Department of Justice (DOJ) Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team have come under fire for apparently attempting to violate attorney-client privilege for Donald Trump in what one former Trump attorney argued is prosecutorial misconduct. But Smith and his prosecutorial team were previously sanctioned in the case of former Rep. Rick Renzi, who revealed details of the numerous illegal wiretaps of his attorney by the prosecutorial team Smith oversaw in exclusive comments to PJ Media.
Renzi was convicted on bribery and extortion charges, to which he pleaded “not guilty” and was later given a full presidential pardon by Trump. While a 2019 complaint and request for investigation filed on Renzi’s behalf by respected legal firm Mayer Brown provided evidence of prosecutorial misconduct, current Trump prosecutors Jack Smith and David Harbach were more directly implicated in the misconduct than previously revealed.
“The prosecutorial misconduct of Jack Smith and his lead prosecutor in my case, David Harbach, is what led to the presidential pardon” Trump gave him, the former congressman told me in his exclusive comments. He explained how Smith and Harbach “tainted” his jury pool while working to exclude pro-life jurors since Renzi is a pro-life father of twelve.
Smith et al., were sanctioned three times, Renzi said. “The first is, they illegally wiretapped my attorney 41 times, they lied to the court that they did that, and they did it in order to try and pierce the attorney-client privilege using the crime-fraud exception, the same thing that they’re us[ing] now on President Trump.”
Evidence was thus found that a member of the government prosecutorial team under Smith not only illegally wiretapped Renzi’s attorney a stunning 41 times, but they first lied about their actions and then tried to weaponize the evidence, according to Renzi. Even if Smith was not directly responsible for the wiretaps, he was responsible for overseeing the prosecutors and for holding them accountable.
Evidence from the above-mentioned 2019 legal filing showed:
After a pretrial government misconduct evidentiary hearing in 2008, the district court found that the government had deliberately and illegally recorded dozens of attorney-client privileged phone calls between Mr. Renzi and his counsel. [Assistant United States Attorney in Arizona (AUSA) Gary] Restaino was found to have lied regarding the manner in whichthe calls were recorded.
Mayer Brown’s filing noted “wide-spread misconduct” with the government having “deliberately and illegally recorded dozens of privileged phone calls between Mr. Renzi and his counsel”; then the prosecution “lied.” Indeed, the filing stated, “the government used privileged information to advance its investigation,” with one agent retaining “a compact disc containing a sensitive privileged call at his desk for years.” The filing accused the government of obtaining a wiretap for Renzi’s cell phone under a false pretense.
Related: ‘The Fight of Our Lives’: Rick Renzi, Trump, Miles Guo, and a Weaponized DOJ
Renzi explained Smith’s culpability in the situation of the wiretaps and other prosecutorial misconduct: “But the rule is that, if one government agent is committing a crime, and you bring it before the judge, all of them are subject—once it’s brought before the judge, they’re supposed to… stand up and do the right thing.”
Only Smith didn’t any more than Restaino did. The prosecutors continued to double down, Renzi explained. “They wiretapped my attorney 41 times, they were found guilty [by] the court of lying about it, they were found guilty [by] the court of a Title III wiretap violation, and my wiretap was thrown out,” he detailed. “And when they indicted my attorney, he was found innocent. They went all the way to indicting one of my attorneys… he was completely found innocent.” Renzi’s attorney was vindicated in spite of Jack Smith and his team.
Just as in Renzi’s case, the DOJ is allegedly trying to use conversations protected by attorney-client privilege against Donald Trump. Renzi explained that Trump’s “pre-trial motions may go all the way to the Supreme Court, [it] may take years. And one of the strongest cases he has is that” his attorney-client privilege was infringed on. Smith and Harbach say that the “former president was trying to commit a crime by asking” a certain question, even though it was “normal and proper” attorney-client privileged communication, Renzi stated. Attorney-client privilege is meant to prevent an attorney from revealing private client communications without client consent.
Renzi is not the only one to protest against the violation of attorney-client privilege in Trump’s case. “Timothy Parlatore, who until recently worked as a criminal defense attorney for former President Donald Trump,” said Jack Smith’s team crossed a “red line” while Parlatore was testifying before a grand jury, Breitbart reported on June 8. The lawyer’s complaint? That questions he was asked infringed on attorney-client privilege.
Parlatore stated that, in his opinion, it was “clear that the government was not acting appropriately and made several improper attempts to pierce privilege and, in my opinion, made several significant misstatements to the [grand] jury, which I believe constitutes prosecutorial misconduct.” Not prosecutorial misconduct from the unimpeachable Jack Smith and team! Oh, wait — that’s exactly what they were accused of in Renzi’s case…
The question Trump asked is being wrongly used against him, according to Renzi. “These guys have used it, framed it, in order to pierce the attorney-client privilege veil, just like they tried to do in my case. So they have a history of trying to destroy attorney-client privileged communication against” Republicans, particularly Renzi himself and now Trump, the former congressman alleged.
As the Trump investigation continues under Special Counsel Jack Smith, stay tuned to PJ Media for more exclusive and shocking accusations of prosecutorial misconduct from Smith.
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