Jack Smith faces another reckoning
Former special counsel Jack Smith will likely be called back to Capitol Hill to testify about his pursuit of two criminal cases against President Trump.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, Missouri Republican, said Republicans have been developing information about Arctic Frost, the Biden Justice Department’s pursuit of Mr. Trump, and the time is ripe to pull it all together with a hearing to grill Mr. Smith.
“I think you can see a hearing this summer with Jack Smith being front and center,” the senator told Seen, Heard & Whispered.
He said the GOP’s investigation has been aided by whistleblowers who have revealed the extent of the pursuit of Mr. Trump after his first term. They have poked holes in the FBI’s justification for the dramatic raid to seek classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and shed light on the Justice Department’s move to secretly gather phone records of members of Congress.
“It does make Watergate look like a third-grade burglary,” Mr. Schmitt said.
Mr. Smith won indictments against Mr. Trump for mishandling classified documents and for his behavior surrounding the 2020 election.
Mr. Trump was also indicted by a local prosecutor in Georgia for his attempt to claim victory in the 2020 election.
One federal case was tossed by a judge and the other was dismissed after Mr. Trump won the 2024 election. The Georgia case was dismissed after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was found to have had an improper relationship with the man she brought in to pursue the case as a special prosecutor.
Newly released documents showed White House officials fawning over Ms. Willis, with one calling her “an icon.”
Sean Spicer unleashes ’Trump 2.0’
Sean Spicer was there at the start of Trump 1.0, helping him get elected and then serving as his first press secretary in the White House, so he has a pretty good idea what he’s talking about when he says the second Trump term is shaping up to be even more important.
His new book, “Trump 2.0,” says the president learned from that first go-around — and figured out that personnel matters as much as anything.
This time, he knew who he wanted to hire and who he needed to avoid.
“Just think about President Biden’s administration. I would bet that Americans couldn’t even name a single member of his cabinet. It was truly a Cabinet of forgettables,” Mr. Spicer writes, “The Trump 2.0 Cabinet, on the other hand, is a Cabinet of absolute winners. Just watch the televised Cabinet meetings. It’s like a monthly accountability report.”
Mr. Trump wrote the foreword to the book, which was published by Regnery and released on April 28.
Energy dominance is best approach to conflict
Those who are focused on soaring gasoline prices are “missing the big picture” about President Trump’s war with Iran and should realize how much worse it could have been, Interior Department Secretary Doug Burgum said.
Speaking at a Breitbart News forum, Mr. Burgum said Mr. Trump’s move to dethrone Nicolas Maduro and forge a partnership with the new leadership in Venezuela meant the U.S. had a cushion to withstand the worst of the price shocks when Iran tried to block access to the Strait of Hormuz.
He said that helped keep the price of oil at about $100 and not $200.
And he said things will get better soon.
“The war with the country of Iran is almost over,” he said. “We are going to have a dramatic drop in prices.”
The secretary, who oversees oil exploration on federal lands in the U.S., also said the artificial intelligence race against China is an existential threat that will require energy dominance.
DHS secretary says a movie saved him from a life destined for prison
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin says that as a younger man, he was on a path of mayhem that seemed destined to end behind bars — until he got scared straight by a viewing of “American History X.”
The 1998 movie is about an ex-skinhead who goes to prison for murder, suffering a brutal three years behind bars, then emerges to try to stop his younger brother from repeating his cycle of hate and violence.
Mr. Mullin, speaking at a ceremony during Police Week celebrating U.S. immigration and Customs Enforcement, said that film was the start of his journey, though ultimately it took him to fully embrace Christianity.
“My life changed when I got saved and I was 20 years old. Until then, my dad said I was more likely to go to prison than I was to be successful,” Mr. Mullin recounted.
“The truth is, I probably was going down that path. I watched this little movie called ’American History X’ that really changed my life, and I thought, I’m never going to prison after that one,” he said. “But I wasn’t walking down the path I should have been walking down until I realized there was something higher, something bigger than myself.”
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