John Dean predicts Smith will ‘keep up the fight’ after updated Trump indictment

John Dean, former White House counsel for the Nixon administration, predicted special counsel Jack Smith will “keep up the fight” after unveiling a superseding indictment against former President Trump in the federal election interference case.

CNN’s Pamela Brown pressed Dean on Tuesday about whether the updated indictment in the case — which is centered on Trump’s efforts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election to President Biden — and Smith’s appeal to reinstate the classified documents case against the former president signals that the special counsel will keep fighting for his cases.

“I think it’s very clear he’s going to keep up the fight,” Dean said Tuesday evening on CNN’s “The Source.”

“The Mar-a-Lago documents case, he filed a very aggressive brief,” he continued. “He did not ask for the judge to be removed.”

Smith filed the superseding indictment, which retains the same four charges brought against Trump but removes some elements of the case in the wake of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling last month, a day after he urged an appeals court to reinstate the documents case, which was dropped last month by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon.

Dean said he suspects a “very strong brief” shows Cannon “had very little basis for tossing the case and dismissing the special prosecutor.”

“There’s a long history in the Department of Justice of attorney generals appointing special prosecutors. She wants to demolish that. Indeed she would, if her ruling upheld — all assistant U.S. attorneys would be out of work,” Dean said, speaking of Cannon.

“So, it’s a very striking situation down there,” he added. “And I think Jack Smith is aggressively defending the Department of Justice, his office and the cases he’s filed.”

The superseding indictment makes cuts in an effort “to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings.”

The Supreme Court ruled earlier this summer that presidents have absolute immunity for actions that fall within the core responsibilities of their office and are “at least presumptively immune” for all other official acts. Shortly following the ruling, Cannon dismissed the case against Trump, the GOP nominee for president in 2024, by ruling that Smith was unlawfully appointed.

Asked if the immunity ruling made Smith’s case against the former president weaker, Dean didn’t seem to agree.

“I don’t believe it’s been weakened at all,” he said Tuesday. “In fact, if anything, given the immunity ruling, that’s been strengthened; it can go through.”