House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan announced late yesterday afternoon that he was launching an investigation into “Alleged Prosecutorial Abuses by Office of Special Counsel Jack Smith”.
This investigation centers on an aide to Jack Smith who is accused of trying to pressure Walt Nauta’s attorney by suggesting Biden would give him a judgeship if he would get Nauta to cooperate with them.
Here’s more via Daily Caller:
Republican House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan is launching a probe into Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office over an aide who allegedly “improperly pressured” a lawyer representing a defendant in former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case, he announced in a letter Thursday.
The investigation focuses on senior prosecutor Jay Bratt’s alleged effort to pressure Stanley Woodward, who represents Walt Nauta, former President Donald Trump’s co-defendant in the classified documents case. Bratt implied that the Biden administration would be more favorable towards Woodward’s application for a D.C. superior court judgeship if his client cooperated as a witness against former President Donald Trump, according to Jordan’s letter.
After this attempt failed, Jordan alleges that Bratt’s Aug. 2 court filing raising conflict of interest concerns regarding Woodward’s representation of two other witnesses “who could be called to testify at a trial” was a further attempt to coerce Nauta into cooperating.
“Mr. Bratt’s attempt to bully Mr. Nauta in cooperating, first by extorting his attorney and then by alleging a conflict of interest that precludes his attorney from the case, seriously calls into question your team and your ability to remain impartial and uphold the Department’s mission.”
The Committee is requesting documents and communications relating to meetings between Woodward and the Department of Justice, referring to Woodward or referring to his application for a judgeship, according to the letter.
Woodward previously represented Yuscil Taveras, who recanted his testimony after switching to a federal defender, providing information that led to a superseding indictment against the former president, Nauta and an additional co-defendant, Carlos de Oliveira, according to court documents.
Woodward wrote in a court filing Tuesday that prosecutors came to a cooperation agreement with Taveras where he agreed to testify in exchange for not being prosecuted on perjury charges. He said the agreement was not offered until Taveras got a different lawyer.
Color me shocked that Jack Smith’s office would be trying to bully and possibly bribe Mar-a-lago staffers and their attorneys into cooperating with them. Say it ain’t so!
Seriously, if this could be proven then I would think it could be used in court to call into question the integrity of their investigation or at least parts of it.