Attorney Ben Rose’s defense of Robin Smith is misguided. It confuses advocacy with accountability and asks readers to overlook the one thing that actually matters in this case — the truth.
Let’s start with what’s undisputed: Robin Smith pleaded guilty to honest-services wire fraud. She admitted, in open court, to helping create and promote a fake company that siphoned taxpayer money through a sham mail-vendor scheme. She signed the plea agreement, she acknowledged the facts, and she swore to tell the truth. Those aren’t my conclusions; they’re her own words in federal court.
To suggest now that she was somehow “targeted” for her politics is a story invented after the fact. Mr. Rose calls my rejection of that narrative “speculative,” but he knows as well as I do that no such claim was ever raised in court filings, hearings, or sentencing memoranda. Robin Smith’s lawyers never argued political persecution — because they couldn’t. The record simply doesn’t support it.
Mr. Rose is correct about one thing: presidents can grant pardons for good reasons, bad reasons, or none at all. But that power doesn’t turn wrongdoing into virtue. The Constitution gives a president discretion; it doesn’t grant moral absolution. Hamilton, whose words I quoted, understood that the rule of law depends not only on legal mechanisms but on the integrity of those who wield them.
And integrity is what’s missing here.
Robin Smith’s cooperation with prosecutors — while commendable — doesn’t erase the fact that she participated in the crime she later helped expose. Cooperation is not a blank check. Every defendant who assists the government still faces sentencing under the law. To argue that she should now be pardoned because she testified is to suggest that the justice system owes her more leniency than the judge, who actually heard the evidence, already gave.
Mr. Rose asserts that “no one ever told him” Robin Smith deserved a single day in prison. That may be true inside his echo chamber, but Tennesseans outside it remember a public official who used her office for personal gain. They are entitled to expect consequences — not excuses — when elected leaders betray their oath.
The irony here is that my commentary did not attack Robin Smith’s faith or humanity; it challenged her refusal to fully accept responsibility. Mr. Rose’s piece doesn’t rebut that point. It confirms it.
Public trust is not restored through self-pity or revisionist history. It’s restored through accountability, candor, and humility. Until those appear in Robin Smith’s public statements, calls for a pardon will remain exactly what they are — an attempt to rewrite a guilty plea after the fact. Hamilton County deserves better than that.
Lee Davis is an attorney and mayor of Walden, Tennessee.