Chris Truax in The Hill
Charter Member Chris Truax published an op-ed in The Hill, “A monument to failure: Jack Smith’s report and what might have been.” He writes:
Legally, Jack Smith’s report doesn’t matter. Though Smith sought to drop the charges against Trump “without prejudice,” meaning they could theoretically be reinstated, there is no chance of that happening. Trump cannot be prosecuted while president and, because the statute of limitations continues to run, he will not be prosecuted after 2028, either.
There is an easy, one-line fix in the law for this statute-of-limitations problem, but President Biden refused to push for it during his presidency. Had he done so, the indictment could be reinstated once Trump leaves office. This is just the first of what I’m afraid will be many examples where Biden’s failure to Trump-proof our democracy will come back to haunt us.
Historically, Smith’s report matters quite a lot. It is a monument to what might have been, a cautionary tale that, assuming American democracy survives sufficiently intact, may motivate some future president and some future congress to do what Joe Biden and Merrick Garland failed to do: strengthen the rule of law and rebuild the guardrails of democracy.
Yes, the Smith report is a monument. Let’s hope it is a guidepost and not a gravestone.