Barring any delay from the United States Supreme Court, the Justice Department will release a report from Special Counsel Jack Smith detailing Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
As NBC News reported Thursday, “Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a letter to Congress on Wednesday that he planned to release the election interference-related volume of Smith’s report publicly if U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s order blocking the release of the report was overruled. The appeals court Thursday kept intact Cannon’s order requiring a brief delay before its release.“
While the DOJ report could prove embarrassing for Trump, it could also tank Kash Patel’s nomination as the next head of the FBI, according to former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann.
Weissmann was a guest this morning on MSNBC’s “The Weekend,” and he noted, “Basically on Monday, unless things change, the temporary stay that Judge [Aileen] Cannon issued is over. She shouldn’t have even issued that with respect to either part of the report, but certainly the January 6th part is not a case that’s in front of her.”
“So by Monday, unless things change, we should see that report related to the January 6th investigation, and there could be interesting new details in that report,” he continued. “With respect to the Mar-a-Lago part, the classified document part, I think that is something really worth keeping our eye on because there could be lots of information in there, not just about Donald Trump and why he did what he did, but also about Kash Patel, who is reported to have gone to the grand jury and has said that he was there when Donald Trump allegedly declassified everything.”
Patel would weaponize the FBI to go after Trump’s perceived enemies and might also share classified information with our enemies, especially Russia, which is believed to have compromising information about the president-elect and others in the GOP.
Kash Patel needs to be rejected by the Senate. Hopefully, Jack Smith’s report will all but guarantee that.
