General Discussion

that it was easy for Trump's people and the SCOTUS to jam the gears every step of the way. A simpler case on more limited charges would have had a better chance, IMHO.

I suppose you and he reason that the "kitchen sink" / "more irons in the fire" strategy gives better odds that SOMETHING will get through. From the first day, I said that was the wrong strategy. I can't prove that a simpler strategy would have been more successful, but these cases ended up exactly where I said they would be -- dead with zero impact. Smith's report is a 24-hour news cycle event, and ultimately can be dismissed as the rantings of a disgruntled prosecutor who lost. There is no comfort in some fragments of his investigating being released

And the case before Chutkin never got to trial, did it? She dismissed it, right after the election because she knew Smith had missed the window of opportunity. This case was the very definition of "time is of the essence", and Smith pissed around month after month expanding the scope, each month getting himself farther and farther from a trial. We don't know his motives. Maybe he just figured, "I'm a lawyer, not a politician. I am trained to keep working on a case for as long as it takes to make the biggest, most bullet-proof case possible." I guess they don't teach "Justice delayed is justice denied" in law school.

However it happened, it is a disaster of existential proportions. Of course, it should not have come down to one man (Smith or Garland, take your pick), any more than it should have come down to Mueller, who clearly was way past his "use by" date. The system failed. DoJ failed. Our political system failed. Our Constitution failed. SCOTUS failed. Our media failed. So I certainly don't place all the blame on Smith. But it didn't have to be this way.