Jack Smiths secret vendetta, a mental-health opportunity and other commentary

Eye on DC: Jack Smith’s ‘Secret’ VendettaSpecial Prosecutor Jack Smith claims “he could have convicted Trump had Trump not won the presidency,” but he could hardly say he’d “spent all that time and money, and stirred up the country so much, on a case he thought he would lose,” snarks the Washington Examiner’s Bryon York.Yet “he could never, ever admit” “the single guiding fact of his prosecution,” namely “that he was working to indict, try, convict, and jail Trump before the 2024 election.” “Justice Department guidelines unambiguously forbid such political moves,” so Smith had to pretend, notably urging the Supreme Court to “rush, rush, rush” on the presidential-immunity question, all while “Smith never, ever mentioned the election he was racing to beat.” Yet: “The country knew what Jack Smith . . .

was trying to accomplish, and a winning margin of the voters put an end to it on Election Day.”From the right: A Mental-Health OpportunityDonald Trump can “disrupt and realign the status quo” to address “America’s mental-health crisis,” argues Stephen Eide at UnHerd.In his first term, Trump “weakened restrictions on the use of Medicaid for psychiatric hospitalization,” now he can “make further progress” and so correct the mistaken “belief that serious mental illness could be treated on the cheap.” This doesn’t “mean the return of the asylum” as “community-based mental health will remain central,” as it “in many respects is really a family-based system.” Thus, putting families at the center of reforms “is the most coherent way to build an effective mental-health system, one that anticipates crises before tragedy strikes.” That’ll make us all beneficiaries.Conservative: Pardoning Colleges for Jew-HateFor “the worst move in Joe Biden’s pardon-spree” is fierce,” thunders Commentary’s Seth Mandel, consider “another recipient of undue clemency: the universities” who let ...