As he sails towards an expected Republican nomination ahead of the presidential elections later this year, Donald Trump keeps trying out a wide range of excuses for his four criminal cases and various civil proceedings.
Some of his latest public criticism of Special Counsel Jack Smith at the federal Justice Department struggles to meet the basics of reading comprehension and knowledge on the functioning of the United States’ federal government. Smith is behind two of Trump’s criminal cases, including charges of attempted election interference and the mishandling of classified government documents recovered from the former president’s southern Florida resort Mar-a-Lago.
“While Crooked Joe Biden and his Cronies have claimed from the outset they have nothing to do with Jack Smith’s Election Interference case against me, Smith himself admitted in a Court Filing yesterday that he “remains subject to Attorney General direction and supervision,” and that includes Biden. That’s right, Jack Smith just admitted what the American People already know, namely, that his case is being directed and supervised by the Biden Administration. So, although he denies it, Garland is carrying out the orders from his boss to prosecute me, and to interfere in the 2024 Election,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
For Smith to identify himself as generally “subject” to the procedural supervision of Attorney General Merrick Garland doesn’t mean that Garland is actively directing what Smith is doing. It just means that the prospect of general oversight is there — which was not a secret. Smith, though, doesn’t regularly report to Garland or the top Justice Department official’s team.
And the “Attorney General” doesn’t somehow “include” President Biden. While Garland was originally nominated for his current post by the president, there is no evidence of Biden then engaging himself in Garland’s work to such an extent. Considering the extensive rate of turnover at high levels, Trump clearly carried the assumption when in office as president that top officials were ultimately subservient to his political whims, but the general principle is the Attorney General working separately from the White House. There’s only intermingling in the context of official duties in extreme circumstances… like Trump’s non-stop hiring-and-firing sprees.
