From the BBC:
The US Congress has released the transcript of testimony by former Special Counsel Jack Smith, in which he defended his decision to lead two now-defunct criminal investigations into Donald Trump.
The transcript, released on New Year's Eve by the House Judiciary Committee, is 255 pages. It features questions from lawmakers, and Smith's robust defense of the attempts to prosecute Trump for illegally retaining classified documents after leaving office, and his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
And you can find it here.
Let's see what's in those pages, shall we?
Early (pg 28) we find Smith testifying that:
We had an elector in Pennsylvania who is a former Congressman who was going to be an elector for President Trump who said that what they were trying to do was an attempt to overthrow the government and illegal.
Later, he is asked about this former member of Congress:
To my recollection I think his name was Thomas Marino. He is a former U.S. Attorney and he is a former -- he's a Republican -- a former Congressman. And he had agreed to be an -- this is before the election -- agreed to be an elector for Donald Trump. And when he was presented with this idea of the fake elector scheme, my recollection of his reaction was that this was an attempt to overthrow the government and it was illegal.
So who is Thomas Marino?
And was co-chair of Trump's campaign in Pennsylvania.
He's also this guy:
Marino was a member of the U.S. House from 2011 until 2019, when he abruptly resigned two weeks into his term. He has also served as U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. In 2017, Trump nominated him to be the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, but he withdrew from consideration after reports that he had crafted a bill that protected pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors and made it harder for the federal government to tackle the opioid crisis.
That guy. That's the former Trump guy who said the fake elector scheme was an attempt to overthrow the government and that it was illegal.
There's 255 pages to the testimony. This is not the last blog post about it.