jack smith deposition

[dirtywick]

https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/e...2/Smith-Depo-Transcript_Redacted-w-Errata.pdf

quietly released on news years eve, i think this should get it's own thread since i anticipate it to be kind of a big news story once people start to go through it all. 8 hours long, lots of long breaks of dead air throughout.

p27

But the President's statements that he believed the election was rife with5 fraud, those certainly are statements that are protected by the First Amendment, correct?

6 A Absolutely not. If they are made to target a lawful government function and
7 they are made with knowing falsity, no, they are not. That was my point about fraud not
8 being protected by the First Amendment.
9 Q I mean, there is a long list of disputed elections, I mean, the election of 1800,
10 1960, year 2000, where candidates believed they were wronged by the -- you know,
11 because they lost. And there's a long history of candidates speaking out about they
12 believe there's been fraud, there's been other problems with the integrity of the election
13 process. And I think you would agree that those types of statements are sort of at the core
14 of the First Amendment rights of a Presidential candidate, right?
15 A There is no historical analog for what President Trump did in this case. As we
16 said in the indictment, he was free to say that he thought he won the election. He was
17 even free to say falsely that he won the election.
18 But what he was not free to do was violate Federal law and use knowing -- knowingly
19 false statements about election fraud to target a lawful government function. That he was
20 not allowed to do. And that differentiates this case from any past history.

p32

Okay. Now, people with different views than you can say the Special
11 Counsel's Office is only interested in prosecuting President Trump because an election is
12 coming up and he is -- he's going to be the Republican nominee. And the special counsel
13 works for a Democratic President, the special counsel works for a Democratic Attorney
14 General. And so the special counsel's laser focus on President Trump is simply to prevent
15 him from, you know, either being the party's nominee or being a successful party's
16 nominee -- or, at the very least, keeping him off the campaign trail.
17 How do you respond to that?18 A All of that is false, and I'll say a few things.
19 The first is the evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large
20 measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes
21 were committed for his benefit.
22 The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without
23 him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit.
24 So in terms of why we would pursue a case against him, I entirely disagree with any
25 characterization that our work was in any way meant to hamper him in the Presidential


1 election.
2 I would never take orders from a political leader to hamper another person in an
3 election. That's not who I am. And I think people who know me and my experience over
4 30 years would find that laughable.
5 Q So did you develop evidence that President Trump, you know, was responsible
6 for the violence at the Capitol on January 6th?
7 A So our view of the evidence was that he caused it and that he exploited it and
8 that it was foreseeable to him.
9 Q But you don't have any evidence that he instructed people to crash the Capitol,
10 do you?
11 A As I said, our evidence is that he in the weeks leading up to January 6th created
12 a level of distrust. He used that level of distrust to get people to believe fraud claims that
13 weren't true. He made false statements to State legislatures, to his supporters in all sorts
14 of contexts and was aware in the days leading up to January 6th that his supporters were
15 angry when he invited them and then he directed them to the Capitol.
16 Now, once they were at the Capitol and once the attack on the Capitol happened, he
17 refused to stop it. He instead issued a tweet that without question in my mind
18 endangered the life of his own Vice President. And when the violence was going on, he
19 had to be pushed repeatedly by his staff members to do anything to quell it.
20 And then even afterwards he directed co-conspirators to make calls to Members of
21 Congress, people who had were his political allies, to further delay the proceedings.
22 Q Did you- -- you sought gag orders in both the Florida case and the D.C. case.
23 Is that correct?

p51

Mr. Smith, let's just start with the bottom line up front. One of your
6 investigations focused on whether any person violated the law in connection with efforts to
7 interfere in the lawful transfer of power following the 2020 election. Is that correct?
8 A Yes.
9 Q At the conclusion of that investigation related to the interference in the lawful
10 transfer of power following the 2020 election, when your office indicted Mr. Trump for his
11 criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 election, did you believe that you had sufficient
12 evidence to obtain and sustain a conviction against Mr. Donald Trump?
13 A Yes.
14 Q For these charges stemming from Mr. Trump's criminal scheme to overturn the
15 2020 election, did you believe that you had sufficient evidence to prove these charges
16 beyond a reasonable doubt?
17 A Yes.
18 Q And we know it's more than just a reasonable doubt. Did you believe that
19 there were multiple substantial Federal interests in proceeding with prosecuting Mr. Trump
20 after he attempted to criminally overturn the 2020 election?
21 A I did.
22 Q Now, the second investigation that you were appointed to lead focused on the
23 possession of highly classified documents at Mr. Trump's Mar-a-Lago social club following
24 his Presidency.
25 When your office indicted Mr. Trump for willfully keeping highly classified docs after

1 he lost the 2020 election, did you believe that you had sufficient evidence to obtain and
2 sustain a conviction against Mr. Donald Trump?
3 A Yes.
4 Q And for these charges stemming -- for these charges stemming from when Mr.
5 Trump left the office in 2021 with these highly classified documents, did you believe that
6 you had sufficient evidence to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt?
7 A Yes.
8 Q And did you believe that there were multiple substantial Federal interests in
9 proceeding with prosecuting Mr. Trump for his unlawful possession of these highly classified
10 documents?
11 A I did.

it's a pain to copy and paste from. check out around p66 of the transcript for the thoughts on the secret documents case gag order by cannon as well.

well it goes on, it's really long.

 

[dirtywick]

p127 after the break there’s a large section naming co conspirators and their efforts to contact and pressure members of congress to delay the certification and push the fake electors. goes into the weeks leading up when they were having discussions with steve bannon on how to pull it off

but not all the fake electors bit, some of them likened their plot as a plot to overthrow the government. and many of the plotters, when interviewed by smith’s team, walked back the fraud claims

 

[dirtywick]

p149

in reference to the fake electors case, comments on whether trump believed there was fraud and the witnesses they would have called to testify about it

2 Did President Trump ever acknowledge -- and I believe you talk about in this
3 paragraph -- did President Trump ever acknowledge that he knew that he had actually lost
4 the election to President Biden?
5 A Yes. So this paragraph references different statements that he made in the
6 presence of other people. One is that, "It doesn't matter if you won or lost the election.
7 You still fight like hell." And then the other was, "Can you believe I lost to this f'ing guy?"
8 referring to Joe Biden.
9 Q So if this would have gone to a trial, and using your years of experience being a
10 prosecutor and trial attorney, how would you have argued this admission of Mr. Trump, or
11 how could you? What's a way you could have argued this admission from Mr. Trump to a
12 jury?
13 A Well, I think -- I saw these admissions as corroborative of the larger case.
14 We would have presented what I viewed as very strong witnesses from each State to
15 explain how the elections occurred in that State and why the events, the outcomes were
16 trustworthy, and debunking various fraud claims that President Trump made.
17 We would present -- we would have presented the false claims that he made
18 repeatedly, interspersed with debunkings to him, or other evidence that showed they
19 weren't true and that that evidence got to him. This sort of evidence would corroborate
20 that, but it would sort of be the cherry on top, if you will.
21 The evidence that I felt was most powerful was the evidence that came from people
22 in his own party who, as I said earlier, put country before party and were willing to tell the
23 truth to him, even though it could mean trouble for them.
24 I think witnesses like that, in my experience, would be very powerful witnesses in
25 front of a jury.

again still annoying to copy and paste

so, the whole thing jumps around a lot depending on who's doing the questioning. the republicans mostly try and imply it was a dem hoax and that he shouldn't have tried to subpoena evidence when he could have just asked nicely.

but it covers 3 things, jan 6 which shortly after expanded the scope to the fake electors plot as well, and the stolen toilet documents case.

 

[Frank Newgent]

Jim Jordan’s toll records were important because Jordan called the White House on January 6 because it sounded like he was scared.

Q The toll record subpoena for the chairman of the committee.

A Well, I can tell you that, for example, there were — there was contact on, for example, January 6. But, again, another example for you is Mark Meadows, when he interviewed, when we interviewed him, he referenced the fact that that afternoon Chairman Jordan had been in contact with the White House. And, like Congressman McCarthy’s contact with the White House, it was relevant because, again, Meadows stated this, that these were supporters. These were credible people that the President relied on.

And what I recall was Meadows stating that “I’ve never seen Jim Jordan scared of anything,” and the fact that we were in this different situation now where people were scared really made it clear that what was going on at the Capitol could not be mistaken for anything other than what it was.

And it goes back to that sort of information from someone who is a credible source to the President, proving that that actually happened and that there’s actually a record of that call and exactly when it happened and what actions happened after that or didn’t happen after that, extremely probative to our case.

page 97

 

[dirtywick]

a couple more things i found interesting:

p116 they try and imply trump didn't get adequate legal representation

But you would certainly agree that the President gets to pick who his lawyers
are, and if he wants to have Todd Blanche and John Lauro and not others, that that's
2 something that the government ought to be able to work with, correct?
3 A Sure. Although, you know, I -- not this case, but other cases, I've seen judges
4 say that if you're going to pick lawyers because they're unavailable, that you can't do that.
5 Q But that wasn't the case here.
6 A Well, if you're picking lawyers because they -- that will allow you to sort of
7 delay the case --
8 Q Right.
9 A -- that's not something that judges usually put up with.
10 Q But, you know, I mean, President Trump, I mean, nobody from Big Law would
11 represent him. I mean, isn't that -- isn't that a pretty well-established case?
12 A I don't know that.
13 Q And, like, Mr. Blanche had to, like, leave his firm to take on the representation?
14 A I know he chose to leave his firm. I don't know the circumstances behind
15 that.
16 Q Okay.
17 I mean, it might -- maybe it comes as a surprise to you, but there are, you know,
18 really, two different Washingtons when it comes to lawyers. And, you know, Big Law
19 downtown just does not, you know, have a great appetite for hiring former, you know,
20 Trump alumni, you know, lawyers that worked in the Trump administration, with, you know,
21 Republicans generally.
22 I mean, are you aware of that?
23 A I have not worked in Big Law. I've been a public servant my whole career.
24 Q Right.
25 A That's the world I know.
Okay.
2 By contrast, you know, the lawyers on the January 6th Committee, I mean, they
3 leave the Hill one day and, you know, they're immediately gobbled up by Big Law very
4 quickly. That just doesn't happen with Republicans.
5 Would you agree?
6 A That Republicans don't get jobs as lawyers? I mean, I'm sorry --
7 Q At Big Law firms.
8 A I don't actually know that that's true.
9 Q Okay.
10 A I mean, again, this isn't a world I have worked in --
11 Q Uh-huh.
12 A -- but I think there are Republicans at Big Law firms.
13 Q Okay. Republicans that represented Donald Trump zealously?
14 A I haven't kept track of that, but you'd said Republicans at law firms, so --
15 Q Okay.

they start getting into the documents case towards the last two hours of the deposition. at about 6:28 in the video, they talk a bit about kash patel's appointment, but judge cannon has an injunction on the case so he can't answer quite a few questions. he then gets into the supreme court putting a kibosh on the case

p191 on the transcript

Mr. Raskin. Mr. Smith, do you believe that the Supreme Court's decision on
11 executive immunity constitutes an exoneration of President Trump's conduct in the months
12 and weeks leading up to January 6 and on January 6?
13 The Witness. No.
14 Mr. Raskin. Would you just explain that for us, why you don't see that as an
15 exoneration for what he did?
16 The Witness. Sure. I understand the Supreme Court's decision. If I can just go
17 back for a second. This was an issue we litigated in the district court. The district court
18 agreed with us. We litigated it in the Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals agreed with
19 us. We litigated it in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court majority did not agree with
20 us. They took a view of executive power that was more expansive than what we argued.
21 I disagreed with it for the reasons we set forth in our brief, and the reasons stated by the
22 dissent in the case, Judge -- Justice Sotomayor.
23 But it is the law of the land, and what my office sought to do in responding to that
24 was to follow the law and see do we still have a case, and I think the evidence that we had
25 after that decision remained powerful.
I talked earlier today about State officials who put allegiance to the country before a
2 party. Those officials from Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania --
3 Mr. Raskin. Georgia.
4 The Witness. All of those witnesses -- right -- all of those witnesses would still be
5 available to us. The heart of our case would still be available to us.
6 And I think it's important to know that, well, you know, our view was that he abused
7 his authority in the Justice Department to as one way, to effectuate this scheme. This was
8 about him as a candidate trying to say he won an election he didn't win, and so, having to
9 frame this in that manner, obviously, it limited some of the evidence. That's why we had
10
11
12to supersede the indictment.But I don't think it was an exoneration because I still believed that there wassubstantial evidence that would allow us to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.
13 Mr. Raskin. Someone can be guilty of a crime in a factual sense, but still be
14 immunized from prosecution, right?
15 The Witness. Well, I mean, that's getting sort of like theoretical and metaphysical.
16 I mean, if the court says that's not a crime, then it's not a crime, but in our case, our view
17 was that that ruling excised a certain portion of our proof, but all the charges we brought we
18 felt were still valid. We felt we still had a lot of evidence to support those charges.

after that some interesting stuff about his feelings on the state of the fbi regarding the purging of agents on a partisan basis



at about 7:28 in the video he discusses the missing documents during republican testimony. they concoct some scenarios, he responds.

trump was apparently storing the documents in boxes mixed with a bunch of personal items, they called them the beautiful mind boxes

p220

And I would just say, everything I say today I'm deriving just from the filings we did
12 on this. But my recollection from those filings is that one of the central issues about
13 keeping the documents in the same order is that President Trump kept these incredibly
14 highly classified documents in boxes with all different sorts of things of all different sorts of
15 shapes and sizes -- clothing, memorabilia, newspaper clippings, things of that nature.
16 And so, while agents, I think, sought or wanted to keep the documents in order as
17 best they could, I think, once they saw the order of these boxes, clearly that was going to be
18 an impossible thing to do.
19 And so we set out our views about that in these filings. And, again, I'm speaking
20 only from these filings.
21 Q Uh-huh. What's the upshot of the documents being taken -- taken out of
22 order?
23 A My view is there is no upshot, in the sense of, these documents were -- staff
24 members referred to these documents as the, quote, "'Beautiful Mind' boxes,"
25 meaning they were -- and this wasn't just one staff member; it was multiple staff members.

 

[Donal]

Confirming what we already knew. I don't expect any of the orange weakling's simps to address any of this except for attempts at impugning Smith.

the real question is: So what? What does this lead to?

 

[TragicMonkey]

the real question is: So what? What does this lead to?

War with Venezuela, or Iran. Or both! Gotta have the distraction.

 

[newyorkguy]

...I don't expect any of the orange weakling's simps to address any of this except for attempts at impugning Smith...

Agree 100%. And I think that was what a caller named "Russell" -- a former Republican voter, born in the same Queens NY hospital where trump was born -- was driving at when he told C-Span he'd never seen "such corruption." That trump administration officials have no integrity whatsoever. They're completely comfortable lying and pandering. As a former ESPN sportscaster would have put it, "It's what they do!" It's what they signed up for.

 

[dirtywick]

Confirming what we already knew. I don't expect any of the orange weakling's simps to address any of this except for attempts at impugning Smith.

the real question is: So what? What does this lead to?

the republicans in the deposition seemed to mostly stick with trying to show smith had an anti conservative bias, and asked a lot of questions about his background and appointment

i don’t think they made very many good points. maybe it came off differently to others

edit

i forgot they made a free speech defense angle as well

 

[newyorkguy]

...i don’t think they made very many good points...

I'm sure that is of no concern to them. What matters is what they DIDN'T say. They know the orange bozo is watching and listening. He's their audience.

 

[dirtywick]

their other major line of questioning seemed to revolve around trump not having adequate legal representation and time because there were too many lawsuits. they spent a ton of time on that as well

 

[JayUtah]

the republicans in the deposition seemed to mostly stick with trying to show smith had an anti conservative bias, and asked a lot of questions about his background and appointment

their other major line of questioning seemed to revolve around trump not having adequate legal representation and time because there were too many lawsuits. they spent a ton of time on that as well

They're pushing the narrative that Smith's prosecution was a political witch hunt. Smith's purported bias is meant to distract from the evidentiary strength of the case. The proposition that Donald Trump was being inundated with a Gish gallop of legal actions is also meant to feed the narrative that it was all just lawfare.

i forgot they made a free speech defense angle as well

Lying per se is not fraud. Lying with the corrupt intent to obtain something of value is. What makes it fraud in Pres. Trump's case was not that he promulgated something he knew to be a lie, but that he did so trying to frustrate a legitimate government operation to his benefit. That's the textbook definition of fraud against the government.

 

[dirtywick]

They're pushing the narrative that Smith's prosecution was a political witch hunt. Smith's purported bias is meant to distract from the evidentiary strength of the case. The proposition that Donald Trump was being inundated with a Gish gallop of legal actions is also meant to feed the narrative that it was all just lawfare.

i agree that seems to be their angle. they didn’t do a very good job of getting there imo

Lying per se is not fraud. Lying with the corrupt intent to obtain something of value is. What makes it fraud in Pres. Trump's case was not that he promulgated something he knew to be a lie, but that he did so trying to frustrate a legitimate government operation to his benefit. That's the textbook definition of fraud against the government.

yes smith goes into detail a few times about why he believes this is fraud. particularly that he had a bunch of sources and examples of people he trusted trying to tell him he lost and him dismissing them and running with the likes of giuliani, powell, and eastman

 

[JayUtah]

The classified documents case was a legal slam-dunk. Trying to dismiss that as a political prosecution is quite a stretch. Donald Trump is not exactly a clever criminal. He's just used to skating by attrition or on a technicality. Judge Canon had to reach into the dark smelly nethers of fringe law to find a reason for the final delay, and she was in a position to do that only because Pres. Trump put her there for that reason.

The legal strategy in the election interference matters was to present Trump's actions as legitimately motivated. For something to be fraud, it has to satisfy a number of testable elements. One of them is the desire to obtain something of value. The other is that it has to be a knowing lie. They wanted to defeat that element by saying it was something the President legitimately believed—or if not, that he was within his rights to call into question the results even if he didn't strictly believe that there was evidentiary merit.

 

[dirtywick]

also want to note that since there's an injunction from cannon on the documents case, there was a bunch of stuff he wasn't able to comment on. pretty likely that bunch of stuff isn't stuff that favors trump

 

[dirtywick]

p 204 covers nauta and the movement of the boxes

nd just to confirm, Mr. Nauta moved these boxes just a day after Mr. Trump
4 met with his attorneys about responding to the grand jury subpoena. Is that correct?
5 A Well, yes. He actually -- the first day that is listed here is in paragraph 54,
6 when he moved the first box. And then -- yes. So then, if you look at paragraph 59,
7 subsection a, three boxes were moved on the 24th.
8 On the 30th, Trump and Nauta spoke by phone for about 30 seconds. And very
9 shortly after that, over a period of a little less than two hours, Nauta moved another 50
10 boxes from the storage room.
11 That same day, there was a text exchange between Nauta and the President's wife,
12 and in that she -- I'm summarizing here, but it's on paper -- she was saying we're not going
13 to have room for all these boxes on the plane.
14 And Mr. Nauta replied, "I think he wanted to pick from them. I don't imagine him
15 wanting to take the boxes. He told me to put them in the room and that he was going to
16 talk to you about them." And then, on the 1st, 11 more boxes were moved out of the
17 storage room.

p205 that he ordered them moved because his attorney told him they were going to search that room

So there were only 30 boxes left in the storage room, although there were
6 64 boxes that were at Mar-a-Lago, to your knowledge, based upon this indictment?
7 A Well, they returned 30. How many more were still in there that they hadn't
8 taken at all, that would be added to that.
9 Q Why was the -- or was there any significance to moving all these boxes prior to
10 June 2nd of 2022? And I believe this was referenced in the false certification of the FBI
11 section of the indictment.
12 What's the significance of moving all these boxes just before June 2nd of 2022?
13 A Because Donald Trump was on notice that his attorney was going to search that
14 room, search for these -- for classified documents in that room. And in between the time
15 he was put on notice of that and the time that he actually did that, at Donald Trump's
16 direction, 64 boxes were taken out, but only 30 were returned.

p206 discussion of the deletion of the security footage

Let's move on to the next section, about the attempt to delete security camera
11 footage. And we're working our way up to this August court-authorized search of
12 Mar-a-Lago, if you can't see where we're going here.
13 So on page 27, that's the section that starts "The Attempt to Delete Security Camera
14 Footage."
15 Do the evidence show that Mr. Trump attempted to or tried to direct someone else
16 to delete security camera footage at Mar-a-Lago?
17 A Yes.

 

[dirtywick]

well i was wrong. seems like nobody gave a ◊◊◊◊ about this

 

[EHocking]

The trump administration has let loose all the squirrels in its possession, is why.