Special Counsel Jack Smith is overseeing the current investigation into and indictment of Donald Trump, who was arraigned Tuesday. But as USA Today reported, Smith “built [his] reputation” with his previous role overseeing the prosecution of former Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.). And according to Renzi himself in exclusive comments to PJ Media, there’s evidence tying Smith to illegal wiretaps, jury influencing, and other highly questionable behavior.
Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as Special Counsel to oversee Trump investigations, and Smith added David Harbach to his team. Smith and Harbach worked together before, both at the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Kosovo war crimes court, according to Politico. It was Harbach who addressed the presiding magistrate judge at the Trump hearing Tuesday, while Smith sat in the gallery.
Harbach and Smith have also worked together on an apparently politically biased case before, that of former congressman Renzi.
Renzi was convicted on 17 felony counts in 2013 surrounding alleged bribery and extortion. He pled “not guilty” to all charges and was later given a full Presidential Pardon by then-President Donald Trump. It seems multiple individuals involved in prosecuting Renzi, including Smith himself, were sanctioned. Based on a 2019 complaint and request for investigation filed on Renzi’s behalf by respected legal firm Mayer Brown, evidence was found of prosecutorial misconduct including improper media leaks, illegal wiretaps, concealment of exculpatory evidence and impeachment evidence, destruction of evidence, and introduction of false testimony before and during Renzi’s trial. This misconduct involved both the FBI and DOJ, with prosecutors under the supervision of none other than Jack Smith. David Harbach was among those handling the prosecution of Renzi.
Smith and Harbach appear to be stacking the deck against Trump in an eerily similar fashion to how they targeted Renzi. In exclusive comments to PJ Media, the former congressman told me about his experience with Smith and Harbach and how it serves as a warning for Trump, including shocking details never before made public.
“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. Now that dangerous duo has teamed up again, with Donald Trump as their new target. “In the Miami courtroom, David Harbach was sitting behind Jack Smith. So both men who prosecuted me, who engaged in misconduct, reunited themselves and have gone after the president.” Renzi said Smith and Harbach were sanctioned “three times in my case,” with one sanction based on illegal wiretaps. For Renzi’s case, Smith and Harbach tried to “pierce the attorney-client privilege.” That is the exact language the Los Angeles Times used to describe what the federal prosecutors under Smith were attempting to do with Trump: “pierce attorney-client privilege.” Was Renzi’s conviction based on a political hit job, and is the same attack being launched against Trump?
“You can’t sleep,” Renzi told me, describing the years-long nightmare he faced. “There’s no peace without justice.” He said the “political animals” at the DOJ and FBI are trying to target Trump just as they targeted him. And Jack Smith is no objective prosecutor, the congressman argued. “Jack Smith gets up, wraps himself in the [US] flag” as an Independent, but he’s been clearly biased against Republicans for years, Renzi insisted; “He’s dangerous, very dangerous.” Both Harbach and Smith are “very capable,” he said, but that’s why they’re dangerous.
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Parallels between Renzi’s situation and Trump’s are already emerging. I mentioned above the similarities of piercing attorney-client privilege, but that’s not all. On June 13, CNN News Central argued that jurors for a potential Trump trial should be chosen based on their “worldviews” and “where [they] get their news.” University of Miami professor of criminal law Scott Sundby even suggested that a juror in the recent trial for the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit of Trump should have been disqualified because he “listened to…a right-wing blog.”
Some might argue that this is just CNN being crazy, but there is a chance Jack Smith et al. will get the same idea. Why? According to Renzi, the feds seem to have “tainted” the “jury pool” based on political beliefs for his trial. Harbach, under Smith’s direction, asked the hundred or so potential jurors to acknowledge whether or not they were pro-life, and none of the self-identified pro-life jurors were selected, Renzi claimed.
“Harbach and Smith go in to the jury pool, and they ask the [potential] jury, ‘Raise your hand if you’re pro-life, raise your hand if you’re in favor of pregnancy care centers.’ And they then try to eliminate those people from my jury.” Since Renzi was a pro-life congressman and the father of 12 children, he argued that Smith and Harbach were attempting to exclude individuals with similar political sympathies to Renzi from the jury. Renzi had been involved with pro-life legislation, so his views on that topic were publicly known.
The former congressman added that Smith and Harbach were “sitting there, writing down their numbers — those potential jurors are sitting in chairs that are numbered — so that they can then exclude them from the jury. And they did. They struck those numbers … That’s the corrupt tactics that you can expect from these guys in the courtroom.”
If Smith and Harbach truly did attempt to exclude pro-life individuals from the jury, as Renzi said, that’s blatant, politically-fueled interference, of exactly the sort CNN was suggesting for Trump’s potential jury trial. “Win at all costs, that’s their motto,” Renzi insisted. He noted that the law firm that presented all the evidence of Smith and his team’s wrongdoing (Mayer Brown), including the illegal wiretaps and false testimony, was Democratic — but that the evidence was clear and not dependent on political affiliation.
But that’s not all. Renzi shared more details with me about Jack Smith’s alleged shady activities, with more parallels to Donald Trump’s situation — soon to be published exclusively on PJ Media.
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