Special counsel Jack Smith moved to dismiss charges against Trump over his efforts to contest the 2020 election and his handling of classified material Monday. Lofgren bemoaned the fact that Trump was not indicted until 2023, asserting the Select January 6 Committee uncovered evidence of wrongdoing during an appearance on “Chris Jansing Reports.”

“Well, it was a huge mistake. Certainly, the committee found, you know, a lot of evidence without the tools that the Justice Department has that made it clear that Trump was at the center of this wide-ranging conspiracy,” Lofgren told MSNBC host Chris Jansing. “Why the Justice Department delayed until basically our report was done is something I’ve never understood. However, Trump and his lawyers are the masters of delay. So, even had the efforts begun in advance, who knows whether they wouldn’t have been able to drag them out. Justice delayed is, of course, justice denied.”

Smith secured a superseding indictment against Trump almost two months after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Trump’s claims of immunity in a case stemming from a previous indictment of the former president over his efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election. Lofgren also took aim at Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who had opposed impeaching Trump over the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol building.

“When Mr. Trump was elected president, I think it became clear that this prosecution could not go forward,” Lofgren said. “You know, it’s ironic that the top Republican in the Senate pointed out in the impeachment that he should be prosecuted, that what he did was criminal and that the court should take care of it.”

“Of course, now there is no accountability either using the constitutional method of impeachment or the courts as Mitch McConnell suggested should be the case,” Lofgren claimed. “So, there is no accountability. The conduct was criminal, and we already knew that we had elected somebody who was a criminal because he was convicted multiple times in another case. So that’s where we are in America.”

A Manhattan jury of seven men and five women convicted Trump on 34 felony counts of falsification of business records on May 30 in the case which centered around a $130,000 payout to porn star Stormy Daniels as part of a confidentiality agreement.

A grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia handed down indictments Aug. 14, charging Trump and other associates over Trump’s efforts to contest the 2020 election results in that state. Attorneys for former Trump campaign aide Michael Roman filed a motion for Willis’s disqualification on Jan. 8 alleging that Willis, who hired Nathan Wade as a special prosecutor to help probe and prosecute the former president, was in a romantic relationship with him, with a judge later ruling that Wade had to withdraw from the case.

An appeals court cancelled oral arguments on whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified due to the relationship with Wade Nov. 18.

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Special counsel Jack Smith moved to dismiss charges against Trump over his efforts to contest the 2020 election and his handling of classified material Monday. Lofgren bemoaned the fact that Trump was not indicted until 2023, asserting the Select January 6 Committee uncovered evidence of wrongdoing during an appearance on “Chris Jansing Reports.”

“Well, it was a huge mistake. Certainly, the committee found, you know, a lot of evidence without the tools that the Justice Department has that made it clear that Trump was at the center of this wide-ranging conspiracy,” Lofgren told MSNBC host Chris Jansing. “Why the Justice Department delayed until basically our report was done is something I’ve never understood. However, Trump and his lawyers are the masters of delay. So, even had the efforts begun in advance, who knows whether they wouldn’t have been able to drag them out. Justice delayed is, of course, justice denied.”

Smith secured a superseding indictment against Trump almost two months after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Trump’s claims of immunity in a case stemming from a previous indictment of the former president over his efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election. Lofgren also took aim at Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who had opposed impeaching Trump over the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol building.

“When Mr. Trump was elected president, I think it became clear that this prosecution could not go forward,” Lofgren said. “You know, it’s ironic that the top Republican in the Senate pointed out in the impeachment that he should be prosecuted, that what he did was criminal and that the court should take care of it.”

“Of course, now there is no accountability either using the constitutional method of impeachment or the courts as Mitch McConnell suggested should be the case,” Lofgren claimed. “So, there is no accountability. The conduct was criminal, and we already knew that we had elected somebody who was a criminal because he was convicted multiple times in another case. So that’s where we are in America.”

A Manhattan jury of seven men and five women convicted Trump on 34 felony counts of falsification of business records on May 30 in the case which centered around a $130,000 payout to porn star Stormy Daniels as part of a confidentiality agreement.

A grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia handed down indictments Aug. 14, charging Trump and other associates over Trump’s efforts to contest the 2020 election results in that state. Attorneys for former Trump campaign aide Michael Roman filed a motion for Willis’s disqualification on Jan. 8 alleging that Willis, who hired Nathan Wade as a special prosecutor to help probe and prosecute the former president, was in a romantic relationship with him, with a judge later ruling that Wade had to withdraw from the case.

An appeals court cancelled oral arguments on whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified due to the relationship with Wade Nov. 18.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

The article below from The Epoch Times represents an analysis of the facts and does not necessarily reflect the perspectives of this publication.

(The Epoch Times)—After President-elect Donald Trump won a second term, multiple defendants charged for their roles in the events of Jan. 6, 2021, asked to delay their cases because they anticipate pardons from Trump.

Many were denied, but each nonetheless raised questions about how Trump will handle the cases.

According to data collected by NPR, more than 1,500 people have been charged in relation to Jan. 6, with nearly 1,000 pleading guilty.

At least a dozen cases have been dismissed, while plenty remain with changes following Trump’s election. At the beginning of November, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia announced multiple sentences and guilty verdicts.

Various factors could determine whether these individuals end up avoiding jail time, but perhaps the most important is Trump’s eventual control of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and who will lead that department.

On Nov. 13, Trump announced Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) as his pick for attorney general. Gaetz has been critical of the prosecutions and introduced a bill in July that was intended to prevent prosecutors from retaliating against Jan. 6 defendants for seeking resentencing. Gaetz has also questioned federal involvement, stating that Jan. 6 “wasn’t an insurrection” but that it “very well may have been a fedsurrection.”

Assuming the presidency also grants Trump substantial pardon power under the Constitution: Trump has indicated that he’s open to pardoning those charged but left open the possibility that some would face punishment.

“We will treat them fairly,” he said in January 2022. “And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons, because they are being treated so unfairly.”

More recently, during an event in July, he was asked about individuals who assaulted officers. He said he would “absolutely” pardon the defendants “if they’re innocent” and added that “they were convicted by a very tough system.”

More than 70 defendants have received a mixed verdict, and so far, more than 1,000 people have been sentenced, with 64 percent receiving prison time, according to NPR data. Some defendants have also taken plea deals.

“I think there’s going to be a complete second look at all of the prosecutions,” Robert Ray, a former Trump impeachment attorney, told The Epoch Times, while noting the large number of cases brought. He added that a second look wouldn’t “necessarily yield a favorable result with regard to each and every defendant, but I think there’s going to be a pretty strenuous exercise of the pardon and commutation power to deal with overreaching [by prosecutors].”

John Pierce, an attorney who has represented Jan. 6 defendants, told The Epoch Times he expects a “blanket pardon,” while Trump–Vance transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said the president-elect “will make pardon decisions on a case-by-case basis.”

Politics of Pardons

It’s unclear which individuals Trump will consider for pardon.

“That’s the million-dollar question,” Lori Ulrich, an attorney with the public defender’s office, told The Epoch Times. She is currently representing Joseph Fischer, whose case made it to the Supreme Court this year.

Fischer and other defendants face a myriad of charges, including an obstruction charge the Supreme Court addressed this summer in Fischer v. United States. It’s unclear how Trump’s DOJ will apply that ruling, but the president-elect’s pardons could be influenced by factors such as the politics surrounding his pardons.

“If President Biden either pardons or commutes the sentences for Hunter Biden, that gives President Trump political cover to either pardon or commute the non-violent J6 offenders, [as well as] Peter Navarro, and Steve Bannon, if he chooses to,” John Shu, a constitutional law expert who served in both Bush administrations, told The Epoch Times.

Shu was referring to President Joe Biden’s son, who was convicted in September of various tax offenses. Both of Trump’s former White House advisers, Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, could be pardoned after each served a four month sentences for defying subpoenas from the House committee that investigated Jan. 6.

A CBS poll found that three years after the events of Jan. 6, 78 percent of Americans expressed disapproval toward “actions of those who forced their way into the Capitol.”

William Shipley, an attorney for one of the defendants, suggested in a motion on Nov. 10 that the election didn’t reflect well on the DOJ’s efforts.

“Defendant Baker would point out that the ‘people’ on behalf of whom the Government purports to speak made themselves heard clearly on November 5, and that should mean something to the Department of Justice without regard to what Administration is now in charge,” Shipley said in a motion for defendant Stephen Michael Baker.

That motion, which asked for a delay in proceedings, was quickly rejected by U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper this month.

Upon entering office, Trump’s pardon power would allow him to commute sentences and pardon convicts who have already served time, such as Ulrich’s client, Riley Williams. Williams was accused of helping to steal then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s laptop. She was found guilty on two felony counts, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict on two other counts, including aiding and abetting theft of government property.

Non-Violent Offenders

Shu told The Epoch Times that pardons for non-violent offenders were more politically palatable.

In August, the DOJ said that approximately 140 police officers were assaulted on Jan. 6, while more than 500 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees. It added that “approximately 163 individuals … have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.”

Among those are Daniel Ball, who pleaded not guilty but whom the DOJ accused of, among other things, “throwing an explosive device that detonated upon at least 25 officers.” Others included a father-son pair who pleaded guilty in January, and Zachary Alam, who was found guilty last year.

David Gelman, an attorney and former Trump campaign surrogate, told The Epoch Times that re-examining the Jan. 6 prosecutions would have to occur on a “case-by-case basis” but indicated that Trump could consider violence in choosing how to exercise his pardon power.

Trump said at a town hall in 2023 that he was “inclined to pardon many of” the defendants who had been convicted. “I can’t say for every single one because a couple of them, probably, they got out of control,” he said.

Earlier this year, he started one of his rallies with a recording of the national anthem sung by Jan. 6 prisoners. He also vowed in March that his “first acts” as president would be to “Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned,” he wrote on his Truth Social account.

In a motion filed just after the election, one of the Jan. 6 defendants, Anna Lichnowski, asked her judge to postpone sentencing partly on the basis that her offenses were non-violent, making her “a good candidate for a pardon,” according to her attorney.

Lichnowski was one of a series of defendants who filed motions for some kind of delay in their cases after Trump’s victory. Many of them have been denied, including by U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who said that Trump’s potential pardon was “irrelevant” to Lichnowski’s case.

“The potential future exercise of the discretionary pardon power, an Executive Branch authority, is irrelevant to the Court’s obligation to carry out the legal responsibilities of the Judicial Branch,” Walton said in a Nov. 7 court order.

Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, similarly resisted the motions while arguing that the public is interested in a quick administration of justice.

Graves will likely exit the DOJ in Trump’s second term, experts speculated—something that is expected for many prosecutors at the beginning of a new administration. During Trump’s and Biden’s first terms, dozens of prosecutors were asked to leave.

The vast majority of defendants have been charged with a trespassing offense, the use of which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld in October. Defendant Couy Griffin, founder of Cowboys for Trump and a former county commissioner from New Mexico, had asked the court to review the DOJ’s use of this charge against him.

In a 2–1 decision, the court held that the DOJ could apply the trespassing law without proving that he was aware that former Vice President Mike Pence’s presence on the Capitol grounds was the reason for restricting that area.

Obstruction Charge

In June, the Supreme Court held in a 6–3 decision that the DOJ had misinterpreted a financial reform law in attempting to accuse the Jan. 6 defendants of obstructing an official proceeding.

The majority opinion in that case, Fischer v. United States, held that the DOJ erred in its attempt to disentangle two portions of the Sarbanes–Oxley financial reform law (Section 1512(c)(1) and (c)(2)).

The DOJ had argued that the law allowed prosecutions that targeted obstructive conduct in a catch-all way that included methods other than those mentioned at the beginning of the section.

A majority of the Supreme Court, including Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, disagreed and held: “To prove a violation of §1512(c)(2), the Government must establish that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or other things used in an official proceeding, or attempted to do so.”

It’s unclear how Trump and his DOJ will apply the Fischer decision to the defendants’ unique circumstances. It carries a 20-year maximum sentence.

In November, the DOJ said that “approximately 259 defendants who, at the time Fischer was decided, were charged with or convicted of violating 18 U.S.C. § 1512 to determine whether the charge should continue to be prosecuted.”

The DOJ said that after Fischer, the government “decided to forgo the Section 1512(c)(2) charge for approximately 96 defendants, will continue to pursue the charge for approximately 13 defendants, and continues to assess the remaining defendants.”

Approximately 133 were sentenced, and more than half were convicted of that offense and other felonies, according to DOJ data from August.

Austin Alonzo contributed to this report.

The fact that Biden and his attorney general, Merrick Garland, are using the imprimatur of the criminal justice system as a smokescreen to railroad and possibly imprison the leader of the opposition party is bad enough.  By treating President Trump’s speech as the “proximate cause” of other alleged crimes (consisting mostly of questionable trespass violations reimagined and inflated into felonies) committed by strangers, the Biden-Garland-Smith Triumvirate of Tyranny has turned every American’s opinion into a potential criminal act.

Should this bother all those rabid leftists who desperately want to see President Trump behind bars?  I would say so.  President Trump has now survived two assassination attempts, and although the FBI has done its best to muddy the waters concerning the motivations of the first gunman (trying to kill the Republican nominee for president seems like a pretty good clue, does it not?), the social media history of the second gunman (as well as the Biden-Harris bumper sticker on his truck) clearly exposes him as a Ukraine War–obsessed, anti-MAGA, Kamala Harris–supporting zealot who believes that President Trump is a civilizational threat.

Where would he get that crazy idea?  Oh, I don’t know — maybe from the constant stream of contributors on networks such as MSNBC who call Trump a “dictator,” another “Hitler,” and a “Nazi.”  Maybe the would-be assassin took Democrat politicians seriously whenever they showed up on news shows these last eight years to claim with utmost sincerity that Trump is a “threat to democracy.”

Maybe the man who turned an AK-47 on the president read one of the numerous opinion columns featured in the nation’s factually shoddy but stubbornly prominent publications, all universally libeling President Trump as a “rapist,” a “white supremacist,” a “fascist,” and a “dangerous” leader of the “far right.”  Should fake journalists who regularly claim that America will “literally end” if Trump returns to the White House be surprised when someone stumbles upon their neurotic rantings and subsequently attempts to “save” the country from the specter of their shared delusions?

Have we not also reached our “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” political moment?  If President Trump must spend millions of dollars defending himself against mercenary prosecutors intent on locking him up for the remainder of his life because of the “dangerous” words that come out of his mouth, then surely those people who use their speech to beg for someone — anyone — to rid the country of the once and future president should be held similarly liable.  How many times can a Democrat politician or credentialed propagandist falsely compare Donald Trump to mass murderers and dictators such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini before those inflammatory slanders rise to the same level of “proximate cause” that prompted the Department of (in)Justice to put Trump in its crosshairs over January 6?

Jack Smith is prosecuting President Trump for somehow threatening the peaceful transfer of power from a legitimately elected president to an illegitimately installed stooge.  Even though Trump correctly believed (and still does believe) that the 2020 election was rigged in Biden’s favor (mail-in ballots stuffed into unsecured drop boxes in the dead of night, the use of Zuckerbucks to increase ballot collection in Democrat neighborhoods, and the Intelligence Community’s efforts to defraud the American people with regard to Hunter Biden’s “laptop from Hell” all amply support this conclusion), he left office as legally required on January 20.

Trump never called for violence against Joe Biden or the U.S. government.  He never urged Americans to revolt against their country.  Even on January 6 — the half-day of protest that leftist pundits and politicians say was worse than 9/11 and the Civil War combined — President Trump calmly urged his supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”  In other words, he defended his First Amendment right to speak his mind and the First Amendment right of all Americans to speak theirs — but he never, ever called for violence against his political enemies.

For the crime of speaking truthfully about the tremendous deficiencies and suspicious vote-counting activities surrounding the 2020 election, Jack Smith and the rest of the Triumvirate of Tyranny have thrown President Trump in the dock to defend his life.  And as atrocious as the Triumvirate’s political persecution of an American president has been, it pales in comparison to the way it has harassed, hunted, imprisoned, and even tortured thousands of ordinary Americans for showing up at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 to protest for free and fair elections.

The vast majority of Americans who arrived in D.C. on that fateful day committed no crimes.  Most had no criminal records.  They included an inordinate number of veterans, law enforcement officers, grandparents, and retirees.  In D.C. courtrooms, however, prosecutors and partisan judges have described them as “terrorists,” “seditionists,” “insurrectionists,” and “domestic enemies.”

How did they earn such ignoble monikers?  They are accused of spreading the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from President Trump.  It does not seem to matter to any of these courts that roughly 60% of the American people also believe that cheating likely affected that election.  For expressing an opinion unpopular in D.C., J6 political prisoners have been held in solitary confinement and forced to review “re-education materials” regarding Trump’s “lies,” “crimes,” and “attacks on democracy.”  These are actual lesson plans for conservative political prisoners in the United States.

If telling a “Big Lie” means that a person’s speech merits criminal punishment, though, surely Joe Biden and Kamala Harris deserve similar treatment.  Biden has repeatedly claimed that Trump-supporters murdered police officers on January 6.  That is a complete lie.  The only people to die that day were J6 protesters, including a female Air Force veteran shot in cold blood and another female beaten to death.  Crimes of murder and excessive force may very well have taken place on January 6, but Trump voters did not commit them.  That truth, however, is inconvenient for Biden, fellow Democrats, and their faithful media propagandists, who all desperately cling to the “Big Lie” that Trump engineered a “violent insurrection.”

Biden has also clung to the “Big Lie” that President Trump called neo-Nazis at a Charlottesville political rally “very fine people.”  Trump did no such thing.  He was discussing the issue of whether statues and monuments commemorating Confederate soldiers should be removed simply because they offend modern sensibilities.  In a moment when he sought to build unity among all Americans, he expressed his belief that there are good people on both sides of that contentious debate.  Trump warned, however, that once we start tearing down historic statues, the impulse to destroy our past will never end.  Eventually, he predicted, statues dedicated to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and other remarkable Americans would be targeted, too.  He was right.  Those who wish to transform America by first rewriting America’s history have spent the last four years toppling priceless monuments built by some of America’s finest artists.  But that truth does not permit Joe Biden to falsely portray President Trump as a “racist.”

Where have we heard the Charlottesville and J6 lies recently?  Kamala Harris repeated both during the presidential debate.  Surely, if President Trump is responsible for “inciting” a fake “insurrection,” Biden and Harris are responsible for inciting two very real assassination attempts.