Special Counsel Jack Smith: ‘We Have One Set of Laws in This Country’

Special Counsel Jack Smith said Friday afternoon that he had charged President Donald Trump because of the importance of protecting classified information and the importance of upholding the rule of law equally for all.

Speaking for less than three minutes, Smith said, in part:

The men and women of the United States intelligence community and our armed forces dedicate their lives to protecting our nation and its people. Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States, and they must be enforced.

Violations of those laws put our country at risk. Adherence to the rule of law is a bedrock principle of the Department of Justice, and our nation’s commitment to the rule of law sets an example for the world. We have one set of laws in this country and they apply to everyone.

Smith did not explain why the same law had not been applied to former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, or why it was not being applied to incumbent President Joe Biden, both of whom appeare to have mishandled classified information (and, in Clinton’s case, to have destroyed it).

He did not address the question of whether indicting the leading opposition candidate for president in the midst of an election “sets an example for the world” — especially when that candidate has been the target of fruitless and partisan investigations for many years.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.