ROGER KIMBALL: Jack Smith’s Plot Against the Republic.

Six hundred and thirty-nine thousand. Thanks to the indefatigable Chuck Grassley, we now know that that’s the number of individuals whose names Special Counsel Jack Smith hoovered up for Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice when Joe Biden occupied 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. (“Occupied 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” it may almost go without saying, seems more accurate than saying “when Biden was president.”)

Senator Grassley has been terrier-like in pursuing evidence of wrongdoing by people like Jack Smith, Merrick Garland and their many confrères in the deep state, which is to say, the Democrat State. Grassley had earlier shown that nearly 5,000 GOP donor checks, mostly for piddly amounts, had been collected as “evidence” by Garland’s minions. “Evidence of what?” That’s a very good question. The answer, in brief is, “Evidence of sympathy for or making donations to Donald Trump.” Is that actionable? You betcha. At least, it was. . . .

Jack Smith and his not-so-merry band of anti-Trump zealots came within a hair’s breadth of destroying Donald Trump – and also shutting down the rights of those 639,000 individuals who donated to Trump’s campaign or ponied up for his merch. Had the Supreme Court not upheld Trump’s claim of immunity he would be in jail now. So many things had to go Trump’s way. All the important ones did. But, like the Battle of Waterloo according to the Duke of Wellington, it was “the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.”

Indeed. Now we need to administer sufficient pain to ensure that no one wants to risk trying it again. We’re nowhere close to that.