As I watch what that MOTHERFUCKER is doing, I keep going back to Merrick Garland

[Bluetus]

18. The question answers itself

The entire government has collapsed into the Trump black hole. Of course it was deliberate.

Now, maybe you are asking was it Garland's choice. Probably not. It was certainly his choice to not do the right thing. But doing the wrong thing might have been by choice or by cowardice. We'll probably never know. His actions were 100% deliberate and intentional. There can't be any question about that. Just as with Mueller.

Smith seems a little different to me. Ultimately he made strategic choices that were doomed, and as a layperson, they seemed like really poor choices all along to me. But I can see how a person in Smith's position was just going "by the book" and lacked an appreciation for how many forces were aligned against the path he was taking. And in reality, even if Smith had taken the much faster and more direct routes to significant convictions and sentences, there was every likelihood that the SCOTUS would have blocked that. Nonetheless, IMHO, it was a blunder to pursue the kitchen sink strategy. He should have taken the simplest path to a meaningful conviction and forces the SCOTUS to face the crisis of their own making.