‘Shame For Justice’: Rep Dan Goldman Says Smith Dropping Cases Proves Trump Is ‘Above The Law’

Democratic New York Rep. Dan Goldman lamented that President-elect Donald Trump is allegedly “above the law” Monday in response to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s dismissal of the election interference case against the president-elect.

Smith filed a motion Monday to dismiss a four-count criminal indictment alleging that Trump engaged in conspiracy in an attempt to overthrow the 2020 presidential election results in the lead up of events on Jan. 6, 2021, arguing that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has a longstanding position of not indicting sitting presidents. Goldman, a major critic of the president-elect, told CNN’s Boris Sanchez that the decision is a “shame for justice” as Trump will allegedly “escape all accountability.”

“I certainly understand why did it given the Department of Justice’s policy that you cannot prosecute a sitting president, I think it is a shame for justice in this country,” Goldman said. “It establishes that Donald Trump is above the law, the Supreme Court put him above the law in that opinion that just mentioned, but now he appears to escape full accountability for what were crimes charged by a grand jury. And I would just add one other thing that we ought to pay close attention to, we cannot normalize the fact that Donald Trump as the president-elect should not be held accountable for crimes that he committed before. If he were to have fired the special counsel, that would be a gross abdication of the independence of the Department of Justice.”

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Smith charged Trump in August 2023 with “conspiracy to defraud the United States,” “conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 proceedings” and a “conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.” The Supreme Court reviewed the case at the request of Trump’s legal team, who argued