Trump indictment #3: 2020 election & January 6th [US / federal]

Will it be for incitement?

It won't be for anything at all, because it isn't going to happen.

(It should, but it isn't. Unlike the Democrats, the Republicans don't seem to have the balls for it.)

If you have a point aside from "Trump is too incompetent to be successful at crime and therefore is innocent," it's not clear to me.

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hey psycho, you're just repeating what CNN told you. Use your fking brain. The CONTEXT of the conversation matters. The context is they were discussing potentially illegal invalid votes, i.e. dead people, or people registered in different states voting twice. Trump isn't saying to find him more votes, he is asking to investigate the massive fraud that occurred to invalidate illegal votes that shouldn't be counted for Biden.

And Raffensberger keeps telling him there was no massive fraud. That was just part of the lies Giuliani and his stooges spinned before the Georgia senate subcommittee on December 3 and that Trump kept repeating. I suggest you read paragraphs 20-33 of the indictment regarding Georgia. https://www.justice.gov/storage/US_v_Trump_23_cr_257.pdf

The allegations in the indictment are just that: allegations that the government has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. But the pathetic thing is that the Trump lemmings don't care whether the allegations are true. Even if everything in the indictment were true they'd still claim Trump did nothing wrong.
 
But the pathetic thing is that the Trump lemmings don't care whether the allegations are true. Even if everything in the indictment were true they'd still claim Trump did nothing wrong.

So is the FBI less pathetic, equally pathetic, or more pathetic, in your opinion, in their handling of the Biden family?
 
CLIP from SYSTEM UPDATE #124:

Media Launches *Creepy* Love Affair w/ Trump Prosecutor, Jack Smith | SYSTEM UPDATE
https://rumble.com/v356tiw-media-la...-trump-prosecutor-jack-smith-system-upda.html

 
The Mind of Donald Trump: Why Proving a Lie Will Not Necessarily Secure a Conviction for Jack Smith
https://jonathanturley.org/2023/08/...cessarily-secure-a-conviction-for-jack-smith/
Jonathan Turley (07 August 2023)

Below is my column in The Hill on how the second indictment of Donald Trump could fail even if Special Counsel Jack Smith could prove that the former president knew that he was lying after the election. Proving his state of mind will be controversial, but, even if successful, it would not necessarily be determinative in the constitutional challenges to come.

Here is the column:

The latest federal indictment of former President Donald Trump was handed down this week with all of the authority of papal infallibility. Pundits lined up to proclaim that case as the greatest prosecution in history.

Former Obama administration acting Solicitor General Neil Katyal even declared that the indictment touched off “the biggest legal case in our lifetimes, perhaps almost ever. It’s up there with cases like Dred Scott, it is up there with Brown v. Board of Education.” What was missing was any serious consideration of the implications of allowing the government to criminalize false statements in a campaign.

Trump was not charged with conspiracy to incite violence or insurrection. Rather, he was charged because he “spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won.”

In order to secure convictions for this, Special Counsel Jack Smith would need to bulldoze through not just the First Amendment but also existing case law holding that even false statements are protected.

The government acknowledges that the Constitution protects false statements made in campaigns, but it insists that Trump must have known that his statements were false and therefore was engaged in fraudulent statements to obstruct or challenge electoral results.

As a threshold matter, one problem is immediately evident. If Trump actually did (or does) believe that he did not lose the election, the indictment collapses. And so in an effort to demonstrate his knowledge, the indictment details how many people told Trump that he was wrong about the election and wrong about the law. I was one of those voices. Trump did not listen to me, most legal analysts or even his White House counsel. Instead, he listened to a small group of lawyers who assured him that a challenge might succeed and that there was evidence of massive election fraud.

But Trump is allowed to seek out enablers who tell him what he wants to hear. All presidents do this. (Joe Biden, for example, ignored virtually unanimous legal opinion and relied upon a single law professor’s say-so to justify an obviously unconstitutional executive action that later had to be reversed).

This case, which criminally targets the sitting president’s leading opponent, is much more dangerous because it sets up the federal government as the arbiter of truth.

This indictment essentially charges Trump with not accepting the “truth.” There is no limiting principle to this indictment. The government would choose between which politicians are lying and which are lying without cause.

Under our current understanding of free speech, Democrats ranging from Hillary Clinton to Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) were engaged in protected speech when they called Trump illegitimate and challenged the certification of his win, even though they knew that their challenges were completely meritless. Yet this indictment suggests that Trump engaged (and indeed still engages) in criminal conduct by insisting that the 2020 election was stolen. Presumably, it also follows that tens of millions of Americans holding that same view are also involved in spreading the same false claims underlying the indictment.

Smith could still secure the cooperation of insiders to support a claim that Trump knew. Many of us have noted the sudden silence of former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and a couple of former Trump lawyers who do not appear to be among the six referenced criminal co-conspirators. One of those six could also flip and say that Trump said that this was all an undeniable but useful sham.

Yet even assuming Trump knew his claims were false, there would still remain the controversial effort to link his false claims to the actions of others in challenging the election. And even then, there remains the constitutional problem of criminalizing political lies.

In the 2012 decision United States v. Alvarez, the Supreme Court held 6-3 that it is unconstitutional to criminalize lies in a case involving a politician who had knowingly lied about his military decorations.

Some of us in the free speech community heralded that decision as correct long before Trump was even a consideration for the presidency. The court recognized that criminalizing false statements “would give government a broad censorial power unprecedented in this court’s cases or in our constitutional tradition. The mere potential for the exercise of that power casts a chill, a chill the First Amendment cannot permit if free speech, thought, and discourse are to remain a foundation of our freedom.”

What was most striking about the case was that Xavier Alvarez knew he was lying about the medals. A 6-3 majority, including every liberal justice on the court at that time, ruled that Congress had gone too far in attempting to criminalize lies about one’s military service.

Likewise, Trump might have known that his claims of systemic voter fraud were bogus, yet still believed that a recount could flip the close result. This might be what he meant in his call with Georgia officials in which he stated “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”

So even assuming that Smith can prove Trump lied, there would still be constitutional barriers to criminalizing his false statements. That is why the threshold constitutional claims in this indictment should be addressed by the courts before it goes forward.

The problem could come down to the judge. Even liberal pundits admit that Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who has used past Jan. 6 cases to vent, is the “worst [judge] Trump could have got.”

Chutkan could effectively certify the deeper constitutional questions and let the parties seek appellate review. Or she could insist that Trump be tried before the constitutional questions are considered. Although the D.C. Circuit is not a friendly court to Trump, the Supreme Court would likely balk at the criminalization of false political speech.

That would mean that Chutkan could force a case to be tried that should not be tried. And even with a conviction, there would remain a serious threshold constitutional question that is not entirely answered by determining what was in the mind of Donald Trump.
 
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Of course, this isn't going to happen - because the rules only apply with respect to things like hapless cosplayers in Michigan, and not to things like election officials in Arizona.

File under "Sauce for the Goose":

How Donald Trump’s Indictment Could Backfire on Joe Biden
https://themessenger.com/opinion/how-donald-trumps-indictment-could-backfire-on-joe-biden
Jonathan Turley (07 August 2023)

After last week’s indictment of former President Donald Trump relating to the 2020 election, CNN declared that the charges were "personal" for President Joe Biden, who previously said Trump's words sounded like "sedition."

Of course, Trump was not charged with sedition or even seditious conspiracy. Nor was he charged with conspiracy to incitement or insurrection, the grounds for his second impeachment.

However, if Biden does view this case as personal, as CNN suggests, he might be right for the wrong reason. That’s because the case being constructed against Trump by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith could prove a serious problem for Biden, too — particularly as the basis for a House impeachment inquiry.

[...]
 
Indictments Will Continue Until Morale Improves | Part Of The Problem 1024
On this episode of Part Of The Problem, Dave and Robbie take a look at the most recent indictments of former president Donald Trump, the "military Actions" of the past 70 years, and we wrap it up with DeSantis answers a question about anti-Semitism in Florida.
https://rumble.com/v35tn3z-indictme...ale-improves-dave-smith-part-of-the-prob.html
 
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NYT: Don’t Televise Trump Trials Because It Might Sway Public Opinion.
https://thenationalpulse.com/2023/0...-trials-because-it-might-sway-public-opinion/
Jack Montgomery (09 August 2023)

The New York Times has warned that allowing the public to watch Donald Trump’s Jan 6 trial on television may lead to a shift in public opinion in the former President’s favor. Instead, the paper insists Americans should get their information on the proceedings through “experts”, echoing former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo’s ludicrous claims after the release of the Hillary Clinton e-mails in 2016.

Author Nick Ackerman, a New York lawyer, claims the former president “could, through gestures or well-timed outbursts, try to use the broadcast to sway public opinion” – as if it would be wrong for a presidential challenger who believes his prosecution is politically motivated to make his case to the public – and undermine the trial’s supposed “solemnity”.

“Televising the Trump trials is no substitute for contemporaneous expert legal reporting and analysis to provide the public with real transparency,” he argues, suggesting that, rather than being able to watch the trial unfold directly and make their own judgments, the American people should have their information on it filtered through various partisan talking heads on networks like CNN and MSNBC – and perhaps New York Times guest essayists like himself, too.

Ackerman also cited his experience trying “mafia and organized crime cases” as a reason not to televise the trial, harping on themes such as “witness intimidation”.


Why Televising the Trump Trial Is a Bad Idea
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/09/opinion/trump-jack-smith-trial-television.html
[archive link: https://archive.li/YAev2]
Nick Akerman (09 August 2023)

As the indictments against former President Donald Trump multiply, TV and print media commentators as well as members of Congress have called for cameras in the courtroom. They claim that broadcasting the trials will increase the public’s understanding of the charges and the evidence against Mr. Trump and that it is the only way there can be full “transparency.” Even Mr. Trump’s lawyer John Lauro says he “personally” wants the American public to see “what kind of prosecution is going on.”

But the arguments in favor of broadcasting the trials do not give enough weight to the dangers that could pose to trial witnesses and jurors, or the potential to undermine the integrity of the trial processes themselves.

As an assistant United States attorney in the Southern District of New York, I tried a number of Mafia and organized crime cases. It was difficult, if not impossible, to convince ordinary citizens to testify in such cases because they were all fearful of physical retaliation. Even armed with subpoena power, I was reluctant to force people to testify, not only because of the real danger that existed but also because of the impact that fear would have on their testimony before the jury.

The Trump trials are no different. The judge who presided over the E. Jean Carroll civil (not criminal) rape trial, Lewis Kaplan, explicitly recognized the danger to the jury of being harassed and targeted by Trump partisans and ruled that the names of the jurors not be publicly disclosed. “If jurors’ identities [in this case] were disclosed, there would be a strong likelihood of unwanted media attention to the jurors, influence attempts, and/or of harassment or worse of jurors by supporters of Mr. Trump,” Judge Kaplan found on March 23. In reaching that decision, the judge referred to reports of Mr. Trump’s previous “violent rhetoric.”

The concern is the same for witnesses in the Trump criminal prosecutions. If there was any doubt that Judge Kaplan’s reason for protecting the safety of jurors applies equally to trial witnesses, it was obliterated last week when Mr. Trump threatened on social media: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”

It is one thing to testify in a public courtroom; it is a whole different level of public exposure to testify before the entire world on television. A witness who is named and pictured on television becomes a sitting duck for any Trump partisan intent on seeking retribution.

A major lesson from the O.J. Simpson murder trial, which gripped the nation when it was broadcast starting in 1995, is how the impact of television can undermine a trial when the judge, the lawyers, the defendant and the witnesses play to the viewing audience, as they did then. This turned a grave murder trial, with Mr. Simpson’s guilt or innocence hanging in the balance, into daily entertainment.

Mr. Trump likely wants cameras in the courtrooms precisely for that reason. His successes or failures as a president will likely always be debated, but almost everyone agrees that he excels at creating reality TV. No matter how experienced a judge is in controlling the courtroom, Mr. Trump could, through gestures or well-timed outbursts, try to use the broadcast to sway public opinion and in the process undermine the trial’s solemnity.

Concerns about witness intimidation and safety in this case certainly extend to potential TV coverage. Broadcasting trials is sometimes acceptable, but in this instance, because of concerns about protecting witnesses and jurors, shots and angles would almost certainly not include their faces nor jurors’ reactions to the evidence. But they are critical elements of understanding witness credibility and impact on a jury.

Judges have the power to enforce decorum in their courtrooms. A criminal defendant who defies the formalities of the courtroom risks being held in contempt and being fined or immediately incarcerated. Unfortunately, the threat of contempt will not restrain Mr. Trump, who has already personally and publicly issued verbal attacks against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and the judge presiding over the New York prosecution as well as Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Mr. Trump’s contemptuous behavior would likely have landed any other defendant in jail, but it is highly unlikely that any judge will take such a step with the former U.S. president.

To ensure greater transparency, the media can do more to, among other things, regularly rely on commentary from seasoned criminal trial lawyers who actually attend the trials and can provide in-depth, practical legal analysis.

For example, in the E. Jean Carroll case, the press extensively reported on the cross-examination of Ms. Carroll by Mr. Trump’s lawyer and the testimony he elicited from her. Far less commented on was the classic rookie mistake by Mr. Trump’s lawyer of enhancing Ms. Carroll’s credibility with an unnecessarily lengthy cross-examination, which permitted her to explain facts she could not include in her direct testimony.

Televising the Trump trials is no substitute for contemporaneous expert legal reporting and analysis to provide the public with real transparency.
 
Politicized DOJ: Anti-Trump Law Professor Warns of Indictment Dangers. Plus: Is Biden's Ukraine Policy Compromised by Personal Interests? And Is Left v. Right Still Relevant? | SYSTEM UPDATE #126
https://rumble.com/v35qp9q-system-update-show-126.html


CLIP:

"Terrible Consequences," Anti-Trump Lawyer Warns of Indictment Dangers | SYSTEM UPDATE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF59Fagncek

 
Biden Admin Goes Full 'Banana Republic' With Preposterous Trump Indictment



The Biden Administration's indictment of former President Trump (again) not only smacks of desperation in the face of Biden's flaccid support. It also is blatantly totalitarian and absurd. Essentially, Trump is being threatened with jail time for believing the 2020 election was not completely above-board and for sharing his beliefs. Even those who hate Trump should be terrified at the thought of Americans being imprisoned for having "bad thoughts." Also today: Why is the US State Department ignoring the torture and illegal incarceration of American journalist Gonzalo Lira at the hands of the Ukrainian government?

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