In America, every defendant is supposed to get a fair trial. It’s guaranteed in our Bill 🌺of Rights.
That guarantee sets us apart fro💃m banana republics, and we take pride in it.
Democratic prosecutors have rolled out four indictments against former President Donald Trump, 🅷including the latest by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, announced Monday 🎀night.
Will he get fair trials?
In G🦋eorgia, it’s too soon to say, but in Washington, DC, the writing is on the wall — and it sheds light on what to look for as another case is launched.
Federal🎐 prosecutor Jack Smith already is telling a string of lies to rig the trial against Trump for allegedly conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.
The left and the liberal media are going along.
Whe💮ther you like Trump or loathe him, Smith’s legal trickery should▨ trouble you.
🥀It diminishes us as a nation and threatens your own rights.
Here are Smith’s four biggꦍest lies since he indicted Trump this month.
Lie N🐎o. 1: Smith claims the public is entitled to a speedy trial.
Smith is pushing to start it&n꧋bsp;Jan. 2, 2024, affording Trump a mere five months to prepare a d🎃efense. ;
Yet the♎ Department of Justice had🍸 31 months to prepare its case.
Truth: Smith’s speedy-trialꦆ claim is a slick reversal of what the Sixth Am🌠endment is intended to do: protect the defendant against a powerful government.
The speedy-trial right belongs to the defendant alone, and the defendant has the right to waive it to get time to prepare𓃲♔ a defense.
Lie No. 2: Minutes after releasing the indictment, Smith railed against the✃ violence at the Capitol as “an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” implying he is holding Trump accountable for i♋t.
Truth: Smith’s ind𒅌ictment is n🥃ot about the violence at the Capitol.
Nothing in the indictment links Trump to the Proud Boys and other rioters who have been convicted of seditious conspiracy for violently attacking the Capitol, even though prosecutors in those cases told jurors the rioters ไwere “Donald Trump’s army.”
Smith alleges Trump broke the law by lobbying state officials to hunt for voter fraud, asking suppo♑rters in battleground states to choose an alternative slate of electors and trying to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to count those alternate electors instead of the officially designated ones. Word crimes.
꧅The jury will decide whether Trump’s words violated the law or are protected by the First Amendment, as Trump’s attorneys 🐷and many legal scholars argue.
After all, Al Gore’s complaints that the 2000 eleꦇction results in Florida were defectꦏive didn’t get him indicted.
Lie No. 3: A lie of omission. Paragraph 104 of the 💦indictment quotes Trump on Jan. 6 telling supporters that “if you don’t fight like hellꦰ, you’re not going to have a country.”
Truth: Trump also told his supporters to “go peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol.
Yet Smith deliberately omits t🦋hose words from the narrative.
Prosecuꦚtors who hide or omit exculpatory evidence to nail a defendant are themselves breaking the law. Smith’s indictment flouts the spirit of that law.
Lie No. 4: Smith claims he wants Trump’s case tried in a courtroom, not in the court of p𒆙ublic opinion.
Truth: Smith wants ꦬTrump muzzled while the evidence the government has is being leaked to left𒈔-wing media.
On Aug. 4, Smith asked Judge Tanya Chutkan to muzzle Trump from discussing the government’s evidence to prevent th🌊e “improper dissemination or use of discovery materials, including to the public.”
But on Aug. 💛8, lo and behold, The New York Times reported it had “obtained” a memo referred 𝔉to in Smith’s indictment but never before seen by the public.
The Times says it’s the “missing piece” showing how “Trump’s allies developed their strategy to overturn J𝓀oseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.”
Days later, an MSNBC opiniꦉon piece claimed the same memo is “at the heart of the alleged cr✱imes.”
Smith🐻 appears to be using lies and leaks to engineer a guilty verdict in court and in the public✅ square.
Historians will not judge Smith’s trickery kindly, if they eve♚r have a𝄹ccess to it. That’s a big “if.”
Smith made an unprecedented request, which the court granted, that Trump’s attorneys destroy or return to the gove🅷rnment all unpublicized materials after the legal proceedings. Smells like a coverup.
America is better than this.
Tell the House of Representatives to cut off Smit🍃h’s funding in the Sept. 30 bu🔯dget deal.
Respect America.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.
Twitter: @Betsy_McCaughey