U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland wasted little time after former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign announcement to confirm that his office had tasked a special counsel to investigate Trump.
The attorney general confirmed that former federal prosecutor Jack Smith would be in charge of determining whether the former president should be charged with a crime related to his concerns about the 2020 election results or allegedly improper handling of sensitive government information.
“The Department of Justice has long recognized that in certain extraordinary cases it is in the public interest to appoint a special prosecutor to independently manage an investigation and prosecution,” Garland asserted.
Right on cue, leftist pundits once again began celebrating the prospect that Trump could face a criminal prosecution.
THIS IS GOOD! Merrick Garland has appointed war crimes prosecutor Jack Smith as the special counsel to handle the Trump investigation. Trump is f*cked!
— Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) November 18, 2022
On the other side of the aisle, however, conservatives are starting to speculate that the latest attempt to demonize Trump might make his fledgling White House bid even more popular among voters across the ideological spectrum.
During a recent Fox News Channel interview, Wall Street Journal Editor-at-Large Gerry Baker explained how Trump could use the investigation to his political benefit.
“How he chooses to use this for his own political opportunity will also become quite a big issue in the course of the next few weeks,” Baker said. “The question to me politically is whether President Trump actually takes this and leverages it to his advantage.”
For his part, Trump almost immediately issued a statement declaring the latest investigation yet another chapter in an ongoing political witch hunt against him.
Asserting that he has “been going through this for six years,” he said that he is “not going to go through it anymore” and “won’t partake” in the special counsel probe.
“And I hope the Republicans have the courage to fight this,” Trump added.
Citing previous investigations that led to two failed impeachment trials and a lackluster report from former special counsel Robert Mueller, he insisted that he has “been proven innocent for six years on everything.”
As for the most recent attempt, Trump concluded: “It is not acceptable. It is so unfair. It is so political.”
