Why Jack Smith’s new filing is both 'mundane' and 'consequential': ex-Obama counsel

Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith's latest filing Wednesday seeks to prevent former President Donald Trump from having the authority to utter falsehoods before the jury during his 2020 election interference trial.

During the latest episode of MSNBC's Deadline: White House, Protect Democracy co-founder and Executive Director Ian Bassin explained Smith's likely thinking behind the pre-trial motion.

"There's something very mundane going on, and there's something more consequential thing going on. The mundane thing going on is that special counsel Jack Smith has filed a very standard motion that is filed before criminal proceedings that seeks to make sure that the court excludes from proceedings in front of a jury those things that are not relevant to the jury determining whether the facts alleged actually took place. Jack Smith has filed an indictment that citizens of the District of Columbia voted on probable cause to believe that Donald Trump engaged in certain acts conspiring to obstruct official proceedings and deprive people of the right to vote. And the question for the jury is simply whether Trump did the things alleged or not. And as any prosecutor does at any trial, Jack Smith is simply saying all this other stuff that Trump is going off about on the campaign trail is not relevant to that question, and would potentially distract the jury from the task before them. And that's the mundane, standard thing."

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He continued, "The more consequential thing that's going on is Jack Smith also understands that when defendants don't have the law on their side, and don't have the facts on their side, the only strategy left to them is to actually put the entire system on trial. There is a very frightening precedent for that, which happens to have happened 100 years almost to the day before this trial is scheduled to begin. On February 26, 1923, the Beer Hall Putsch trial began in Bavaria, are Adolf Hitler was put on trial and decided to turn the proceedings around and put the entire German government on trial. One hundred years later, Jack Smith knows that's exactly what Donald Trump plans to do, and it's not what's supposed to happen in the court of law."

Watch the video below or at this link.

Why Jack Smith’s new filing is both 'mundane' and 'consequential': ex-Obama counselyoutu.be

READ MORE: New Jack Smith filing includes list of Trump arguments that 'must be excluded' from courtroom