Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner said Donald Trump may have been unwise with his criticism of the wife of Jack Smith, the special counsel recently appointed to oversee criminal investigations involving the former president.
In a Truth Social post on Tuesday, Trump hit at the Democratic connections of Katy Chevigny, who is married to the special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee the investigation into classified documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago and aspects of the efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
In his post, Trump shared screenshots showing Chevigny worked as a producer on the Michelle Obama documentary Becoming, as well as a Twitter post from Cevigny's account declaring "thank goodness" when Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 Election.
Another Twitter post shared by Trump featured Chevigny describing how Wisconsin Democrats "picked themselves off the floor" after Trump's "shock" win in the state in the 2016 election.
"This is just a small amount of information from the wife of the hard-line Radical Left Special Counsel (prosecutor), an acolyte of Eric Holder and Barack Hussein Obama," Trump wrote.
While sharing a Salon article about Trump's Truth Social post, Kirschner—a legal analyst for NBC and MSNBC—tweeted: "This attack on Special Counsel Jack Smith's wife by Trump is . . . a miscalculation."
Kirschner, a frequent critic of Trump, did not expand upon his remark further.
Trump has often accused the Department of Justice of being "weaponized" against him as he faces investigations into allegations he mishandled top secret materials recovered from his Florida home—and then attempted to obstruct the federal attempt to retrieve them—as well his actions around January 6.
Other conservative figures are now using the appointment of Smith by Garland as "proof" that the Biden administration is using the DoJ to unfairly target Trump.
Records from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show that Chevigny donated in support of President's Biden campaign twice in the 2020 elections.
"The wife of the Special Counsel Biden chose to investigate Donald Trump (his likely opponent in 2024) reportedly produced the Michelle Obama documentary... Yes America, you are reading this correctly," the former president's son, Eric Trump, posted on Truth Social.
Charlie Kirk, political commentator and founder of Turning Point USA, tweeted: "Of course the wife of Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by Merrick Garland to investigate President Trump, was one of the producers of the Michelle Obama documentary. But don't worry guys, the DOJ has not been weaponized against conservatives. Everything is fine!"
In a press conference on November 18, Garland said that Smith, a former chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague, will be tasked with prosecuting federal crimes that arise from the investigations into Trump.
In a statement, Smith said: "The pace of the investigations will not pause or flag under my watch. I will exercise independent judgment and will move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate."
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About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, domestic policy ... Read more
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