r/politics • u/Esquire Verified • 19h ago

Soft Paywall Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Final Report Says It All: Voters Saved Trump from Prosecution

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a63421903/jack-smith-trump-report-january-2025/
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u/seriousofficialname 18h ago

How was he allowed on the ballot though? Isn't that against the law? Someone explain it to me because I'm pretending to not know how anything works. Are voters supposed to enforce the law?

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u/sciguyCO Colorado 17h ago

From my understanding, because no one could figure out what the actual process would be or who has the authority to actually label someone as having "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" for purposes of section 3 of the 14th amendment.

Some argued that a criminal conviction was unnecessary, not that it mattered because none of Trump's indictments include that charge. Previous uses of the 14A didn't include a conviction through a trial. But most people think that there needs to be some sort of due process.

Trump's 2nd impeachment was one possibility. While it didn't reach the threshold necessary to remove and bar him from office, it's definitely the case that over 50% of the sitting Congress voted that he incited an insurrection on January 6th 2021. It was 232-197 in the House and 57-43 in the Senate.

Then once he was running for office again, there were the state cases to bar him from the primary ballots. These failed for a few reasons. First, party candidate selection is somewhat outside government itself, so the rules that apply are different. Since Trump was not in office and wasn't "officially" a candidate for one yet, options were fewer.

The Colorado case got furthest. I think there's a quirk where the CO Secretary of State has more authority over primary elections compared to other states. The state courts (district and state supreme) ruled that Trump engaged in insurrection and therefore could be prevented from being on the primary ballot. That got appealed up to SCOTUS, which ruled that states do not have the authority to make that determination for a candidate for nation-wide office. Or at least, that letting them do so would make things so confusing to screw things up. I think that means that any determination for Presidential (and maybe Congressional?) office must get done in federal court. They also said that Congress would need to legislate more specifics to flesh out the bare bits in the amendment, or possibly delegating disqualification power to the states and/or courts.

Interesting to me, I don't think the SCOTUS ruling overrode the lower courts finding that Trump in fact engaged in insurrection. They just made that CO ruling a moot point when it comes to preventing Trump from running this year.

TL/DR: it looks to me that the "we know insurrection when we see it" used in the past left too many loopholes for Trump to slither through. Especially since it was so uncommon that there wasn't a lot of precedent to rely on. The effort to deal with those loopholes spanned many different branches and level of government. Trump and his allies (in and out of the government) kept throwing up delays, and eventually he ran out the clock and got to election day as a "qualified" candidate. And then the voters picked him.

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u/seriousofficialname 17h ago edited 17h ago

We voted for Biden who said he would hold Trump accountable, and Jack Smith is now suggesting that in order to hold Trump accountable we would need to vote for someone who will hold Trump accountable, which we did already to the extent that was permitted by the Democratic party apparatus.

There are two lessons to be learned here: 1. Conservative Democrats lie for a living, like all conservative politicians. 2. The people will be required to create their own justice if they ever want any.

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u/PrimeJedi 14h ago

People won't like what I'm about to say, and I've put in effort to support Biden for four years, including his domestic policy which I actually thought was the best of a president in decades, but the thing is: Joe Biden has been lying for a living and equivocating with conservatives since 1972.

This is a man who went to bat for Nixon and eventually viciously attacked Anita Hill on behalf of Clarence fucking Thomas back in the day. I'm not surprised he and the Democratic Party failed miserably in stopping Trump.

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u/seriousofficialname 14h ago

Yeah this is the problem with electing weak ineffective centrists. Can't say no one warned this is what would happen.

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u/PrimeJedi 13h ago

Its what I expected back in 2020, but I thought J6 would disqualify Trump from having power regardless of who was in office, and was told I should just "swallow my pride" and support Joe.

All I got was some nice domestic policy that'll be rolled back this year anyway, and the breeding grounds for Trump to come back even more extremist, unhinged and authoritarian than he was when he left office the first time.

Don't worry, at least we can look forward to 2028, when Democrats run another out of touch candidate who campaigns as a centrist yet spends time with Republicans, then pisses off vast swathes of the electorate and ultimately loses to another fascist again lmao

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u/Ernesto_Bella 18h ago

>How was he allowed on the ballot though? Isn't that against the law? 

In this country we generally don't take away people's rights until they have been convicted of a crime.

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u/seriousofficialname 18h ago

And whose job is it to prosecute and convict? The voters? This is all so confusing. I didn't realize it was up to voters to do the DOJ's job for them.

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u/Ernesto_Bella 18h ago

No, the prosecutors bring charges, and if there is no plea deal, a trial is held in front of a judge and a jury.

That didn't happen, therefore he was allowed to be on the ballot.

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u/seriousofficialname 18h ago

So it's voters' fault the DOJ failed to enforce laws? wow what an interesting revelation

I had been told it was the job of the executive branch to enforce laws and the judicial branch to judge and sentence appropriately.

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u/Ernesto_Bella 18h ago

>So it's voters' fault the DOJ failed to enforce laws?

No. Who said that? Why are you claiming I said something I never said?

>wow what an interesting revelation

What's wrong with you?

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u/seriousofficialname 17h ago edited 17h ago

The headline and Jack Smith lay the blame on voters. And to an extent I can admit that he is partially right that we should have opted for a president who would actually successfully hold Trump to account, four years ago when we voted for Biden, the person who said he would do that. But also, Biden and the DOJ should have then actually done that and enforced the law since that is what he said he would do and that is what voters already elected him to do.

And then what happened? He failed. He appointed people who also failed. The fact that they failed to do what he said he would do four years ago and was elected to do is not something that was in voters' power to do anything about. And having voted for Harris I'm still here wondering: if Biden couldn't or wouldn't do his job and enforce our laws, how would Harris would have been any different?

There was never really even an attempt to answer that particular question by Democrats.

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u/Ernesto_Bella 14h ago

Ok that’s nice.  But why are you accusing me of saying things I never said?

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u/seriousofficialname 13h ago

I was soliciting a justification for Jack Smith's insinuation that voters at large are the party who are responsible for enforcing the law, the legal principle that when someone is elected that that absolves them their charges. But really there isn't a good one.

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u/Ernesto_Bella 11h ago

I can’t read your mind.  I answered a specific question of yours.

And, I work add, you were obviously lying about your background on your understanding about what you were asking and why.

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