I wasted five hours of my life last week watching those hypocrite Republicans and clueless Democrats of the House Judiciary Committee question Special Counsel Jack Smith, who sat there giving us as much fresh news as a potted plant.
He called the president of the United States an indictable criminal who’s lucky he’s not in prison.
Oh, really, Mr. Smith? Tell us why.
But nobody asked.
Instead, for five hours, we got what we already knew — because we saw it with our own eyes. And we either believe our eyes or admit to ourselves that we live in a fantasy world, or a world in which we’ve sold our souls to the most fascistically inclined person we’ve ever had in the White House.
Five years ago this month, on Jan. 6, 2021, we watched Donald Trump set loose the jackals who stormed the U.S. Capitol, savagely attacking police officers, desecrating government offices, threatening to kill the vice president and attempting to alter the course of history itself.
All of this while the leader of what’s left of the free world watched on television, hoping that these marauders would overthrow the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election and save his ass from prison on a whole swath of evidence.
Specifically, what kind of evidence, Mr. Smith?
At their five-hour orgy of egos last week, nobody asked.
Three years of investigating this president, and we finally had Smith, the man with all the secrets, getting a chance to tell all of America what he found.
Donald Trump, he said, “engaged in criminal activity” that undermined democracy and the rule of law.
In other words, January 6th didn’t happen all by itself. There was “criminal activity” beyond the president of the United States egging them on to riot on that day.
So what did the Republicans do?
Well, they didn’t want to hear any more of that kind of talk, that’s for sure. And they didn’t want to hear any details about the weeks and weeks of Trump’s activities leading up to the riots.
The Republicans trivialized the proceedings, they mocked Smith’s 30 years of apolitical public service. They questioned whether he’d even been sworn in properly when he took the job of special counsel. It was a naked search for some loophole to question Smith’s very legitimacy to hold the position.
They couldn’t get over Smith not remembering the name of whoever it was who swore him in when this whole business started.
They questioned Smith’s use of telephone records, as if they’d never heard of such a tactic used every single day in legitimate law enforcement investigations.
They attempted to place blame for the Jan. 6th riot on anybody but this man Trump who — according to Smith — instigated the whole thing.
But how, specifically, did Trump do that, Mr. Smith?
We still don’t know, beyond what we saw with our own eyes.
Because when the Republicans weren’t doing their best to change the subject, the Democrats were busy chastising the Republicans instead of asking Smith for specifics on why he was calling Trump a “criminal.”
And to tell the truth, it felt good to hear them doing it — criticizing the Republicans’ hypocrisy, and condemning condemn their stunning arrogance and insensitivity as they turned their backs on the very police who saved their lives and sat in front of them for five hours.
One Republican, Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas, said U.S. Capitol Police leadership was at fault for the riot, not Trump. To which one of the cops, Michael Fanone, who was brutally beaten by Jan. 6th rioters, cried, “Go f— yourself,” disguising the words only slightly with a cough.
Yeah, it felt good to hear the Dems — and the cops — vent their anger.
But where did it get anybody?
Smith was obviously wary of saying anything extraneous that might be used against him by Republicans. He lacked all sense of personal aggressiveness.
But he had one line, early in the day, that hung in the air.
“Our investigation,” he said, “revealed that Donald Trump is the person who caused Jan. 6, that it was foreseeable to him, and that he sought to exploit the violence.”
“Caused” the violence. (Tell us how, Mr. Smith.)
The violence was “foreseeable” to him. (In what ways, Mr. Smith?)
Sought to “exploit the violence.” (Get specific, Mr. Smith.)
There are a thousand questions to be asked about such statements, and many of us sat through five hours of testimony thinking this was finally the time somebody would ask them when we could actually hear the answers.
But nobody asked, not a Republican or a Democrat. And Smith never volunteered anything.
What a waste of five hours for America.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, including “Journeys to the Heart of Baltimore” (Johns Hopkins University Press) and “Michael Olesker’s Baltimore: If You Live Here, You’re Home” (Johns Hopkins University)
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