Politics
NEW: Top Buttigieg Aide Appears To Admit Trump Prosecutions Were Part Of Coordinated ‘Resistance’
A former aide to Biden transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg said the quiet part out loud on CNN this week, confirming that a coordinated “resistance” network of Democratic prosecutors and law enforcement officials was operating under a shared partisan mission to imprison President Donald Trump before the 2024 election.
Lis Smith, who served as a communications aide to Buttigieg, sat next to a contemplative Scott Jennings as she described Democrats’ disappointment with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for acquiescing on a Republican-led continuing resolution back in February to keep the government running. Recent polling shows that just 1 in 3 Democrats hold a favorable view of the longtime party boss.
“I agree with you: Democrats cannot only be the party of resistance,” she concurred with Jennings before speaking a little too candidly.
“Like, we resisted so hard between 2017 and 2024. We impeached the guy–”
“Twice,” Jennings interjected.
“We prosecuted him, convicted him on thirty-four felony counts,” she went on. “And guess what? He still got elected.”
Sensing a vulnerability, Jennings asked Smith if the New York hush money case against Trump was “part of the organized Democratic Party resistance.”
“It was a Democratic prosecutor,” she admitted, causing Jennings to cheer his own vindication.
“I can’t believe it. They finally admitted it on live TV: The prosecution of President Trump was an organized effort by the Democratic Party ‘resistance,'” he wrote on X while sharing the surreal clip. “Lawfare is real. The justice system was weaponized against President Trump.”
WATCH:
Despite Trump being convicted in the case brought by Manhattan’s Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Trump was never sentenced and most likely never will be. He was facing prosecution in Georgia by another Democratic prosecutor, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, before allegations of nepotism and self-inflicted wounds permanently derailed the trial.
At the same time, Jack Smith, a special prosecutor appointed by former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, was prosecuting Trump in federal cases related to classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago and the January 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol.
Through it all, Trump insisted that an organized resistance was orchestrating the various criminal charges against him while Democrats accused him of sowing distrust in the justice system.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who prosecuted Trump in a civil trial alleging real estate fraud, is now ironically decrying “lawfare” by the White House amid a federal probe into whether she forged documents to illegally obtain more favorable loan terms for several properties she owns.
But years of obstructive obstinance have left Democrats exhausted and looking for a new direction, rank-and-file voters have told pollsters. Even California Democrats don’t want their next governor to base his or her candidacy on total opposition to Trump, and across the nation, Democrats say they don’t envision a total transformation of the embattled party until a new Obama-like savior comes along.
“I just feel like the majority of the old Democratic Party needs to go,” said Democrat Monica Brown, a 61-year-old social worker from Knoxville, Tennessee. “They’re not in tune with the new generation. They’re not in tune with the new world. We’ve got such division within the party.”
