Former President Donald Trump’s latest rant against special counsel Jack Smith didn’t stop at attacking him — it appeared to go after his family and friends as well, which raises the question of whether he made criminal threats.
Many legal experts appear to think he didn’t — but that he stepped very close to the line, reported the Huffington Post.
“COULD SOMEBODY PLEASE EXPLAIN TO THE DERANGED, TRUMP HATING JACK SMITH, HIS FAMILY, AND HIS FRIENDS, THAT AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, I COME UNDER THE PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS ACT, AS AFFIRMED BY THE CLINTON SOCKS CASE, NOT BY THIS PSYCHOS’ FANTASY OF THE NEVER USED BEFORE ESPIONAGE ACT OF 1917,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.
“‘Smells of desperation,’ said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University history professor and an expert on authoritarianism. ‘Once again, Trump is acting like a Mafia boss and also stringing as many propaganda slogans together as possible,'” wrote S.V. Dáte. “‘Trump is encouraging his followers, who we know have included the violent insurrectionists responsible for Jan. 6, to target the family and friends of Jack Smith,’ said Norm Eisen, a lawyer who served in Barack Obama’s White House. ‘It is profoundly concerning.'”
“Threatening federal law enforcement officers doing their jobs is a crime punishable by years in prison, although it is unclear whether Trump’s pattern of attacks, which go back now nearly a year and a half, could be successfully prosecuted,” noted the report. “A Supreme Court decision released Tuesday requires prosecutors to prove that a person making a statement knows that doing so would be considered a threat, not merely that a reasonable person would consider it a threat.”
Trump is being prosecuted under the Espionage Act for hoarding boxes full of highly classified national defense information at Mar-a-Lago, and allegedly ordering aides to move the boxes around so as to hide them from federal authorities and even from his own lawyers.
