Since the very beginning of the lawfare campaign against former President Donald Trump, there has been virtually no legal norm that liberal prosecutors have been unwilling to breach in order to pursue their target.

Special counsel Jack Smith has been no different, but his most recent gambit against Trump -- the filing of an unusually expansive and strategically-timed memorandum -- has drawn the ire of commentators on both sides of the aisle, even on the pages of the New York Times, as Breitbart reports.

Smith's memo spurs backlash

It was last week that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan -- against objections from the former president's legal team -- unsealed a redacted version of Smith's most recent filing in the Jan. 6-related election interference case against Trump a move that has since sparked significant debate about its broader propriety.

As Breitbart noted separately at the time, motions of this nature are usually restricted to just 45 pages, but Chutkan permitted Smith to submit 165 pages in which he leveled a host of evidentiary allegations about Trump's supposed frame of mind at the time of his supposed crimes.

Critics of the release have pointed out that the unsealing of such a document at this stage of the proceedings was unusual in and of itself, but also that it appears to violate a longstanding Department of Justice practice in which prosecutors refrain from taking actions within a 60-day window of an election so as not to unduly influence outcomes.

Chutkan's decision to allow Smith such liberties has contributed to a preexisting notion of bias on her part against the former president and a willingness to prejudice the proceedings for the government's benefit.

Goldsmith takes aim

In an op-ed written for the Times, Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith suggests that Smith has committed serious violations of legal norms which he believes are designed to exert influence over the electorate as early voting begins in several states.

In Goldsmith's estimation, “this is not the first time Mr. Smith has appeared to disregard relevant department rules, noting the special counsel's prior attempts to expedite the case in order to reach trial ahead of November.

Then, as now, Goldsmith says, “Mr. Smith at minimum created a strong appearance of impropriety without any explanation in context where public confidence in the integrity of his decisions is vital.”

Also included in Goldsmith's critique were President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who have breached norms by continuing to comment on the case against Trump and attempting to wield it as a campaign season cudgel against the Republican challenger.

Turley, Honig concur

Adding their assessments of Smith's endeavor were noted legal commentators Jonathan Turley and Elie Honig, frequent contributors on Fox News and CNN, respectively.

Turley, for his part, believes that Smith's ill-advised salvo against Trump “could well backfire,” noting that alleged “weaponization of the legal system is central to this election, including the role of the Justice Department in pushing the debunked Russia-collusion allegations from the 2016 race” and suggesting that “Smith's raw political calculation should be troubling for anyone who values the rule of law.”

No fan of Trump, Honig nevertheless made clear his belief that Smith's filing represented nothing more than a “cheap shot” that shredded “ordinary procedure” for purely political purposes.

The takeaway from the special counsel's memo, according to Honig, is that “Smith has essentially abandoned any pretense; he'll bend any rule, switch up on any practice – so long as he gets to chip away at Trump's electoral prospects. At this point, there's simply no defending Smith's conduct on any sort of principled or institutional basis,” and hopefully the corrupt nature of the tactics deployed against the former president will be at the forefront of voters' minds as they make their way to the polls.