Jack Smith’s ‘Shocking Display of Disregard for the Constitution’
The scandal continues to put the Department of Justice on its heels. After court documents demonstrated the potentially dangerous situation created by the presence of two armed federal law enforcement agencies at the former president s sprawling Palm Beach estate that day, both Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray made public statements in an attempt to downplay the FBI s inclusion of lethal force language in the FBI s raid plan.
But Republicans are not placated by the DOJ s assurances of following standard operating procedure or unsubstantiated claims that the deadly force policy also was in play during consensual searches of Joe Biden s home in 2023. And it appears U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon has her own set of concerns as to how the FBI conducted the search on August 8, 2022.
Next week, Cannon will hold a hearing in her Florida courtroom on Donald Trump s motion to prevent Special Counsel Jack Smith from using evidence seized during the nine-hour raid at trial. Cannon is presiding over Smith s espionage and obstruction indictment against Trump and his two codefendants.
Smith is on Cannon s bad side for a number of reasons, not the least of which is his office s recent confession that evidence is not in the same sequence as they were following the raid something Smith s lead prosecutor misrepresented in court and that an unknown number of classified documents apparently are unaccounted for. (I explained here.)
Trump s lawyers further accuse FBI agents of exceeding the scope of the warrant by ransacking the bedroom of Mrs. Trump and their son, Barron.