Holy Andrew Weissmann, Batman. You have already read on this site, the many abuses of power that Jack Smith and his hoodlums have committed to get convictions that were later thrown out. One of his victims has now made the causation that Smith’s team paid a key witness, Phillip Aries, to change his testimony to match the false narrative contained in ‘Operation Eagle.’” Aries was in the middle of a divorce and was in financial quicksand.
He had previously given testimony absolving former Rep Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.). Suddenly, he reversed his testimony in order to match up with the legal theories of Smith’s team. Renzi claimed Aries was paid between $10,000 and $25,000 for his new testimony. Smith’s teams over the years engaged in illegal wiretapping, jury manipulation, payoffs for false testimony, and other highly questionable behavior. Smith and his handpicked team also got a conviction against Virginia Governor, Gov. Bob McDonnell, that was so egregious that the Supreme Court tossed his conviction out unanimously.
Although it was just a member of Smith’s team that paid the bribe, Renzi’s lawyers claim Smith knew of the offer, approved it, and helped get the payoff made.
Renzi said:
“According to my attorneys, [Smith] actually approved and helped with the [payoff] offer—that’s all on him,” Renzi explained. If true, that makes Smith directly culpable in offering to bribe a witness to provide false testimony. Smith and his team (including Harbach) “knowingly sponsored false testimony to the jury.”
Renzi’s website, Abuse of Power, details “Operation Eagle,” based on the evidence filed in 2019 by Mayer Brown’s Kelly Kramer:
VISIT OUR YOUTUBE CHANNELThe government investigation was driven by a fabricated dossier procured by the former President of Resolution Copper Company (a foreign-owned mining company) Bruno Hegner (a South African citizen) and Democratic lobbyist Ron Ober who together hired former FBI agent Jim Elroy to launch a covert plot which they code-named “Operation Eagle” to target Mr. Renzi in a blatant political “hit job.” Although the allegations in the dossier were false, the scheme was handed off to the politically-driven AUSA Gary Restaino, a staunch partisan Democrat whose wife was Arizona’s then-Governor Janet Napolitano’s [D] General Counsel.
Kramer describes Napolitano as one of Renzi’s “fiercest political rivals” in the state of Arizona, who was also involved politically with “Resolution’s land-exchange proposals.” Kramer further wrote that Restaino eventually admitted the existence of FBI records showing the FBI had told Aries multiple times he would have to pay taxes on any potential rewards for cooperation. As noted in my previous piece, Mayer Brown, the legal firm that filed these accusations, is a Democrat firm. They weren’t assisting Republican Renzi by exposing the prosecutorial misconduct for political reasons.
What’s particularly relevant about this evidence of Smith’s alleged payoff offer to a witness is that the DOJ reportedly tried to influence a potential witness and his lawyers in the ongoing Trump investigation, which is under Smith’s supervision. In this case, however, the DOJ reportedly didn’t try to incentivize them with money, but with a seeming threat or warning. The Guardian reported on June 8 on an allegation from attorney Stanley Woodward, lawyer to Trump’s valet and co-defendant Walt Nauta:
The lawyer for Donald Trump’s valet, under scrutiny in the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation, has submitted court papers describing a meeting at which a top federal prosecutor brought up his application to be a judge when they tried to gain the valet’s cooperation last year, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The Guardian explained that the prosecutor’s raising the subject “in the context of trying to persuade a lawyer for a witness to recommend cooperating could give the appearance of coercion.” As noted above, Renzi told me that Smith and Harbach are “known for” incentivizing potential witnesses in some way. Woodward’s claims could confirm the alleged pattern in the Donald Trump and Walt Nauta cases.
Trump\s lawyers will try to get the charges dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct.
