Jack Smith clearly didn’t enjoy Mar-a-Lago judge calling him a ‘private citizen,’ brings up treason prosecution of Jefferson Davis

MATT NAHAM
Aug 27th, 2024, 11:13 am

The Special Counsel’s Office finally filed its appellate brief Monday in its quest to undo Judge Aileen Cannon’s dismissal of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Espionage Act indictment, and Jack Smith, buried deep within the 57-page document, took time to say he is not really the “private citizen” he’s been “fundamentally mischaracteriz[ed]” as.

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“According to the district court, ‘Mr. Smith is a private citizen exercising the full power of a United States Attorney,'” the brief said. “But he is not a private citizen: he is a sworn officer of the Department of Justice.”

That aside, the brief immediately delved into history, telling of the time in 1865 that private citizen lawyers were tasked with directing the treason prosecution of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States, after the Civil War.

“There was a period in American history when ‘private citizens’ prosecuted some of the most consequential cases of the day, such as the prosecution of Jefferson Davis. But that has not been the practice for more than 150 years,” the brief said. “And to the extent the district court used the term ‘private citizen’ to refer to someone who was not already a member of the Department of Justice before receiving his commission, that definition applies equally to every member of the Department and has no relevance to the Appointments Clause or to the statutes authorizing the appointment of Special Counsel Smith.”

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