Top GOPer Accidentally Wrecks Trump's Biggest Lie About Jack Smith [View all]

[Nevilledog]

https://newrepublic.com/article/182728/top-goper-accidentally-wrecks-trumps-biggest-lie-jack-smith

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https://archive.li/LthXw

Don’t look now, but Donald Trump’s criminality is slowly morphing into a serious wedge issue against the Republican Party—and Democrats, fortunately, are beginning to act like it.

Politico’s Playbook reported Thursday that Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson privately discussed ways the House can sabotage Special Counsel Jack Smith’s ongoing prosecutions of Trump, including attempting to defund his office. That grabbed all the attention, but let’s not overlook another key factoid buried in the report: A senior Republican offered a striking dissent from the idea of defunding Smith—in a way that will leave a mark.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea unless you can show that [the prosecutors] acted in bad faith or fraud or something like that,” Rep. Mike Simpson, a senior appropriator, told Playbook, speaking about the defund-Smith push. He denounced the idea as “stupid,” adding of prosecutors: “They’re just doing their job—even though I disagree with what they did.”

Wait, what? Trump’s prosecutorial tormentors are not acting in bad faith or being fraudulent? Do tell!

Simpson apparently thought he was just rebuffing a tough question, but he also badly undermined a core argument of Trump and his propagandists: that the prosecutions of Trump are wholly illegitimate, exposing the “deep state” as irredeemably corrupt to its very core. Now comes along a top Republican who disagrees with the prosecutions of Trump on their interpretation of the law, but appears to allow that the special counsel’s office is not abusing its institutional role in a way that merits maximal GOP tactics in response, such as defunding it.

*snip*