Democrats must answer for Jack Smith’s politically charged prosecutorial abuses

The Senate Judiciary Committee last week dropped evidence that Biden-ers special counsel Jack Smith savagely abused prosecutorial powers for purely political purposes — an outrage Democrats as of now seem sure to repeat when next they run the Executive Branch.

The Biden Justice Department in 2022 tasked Smith with creating a federal case against then-ex-President Donald Trump to hobble (or better still prevent) his third White House run.

Now we know that Smith, in his Capt. Ahab pursuit of Trump, went after complete innocents — spying on thousands of average Americans, obtaining their home addresses, bank account and routing numbers, and signatures.

Their crime? Donating to Trump, in some cases as little as $1.  

Smith also obtained emails of dozens of reporters at major media outlets — targets who fell across the partisan spectrum, by the way, in case left-leaning journos thought their political allegiances might spare them. 

What was their crime? Daring to be in touch with Trump White House officials.  

All this comes atop Smith’s already-revealed spying on text messages between Trump officials and 44 lawmakers from October 2020 to Jan. 20, 2021. 

Again: The victimized legislators come from both parties.

And the seizure of their texts seems a clear violation of Article I’s “Speech and Debate” clause, which protects members of Congress from civil and criminal prosecution over their official activity. 

Plus, Smith spied on the whereabouts of 10 Republican lawmakers in the days before and after Jan. 6 using phone geolocation —surveillance ruled clearly unconstitutional in a landmark 2018 Supreme Court decision, Carpenter v. United States.

Democrats love to bemoan the “chilling effect” of Trump’s perfectly legal actions on everything from budget cuts to immigration enforcement: Where are they on Biden’s favorite special prosecutor illegally going after small-dollar political donors and reporters? 

Then again, the national party seems to be built around contempt for the civil rights of its political enemies: Look at Biden administration efforts to set up a “Disinformation Governance Board” or Attorney General Merrick Garland siccing the FBI on school-board protestors.

To say nothing of Democrats’ open talk now of packing the Supreme Court.

Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley’s done the republic a service by bringing Smith’s outrages to light.

Too bad Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) gave the deniers an out with his an embarrassing marquee moment, confusing a text message to level a baseless perjury claim.

That unforced error obscured Sen. Josh Hawley’s far more credible perjury charge: Smith was lying when he said in previous House testimony that he couldn’t remember seeking a search warrant for text messages of members of Congress.  

Democrats will come back into power someday; if this habit of running roughshod over the rights of anyone who stands in their way politically remains unchecked, it will cause a constitutional crisis of the kind Smith et al have spent the past decade charging Trump with causing.

That’s why Smith and his former masters must be held accountable for the sake of their party’s future — and America’s.