Donald Trump v. Jack Smith. Guess Who Wins?

If I were a guy trying to keep from getting prosecuted for some kind of political flim-flam or other, I wouldn’t feel all that happy if the prosecution of my case were headed by Jack Smith. And the reason I wouldn’t want to be a defendant in a case put together by Jack Smith is that he happened to have been the federal attorney who investigated and prosecuted my old friend Shelly Silver, who died in a prison hospital while he was serving a six-year sentence for extortion and other financial shenanigans after Smith did him in.

Silver came up to Albany as a member of the Assembly in 1977, which was four years before I was appointed Public Information Officer on Speaker Stanley Fink’s staff. I met Sheldon shortly after I came up to Albany, and from the beginning he struck me as a guy who had no problem cutting the legal corners as close as possible in order to get things done. And what I mean by getting ‘things done’ were the legislative goodies he was in a position to dispense.

Silver was so good at keeping track of those favors that he was elected Assembly Speaker in 1994, and served in that position for 25 years, the second-longest Assembly Speakership in the history of New York State. He even held onto the position for almost a year after he was indicted on federal corruption charges involving secret payments he received from various law firms…