ON TUESDAY, the House G.O.P. conference chair, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) filed an ethics complaint with the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility against special counsel Jack Smith over his pro- persecution of 45th President Donald Trump, contending he has “unlawfully interfere[d] with the 2024 presidential election.” Her primary gripe, for which she wants Smith censured, is that Smith’s “rushing” the case unjustly to ensure the publicity will maximize adverse coverage of the leading presidential candidate.
The D.O.J. has a selectively utilized tacit policy of avoiding actions that could influence an election in the 60 days prior to it. (Hillary Clinton appeared unable to escape this ‘rule’ in 2016 for her unsecured, unauthorized private email server used for work. She didn’t need to, however, given then-F.B.I. Director James Comey’s conclusion “no reasonable prosecutor” would pursue a case against her, though that seems especially absurd given today’s presumably ‘reasonable’ Trump prosecutors have shown themselves to be most enthusiastic and zealous about taking on more frivolous and vengeful cases against him.) Apparently, this ’60-day rule’ is also a pretext for rushing cases through the judicial system precipitously, with the ultimate result of denying due process to a defendant, at least if his last name begins with a ’T’ and rhymes with ‘chump.’
Stefanik isn’t really the appropriate person to file a complaint with any bar associations Smith may be a member of, but Trump’s attorneys certainly could if they believed he was violating the Rules or Code of Professional Conduct. Perhaps they don’t think he has, are too busy defending their client, or don’t want to play nasty—who knows.
More likely, it is Stefanik putting in yeoman’s effort to appear to be taking affirmative action to defend the president whose vice president she’d presumably like to be. She has done similar things in the past. In December, she requested an ethics investigation into U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell who was sitting on cases connected to Trump and the Jan. 6th defendants. (Read it here.) And the month before, she filed an ethics complaint against N.Y. Judge Arthur Engoron, who sat on the Trump ‘civil fraud’ case, requesting he resign and accusing him of “inappropriate bias and judicial intemperance.” (Read it here.) In its defense, the D.O.J. prosecutor, Jay Bratt, informed the judge that Smith’s tea, had sought advice from the department’s Public Integrity Section of a manual Stefanik had cited.
Stefanik’s belief was advanced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News two days earlier. He characterized all the cases against Trump as a “conspiracy” intended to skew the presidential election, saying:
“Alvin Bragg [is saying] President Trump was involved in a conspiracy to obstruct the 2016 election. And Jack Smith is saying President Trump was involved in a conspiracy to interfere with the 2020 election. It seems to me the truth really is, Alvin Bragg and Jack Smith are in a conspiracy to impact the 2024 race and frankly, Fani Willis is a part of the effort as well.”
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