A lot of people, either accidentally or deliberately, have misstated a few things about Wednesday's indictment of Donald Trump for colluding with others to overturn the 2020 election results and keep himself in power. Here they are:
- Free speech. Even mob bosses have free speech rights. But if your local mafia don tells one of his stooges to kill someone—and you can prove it—then he can be put on trial for murder even if he's not the one who pulled the trigger. Likewise, the Trump indictment is not about speech. It's about planning and conspiracy.
- Insurrection. There is nothing in the indictment about Trump being responsible for the mob violence on January 6. Nor is there anything about insurrection. He is not being tried for that.
- Lying. The prosecution doesn't have to prove that Trump knew he was lying when he conspired to overturn the election results. The standard of proof stops short of requiring mind reading: "Reckless disregard of whether a statement is true, or a conscious effort to avoid learning the truth, can be construed as acting 'knowingly.' "
Everybody got that?
Thank you.
Yes, thank you Kevin.
The fact that all this legal wrangling is draining his finances is icing on the cake, even if he never sees a day in jail.
He is spending $1.5M/wk on legal fees, and it is likely to continue at that level or more for the next couple years. Granted, it's all coming from his campaign and various PACs, not from his personal finances. But that's money he won't be able to spend on his campaign or his businesses or himself.
A lot of that money is not just being drained from Trump's potential campaign fund; it's being drained from the Republican Party as a whole. The entire party is going to have less money to spend on the next campaign because of Trump's legal troubles, and given Trump's penchant for appealing every loss, Trump's legal bills are likely to affect the 2026 campaign and quite possibly the 2028 campaign as well.
Yeah, he isn't charged with seditious conspiracy like the Proud Boys were, either, because that requires a tie to violence which isn't supported by the evidence available.
But the elector scheme, and the thing with Pence, etc. Oh yeah. Plenty of evidence there.
"Everybody got that?"
Well, obviously not the both sides reporters and editors of the "liberal" NYT and WaPo, since the lead story in both this morning was the clash between lies and free speech posed by the new indictment. The NYT story was, of course, co-written by execrable Drumpf whisperer Maggie Haberman. Good--and exasperated--takedown of that story in Talking Points Memo.
Oh, Maggie, I wished I'd never seen your face
I started reading Maggie Haberman's tongue-bath of The Defendent shortly after it came out, and after a few chapters, took it back to the library.
Got it.
I'll give you two guesses.
Kevin is getting suckered. The people spewing this nonsense know it is nonsense. They're not making legal arguments, they're making political arguments. And the people who need to hear it don't read this fine blog.
They're breeding distrust. The coup plot did not end the night of Jan 6, that was just a setback.
Except for the formerly-respected Constitution scholar who claims to be making legal arguments, and is treated as such by a certain propaganda outlet: https://www.foxnews.com/media/jonathan-turley-concerned-chilling-new-trump-charges-price-high
What's sort of disturbing is that even NPR isn't doing the greatest job even explaining what thew indictment is. As a lawyer I am used to the media not getting even close to facts and if something has a political angle then there is outright lying.
But the key to this is that they went way too far with the whole fake elector thing, including preparation of fake elector documents.
Which, when that sinks in, is really a whole 'nother ball of wax, or whatever, than merely Trump sounding off like the jackass he is about how he got screwed out of the election.
This indictment is beyond speech. Far beyond.
By the way, you had to feel for the poor NPR junior mint reporter who got tasked with hanging out outside the courthouse all day. When one of the Los Angeles anchors asked her, during a live feed, "so, can you describe the specific charges Trump faces today?" she had no idea. Had not read the indictment or even a summary of it.
You can say that about alot of reporting. Or at least the reporting that's not propaganda.
I think everyone (except lawyers, probably) uses insurrection and treason colloquially and informally, not the defined criminal offense outlined in the statutes.
I know I do. There is no longer a crime of "treason" because Congress never "declares war" anymore.
Mic drop.
As regards the lying, in this indictment Trump can 100% believe he was telling the truth. As many have pointed out, I can 100% believe that my credit card company has fraudulently charged my card, even if they didn't. I can't then hack into their computer system and destroy their data files.
Mind you, I fully believe Trump knows he was lying, and I fully believe that Jack Smith intends to demonstrate that Trump knew he was lying. But that's just icing on the cake. Much of the indictment still stands even if Trump actually believed he was telling the truth. The fraudulent elector scheme is a great example of that.
" Wednesday's indictment of Donald Trump for colluding "
He wasn't colluding, he was conspiring.
Let's not get collusion back into the conversation
Yes. It's "combine, conspire, confederate, and agree".
Yabbut something something Hillary something Vince Foster something Algore something Hunter Biden's peeeenniiiisssss!!
(What IS it with Republicans and anything even remotely related to sex?)
They're either incels, pedophiles, or customers.
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