Conservative Media Is Skeptical

Two conservative media voices — neither of which is predictably pro-Donald Trump — voiced skepticism about yesterday’s indictment of Donald Trump.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page worries that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s theory of the case “potentially criminalizes many kinds of actions and statements by a President that a prosecutor deems to be false.”

“It makes any future election challenges, however valid, legally vulnerable to a partisan prosecutor. And it might have criminalized the actions by Al Gore and George W. Bush to contest the Florida election result in 2000.”

National Review says Smith “is endeavoring to criminalize protected political speech and flimsy legal theories — when the Supreme Court has repeatedly admonished prosecutors to refrain from creative theories to stretch penal laws to reach misconduct that Congress has not made illegal.”