Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Trump Faces Streamlined Insurrection Indictment
Donald John Trump is a convicted felon. His legal issues have not gone away despite the best efforts of a bent judicial system to excuse him for just about everything. Special Prosecutor Jack Smith has streamlined the indictment of Mr. Trump on the charges related to the failed coup d'etat of January 6, 2021. This was in response to the Supreme Court inventing broad immunity for POTUS acting in an official capacity. Despite this bogus right, Mr. Smith believes all the counts can still be proved without the evidence and witnesses that the immunity decision made problematic. One can only hope he is right.
"Despite having lost, the Defendant -- who was also the incumbent President -- was determined to remain in power," the indictment reads.
"For more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false."
"Throughout the conspiracies, although the defendant sometimes used his Twitter account to communicate with the public, as president, about official actions and policies, he also regularly used it for personal purposes," the new version said.
It said Mr. Trump used social media "to spread knowingly false claims of election fraud, exhort his supporters to travel to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, pressure the vice president to misuse his ceremonial role in the certification proceeding, and leverage the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6 to unlawfully retain power."
For those who actually watched the attempted coup (it was televised live), this is an open-and-shut case if it were just about the fact. Mr. Trump tried to stay in office by force after losing an election. That is the kind of thing that gets people hanged in other countries.
The Supreme Court is in the tank for the far right, and it declared the president has broad immunity for official acts without giving any details on what makes something an official act. That means that the case could wind up right in front of the Supremes again if the Trump team does not like the way the immunity issues are addressed; in other words, unless the case is dropped, he will appeal everything. This will take time, and time is what he wants to use up. If he wins in November, this all goes away because he will order the new AG to make it go away. Justice will be denied because it was delayed.
The country, however, needs a trial. The facts must be made public, and a jury must be allowed to decide the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The attempted overthrow of the Republic must be punished, and the manner in which it happened must become common knowledge if the nation is to protect itself in future.
That will probably not happen in quite the way most expect. Mr. Smith does have an opportunity to have all of the evidence presented in an evidentiary hearing. These can be done just by proffer, wherein the lawyers merely state what the evidence proves. On the other hand, he may well decide that putting the witnesses and documents before the court serves his purposes better. This journal thinks so. Mr. Trump is never going to Levenworth but the nation can know in detail exactly what he did.
If nothing else, history can judge him, but to do so, history must have the facts.
copy; Copyright 2024 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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