As Trump keeps complaining on his Twitter wannabe Truth Social about the pace of investigations at the Justice Department and elsewhere into his conduct and that of his associates, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is keeping up the pressure.
“Trump is again trying to rewrite history,” Schiff said on Thursday. “After inciting a mob to attack the Capitol and refusing to lift a finger to stop it. But no matter how often he screams “witchhunt,” he can’t escape the facts. The Department of Justice must hold him accountable.” For now, that’s evidently within the purview of Special Counsel Jack Smith, who took over not just the criminal investigation into the ex-president’s handling of classified documents from his time in office but also the probe into the political schemes after the last presidential election meant to support Trump’s ambitions of staying in the presidency. Smith has been taking testimony from high-profile figures, like several Trump lawyers and Robert O’Brien, who was Trump’s national security adviser when the Capitol riot happened. Subpoenas for prominent figures around Trump like Mark Meadows and Mike Pence were also reported.
Recently, a particularly glaring example of Trump’s attempts to reshape history came in the form of his response to the release of portions of a report from a special grand jury that recently completed a stint of work on a criminal investigation in Georgia into pro-Trump election interference there. That probe is led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, whose jurisdiction is in the Atlanta area. Trump dramatically misrepresented what was actually released, predictably claiming he had received total exoneration, which is a laughably ludicrous idea. As the underlying investigation continues, all the judge actually agreed to release was the introduction, conclusion, and a brief part pushing the idea of criminal charges for perjury for some number of the witnesses who provided testimony! Not even half of the report is publicly available at this point. Perhaps even more than usual, Trump — knowingly or not — has no idea what he’s talking about.
The introduction to the report is mostly just introductory material along the lines of the basic details of the special grand jury’s work, such as relevant dates. The jurors also, though, made a point of noting they saw zero evidence of the kind of widespread election fraud Trump claimed — making his idea of the report providing him with total exoneration even more utterly ridiculous. The report said the group unanimously agreed on that point, finding no fraud that could’ve altered the way the election ended.
