If Jack Smith’s Goons Don’t Pay For Their Crimes, Americans Will

In exposing Jack Smith’s lawless, corrupt, and tyrannical effort to criminalize the MAGA movement, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, revealed jarring new details about the extent of the Jan. 6-justified lawfare campaign.

Smith’s partisan team carried out a fishing expedition on behalf of the Biden administration and Democrat Party that went beyond obtaining the text messages of more than 40 members of Congress despite the weaponizers knowing it likely violated the Constitution’s speech and debate clause. It also encompassed the issuance of some 197 subpoenas for records relating to 430 Republican individuals and organizations, or the collection of nearly 5,000 checks from mainly small-dollar Trump donors. But on top of all that, Grassley divulged that Smith’s sleuths secured messages from 87 Trump I White House phones and hoovered up the communications of nearly 50 media members at well over a dozen outlets, including those of The Federalist’s own Mollie Hemingway.

It is as unsurprising as it is depressing that legacy media outlets have been silent on Smith’s overreach, even though employees of those outlets had their messages pilfered by zealous FBI and DOJ officials, operating as hitmen for one political party in its effort to eliminate the other political party. The same is true of the fact that the journalists silent today over this brazen operation were yesterday screaming bloody murder that the Trump administration revoked the privileged White House access of their leftist apparatchik colleagues.

They’re silent because the Democrat mouthpieces who dominate the media and cry crocodile tears for “freedom of the press” believe that efforts to destroy Republicans are righteous and just, and the ends justify the means — freedom be damned.

A bigger problem than the hypocritical and hyper-partisan nature of the Fourth Estate is the reality that the Biden administration’s Soviet-style assault on political dissenters has done catastrophic damage. It is not clear where the victims can or will go for recompense, nor that the aggressors will face justice for their depredations — guaranteeing worse abuses are to come.

Consider the chilling implications of this operation given The Federalist’s experience. This publication has been a dogged critic of America’s ruling class, regularly features ideas and policies that threaten its power and privilege, and has exposed some of our betters’ greatest scandals — most notably with our award-winning coverage of the Russiagate hoax, led by none other than our targeted editor-in-chief.

Apparently, because of The Federalist’s effectiveness, along with its presentation of information and opinion that authorities find inconvenient and imperiling, the Biden administration-led censorship-industrial complex targeted us. Now, it just so happens, the Biden FBI and DOJ snooped on our editor-in-chief too.

What are the takeaways from this experience?

If you oppose the priorities of the political class and expose the ways it has weaponized its authorities against its public critics and political foes, the most powerful national security apparatus will come down on your head. It will watch you, intercept your communications, build a dossier on you with information that the apparatus will never delete, try to put you out of business, and worse.

Knowing all this, commentators and reporters may be intimidated. Some will self-censor, shrinking the bounds of public discourse by avoiding critical and meritorious but controversial arguments. Still others will become co-opted by the powerful rather than seekers of truth. Advertisers and financial supporters may flee.

For those who would serve as sources for such media outlets, they too must assume Big Brother is watching, waiting, plotting, and planning. Whistleblowers already know they risk everything by coming forward to disclose malfeasance. But the anti-Trump lawfare of the last decade — in which the ruling class has sought to silence, bankrupt, and jail its political opponents, while fomenting street violence and helping inculcate a homicidal wing of the Democrat Party — has taken the threat level to new heights. Needless to say, sources will dry up.

Abuses, no longer revealed, will fester and multiply. The ruling class will consolidate its position and grow even less responsive to the people.

If we cared about having any semblance of justice in this country, let alone a genuine commitment from our leaders to the First Amendment, including a free press, we would demand answers to the following immediately: Whose communications, among those in the media, did Jack Smith and his regime get their hands on? On what specific grounds, and by what authority? What was the content of those communications? To what end did the Smith regime use them? Who were each of the individuals involved with the decision-making and collection process? Did any of them commit crimes in the process? Can they be prosecuted, and if so, why have they not been charged? Will those records be deleted? If not, why not?

We would then hold the wrongdoers to account. We would ensure they were prohibited from working in government ever again. (Unfortunately, unlike ex-Trump administration officials who are blackballed for merely having the wrong beliefs, one can expect the private sector will not shun but reward these individuals as “resistance” heroes, with large sinecures.) Congress would haul them in for public hearings, and those they snooped on would get to confront them by submitting their questions to be asked verbatim by their representatives.

We would implement laws punishing analogous misconduct with such crippling penalties that none would dare approach, let alone cross the lines drawn in defense of our civil liberties. Minimally, lawmakers would create civil remedies commensurate with the grave nature of the transgressions at hand.

If past is prologue, we can expect almost none of this to happen besides perhaps the release of more documents. Perhaps the biggest tell was when Congress killed the fund to compensate the victims of government weaponization — an attempt to at least begin to try and make whole victims of such egregious assaults on our rights.

Self-evident apathy, indifference to weaponization, an unwillingness to do what is necessary to punish the aggressors and reward the victims prevail in Washington, D.C. — or worse, a belief that such weaponization is merited. Ultimately, it is fatal to our republic. The reality is that even if every executive and legislative branch official were genuinely dedicated to de-weaponization, the genie can never be fully back in the bottle. But it is a travesty that most of our purported public servants do not even try.

And it is not only Trump administration officials, or conservative journalists, or small-dollar Republican donors who will bear the brunt of it. We all will.

Ben Weingarten is editor at large for RealClearInvestigations. He is a senior contributor to The Federalist, columnist at Newsweek, and a contributor to the New York Post and Epoch Times, among other publications. Subscribe to his newsletter at weingarten.substack.com, and follow him on Twitter: @bhweingarten.