OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
One of former President Donald Trump’s top advisors, Stephen Miller, claimed that the Department of Justice was “trying to put President Trump in jail for 100 lifetimes over a library dispute.”
Miller appeared on “Jesse Watters Primetime” and spoke about Trump being charged with three additional counts by Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith, including “willful retention of national defense information” and obstruction. Additionally, Trump was charged with ordering a maintenance worker to remove surveillance footage from his Mar-a-Lago resort.
On the separate allegations of bribery and foreign corruption against President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, Miller said:
All of the answers that we could ever need til the end of time, that would close the book on this forever, are inside that drug-addled brain of Hunter Biden. He is the star witness. Now this isn’t hard for the DOJ. This is the kind of thing that people like James Comey could do in their sleep. You would go to Hunter and you would say, “We have you dead to rights on tax crimes, being an unregistered foreign agent, on sex crimes, on drug crimes, on gun crimes, on every crime under the sun, and we will give you an immunity deal, a non-prosecution agreement, under one condition: you tell us everything and you give us the instructions for every foreign bank account and every transaction involving your father Joe.
Watters joked, “Yeah but Stephen, what you’re missing is, why do that when you can charge Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker?”
“What is $50 million in bribery and foreign corruption and trading on America’s national security compared to a janitor in a library dispute with the national archives? I mean, good lord, Jesse,” Miller said.
Miller added: “This is why the American people are absolutely just fed up. They are completely at their wits’ end when it comes to DOJ corruption. They are trying to put President Trump in jail for 100 lifetimes over a library dispute with the National Archives! But right in front of us is literally the corruption case of the century, of American history, and it would take is working Hunter Biden for a couple of hours facing real jail time.”
Watters concluded, “Yeah, it’s disgusting. I’ll say this, we’re disgusted with it, the voters are disgusted with it.”
When Special Counsel Jack Smith bypassed federal appeals courts last week and took a case involving his prosecution of Trump directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, he took a chance that could come back to bite him.
Smith questioned the justices last week about whether Trump has presidential immunity, which would shield him from prosecution for his actions leading up to and during the riot at the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.
In addition to that, the justices also agreed to hear a case brought by two of the rioters, including Fischer v. United States, which involves Capitol rioter Joseph Fischer’s appeal of the Justice Department’s interpretation of “obstruction of an official proceeding,” which is the same felony charge that Trump is facing in his criminal case.
In addition, Newsweek noted, “Trump is also facing one count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and one count of conspiracy against rights. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.”
The outlet further explained: Because Fischer could potentially upend hundreds of cases, including Trump’s, legal experts said the SCOTUS announcement could give Trump’s team further reason to delay the trial, which is scheduled to begin March 4, 2024.
Trump attorneys have already sought to push the trial date until after the 2024 election. Smith, who has insisted that the proceedings begin on time, filed his own petition with the Supreme Court on Tuesday, asking the justices to weigh in on a critical issue that would keep the case on track with the proposed trial timeline.
Former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade explained to Newsweek that the Supreme Court’s decision to hear Fischer’s case doesn’t necessarily delay Trump’s case. However, Smith may consider pushing the trial date until after the justices rule to determine the validity of the two counts of obstruction against Trump.
“Even though he has two other counts in the indictment, convictions on the obstruction counts could jeopardize the whole case on appeal if a court were later to find that the jury may have relied on evidence of the obstruction in reaching its decision,” McQuade told the outlet. “Other options are to drop the obstruction counts now and proceed on the other two counts or take his chances with all four counts and move forward.”
Legal commentator Randall Eliason agreed with McQuade and told Newsweek that there is a “good chance” that the Fischer case will lead to a delay in the March 4 trial date.
“Both the judge and the parties will likely want to see what the Supreme Court has to say before going to trial, or at the very least before instructing the jury,” he told the outlet.
In his Sunday newsletter, Eliason suggested that Judge Tanya Chutkan, overseeing Trump’s federal election interference case, might prefer not to take the case to trial without first hearing the Supreme Court’s decision on the charge constituting half of Trump’s indictment. Eliason proposed that Chutkan could attempt to start the trial in mid-May, anticipating the justices’ decision on Fischer before providing jury instructions. Even if the trial begins in July, a verdict could still be reached before the 2024 election.
Former federal prosecutor and elected state attorney Michael McAuliffe stated that Smith has structured the indictment against Trump in a way that even if the Supreme Court were to rule against the obstruction charges, it would not hinder the progression of the federal election case.
“Each count can stand on its own even though they arise from the same set of factual allegations,” McAuliffe told the outlet. “As such, the Supreme Court’s prospective decision defining the scope of one subsection of the federal obstruction of an official proceeding statute will not derail the special counsel’s prosecution of Donald Trump in the D.C. case.”
Trump is also accused of participating in a fake elector scheme, which allegedly involved the use of phony documents.
But there is another wrinkle as well: the question of presidential immunity.
Newsweek noted: “McAuliffe said the only real threat to Trump’s federal election case would be the presidential immunity claim, which Smith already brought to the Supreme Court in his petition last week. The justices have given Trump’s team until December 20 to respond to Smith’s petition before the court decides whether or not to take the case.”
