Classic Rock's final interview with Chris Cornell: Grunge superstar, acoustic balladeer, would-be R&B lover-man, drinker

The Yemeni rapist was caught because he used his own phone to send his rape victim pornography while demanding nudes in return. REMIX News (h/t Nita) A Yemeni Musim migrant has confessed to raping a 14-year-old girl after isolating her at a bus stop and demanding sex through a translation app. The 35-year-old man, who […]

MSNBC contributor Jason Johnson warned the political Left on the network Thursday night that President-elect Donald Trump’s new nominee for U.S. Attorney General is dangerous because she knows what she is doing. Johnson’s remarks came shortly after Trump announced that he had tapped former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi for the role after former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) withdrew his name from consideration. “Pam Bondi is exactly what I was saying in the last segment that we should all fear because she’s competent,” Johnson said during a segment on MSNBC’s “The Beat With Ari Melber.” “We may not agree with her ideologically, but she actually knows how to do this job,” he said. “So if anyone on the Democratic side or anyone who cared about liberty or justice was thinking, well, maybe Matt Gaetz will screw this up and that’ll give us some time — no. Pam Bondi knows what she’s doing.” “She knows what she’s doing about immigration. Remember, Florida is one of those states that’s been very aggressive about migrants and deportation and moving people to different states and everything else like that,” Johnson said. “She is a dangerous and effective pick and that’s, frankly, worse than what we would have got with Matt Gaetz, even with the deplorable moral background that he has.” MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+ WATCH: MSNBC is FREAKING OUT about Trump’s new AG Pam Bondi. Phenomenal sign. pic.twitter.com/ESYDfWq8nt — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) November 22, 2024 Trump made the announcement just a few hours after Gaetz removed his name from consideration because he said that he did not want to be a distraction to the Trump transition team. Trump highlighted Bondi’s record as the first female Attorney General of Florida, noting that she worked to stop drug traffickers and tackle the fentanyl problem plaguing America’s streets. “Pam was a prosecutor for nearly 20 years, where she was very tough on Violent Criminals, and made the streets safe for Florida Families,” he said. “She did such an incredible job, that I asked her to serve on our Opioid and Drug Abuse Commission during my first Term — We saved many lives!”

President-elect Donald Trump was praised Thursday evening after announcing that he had nominated former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to be his U.S. Attorney General. Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who was Trump’s pick for attorney general until he removed his name from consideration on Thursday afternoon, said that he was excited about her nomination. “@PamBondi is a stellar selection by President Trump for Attorney General,” he said. “Pam and I worked closely together when she was Florida’s Attorney General and I chaired Criminal Justice in the state house.” “She’s a proven litigator, an inspiring leader and a champion for all Americans,” he continued. “She will bring the needed reforms to DOJ.” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said: “@PamBondi excelled as Attorney General of Florida and has dedicated her career to enforcing the law. She will work with President Trump to end the weaponization of the justice system and uphold the rule of law. Pam will be a great Attorney General.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also congratulated Bondi on the nomination. MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+ “She will put America First, and we’ve got her back in Texas!” he said. “I look forward to working with you!” Congrats to the great @PamBondi She will put America First, and we’ve got her back in Texas! I look forward to working with you! https://t.co/ZIzpvyT8iZ — Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) November 22, 2024 Texas Governor Greg Abbott said that he collaborated with Bondi when he served as Texas’ Attorney General. “She will be a steadfast fighter for what is right and restore respect for the rule of law,” he said. “@PamBondi is a tough-as-nails former prosecutor and one of the best in the game,” said Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares. “As one AG to another? The US Department of Justice will be in excellent hands.” Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody said: “Congratulations to my friend, @PamBondi. Pam will be an excellent U.S. Attorney General.” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) said: “Congrats to my friend @PamBondi. She’ll be an incredible Attorney General. Great choice @realDonaldTrump!” Congrats to my friend @PamBondi. She’ll be an incredible Attorney General. Great choice @realDonaldTrump! pic.twitter.com/LbG28Ea8KK — Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) November 21, 2024

There is something about music that makes life more enjoyable. Our favorite songs and artists often play an essential role in our day-to-day living. Because their music means so much, it’s hard to imagine it not being exactly as we know it. Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn put on their first album as Brooks & Dunn, in 1991. Their debut, Brand New Man, started a career that’s endured more than 30 years. Even though we can’t imagine Brooks without Dunn or Dunn without Brooks, the men intended to be solo artists. Brooks & Dunn Almost Didn’t Happen Kix and Ronnie explain to Inspiremore that they both wanted to be solo artists but ended up as a duo. Ronnie credits their partnership and relationship with their success. “That’s a dynamic that we have to talk about all the time,” he says. “We realize that our differences are our assets.” Ronnie adds that it just doesn’t happen. You have to have chemistry to begin with in order to be as successful as Brooks and Dunn. Kix agrees and says that he tried to make it on his own, but it wasn’t until he and Ronnie got together. “Why didn’t it happen?” He asks hypothetically. “I can’t tell you, but for whatever reason, we wrote our first two number-one records the week we met.” Ronnie and Kix agree they were meant to be together. And if you’d like to see them live again, fans are in luck. Their Neon Moon Tour continues in the spring 2025. Fans will have a chance to see the legendary duo live. Their newest album, Reboot II is streaming now. The duo shared on Instagram, “18 Brooks & Dunn songs + 18 bada– artists come together to reinvent time-tested classics. You are not going to believe where this genre-bending journey is about to take you.” This story’s featured image is This story’s featured image is by Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images. The post Kix Brooks & Ronnie Dunn Wanted To Be Solo Acts, But Fate Had Other Plans appeared first on InspireMore.

There is a lot of anger among the leftists in the wake of the re-election of Donald Trump. Many of them are so afflicted with TDS that their anger often seems to bleed into blind rage. So what to do? Well, The Atlantic magazine has not the cure but what they claim is the prescription. Namely they suggest reading from a recommended book list. The problem is that their book suggestions seem to be like pouring high octane fuel on the TDS fire.  Ruth Madievsky made her book suggestions on Wednesday in "What to Read If You’re Angry About the Election." The subtitle is "These seven books aren’t a cure for rage and despair. Think of them instead as a prescription." As you will see her book suggestions seem more like rubbing salt in a wound rather than a prescription. ...For those who are despondent about Donald Trump’s victory and feel unable to make a difference, reading might be a place to start. This doesn’t necessitate cracking open textbooks or dense political tracts: All kinds of books can provide solace, and the past few decades have given us no shortage of clear-eyed works of fiction, memoir, history, and poetry about how to survive and organize in—and ultimately improve—a broken world. Okay, let us take a look at Ruth's suggested book list for angry TDS liberal voters and see if we can find the elusive "solace." Which Side Are You On, by Ryan Lee Wong ...It’s 2016, and spurred by the real-life police shooting of Akai Gurley, 21-year-old Reed is considering dropping out of Columbia University to dedicate himself to the Black Lives Matter movement. Reed wants nothing more than to usher in a revolution, but unfortunately, he’s a lot better at spouting leftist talking points than at connecting with other people. Like many children, Reed believes that his family is problematic and out of touch. His parents, one a co-leader in the 1980s of South Central’s Black-Korean Coalition, the other a union organizer, push back on his self-righteous idealism. Yup! Just typical everyday problems that we all share... but only if we live inside a far left bubble. Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, by Rebecca Solnit Solnit’s short manifesto about the revolutionary power of hope is a rallying cry against defeatism. She begins by critiquing the progressive tendency to harp on the bleakness of societal conditions, insisting that despair keeps oppressive systems afloat. As soon as you see the word "manifesto" to describe a book you just know it is not even close to a prescription for election anger. Oh, and "revolutionary power" in the description only adds more fuel to the fire. Women Talking, by Miriam Toews The inspired-by-true-events premise of Toews’s seventh novel is literally the stuff of nightmares. In a remote Mennonite colony, women who have suffered mysterious attacks in the night learn that they’ve been drugged and raped by several men from their community. One woman is pregnant with her rapist’s child; another’s 3-year-old has a sexually transmitted infection. And this is supposed to be a prescription for voter anger and depression? In what universe? Good Talk, by Mira Jacob Jacob, who was raised in the United States by parents who emigrated from India, gorgeously illustrates her formative experiences, touching on respectability politics, colorism within the Indian community, her bisexuality, and her place in America. She refuses to caricaturize the book’s less savory characters—for example, a rich white woman who hires Jacob to ghostwrite her family’s biography and ends up questioning her integrity and oversharing the grisly details of her 2-year-old’s death from cancer. Four books in and all are shoving the potential readers down a deep well of utter despair and depression. The Twenty-Ninth Year, by Hala Alyan ...A shallow read of the collection might be: I burned my life down so you don’t have to. But I return to the last line of the book: “Marry or burn; either way, you’re transfiguring.” There is always something to set aflame; more optimistically, there is always something left to salvage. The Twenty-Ninth Year is, in the end, a monument to endurance. Struggling to see the optimism here.  Riot Baby, by Tochi Onyebuchi Kev, a Black man born during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, California, spends much of his 20s in prison after a botched armed robbery. His sister, Ella, has more supernatural problems: She sees the past and the future and, when fury takes over, can raze cities to the ground—yet she could not protect her brother from the violence of incarceration. At this point you might find it hard to remind yourselves that these books are supposed to be a "prescription" for voter anger. Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987–1993, by Sarah Schulman ...Part memoir and part oral history, Let the Record Show is a master class on the utility of anger and a historical corrective to chronicles that depict straight white men as the main heroes of the AIDS crisis. Do we hear the collective scratching of heads wondering how reading a "master class on the utility of anger" is supposed to be a prescription for voter anger? Perhaps Ruth Madievsky might want to reconsider her recommendations to treat voter anger. A good start would be the science fiction book "Venus on the Half-Shell" by Kilgore Trout. Here is a synopsis: "When a massive flood wipes out Earth and spoils his date, lone survivor Simon Wagstaff finds refuge in an abandoned Chinese spaceship, the Hwang Ho. Accompanied by three new companions—a dog, an owl, and a beautiful robot—and his electric banjo, Wagstaff sets off on an extraterrestrial adventure. He travels from planet to planet, seeking the definitive answer to the ultimate question: Why are we created if only to suffer and die?" It makes about as much sense as Ruth's recommendations but at least it will take readers minds away from the election... and their anger as well.

As President-elect Donald Trump moves to shake up the federal bureaucracy, White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez pushed a new Red Scare on Tuesday’s edition of the PBS NewsHour. But first came a series of clips introduced by anchor Amna Nawaz of several disgruntled bureaucrats and union members working (for now) in the federal government. Surprise! They’re all opposed to Trump’s plans. One example will suffice: Jesus Soriano: When our future boss, the president, is passing the message that we do not belong here, that many of us will lose our jobs, that our families will suffer, that we may be forcibly relocated to other area, we care. We suffer. Employees are fearful, scared for their jobs, for their families, and many of them are already considering leaving. As if government employees are more vulnerable to job loss than private-sector ones! Nawaz set up White House correspondent Barron-Lopez. Anchor Amna Nawaz: So we heard some fear, some confusion in the voices of those federal employees about the extent of president-elect Trump's plans to overhaul government agencies. What do we know about what he's planning to do? White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez: President-elect Donald Trump made clear in his campaign, but also he's made clear in his Cabinet picks, that he wants loyalty across the board with little to no resistance. That is his top goal. And so, to achieve that, sources close to the transition say that he is expected to issue an executive order known as Schedule F as soon as he takes office....in essence, it makes it much easier for Donald Trump to fire anyone he deems disloyal and to replace them with loyalists….. Amna Nawaz: So what else do we know about how far reaching this could be? And are there any guardrails in place to protect against that? Barron-Lopez explained that President Biden “tried to protect federal workers” but that Trump can reverse it, then ran a clip of a public policy professor opposed to Trump’s move, making the segment even more one-sided (she said she had also talked to Mike Howell, head of the Oversight Project at the conservative Heritage Foundation, but that was off-camera). Don Moynihan, University of Michigan: They're engaging in a strategy of naming and shaming of federal employees, of intimidation, of career civil servants who are not really in the public eye. For some of them, they're creating Web sites funded by The Heritage Foundation that lists these individuals, puts them online, and is telling the Trump administration, these are the people that you should fire. It is a fairly disturbing pattern, which I think will only make it harder to recruit and retain talented people who want to work for the federal government. Barron-Lopez pounced on a suspiciously leading question from Nawaz (“…are there any historic parallels we can look to here?”) to offer up a new McCarthyism for government workers -- as if federal jobs should be untouchable. Barron-Lopez: Don Moynihan of the University of Michigan compared this to the 1950s McCarthy era, where civil servants had to be vetted for loyalty under this guise of rooting out communists, essentially. And Moynihan said that sometimes that meant that they would target who they -- quote -- "deemed as deviants," like LGBTQ people. But Don Moynihan added that filling the civil service with cronies, as well as loyalists, with friends, defeats the very purpose that the civil service was founded on. This segment was brought to you in part by American Cruise Lines. A transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS NewsHour 11/19/24 7:20:56 p.m. (ET) Amna Nawaz: President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to make wide-scale changes to the federal work force, cutting jobs, replacing career civil servants with political appointees and relocating government offices. Laura Barron-Lopez has more in just a moment. But, first, let's hear from federal government employees across the U.S. Colin Kramer, Government Employee: My name is Colin Kramer. I'm a chemist with the EPA. I'm involved with AFGE Local 704 as a union member. Jesus Soriano, Government Employee: My name is Jesus Soriano. I'm a scientist and a program director at the National Science Foundation. I am also president of AFGE Local 343. Michael Knowles, Government Employee: My name is Michael Knowles. I'm an asylum officer with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. And I'm the executive vice president of the AFGE National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council 119. Sheria Smith, Government Employee: I'm Sheria Smith, a Dallas-based civil rights attorney at the U.S. Department of Education, where I also serve as the union president for my almost 3,000 colleagues in this agency nationwide. I did read after his election some statements about eliminating the agency. And I think it's shortsighted. Certainly, for — perhaps he has not had to interact with our agency because his own children, he's been able to afford to educate them privately. But that is not the situation for most Americans. Jesus Soriano: When our future boss, the president, is passing the message that we do not belong here, that many of us will lose our jobs, that our families will suffer, that we may be forcibly relocated to other area, we care. We suffer. Employees are fearful, scared for their jobs, for their families, and many of them are already considered leaving. Michael Knowles: It would hold people more accountable to carry out the policies of a new administration, whether or not those policies were lawful. It's really more of a — what we would say would be more of a loyalty indicator, rather than an efficiency indicator. Colin Kramer: I worry about taking projects, data, and conclusions made in good faith, made through the scientific process, rigorously checked, peer-reviewed, and gone through all of these different avenues, I worry about those taken and being used for illegitimate purposes, illegitimate decisions in ways that they, frankly, have no business being used to justify. Jesus Soriano: The federal government is going to lose hundreds of years of institutional memory and expertise. That is actually a national security issue, although we are not a national security agency. We're talking about, if there's no science, there's no progress. If there's no progress, we won't be able to stand up to strategic adversaries. Sheria Smith: They would be evaluating our work not based on how well we regulate servicers or how well we protect American citizens from predatory schools or how well we enforce laws that protect our nation's children, but how observant we are to whatever political whims might be at play in the White House. Michael Knowles: We're very concerned about attitudes by various politicians that somehow civil servants are an obstacle or a deep state of resistors or woke employees. Or we have even seen language of far left, open-border advocates. And I would say there's nothing farther from the truth. Amna Nawaz: And our White House correspondent, Laura Barron-Lopez, joins me now. Laura, good to see you. Laura Barron-Lopez: Good to be here. Amna Nawaz: So we heard some fear, some confusion in the voices of those federal employees about the extent of president-elect Trump's plans to overhaul government agencies. What do we know about what he's planning to do? Laura Barron-Lopez: President-elect Donald Trump made clear in his campaign, but also he's made clear in his Cabinet picks, that he wants loyalty across the board with little to no resistance. That is his top goal. And so, to achieve that, sources close to the transition say that he is expected to issue an executive order known as Schedule F as soon as he takes office. Now, this is an executive order that he issued during his first term. It didn't take effect. But what is Schedule F, Amna? Schedule F would allow the president to change the job classification of nonpartisan career federal workers to political appointees. So, in essence, it makes it much easier for Donald Trump to fire anyone he deems disloyal and to replace them with loyalists. Now, initially, those who wrote Schedule F believed that it could affect some 50,000 federal workers across agencies. But that number is likely a minimum. And experts that we spoke to say that it could affect many more people. Amna Nawaz: So what else do we know about how far reaching this could be? And are there any guardrails in place to protect against that? Laura Barron-Lopez: President Joe Biden attempted to put in some guardrails. He tried to protect federal workers with a regulation. But Donald Trump, once he becomes president, could very well reverse that regulation. And experts that we spoke to said that he could implement Schedule F, this executive order, within four to six months after taking office. Now, I spoke to Don Moynihan. He's a public policy professor at the University of Michigan. And he said that Donald Trump and his allies are already specifically identifying certain targets. Don Moynihan, University of Michigan: They're engaging in a strategy of naming and shaming of federal employees, of intimidation, of career civil servants who are not really in the public eye. For some of them, they're creating Web sites funded by The Heritage Foundation that lists these individuals, puts them online, and is telling the Trump administration, these are the people that you should fire. It is a fairly disturbing pattern, which I think will only make it harder to recruit and retain talented people who want to work for the federal government. Laura Barron-Lopez: Now my producer, Shrai Popat, and I spoke to Mike Howell. He is the head of what's called the Oversight Project at The Heritage Foundation, which Don just spoke about. And Mike Howell said that they have filed some 65,000 federal — or Freedom of Information requests across government agencies to obtain e-mails between federal workers and documents about federal workers. Now, Mike Howell with Heritage says that they're not working directly with Donald Trump's team, but their goal is to help identify bureaucrats that they deem partisan. And their top priority is to target people across Homeland Security and Justice Departments, as well as the FBI, who they think are sympathetic to things like Black Lives Matter protesters, who have worked on diversity or inclusion projects and who worked on cases against the January 6 rioters. They're also focused on civil servants who just simply are carrying out President Biden's policy priorities. And so they're hoping to flag for the incoming Trump administration anyone they call untrustworthy, despite this being the very nature of civil servants' jobs, Amna, which is to carry out any president's agenda regardless of their political affiliation. Amna Nawaz: You know, in some of the voices there, we also heard some fear about wholesale gutting of federal agencies and departments there. Mr. Trump himself has said he'd like to abolish the Education Department. How feasible is any of that? Laura Barron-Lopez: Well, let's just lay out the numbers real quick. Currently, there are more than two million civil servants, not political appointees. That number's been pretty consistent throughout the 1960s. Despite that, Vivek Ramaswamy, who's going to co-lead this government efficiency agency, has said that they want to — quote — "delete outright" some government agencies. Now, the experts that we talked to said that that's not exactly feasible, that that would be a lot harder, and that, historically, agencies are created, reorganized and eliminated by Congress. So Donald Trump and his staff may very well run into headwinds from Congress. Amna Nawaz: What's the larger impact all of this could have? And are there any historic parallels we can look to here? Laura Barron-Lopez: Don Moynihan of the University of Michigan compared this to the 1950s McCarthy era, where civil servants had to be vetted for loyalty under this guise of rooting out communists, essentially. And Moynihan said that sometimes that meant that they would target who they — quote — "deemed as deviants," like LGBTQ people. But Don Moynihan added that filling the civil service with cronies, as well as loyalists, with friends, defeats the very purpose that the civil service was founded on. Don Moynihan: If you look at the history of America, the introduction of the civil service system was a response to the corruption that took place with the spoils system that preceded it. And it was called a spoils system because once a president or a governor or mayor took over the government, they used public resources, not always in the public good, but to reward their supporters. Laura Barron-Lopez: As Moynihan said there, Amna, this could potentially lead to more corruption across the federal government. Amna Nawaz: Our White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez. Laura, thank you. Laura Barron-Lopez: Thank you.

In their frantic search to blame someone, anyone, for the election of the alleged proto-fascist Donald Trump, the Democratic Party establishment has overlooked one significant culprit: special counsel Jack Smith.Smith has faced criticism from both the right and left, but neither side has fully grasped the root of the issue. Trump supporters have denounced Smith’s alleged use of “lawfare” to target Biden’s chief political opponent. Meanwhile, Democratic voters have expressed frustration with what they see as Smith’s delay — potentially influenced by Attorney General Merrick Garland — in indicting Trump soon enough to secure a conviction before the election.If Smith had focused solely on obstruction and lying charges, the case could have gone to trial by late 2023 or early 2024, with a conviction likely.These critiques of delay from the left and politicization from the right carry weight. However, they overshadow Smith’s fundamental misstep: his gross overcharging in two cases, including one that should never have been filed. Any experienced prosecutor knows that a streamlined, focused, and straightforward set of charges in a strong case is far more effective than an indictment that tries to do too much. Overreaching by piling on excessive charges often leads to delays and risks confusing a jury, diluting the strength of the core allegations.Overcharging can also mask the weakness of a case. Smith’s January 6 indictment of Trump, filed in Washington, D.C., may have relied on its complexity to give a biased jury a smorgasbord of options for convicting a politician they despised on weak charges. These allegations, though thin, were emotionally charged and offered a convenient way for jurors — and, the Biden administration hoped, the nation — to pin the blame for the “insurrection” on Trump. This strategy distracted from deeper issues such as flaws in the 2020 election or glaring security failures by Democratic officials.Smith had counted on a D.C. district court judge to refine his indictment’s overreach and present the charges in a way that appeared measured. He found that in Judge Tanya Chutkan — an intelligent yet clearly biased jurist deeply offended by the disorder of January 6. Smith was aware of the significant presidential immunity issues at play but calculated that he could craft a compelling emotional case that Chutkan wouldn’t dismiss. Instead, she would likely leave those thorny legal questions to the appellate courts to address after the election. For Joe Biden’s partisan objectives, Smith’s approach served its purpose, even if it abused the legal system.However, the D.C. case carried a risk that eventually worked in Trump’s favor: the presidential immunity issue. The Supreme Court threw a monkey wrench in the case pretrial, before any conviction, creating significant hurdles for Smith and halting the case in its tracks.In contrast, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s cartoonish prosecution over the Stormy Daniels payment highlighted another extreme. That case, widely seen as frivolous, may have done more to help Trump than harm him. Even voters with little legal knowledge could recognize the absurdity of the charges, though objections came almost exclusively from Trump’s supporters.Between the sprawling, immunity-laden January 6 case and the vacuous Stormy Daniels indictment loomed a Goldilocks perfection: the Mar-a-Lago documents case. If handled correctly, this case was manageable, straightforward, and free from major legal ambiguities like presidential immunity. It revolved around allegations of a clear-cut crime, making it easier for a jury to grasp. The case, in short, was potential Kryptonite for SuperTrump.What, then, went wrong with this promising line of attack? Understanding why this case faltered is critical, as it profoundly influenced the outcome of the election.It should have been a civil lawsuitIn this case, Trump was effectively entrapped by the National Archives, working in coordination with the Department of Justice. While the entrapment may have occurred in practice, however, it did not meet the legal definition of entrapment. Trump had been gradually returning presidential documents to the Archives but wanted to retain access to certain “Russian collusion” documents for further study and copying. He also sought to keep what he considered personal items, such as a note from North Korean President Kim Jong Un. The Archives unlawfully denied Trump access to the Russian collusion documents, despite the Presidential Records Act permitting such access. And Trump had a valid argument that the Kim letter was a personal gift.Both issues should have been resolved through a civil lawsuit. If Trump got such legal advice, he did not follow it.The Archives’ actions escalated when its political White House liaison office sent a referral letter to the Justice Department, alleging that Trump’s handling of classified documents during his previous turnover was improper because classified and unclassified documents were sometimes stored together. Horrors! Although a minor and technical issue, this allegation provided the government with a pretext to open a criminal case. The criminal investigation, in turn, allowed the Justice Department to issue a criminal subpoena, rather than the more appropriate civil subpoena used in civil disputes.In civil cases, it is not uncommon for litigants to challenge or even evade subpoenas, often withholding documents and resolving disputes in court. Such actions are not crimes. By framing the situation as a criminal matter, the government transformed a standard civil conflict into a far more serious legal battle.With a criminal subpoena in place, any falsehoods or obstruction in Trump’s response could result in criminal charges. According to emails with his valet and video surveillance footage, it appears Trump may have engaged in such actions. Unlike during his presidency, Trump could no longer invoke immunity as a defense.This case was straightforward and poised to move quickly to trial. It presented an opportunity for Biden to secure the conviction he needed to bolster his re-election campaign. Legally, the case seemed airtight. So what could go wrong? Shakespeare provides the answer in his tragedies: hubris.Smith was not satisfied with pursuing a narrow, focused conviction. Instead, he aimed for a broad smear campaign against Trump. Smith added charges related to the mishandling of classified documents, citing their storage in a bathroom, bedroom, and even on a stage. Traditionally, charges of mishandling classified documents are reserved for cases involving the transfer of sensitive information to external parties, often with serious intelligence implications. For example, Biden’s storage of documents in his garage did not and should not have led to criminal charges.Smith’s allegations seemed crafted to paint Trump as someone potentially retaining documents for treasonous purposes. But the strategy created unnecessary complications and delays. Questions surrounding personal effects and document declassification arose, and lawyers for co-defendant Trump aides needed time-consuming security clearances.These factors made delays inevitable. Smith likely calculated that a trial during the campaign season would work to his advantage, even though such timing violated Justice Department norms against political influence. While those guidelines are not legally binding, it’s worth noting that the White House may have pressured Smith to pursue these tendentious allegations.Smith overcomplicated his caseIf Smith had focused solely on obstruction and lying charges, the case could have gone to trial by late 2023 or early 2024, with a conviction likely. This would have positioned Smith as a hero to the anti-Trump left and handed Biden a valuable campaign narrative. Instead, Smith, tasked as a supposedly apolitical and unbiased special counsel, opted to overcharge the case, amplifying delays and creating political fallout.As predicted, the case slowed to a crawl due to classification issues. Trump received an unexpected boon in the form of a decision from Judge Aileen Cannon by way of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In his concurring opinion in Trump v. United States, a case addressing presidential immunity, Thomas wrote that Smith’s appointment violated the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. Smith was not appointed with the Senate’s “advice and consent.”Cannon, in the Mar-a-Lago case, adopted Thomas’ reasoning and dismissed the entire classified documents case against Trump. Please note that the immunity ruling emerged because Smith had brought the January 6 prosecution, which included clear immunity issues. Without that misstep, it’s doubtful the Mar-a-Lago case would have been dismissed on Appointments Clause grounds. The delays caused by Smith’s ill-advised classified documents charges further prevented the Mar-a-Lago case from going to trial.Biden and Garland could have appointed an experienced U.S. attorney, immune to Appointments Clause challenges. But they likely understood that an honest and experienced prosecutor would neither have overcharged the case as Smith did nor pursued the shaky January 6 prosecution. That choice squandered an opportunity — however politically motivated — to harm their chief political opponent with a more straightforward Mar-a-Lago case.Finally, the Democrat camp should realize in hindsight that its dependence upon partisan, dishonest media can be a double-edged sword. It could certainly depend on the media to hide the weakness of its criminal claims. But did the media’s slavish bias lull it into a false sense that it was invulnerable?Smith’s deliberately designed excess destroyed decent, if insidiously entrapping, criminal charges, and in so doing enabled Trump’s return to the White House. Smith should go down in history as emblematic of a repugnant politicization of our criminal process, an attempt at authoritarian rule by law, worthy of Stalin and Beria, with no place in our democratic rule of law.

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