Immunity Doesn’t Apply to Trump for January 6

Despite Donald Trump’s heroic efforts to dismiss, downplay, and otherwise amnesia his shameful role in instigating the January 6, 2021 MAGA coup attempt, Republican politics That confusing moment in history keeps resurfacing like a madman in the attic. Victorian novel. There was a notable exchange near the end of this week’s vice presidential debate, when J.D. Vance brazenly lied that the transfer of power to President Biden would be smooth and peaceful. Later, when asked by opponent Tim Walz whether he thought Trump lost the 2020 election, Vance refused to answer, saying, “I’m just talking about the future.” .

Well, January 6th teeth If Trump is re-elected as president in the future, Jack Smith, the federal prosecutor who is leading the long-delayed prosecution of Trump for his central role in facilitating the coup attempt, will In a newly released filing in support of , he made that point in unmistakable terms. Indictment. Smith was forced to restart his case in August with a superseding indictment following the Supreme Court’s ridiculous pro-Trump decision granting the president unfathomably broad executive immunity protections. new 165 pages of filing Smith said his argument that with respect to the election Trump was acting to overturn, “Mr. Trump is not subject to these broad new indemnities because the defendants are acting as an office.” provides a detailed factual basis for theseekernot an office –holderthere is no immunity. ”

The chronology of fact-finding in the filing reveals just how manic and deranged Trump was to the point of willfully ignoring the actual election results in an effort to cling to the presidency. Trump told his aides, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, during a months-long campaign to discredit the results without any evidence. It is said that he heard. You still have to fight hard. ”

That was the de facto motto of the entire baseless attack on free and fair elections. The day after the election, as election officials continued to count ballots in downtown Detroit, a group of Republican protesters, enraged by false “stop the steal” rhetoric, broke into the building and began counting ballots. tried to interfere. Operatives on the scene sent text messages to Trump campaign officials. The identity of that person is redacted in the filing, but appears to be Mike Roman, the campaign’s director of campaign operations. At first, campaign officials dismissed the earlier text indicating that the tally was legitimate, telling them to “find a reason why it’s not legitimate.” When informed that this conflict could explode into a new “Brooks Brothers Riot,” an election operation orchestrated by Roger Stone, who thwarted a key recount effort in Florida after the 2000 election, , the official replied: Try it! ! ! ”

That was also the spirit of the Trump team on January 6, as Smith’s filing makes painfully clear. Furious White House officials tried to get President Trump to issue a statement protesting the January 6 rioters, but Trump instead went to the White House to watch television and tweet. returned surly to the dining room. This is when he issued the fateful tweet accusing Vice President Mike Pence of lacking the “courage” to ignore the election results and anoint Congress with non-existent powers to overturn the votes of 81 million Americans. It was time. According to Smith’s filing, “defendant personally posted the tweets at a time when he already understood that the Capitol had been breached,” and Pence’s Secret Service agents quickly He was evacuated from the Capitol. When another White House aide told Trump that Pence was evacuated after rioters came within 40 feet of his location, Trump’s response was, “So what?”

Whatever this is, it is clearly not an act of the President of the United States honoring his constitutional oath or discharging his office. As Smith’s filing points out, the president has no designated role in overseeing or certifying election results. For the obvious reason that doing so would amount to a clear conflict of interest.

Many of the other revelations in Smith’s report include the lies, evasions, threats, violence and chaos described in the House Select Committee’s report on Trump’s second impeachment and the January 6 attack. rehearsing the well-known chronology of the instigation. False claims of election fraud have been pathetically promoted in the wake of tough post-election vote counts in Arizona and Georgia, with a total lack of supporting evidence. There are also outlandish claims that fraudulent voting machine algorithms are controlled by nefarious foreign actors. A list of “fake electors” is being assembled to pounce on President Trump’s dreamed-up MAGA-induced crisis and overturn the results. The cynicism about this maneuver was conveyed in a communication from another snarky Trump campaign lawyer, apparently Mike Chesevolo, who ironically designated the fake electors as just that.

MAGA Even in this unfortunate history of demagogy and paranoia, the details of the entire highly cynical and authoritarian anti-empiricist rebellion are horrifying. Among other things, Smith’s submissions demonstrate that the shift toward modern imperial presidents (a trend that Roberts’ immunity ruling further reinforced) has shifted from protecting access to the ballot (in keeping with J.D. Vance’s pace) to shifting away from protecting democratic governance. It dramatizes how it threatens core operations. peaceful transfer of power. In a speech at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Trump reiterated his advice to Ivanka and Jared, telling the crowd at the beginning of the riot to “fight like hell” against the Biden organization’s sinister power grab. It is necessary, otherwise “we cannot fight,” he said. It’s a country. ” But a review of this sobering documentary about the Trump-led path to election fraud and violent incitement reveals that the real forces endangering our country are the bloated Republican power elite. .