Former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuade broke down why Jack Smith would preemptively “pull the plug” on the Jan. 6 election interference and classified documents cases against returning President Donald Trump, as the special counsel did earlier this week.
And it’s “not at all” about “obeying an authoritarian in advance,” the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, who is now a University of Michigan law professor, argued in an essay published by MSNBC on Tuesday.
Smith’s request to nix the cases “without prejudice” could actually “be an effort to keep the cases alive in the long term,” suggested McQuade.
It means they can be filed against the president-elect when he eventually leave office, it stops Trump’s incoming attorney general from permanently blocking them and also lets Smith “explain his reasons for dismissing the case, rather than allowing Trump’s future AG to mischaracterize them,” she added, saying that “Smith has done all he can to preserve that possibility” of a future attorney general picking up the cases again.”
Democracy In The Balance
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On social media, McQuade wrote: “Anger over Smith’s dismissals of the Trump cases is understandable, but it’s the only move he had. By filing preemptively, he keeps the cases alive for 2029.”
McQuade argued the same case on MSNBC.