Recent reports have outlined a series of new subpoenas connected to investigative efforts at the Justice Department now led by Special Counsel Jack Smith. Targets include at least two former Trump campaign officials, who were told to provide materials including communications about Dominion Voting Systems, the election tech company often used in pro-Trump conspiracy theories.
Trump is apparently paying attention. “The Special “Prosecutor” assigned to the “get Trump case,” Jack Smith(?), is a Trump Hating THUG whose wife is a serial and open Trump Hater, whose friends & other family members are even worse, and as a prosecutor in Europe, according to Ric Grenell, put a high government official in prison because he was a Trump positive person,” Trump complained on Truth Social Thursday. “Smith is known as “an unfair Savage,” & is best friends with the craziest Trump haters, including Lisa Monaco who runs “Injustice.” The Boxes Scam is a HOAX… I beat the Fake Impeachments, the disgraceful Mueller Persecution, and much else that the Fake News doesn’t want to write or talk about, but this charade MUST STOP NOW!!!”
In the context of prior comments Trump has made, his insistence the investigations “must stop now” sounds somewhat like a threat. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who infamously faced pressure from Trump after the 2020 presidential election to take action on the results that showed Joe Biden winning Raffensperger’s state, previously spoke to how he understood comments Trump made on a high-profile phone call with him not long before January 6 to include a threat of what would apparently be physical violence carried out by his supporters.
“Well, first of all, there’s the positional power,” he told the House panel that investigated the Capitol riot. “And what we’ve seen, sadly, is, some people that, you know, have had government positions started going down the rabbit trail and buying into this stuff. And then, also, we just saw that from a personal standpoint — you know, people driving by our house, people that send you threatening texts, threatening emails, things like that, not just us but to my wife. Someone broke into my daughter-in-law’s house the same night that the two Oath Keepers came by our house, so — from North Carolina and Pennsylvania. I saw the text. So I say all that because I understood that some people could believe this stuff, or they want to believe it.”
Raffensperger’s comments certainly sound like he believed Trump to be consciously making the threat, not just stumbling into something that his extremist supporters could use as an excuse to act. It’s also clear how he wasn’t alone in that understanding — and that Trump wasn’t alone in pursuing and ginning up action, considering his backers who lashed out.
It’s not that difficult to see Trump’s commentary about Smith in a similar light. Separately, journalist Kyle Cheney suggested the former president might be trying to refer to a European government official actually accused of war crimes, not just somehow ensnared in Donald’s delusional vision of the world in which just about everything somehow substantively revolves around him. Smith has a recent past of involvement in prosecuting such offenses.
This guy? pic.twitter.com/5Vo2kLmP9R
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 12, 2023
