An Indictment Worth Waiting For

It’s Hitler vs Hunter for the defense.

The over 1000 people charged (just short of 600 already convicted) resulting from the January 6 riot at the US Capitol were joined yesterday by the man behind the plan, namely former president Donald Trump.  

Those previously charged are being brought to justice for their role in the attempted interference of the certification of the Electoral College vote affirming Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election.

Little did they know that their fearless leader was using their lawlessness to further his case for overturning the election in either arenas

The former president, on the other hand, is now facing the most serious charges yet: a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. His oft-repeated and unsubstantiated claims of election fraud struck at the very heart of American democracy, the right of the people to select their president. This indictment details exactly how far that conspiracy went. 

(Read the charging document for yourself here.)

Specifically, Trump is charged with three counts of conspiracy: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. Trump is also charged with obstruction of, and an attempt to obstruct, an official proceeding. 

Via Lisa Needham at Public Notice:

• Smith makes clear that the issue here isn’t Trump’s lies as such, particularly right after the election. In fact, the indictment states that Trump “had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won.” Nor is the issue the dozens of unsuccessful court cases Trump brought. Instead, the issue is that Trump worked with his co-conspirators to disenfranchise voters by interfering with the collection, counting, and certifying of votes.

• Put another way, Trump isn’t being indicted for what he said. He’s being indicted for what he did.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s charging document is tightly focused with the aim of expediting a trial as soon as possible. It’s a 45 page long “speaking” document, including a narrative of the alleged underlying conduct in detail in addition to listing the charges.

The six people (mostly lawyers, analysts think) mentioned as co-conspirators were not indicted. Yet. By focusing the case on one individual, the prosecution hopes to limit pretrial maneuvering to facilitate a speedier trial. The former president is infamous for legal defenses –having nothing to do with the substance of allegations– intended to prolong court cases.

Just about everywhere you look in the media landscape there are stories purporting to offer analysis and opinions about this latest round of indictments.

Here are some news and views likely not included in your usual media mix.

Why Trump's Indictment is Very Bad News for the GOP Via Dan Pfeiffer 

• …this is a crime that Trump committed with the aid of his political party.

How to Read the Indictment by former Federal prosecutor Joyce Vance

• So the question has always been, how would Jack Smith make sense of it all, organize the conduct, and charge this case? It has to be done in a way that, legally speaking, is air tight—there’s no point in fighting for a conviction that you lose on appeal—but it also has to make sense out of a morass.

Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson

• While Trump loyalists are trying to spin the indictment as the weaponization of the Department of Justice against Trump, legal analyst George Conway noted on CNN tonight: "All the evidence comes from Republicans. If you go through this indictment and you annotate the paragraphs to figure out who are the witnesses the [special counsel] would use to prove particular points, they're all Republicans. Those are the people who were having the discussions, telling [Trump], 'You lost.'” 

How Many Ways was Defendant Trump told there was No Election Fraud. Let Jack Smith count the Ways. Via Daily Kos

The short answer is eight–The Vice President, senior leaders of the Justice Department, the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Senior White House attorneys, Senior staffers on the Defendant’s 2020 re-election campaign,  State legislators and officials, & State and federal courts 

Six Things We Learned From the New Trump Indictment Via the Daily Beast

More details for obsessive readers.

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The conservative stalwarts at the National Review are trying to straddle the line between MAGA and sanity by saying, yeah, Trump’s an asshole, but these indictments aren’t crimes:

• Here, it is not even clear that Smith has alleged anything that the law forbids. The indictment relates in detail Trump’s deceptions, but that doesn’t mean they constitute criminal fraud. As the Supreme Court reaffirmed just a few weeks ago, fraud in federal criminal law is a scheme to swindle victims out of money or tangible property. Mendacious rhetoric in seeking to retain political office is damnable — and, again, impeachable — but it’s not criminal fraud, although that is what Smith has charged. 

The hardcore Trump bunch is circling the wagons, hoping that bleating about the latest “questions” about the president’s son and/or comparisons to various totalitarian regimes will distract citizens from learning the facts.

Some media just lied about the charges and invited people to share in the victimhood.

Just remember, with Republicans, every accusation is actually a confession. Hunter Biden, who holds no public office is guilty of being loved by his father, something not normal in the Trump dynasty. Who’s the guy who claimed he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not  be prosecuted? And who’s the guy who campaigned on “lock her up?”

It turns out that those righties who say pronouns are unimportant are wrong. Because in this instance it’s not “Lock Her Up.” It is most definitely “Lock Him Up.”

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Of interest to historians: The conspiracy against rights charge claims a violation of a law passed just after the Civil War to protect rights under the newly-enacted 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. It prohibits conspiring to “injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate” anyone exercising a right guaranteed by the Constitution or federal law. It was used in the past to prosecute the Ku Klux Klan’s violent actions aimed at preventing Black people  from voting. 

The allegation is that Trump worked with his co-conspirators to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate “one or more persons” in their exercise of rights guaranteed by the Constitution and federal laws: “the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.” 

The victims in this conspiracy were all voters. 

A Few Items for Additional Worldly Enlightenment

Trump allies charged with felonies involving voting machines in Michigan Via ABC News

• A former candidate for attorney general in Michigan pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to charges associated with his alleged efforts to obtain and damage voting machines in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, according to a court official.

• Matthew DePerno, who ran an unsuccessful bid as the Republican candidate in 2020, was charged on four counts, including undue possession of a voting machine, conspiracy to commit unauthorized access to a computer system and willfully damaging a voting machine, according to Richard Lynch, an administrator at the Oakland County court in Michigan.

• DePerno was arraigned Tuesday along with Daire Rendon, a former GOP state representative, who was charged with conspiracy to commit undue possession of a voting machine and false pretenses.

 Waves along parts of California coast are getting bigger and badder due to climate change, new study says Via the Union-Tribune

• When waves reach shore, some of their energy is reflected back into the sea, he said. That energy interacts with other incoming waves, producing a pressure signal that turns into seismic waves at the seafloor. Those signals are directly related to the height of each wave.

• The new study was primarily focused on central California, which often takes a beating from winter storms out of the North Pacific. Bromirski said that the average height of the waves in that area began to increase after 1970 and had reached 8.5 feet in recent years. Before 1970, the average height was 7.5 feet.

Harris rejects DeSantis’ offer to debate Florida’s new Black history standards Via Politico

• Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday rejected Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ offer to debate the state’s recent guidelines on teaching the African American experience, calling him part of a group of “extremist, so-called leaders” trying to rewrite the “ugly parts of history.”

• “They attempt to legitimize these unnecessary debates with a proposal that most recently came in of a politically motivated roundtable,” Harris said in her afternoon speech at the 20th Women’s Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Quadrennial Convention in Orlando. “Well, I’m here in Florida, and I will tell you there is no roundtable, no lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact. There were no redeeming qualities of slavery.”

Birth Announcement – Axios San Diego. Andrew Keatts (formerly of Voice of San Diego) and Kate Murphy (Formerly at The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina.) have been tasked with keeping daily local news short and sweet by the latest news octopus entering markets coast to coast. I could make a joke about the Axios style of reporting being news for people with short attention spans, but I won’t ‘cause Keats is totally wired into San Diego politics.