Previous Target of DOJ’s Trump Legal Hit Squad Exposes DOJ, FBI Misconduct
“The prosecutorial misconduct of [now-Trump prosecutors] Jack Smith and his lead prosecutor in my case, David Harbach, is what led to [my] presidential pardon [from Trump].” —former Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ)
This past week, I did an exclusive interview of former Rep. Rick Renzi, a Republican who was convicted on bribery and extortion charges (to all of which he pled “not guilty”) but later given a full pardon by then-President Donald Trump. Respected legal firm Mayer Brown uncovered a whole litany of prosecutorial misconduct in Renzi’s case, involving both the FBI and Justice Department (DOJ), including illegal wiretaps, a witness payoff scheme, concealment of exculpatory evidence and impeachment evidence, destruction of evidence, and introduction of false testimony before and during Renzi’s trial. But two men in charge of Renzi’s prosecution, Jack Smith and David Harbach, are now prosecuting Donald Trump—and they were more directly guilty of misconduct in Renzi’s case than was previously known.
President Trump reacted to the new allegations by calling Smith a “deranged sleazebag.”
As DOJ Special Counsel Smith and Harbach go after Donald Trump, remember the allegations of their previous egregious misconduct, as I reported exclusively on PJ Media (in three parts):
Part I: For Renzi’s case, Smith and Harbach tried to “pierce the attorney-client privilege.” That is the exact language the Los Angeles Times used to describe what the federal prosecutors under Smith were attempting to do with Trump: “pierce attorney-client privilege.” “You can’t sleep,” Renzi told me, describing the years-long nightmare he faced. “There’s no peace without justice.” He said the “political animals” at the DOJ and FBI are trying to target Trump just as they targeted him.
On June 13, CNN News Central argued that jurors for a potential Trump trial should be chosen based on their “worldviews” and “where [they] get their news.” According to pro-life Renzi, the feds seem to have “tainted” the “jury pool” based on political beliefs for his trial. Harbach, under Smith’s direction, asked the hundred or so potential jurors to acknowledge whether or not they were pro-life, and none of the self-identified pro-life jurors were selected, Renzi claimed.
Part II: Smith et al. were sanctioned three times, Renzi said. “The first is, they illegally wiretapped my attorney 41 times, they lied to the court that they did that, and they did it in order to try and pierce the attorney-client privilege using the crime-fraud exception, the same thing that they’re us[ing] now on President Trump.” Even if Smith was not directly responsible for the wiretaps, he was responsible for overseeing the prosecutors and for holding them accountable. Just as in Renzi’s case, the DOJ is allegedly trying to use conversations protected by attorney-client privilege against Donald Trump.
Part III: Renzi said that “what Jack Smith and Harbach are known for is that they’ll provide some sort of a secret incentive, some sort of a pay-off scheme… to cooperating witnesses in order to get them not just to flip on the defendant, but also to spin a tale.” Renzi made the bombshell allegation to PJ Media based on what his lawyers told him: that Jack Smith not only knew about the payoff offer to witness Phillip Aries but personally approved it.
Read the full details on PJ Media. As Smith and Harbach seem poised to use similar dishonest tactics against Trump, the truth about their past misconduct needs to be exposed.