Jack Smith Wrote the Playbook. Now Democrats Hate Seeing It Used.

Former FEC commissioner Hans von Spakovsky says Jack Smith's 2023 indictment of Donald Trump "set a precedent" for the Justice Department's Alaska probe. He is right that the legal theories overlap.

Smith's case leaned on conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy against rights. Von Spakovsky points to those same statutes as possible tools if prosecutors can show Democratic operatives coordinated to put a second Sullivan on the ballot. He calls the recruitment a "dirty trick" but not necessarily a crime on its own, and says paying the candidate or running his campaign could change the analysis.

That caveat matters. Alaska U.S. Attorney Michael Heyman said at a Friday news conference, "I'm not making any assumptions on whether a crime has been committed or not." Nothing has been charged, and the Peltola campaign and Sullivan Jr. both deny coordination.

But here is the point. For years the left insisted that stretching conspiracy statutes to cover political conduct was simply the rule of law at work. If the New York Times is right that Democratic Senate aides helped recruit a spoiler, voters should expect the same scrutiny, and Democrats should explain why the standard applies only one way.