After Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith to oversee the criminal investigations into Donald Trump, it was only a matter of time before the former president lashed out against the news and the new special counsel. As NBC News reported, we didn’t have to wait long.
In remarks at his Florida resort Friday night, Trump called the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith “appalling” and a “horrendous abuse of power.” “This is a rigged deal,” he said, referring to Smith, a highly respected career prosecutor, as the “super radical left special counsel.”
In comments reminiscent of his Jan. 6 rhetoric, the Republican added, “You people have to fight. You have to fight. You have to be strong.” Hours earlier, Trump said something similar to Fox News, insisting that the Republican Party should “stand up and fight” on his behalf.
Ideally, at least from his perspective, the former president would help his followers and partisan allies with talking points they could use to “fight” for him. But in the wake of the Justice Department’s announcement, Trump apparently couldn’t think of anything coherent.
“I am not going to partake in this.” This was another part of the Republican’s message to Fox News on Friday afternoon. It’s also not much of a response: Criminal suspects don’t have the luxury of trying to negate legal proceedings through boycotts.
“I have been going through this for six years.” Trump added this whine in his message to Fox News, but it was less effective than he probably realized: Reminding us that he’s been suspected of criminal wrongdoing throughout his political career doesn’t help his defense.
“Isn’t this sort of like double jeopardy?” Evidently, because he’s been impeached twice before, Trump doesn’t think he should face criminal investigations into separate matters now. In related news, the former president apparently has no idea what “double jeopardy” means.
The Justice Department has been “weaponized.” This was part of the former president’s pitch at Mar-a-Lago on Friday night, and it remains both wrong and ironic. Trump’s efforts to turn federal law enforcement into a political weapon have been well documented — and unrefuted. Indeed, as the Republican peddles nonsensical claims about the politicization of the Justice Department, it was literally last week when Trump’s former White House chief of staff went on the record to complain about Trump trying to use federal law enforcement against his perceived political opponents. The newly appointed special counsel is “totally controlled by President Obama and his former A.G., Eric Holder.” This was a new claim Trump rolled out via social media last night, and it’s ugly. Not only is Smith a highly respected prosecutor, there’s nothing to suggest he has any meaningful connections to Obama and Holder, neither one of whom had anything to do with his appointment. It was almost as if the former president went out of his way to whine about two Black men for no apparent reason. The precedent that doesn’t exist. At Friday night’s gala, Trump again insisted other modern presidents “kept documents,” adding, “In one case, they had it in a Chinese restaurant with broken windows. And in another case they had a Chinese restaurant connected to a bowling alley. This is where the documents were kept. They took documents with them. President Obama took documents.” All of this has been thoroughly reviewed and discredited. Let this be a reminder to Republicans scrambling to defend the former president: If Trump can’t think of a coherent response to these developments, are you sure it’s wise to line up behind him?
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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