"Federal prosecutor David Raskin was expecting that the criminal case he had helped build against former president Donald Trump would be filed in Washington, D.C., when a colleague bumped into him with surprising news: Their boss, special counsel Jack Smith, had decided to bring the case in Florida," according to the book written by Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis.
“'Are you all f--king insane?' Raskin blurted out to his fellow prosecutor on that spring day in 2023, in a hallway at a Justice Department building in D.C."
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Raskin saw the move as a huge gamble because the case had at least a one-in-six chance of landing before U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon, a Trump appointee who had already temporarily blocked federal agents from reviewing materials seized by FBI agents from the former president's residence.
“'I’m not worried about Florida,' Smith said later when presenting his decision to Justice Department officials," according to the book, “Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department,” which will be published Nov. 4 by Penguin Press. "But the early calculation of the odds that Cannon would get the case — and Smith’s faith that the evidence could win her over even after she did — turned out to be wrong."
Prosecutors have discretion over where to bring charges in a case, as long as some of the alleged criminal conduct took place there, and Smith tasked James I. Pearce, a senior Justice Department appellate attorney, to analyze whether to charge Trump in D.C. or Florida, and the special counsel and his inner circle agreed that a conviction would be more easily overturned on appeal in the District of Columbia.
“This is an existential threat to the case,” Raskin told his colleagues when learning Smith was risking the case winding up in Cannon's courtroom.
The National Security Division chiefs understood the logic of charging Trump in Florida, where most of the alleged crimes occurred, but senior counselors determined the risk of drawing Cannon was even greater – one in three, they concluded – because some of the judges located closest to Mar-a-Lago did not work full time or already had trials scheduled.
“The biggest risk you have is Cannon gets the case,” David Newman, a senior adviser in the division, told Smith and his deputies. “Then it’s dead.”
Smith's team flew to Miami in the second week of May 2023, checked into a hotel under the name of a fake corporation and started presenting evidence to a grand jury operating in secret, and they voted to charge Trump with 37 felony counts after hearing five weeks of evidence, and Trump himself broke the news June 8 on Truth Social.
“The corrupt Biden administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax,” Trump posted. “I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States,” he added in a subsequent post, which ended, in part: “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!”
Smith's team learned later that afternoon on the court's website which judge had been assigned to the Trump case.
"Some gasped seeing the initials at the top of the docket: 'AMC,' for Aileen Mercedes Cannon," according to Leonnig and Davis.
Jay Bratt, a top national security prosecutor helping to lead the case, called Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, who had overseen the documents probe before Smith was appointed.
“You’re not going to believe it,” Bratt said, according to the book. “We got Cannon.”
“We’re screwed,” Olsen said.
