Special Counsel Jack Smith is letting failed, one-term former president Donald Trump know in no uncertain terms that the law applies to him and will be enforced to the maximum extent for his alleged crimes.
In a brutal 54-page response to a motion filed two weeks by attorneys for the disgraced ex-president, Smith makes it clear that the “defendant is not above the law.”
Trump is claiming that he has “presidential immunity” from any actions he took while still serving as head of state, including trying to overturn the 2020 election and his possible involvement in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Smith, however, is having none of such nonsense, writing in his response to the Trump motion, “He is subject to the federal criminal laws like more than 330 million other Americans, including Members of Congress, federal judges, and everyday citizens. None of the sources the defendant points to in his motion—the Constitution’s text and structure, history and tradition, or Supreme Court precedent—supports the absolute immunity he asks the Court to create for him.”
The special counsel also notes that Trump’s attempts to “draw a parallel between his fraudulent efforts to overturn the results of an election that he lost and the likes of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and George Washington’s Farewell Address” are absurd on their face.
“These things are not alike,” Smith explains in the brief. “The more apt parallel the defendant identifies is to judges, who, like a former president, enjoy absolute immunity from civil damages liability for certain conduct but who are ‘subject to criminal prosecutions as are other citizens.’ The same is true for the defendant.”
Smith concludes his brief with this flourish, “For the foregoing reasons, the Court should deny the defendant’s motion to dismiss the indictment on the ground that a former president is immune from criminal prosecution.”
According to the U.S. Constitution, no one is above the law, whether he’s a former president, a Supreme Court justice, or a janitor. We are all equal under the law and subject to what it says. If we aren’t, then the American Revolution was pointless and we might just as well go back to having a king rule us with absolute impunity.
