General Discussion

He didn't get around to indicting Trump until August 2023. That was just 15 months before the election.

Smith was named as SC in Nov 2022. At first, one might say that 9 months to bring an indictment isn't exactly slow. Maybe, except for the fact that the House special committee had already compiled a vast cache of evidence, and DoJ was also supposedly doing its own investigation for the two years prior. So by the time Smith came on board, there was already a mountain of evidence.

Of course, some of the Congressional evidence wasn't admissible in court, so Smith's team would need to do some backtracking to get essential evidence into indictable form. But that wasn't the main delay. The big delays came because Smith acted as if time wasn't important, and he kept expanding his probe month after month, instead of getting some basic crimes into trial quickly. And by letting the scope run wild, he exposed himself to the 11th Circuit, and all the shenanigans that Cannon pulled. That slowed everything down.

Bottom line, never any sense of urgency in any of this from either Garland or Smith. Garland was happy rolling up the dumbasses that took dumps in the Capitol, and never had any intention to do anything more.

So yes, I blame Smith AND Garland, and find it discouraging that anybody would still be defending that pair at this stage. Garland stalled for 2 years. Smith didn't necessarily stall, but he went on a wild goose chase that guaranteed there would never be a trial before the election. They both are to blame.