A Possible Answer To Yesterday's Question About Jack Smith
Oddly enough, Larry Johnson at the Gateway Pundit may have an explanation. But keeping him in context, he's the same Larry Johnson who, as a PBS News Hour talking head a generation ago, discounted Al Qaida and Osama bin Laden as terrorist threats, something that's hurt his credibility ever since, although more recently, he's been an important contrarian voice on the Ukraine war who's proven correct on that issue so far. Here's his allegation:
My old friend and business partner, John Moynihan, filed a whistleblower complaint with the Department of Justice Inspector General’s Office on November 28 alleging that Jack Smith, the Special Prosecutor pursuing Donald Trump, was engaged in an extortion scheme while he was working at the International Court of Justice. . . . It is no coincidence that Jack Smith, in the wake of that complaint, made an impromptu move on Monday (December 11) asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether Donald Trump had immunity to the charges filed by Smith. Moynihan’s complaint was filed on November 28, 2023 and Smith, 13 days later decides to bypass the Appeals Courts. Smells like politics.
The Moynihan complaint is political dynamite because it provides circumstantial evidence to support Donald Trump’s belief that Jack Smith is not only politically motivated but corrupt. The Trump team wisely has refrained from piling on this news in order to avoid accusations that this was a manufactured hit job.
The complaint alleges in brief that Smith, while serving as chief prosecutor for the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague from 2018 to 2022, engaged in bribery and extortion. In one instance, his job was to track down Kosovo war criminals, but in the process, he solicited bribes to avoid prosecution:
In August 2020, Imeri contacted Halit and tasked him with contacting three “war criminals” in Kosovo. Imeri said that Jack Smith’s office was going to leak dossiers on the three individuals and that Halit’s job was to contact them and solicit a bribe. Halit did as instructed and incurred the wrath of the three targets. His next conversation with Imeri was unpleasant, with Imeri accusing him of botching the bribe request. To earn the trust of Smith’s operation, Halit was asked to “donate” more than $400,000 to a black fund used by the Prosecutor’s office. Halit did as instructed.
Another source reported that Smith was interested in tracking down Russians who may have been aware of corruption by Hillary Clinton. Johnson asks,
How did Jack Smith know that the Russian Potanin possessed incriminating evidence about Hillary Clinton? And why was a prosecutor with the International Court of Justice meddling in that area? Legitimate questions that merit an investigation.
Another article makes the point that the information in the Moynihan November 28, 2023 complaint had already been provided to the Justice Department in April 2022. That author surmises,
Attorney General Merick [sic] Garland learned about this material 18 months ago, and he (or Lisa Monaco, the Littlefinger of Garland’s DOJ) summoned Jack Smith back to Washington, DC to tell him something along the following lines: Listen you SOB, we know that you have been blackmailing people over in Europe and we are going to put you away for 30 years…. or you are going to come home and prosecute Donald Trump. We don’t care how far-fetched the legal theories, you are going to indict him and hound him to thwart his return to office.
Thisis at least a potential explanation for the impression I get that the urgency in Smith's request to the Supreme Court comes from someone well above his paygrade. But we'll have to see what shakes out.