Cotton calls Jack Smith a ‘deranged fanatic’ over election-season filing

Sen. Tom Cotton slammed the unsealed legal brief of special counsel Jack Smith regarding his 2020 election interference case against former President Donald Trump as a “temper tantrum.”

“Well, what I think about what Jack Smith did this week is that it was a temper tantrum from a deranged fanatic who is angry that he keeps losing time and time again in the Supreme Court over the course of his career,” the Arkansas Republican said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Mr. Smith last week released a massive legal filing from his election interference case against Mr. Trump that alleged the former president committed crimes ahead of and after the 2020 election.

Mr. Cotton called that filing a form of election interference, contrary to Justice Department policy against acting in politically fraught cases close to elections.

“This is unverified, un-cross-examined hearsay from grand jury testimony, which usually isn’t revealed publicly for that reason,” Mr. Cotton said. “He went to court. He asked for special permission to file a brief that’s four times as long as a normal brief and to have it disclosed less than 30 days before the election. This is professional misconduct in all likelihood by Jack Smith and it should be investigated.”

Mr. Cotton argued that Mr. Trump did not incite violence, as the filing claims, but instead told the protesters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 to “protest peacefully and patriotically.”

“This is a perfect example of actual election interference: Jack Smith violating Department of Justice regulations to try to get out as much unverified, so-called evidence as he has because he’s angry that he lost and the Democrats don’t think they can beat Donald Trump on issues like inflation and immigration,” Mr. Cotton said.

When asked by host Kristen Welker to confirm that Mr. Trump did in fact lose the 2020 election to President Biden, Mr. Cotton said that Mr. Biden was elected in 2020, but called it an “unfair election in many ways.”

“You had states that were changing their election practices or election laws, sometimes in violation of the Constitution,” he said. “You had networks combining with big tech to suppress what we now know to be a truthful story about Hunter Biden’s laptop and the evidence that it exposed about Biden family corruption.”