I start this excerpt of Tim Pools fuller “Tim Cast” (RUMBLE) with Victor Davis Hanson noting the “Revolutionary Acts” by the Democrats as of a year ago on FOX NEWS. – I have an updated audio as well (RUMBLE) . Enjoy… I found a new resource which I am excited about: LARRY DORS, who pieces together the same line being said from different movies. Check out his YouTube Channel.
REASON ARTICLE[s]:
This will be my first installment to a legal challenge just getting underway in keeping Trump from office. Some say this is new, it is not. Some say Trump being charged with “insurrection” isn’t needed, it is. David Frum correctly says the Court will decide in the end. Frum also notes that if this tactic is opened up, our body-politic will be riddled with keeping our political foes from office. More distortions of the law will surely come as the Left uses Lawfare to attack the “Democracy” they say they want to protect. As more is written on these challenges and the hyperbole from the MSM and politicians splash into our lives, I will be posting on this more in the future.
This old challenge reignited “anew” by a couple Federalist legal scholars [as well as some Leftist scholars] is that Trump can be barred from future office positions due to “insurrection.”
This will be a thing.
THE CHALLENGE EXPLAINED A BIT
Firstly, as much as the Left opines that an insurrection conviction isn’t needed, it is, in reality, in order to bar Trump from office. If the Left tries to push this thru without a solid legal ground, the electorate will clearly note this and there will be hell to pay.
And, I assume, in the end the Supes will need to get involved. Especially if pushed thru before the election like Trump’s 2nd shampeachment.
More on SCOTUS from David Frum below.
COURT CASE ALREADY STARTED
Here is a recent news story of a Florida case already being pushed thru:
A Florida lawyer is challenging former President Trump’s ability to run for president in 2024 under the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, citing the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
Lawrence Caplan, a tax attorney in Palm Beach County, filed the challenge in federal court Thursday, pointing to a clause in the amendment that says those who “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the government cannot hold office.
Here is a video, also Left leaning, explaining the issue well:
PUSHING BACK ON THIS IDEA
[As an aside: just to note officially on my site, the current cases against Trump are being rushed through the courts, however, Alan Dershowitz and Jonathan Turley both say isn’t going to happen.]
THE FEDERALIST has this response to a recent 126-page paper on Trump not being eligible for the Presidency:
….Despite the scenes of the attack on the Capitol and extensive investigations, the American people do not seem to agree that Trump took part in an insurrection or rebellion. Almost half the respondents in a THE HILL rejected the claim that the events of Jan. 6 were an actual “insurrection” (with the divide tracking partisan lines), and 76 percent viewed it as a “protest gone too far.”
Other considerations also call into question the claim that Trump instigated an “insurrection” in the constitutional sense. If it were clear that Trump engaged in insurrection, the Justice Department should have acted on the Jan. 6 Committee’s referral for prosecution on that charge. Special Counsel Jack Smith should have indicted him for insurrection or seditious conspiracy, which remain federal crimes. If it were obvious that Trump had committed insurrection, Congress should have convicted him in the two weeks between Jan. 6 and Inauguration Day. Instead, the House impeached Trump for indictment to insurrection but the Senate acquitted him.
The Senate’s acquittal is the only official finding by a federal or state institution on the question of whether Trump committed insurrection. The failure of the special counsel to charge insurrection and the Senate to convict in the second impeachment highlights a serious flaw in the academic theory of disqualification.
According to Luttig and Tribe, it appears self-evident that Trump committed insurrection. They assume Trump violated the law without any definitive finding by any federal authority. According to their view, he must carry the burden of proof to show he is not guilty of insurrection or rebellion — a process that achieves the very opposite of our Constitution’s guarantee of due process, which, it so happens, is not just provided for by the Fifth Amendment, but reaffirmed in the same 14th Amendment that contains the disqualification clause. It would be like requiring Barak Obama to prove he was native-born (a constitutional prerequisite for being president) if state election officials disqualified him for being foreign-born.
The Electoral College Chooses Presidents, Not State Officials
If this academic view were correct, it would throw our electoral system into chaos. One of the chief virtues of the Electoral College system is that it decentralizes the selection of the president: State legislatures decide the manner for choosing electors, with each state receiving votes equal to its representation in the House and Senate. States run the elections, which means that hundreds, if not thousands, of city, county, and state officials could execute this unilateral finding of insurrection. A county state election official, for example, could choose to remove Trump’s name from printed ballots or refuse to count any votes in his favor. A state court could order Trump barred from the election. A state governor could refuse to certify any electoral votes in his favor. The decentralization of our electoral system could allow a single official, especially from a battleground state, to sway the outcome of a close race in the 2024 presidential election.
Allowing a single state to wield this much power over the federal government runs counter to broader federalism principles articulated by the Supreme Court. In our nation’s most important decision on the balance of power between the national government and the states, McCullough v. Maryland, Chief Justice John Marshall held that a single state could not impose a tax on the Bank of the United States. Marshall famously observed that “the power to tax is the power to destroy.”
Marshall may well have frowned upon single state officials deciding to eliminate candidates for federal office on their own initiative. The Supreme Court lent further support for this idea in United States Term Limits v. Thornton (1995), which held that states could not effectively add new qualifications for congressional candidates by barring long-time incumbents from appearing on the ballot. Writing for the majority, Justice Stevens argued that allowing states to add term limits as a qualification for their congressional elections conflicted with “the uniformity and national character [of Congress] that the framers sought to ensure.” Allowing state election officials to decide for themselves whether someone has incited or committed insurrection, without any meaningful trial or equivalent proceeding, would give states the ability to achieve what term limits forbid.
[….]
We are not apologists for Trump’s spreading of baseless claims of electoral fraud or his efforts to stop the electoral count on Jan. 6. But as with the weak charges brought by the special counsel, the effort to hold Trump accountable for his actions should not depend on a warping of our constitutional system. Prosecutors should charge him with insurrection if they can prove it and have that conviction sustained on appeal. Congress should disqualify Trump if it can agree he committed the crime. Ultimately, the American people will decide Trump’s responsibility for the events of Jan. 6, but at the ballot box in 2024’s nominating and general elections for president…
TRUMP NOT CHARGED with INSURRECTION
Insurrection is still key in this endeavor, and, as mush as Laurence Tribe thinks it is self evident, the case has not been made. In THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR has a great little article worthy of noting,
For 31 months, the Democrats and their allies in the corporate media have characterized the Capitol Hill chaos that erupted on Jan. 6, 2021 as an “insurrection.” The House of Representatives reinforced this version of events by impeaching then-President Trump for “incitement of insurrection.” The Senate acquitted him, of course. Nonetheless, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th attack referred the case to the Justice Department for further investigation. Consequently, it was something of a surprise that the formal indictment unsealed last Tuesday by Special Counsel Jack Smith failed to charge Trump with fomenting insurrection.
This must have been particularly frustrating for those who have long insisted that the 14th Amendment prohibits Trump from serving a second presidential term. The primary purpose of the 14th Amendment was, of course, to grant citizenship to emancipated slaves. However, it also includes language in Section 3 that bars anyone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the [United States]” from holding office in the federal government. This passage was included to prevent former officials of the Confederacy from returning to Congress and creating more mischief. The problem with using this clause against Donald Trump is explained by constitutional law professor Josh Blackman in Reason:
In some legal circles, advocates contend that it is so obvious that Trump committed insurrection. Yet, the special counsel, after studying the issue for months, opted not to bring that charge. Why? Perhaps Smith determined that he could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump engaged in insurrection. Or maybe Smith determined there were considerable legal questions about how to obtain such a conviction – most critically, was there an actual insurrection? (Yes, for the Supreme Court to knock Trump off the ballot, you need five votes to say that there was an insurrection as a matter of law – good luck with that!)
It evidently never occurred to the victims of Trump Derangement Syndrome that “insurrection” is a legal term with an actual definition in the U.S. Code. In order to convict former President Trump of this crime, the Special Prosecutor must prove that he fits the following description in 18 U.S.C. § 2383: “Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto.” Anyone convicted of insurrection can expect a long prison term and a hefty fine. It would be difficult to convict Trump under this statute, considering that not one participant in the Jan. 6 riot has been charged with insurrection…..
DAVID FRUM’S ATLANTIC PIECE
And it may be a 50-state attempt, which will push it to the Supes sooner rather than later. David Frum, a #NeverTrump guy, notes this will be a failed endeavor by simply stating in his ATLANTIC piece:
Continuing he states:
….The least of these problems is the legal one: whether Trump’s scheme to seize the presidency by fraud, then violence, amounts to a “rebellion” or an “insurrection” under the amendment. There will be a lot of disagreement on that point, enough to generate litigation. But let’s suppose that the excluders win in court or that the courts abdicate altogether, kicking the dispute back to the elected branches of government as a “political matter.”
In that case, the use of the section to debar candidates would not stop at Trump. It would become a dangerously convenient tool of partisan politics.
LET’S RECONSIDER the text:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Because Section 3’s meaning seemed so obvious in 1866, a lot of the hard questions about its interpretation and application were shrugged off. I’ll nominate just two examples.
First, the section does not apply only to candidates for president—it does not even mention the president. It mentions senators, House members, electors, and civil and military officers of the United States or any state. The section appears to apply to the presidency only as part of that final catchall category.
Second, that phrase “aid and comfort to the enemies thereof”—what does that mean? The language is copied from Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution. But there, the language was drafted to make it difficult to convict an accused person of crime: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”
David H. Gans: The Fourteenth Amendment was meant to be a protection against state violence
Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment strips away all of the 1787 restrictions: the overt act, the two witnesses, the requirement of public confession. The question of what constitutes “aid and comfort” is left to the judgment of … wait—Section 3 gives no clue about how it should be enforced or by whom. Again, that’s understandable. In 1866, none of this looked complicated. But in a modern context, that enforcement question of a reactivated Section 3 will be nasty.
Consider the scenario in which Section 3 is invoked against Trump in 2024. Although he has won the Republican nomination, Democratic secretaries of state in key states refuse to place his name on their ballots, as a person who engaged in insurrection against the United States. With Trump’s name deleted from some swing-state ballots, President Joe Biden is easily reelected.
But only kind of reelected. How in the world are Republicans likely to react to such an outcome? Will any of them regard such a victory as legitimate? The rage and chaos that would follow are beyond imagining.
And then what? If Section 3 can be reactivated in this way, then reactivated it will be. Republicans will hunt for Democrats to disqualify, and not only for president, but for any race where Democrats present someone who said or did something that can be represented as “aid and comfort” to enemies of the United States. Didn’t progressive Representative Ilhan Omar once seemingly equate al-Qaeda with the U.S. military? Do we think that her political enemies will accept that she was making only a stupid rhetorical point? Earlier this year, Tennessee Republicans tossed out of the legislature two Black Democrats for allegedly violating House rules. Might Tennessee Republicans next deem unruly Democrats “rebels” forbidden ever to run for office again?
Where are the federal courts in all this? Do they actually stand aside as local officials exercise veto power over who’s a loyal enough American to be listed on the ballot for county commissioner? Do they really let the “elected branches” decide? And what would that mean in practice? The section transfers an otherwise presidential prerogative, the pardon power, to Congress. If the courts step back, does that not imply that the House and Senate must somehow find a way to wield the power of the section together?
That seems unlikely. But the alternative of judicial decision is fraught with institutional risks too. Imagine a serious effort to block Trump from appearing on ballots in 2024, and then suppose he challenges that block in court—and ultimately wins a ruling in his favor from the Supreme Court, by a margin of 5–4 or even 6–3. Now the rage and chaos would be reversed. A pro-Trump Thomas-Alito-Gorsuch-Barrett-Kavanaugh majority might obliterate whatever deference the Court still commands among Democrats and liberals. Although much is wrong with the present Court, this country will not be in a better or happier place if it loses its last, imperfect arbiter….
UPDATED ON 09/18/2023 | CNN Transcript
A CNN interview was just pointed out to me where a “not-fan of Trump” said rationally what David Frum said, and that is, allowing states to go down this path will create vindictive cross-fire that will spread through our body-politic:
STERLING: What we need to do is focus on the voters. We have a Constitutional Republic of laws that essentially empowers voters to make decisions. They make good ones. They make bad ones. They generally come out OK. We have to trust the voters in this. And anybody using an electoral scheme or a constitutional interpretation to remove anybody from the ballots is going to be a dangerous precedent.
Because I can guarantee you what happens, it start up from the Bork hearings in ’86. One side does one thing, the other side does something else. The other side blames the last side for doing it. There will be a Republican saying, you have violated your oath of office under the Constitution. I’m barring you from the ballot. That’s all we’re going to see happening. We need to have grown-ups in the room look at the long term implications of these things. Whether we disagree with the individual candidate or loved a individual candidate.
FRUM IS RIGHT
Bottom line?
IN THE END, SCOTUS SAVES THE DAY
And Frum is exactly right on this point as well: Republicans will hunt for Democrats to disqualify. As much as I love the GOP using the Dems tactics against them. Take for instance Mitch McConnell’s warning to Harry Reid, which came to fruition when the Republicans [thankfully] used to get judges onto the bench that were center-right. If this “insurrection/sedition” tactic is unleashed, our system will have a ton of these potholes, forever disrupting the turnover of power peaceably.
ALREADY TRIED
The WASHINGTON TIMES also notes that this effort has already been unsuccessful with other Republican candidates
….According to the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan shared staff to congressional committees and members of Congress, “Invocation of the Disqualification Clause raises a number of novel legal questions involving the activities that could trigger disqualification, the offices to which disqualification might apply, and the mechanisms to enforce disqualification.”
CRS’ analysis of the 14th Amendment relating to the Capitol events adds, “The clause has been seldom used, and the few times it has been used in the past mainly arose out of the Civil War—a very different context from the events of January 6.”
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have joined Free Speech for People with plans to hit Mr. Trump‘s campaign with legal broadsides under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
They have written letters to state election officials requesting them to block Mr. Trump from the ballot and are preparing voter lawsuits and state election board complaints.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, enacted after the Civil War during Reconstruction, disqualifies someone from holding office after taking an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution but later engages in “insurrection or rebellion” against the country.
The clause was intended to deal with Confederate rebels who went to war against the Union or provided aid or comfort to national enemies.
Throughout 2022, liberal organizations such as Free Speech for People and Our Revolution sent letters urging election officials in all 50 states to disqualify Mr. Trump and his allies from qualifying for the ballot.
The groups cited the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, to make a case for barring lawmakers and the former president from running campaigns because of their perceived role in inciting the protest.
Liberal activists’ 2022 legal attempts under the 14th Amendment, however, to throw Republican House lawmakers they contended were “insurrectionists” off ballots in their home states were all unsuccessful.
These lawmakers were Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs of Arizona, Tom Tiffany and Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin, Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
A law firm recently filed a lawsuit arguing that former President Donald Trump can be disqualified from the elections. And while this is new, it pulls from an agenda that the establishment has been proposing since 2021. The basis is Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 just after the Civil War. It says a person can be banned from election or appointment to any level of government office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the [United States], or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” The establishment has been arguing this could apply to President Trump’s actions to challenge the 2020 election, and for his alleged role in Jan. 6.
HOWEVER, as pointed out, Joshua Philipp points out this has already been tried, and failed:
MORE TO COME IN THE FUTURE, FOR SURE.
Federalist Bonus
John Yoo & John Malcolm
Below are four excerpts from a longer FEDERALIST SOCIETY discussion between John Malcolm and John Yoo: “A Conversation on the Right: The Current State of Presidential Power”.
EXCERPT ONE:
John Yoo Says That January 6th Was “Thee Most Important Legal Event”
In this excerpted discussion John Yoo notes that the January 6th stuff is not nearly as strong as the Mara-Lago case (and in the fuller video he throws cold water on that as well). John Malcolm also discusses the ability of counsel to delve into all sorts of avenues of legal thought and advice. Jack Smith laid out an argument that undercuts his and Georgia’s entire case [should watch the above linked video for more]:
3. The Defendant 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. He w6as also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures. Indeed, in many cases, the Defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful. (HERITAGE FOUNDATION)
EXCERPT TWO:
Insurrection and Sedition Not Part of Indictments | PLUS: Trump’s State of Mind
In this excerpted discussion John Yoo notes the lack of “insurrection” or “sedition” in the indictments. John Malcolm speaks to Trump’s clear words of “peacefully and patriotically marching” – which he says is not in the record of the indictment. Trump’s state of mind is discussed a bit.
EXCERPT THREE:
Brad Raffensperger/Trump Phone Call Dissected by John Malcolm
In this excerpted discussion John Malcolm quickly notes the failure of any criminal law breaking in the phone call between Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Donald Trump regarding the “finding” of votes. The worst of intentions is applied to Trump by those that dislike him, however, the law done well looks beyond people’s opinions of him.
EXCERPT FOUR:
A Question About What Type Of Legal Advice John Eastman Gave
This is a question regarding John Eastman’s legal advice from the Q & A portion of the video.
‘Fox & Friends’ co-host Ainsley Earhardt compares the timeline of former President Trump’s four indictments and key developments in the Hunter Biden probe.
There is another twist to this story. Granted, in the end [so far] it is hearsay. But noting the timing above, it seems probable. Newt Gingrich claims he heard through “remarkably good sources” that Monday’s indictment of Donald Trump was thrown into motion last minute at the urging of “somebody” in D.C.
MEDIA’ite has more:
…“The reaction is so bad on Friday that I am told — this is hearsay, but I am told by a reliable source that Friday evening, somebody from Washington called the district attorney in Atlanta and said, ‘You have to indict on Monday. We have to cover up all of the mistakes we just made with Wiess,’” Gingrich alleged, referring to District Attorney Fani Willis.
“And she said, apparently, ‘My jurors aren’t coming back till Tuesday.’ And they said, ‘You didn’t hear me. You have to indict on Monday.’ And she said, ‘Well, they’re not going to get here before noon.’ They said, ‘That doesn’t matter.’ She said, this means it’s going to be eight or nine or ten o’clock at night. And they said, ‘It doesn’t matter. We need the news media shifting off of Weiss,’” Gingrich said.
Although Gingrich was unaware of who made the call, he said the source he was talking to was someone with “remarkably good sources.”…
Well, this may have been a deflection for the many missteps Jack Smith [Special Council appointed by Biden to investigate Trump] has made. One being this:
Under what is called the Brady rule, prosecutors in a criminal trial have a constitutional duty to disclose all evidence to a defendant’s legal team, including information that is favorable to the accused and could reduce a potential sentence.
[….]
Special counsel Jack Smith’s team made a startling admission in its case against former President Donald Trump, acknowledging in a new court filing that it failed to turn over all evidence to Mr. Trump’s legal team as required by law and falsely claimed that it had.
Former Trump Attorney Tim Parlatore: Jack Smith Did Not Even Download Exculpatory Evidence Until 2 Days After Indictments
Jack Smith has a troubling past for the cause of freedom!
I have some time on my hand [literally] to read a lot of articles due to an operation. One of the best I have come across yet is over at REAL CLEAR POLITICS, titled, “Justice Shrugged: The Persecution of Donald Trump” — which came via JJ Sefton’s “Morning Report.”
I will add some media before and link other articles worth your time — after this…
TURLEY DERSHOWITZ
Here is the article:
Here’s what I dream of Donald Trump saying when he stands trial on bogus charges proffered by his political opponents: “I do not recognize this court’s right to try me … I do not recognize my action as a crime.”
Those are the fighting words of industrialist Hank Rearden when he was put on trial for ignoring an unjust law in Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged.” Although the circumstances of the cases differ, Rearden is a perfect avatar of Donald Trump, as both larger-than-life men are persecuted by the justice system for seeking to pursue their own self-interest and for refusing to surrender to government oppression.
Self-interest is central to the Objectivist philosophy of Rand, who grew up in Russia and witnessed first-hand the oppression of free thought and free enterprise following the 1917 Communist revolution. Her masterpiece, “Atlas Shrugged,” is the ultimate roadmap to how American democracy can be subverted by leftist bureaucrats and a corrupt media to destroy some individuals and intimidate the rest.
In the novel, Rearden has created a unique metallic alloy that carries his own name. Rearden Metal is far superior to steel and was in high demand by contractors, but tyrannical government regulations prohibited Rearden from selling to customers of his own choice. He ignored the government’s warnings and sold to one of the few honest businessmen left in the country. That meant he had broken the law, and because of his stature and reputation for excellence, the government prosecuted him as a warning to others that they dare not pursue their own self-interest, too.
Rearden epitomizes the essence of individualism, striving to achieve his goals despite societal pressure. As an industrialist, he prioritizes his innovation and accomplishments, unapologetically pursuing personal success. His trial underscores the struggle between individual rights and the perceived interests of society, reflecting Rand’s championing of individualism.
Similarly, Trump’s refusal to accept the election results turns on his deep sense of individualistic ambition, his willingness to challenge societal norms, and his determination not to surrender his principles, even at the expense of public ridicule, political persecution, and now potentially years in prison. But you can’t view the 2020 election in a vacuum. Trump was no different than Rearden in fighting what he knows is a rigged system. For the preceding five years, Trump had been the victim of a series of vicious attacks by the Deep State and the media who never really accepted him as president. So Trump had no reason to accept the election results parroted by the same actors who had already tried to destroy him multiple times.
And now, two and a half years after the 2020 election, as Trump has a fighting chance of returning to the White House in the greatest political comeback in history, his enemies have come for him again, with three separate indictments and soon to be a fourth.
The four-count indictment most recently brought against Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith is intended to make a victory in 2024 nearly impossible. The Deep State in this case represents the entrenched bureaucracy of the federal government as well as the individual states’ election officials. This is the same Deep State that gathered up 51 national security officials to sign a statement prior to the 2020 election that falsely claimed that Hunter Biden’s laptop “has all the classic earmarks of Russian disinformation.” It had none of them. No wonder Trump was disinclined to accept their conclusions that the election was secure and fair. Trump sought to prove his concerns about the legitimacy of the 2020 election by pursuing a vigorous legal strategy as was guaranteed to him under the First Amendment’s right “to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Biden’s weaponized Department of Justice is determined to deny that right to Donald Trump, and by extension to the rest of us. You either agree with the government’s interpretation of election results or else you risk going to jail. The indictment brought against Trump acknowledges that everyone has a First Amendment right to speak their minds and even to “formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means,” but it then avers that Trump’s right to believe he won the election is abrogated by a string of court losses and equally pessimistic assessments from so-called experts.
Here’s where it gets interesting, and where the Department of Justice has overstepped. The four counts in the indictment are based on what prosecutor Jack Smith calls three conspiracies: “A conspiracy to defraud the United States” by seeking to stop the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021; “a conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the Jan. 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified; and “a conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.”
INTERLUDE
RPT NOTE: Much like the Stalinist Court Trials, evidence typically allowed for a defendant to use was in fact not allowed: “The trials successfully eliminated the major real and potential political rivals and critics of Joseph Stalin.” In similar fashion, the J6 Committee “hearings” refused anyone who would bring countering testimony or challenge their charges. And now any evidence that would have been available to Trump from those hearings was reportedly destroyed – that should have been kept per the law!
CONTINUING
All of these alleged conspiracies and the resulting four charges are directly related to the joint congressional session on Jan. 6, when the Electoral College votes were opened and debated to determine whether they should be counted. Moreover, when Jack Smith announced the indictment, he suggested that Trump was responsible for the riot that occurred at the U.S. Capitol on that day, yet none of the charges hold Trump responsible for the violence. Every charge in this dubious indictment could have been brought even if the protesters had marched “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol as Trump had requested. The charges in the indictment have nothing to do with the violence; they only relate to Trump’s insistence that he won the election, and that he would do whatever it takes to prove it.
In other words, these are not real crimes like insurrection or sedition; they are thought crimes. Smith’s “conspiracy” charges simply reflect that Trump consulted his lawyers to develop a legal strategy on how to right the wrong that he perceived. In its substance, from paragraphs 8 to 123, the indictment merely alleges over and over again that Trump refused to accept the conclusions of others that the election of Biden was legitimate, and that he had help from like-minded attorneys. How infuriating that must be to prosecutor Smith, who believes with all his heart that no one could doubt the veracity of what government officials (like him!) tell us.
But millions of us did doubt the official story of a Biden victory. In the weeks after the Nov. 3, 2020 election, I wrote about problems with the election on Nov. 6, Nov. 13, Nov. 23, Nov. 30, and Dec. 7. If I had been able to ensure that Trump had read those columns at RealClearPolitics, I might be under indictment for conspiracy now, too. Then on Jan. 2, 2021, I wrote a column called “Our Electoral Crisis: The Call of Conscience on Jan. 6.”
In that preview of the challenge of electoral votes from disputed states, I wrote, “There is no reason to expect that the Jan. 6 session of Congress will result in certification of President Trump as the victor of the 2020 election. Despite the extensive evidence of fraud that has been amassed, this vote will be an exercise in raw political power, not an expression of blind justice. Probably the best that Trump supporters can hope for is a fair hearing before the American people regarding the reason why doubts exist as to the legitimacy of Biden’s apparent victory.”
Because of the riot at the Capitol, even that small hope was dashed, as most of the congressional debate about fraudulent activity in swing states was canceled when the joint session resumed late in the evening. It is important to note that Trump was the political victim of Jan. 6, not its beneficiary. Because of the violence, he lost his last opportunity to have a public debate on the voting irregularities that made millions of us believe the election returns were compromised. Yet Jack Smith would have you believe that it was Trump’s plan all along to shut down the electoral count that day as part of a plan to overturn the results. It’s just a fairy tale told to Trump-hating liberals to make them feel better.
MSNBC commentator Mike Barnicle summed up Smith’s theory of the case in a segment on “Morning Joe” the day after the indictment was unsealed. “It’s one thing to have beliefs. We all have beliefs,” Barnicle said. “Donald Trump had the belief that he won, and he can articulate it as long as he wants, but he does not have the right to transform that belief into illegal conduct.”
What that means is that we all have First Amendment rights to be wrong, but we do not have a right to persuade others that we are right. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the first step toward totalitarianism. What we are seeing in Jack Smith’s indictment is the attempt to criminalize what I would call “other thought,” the insistence that you will make up your own mind and pursue your own truth regardless of what the government tells you. This is an attempt to codify the suppression of ideas that we saw the Deep State impose on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms in 2020. You have the right to think whatever you want, but as soon as you share thoughts that dispute the official narrative, you can be silenced, and in Trump’s case locked up in a federal penitentiary.
Well, he wouldn’t be the first person to be jailed for “other thought,” and you don’t have to turn to Russia or China for examples. How about Henry David Thoreau, who spent a brief time in jail in 1846 for protesting the Mexican-American War and wrote about his beliefs in “Civil Disobedience”?
“Any man more right than his neighbors, constitutes a majority of one already,” Thoreau told us. “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”
That certainly will be true should the unthinkable happen and Jack Smith achieve his goal of imprisoning Trump. In a very real sense, the indictment is less an accusation against one man than a ham-handed attempt to enforce group-think on any Americans who resist the imperial decrees from Washington, D.C. Consider this passage from “Atlas Shrugged” in light of the hundreds of Jan. 6 convictions that turned ordinary Americans into felons:
“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against … We’re after power and we mean it … There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”
One of the most striking parallels between the Trump and Rearden cases is the complicity of the mass media in promoting hatred for the defendants. The legacy press has been trying to destroy Trump for seven years now, starting with the Russia hoax, the Ukrainian impeachment hoax, the Trump taxes hoax, and the classified documents hoax. It didn’t matter what topic came up; the media turned it into another reason to hate Trump. Most recently, they have drummed up the “fake electors” narrative as proof that Trump intentionally tried to steal the election.
That is essentially the linchpin of Smith’s case. When Trump’s team put forward alternate electors on Dec. 14, 2020, they were following the entirely legal precedent that Democrat John F. Kennedy used successfully in the 1960 election, when Hawaii’s result was in doubt until after Dec. 14. The reason that date is so important is because the U.S. Constitution mandates that all electors must give their votes on the same day. If Trump’s lawyers were able to prove fraud after Dec. 14, but his electors had not voted on that day, then their votes would be lost forever.
Trump is an obstacle to the Deep State that seeks power over people, just as Hank Rearden was an obstacle to the economic tyranny of “Atlas Shrugged.” Rearden was not a person of quite the stature of Trump, but more of an Elon Musk – a self-made man of unthinkable wealth who didn’t follow anyone’s rules but his own. But that last quality is shared by all three men, and perhaps that more than anything is what has made them all targets.
Here’s how Rand described the media’s assault against Rearden as his trial began, and how their campaign to marginalize him had failed because the regular people oddly identified with the millionaire industrialist just as Trump gains popular strength with each new indictment thrown his way:
The crowd knew from the newspapers that he represented the evil of ruthless wealth; and … so they came to see him; evil, at least, did not have the stale hopelessness of a bromide which none believed and none dared to challenge. They looked at him without admiration – admiration was a feeling they had lost the capacity to experience, long ago; they looked with curiosity and with a dim sense of defiance against those who had told them that it was their duty to hate him.
That’s how the trial started, but by the time Rearden spoke in his own defense – or rather spoke to demolish the prosecution’s false claims – the crowd was in full support of Rearden in his battle against the nameless, faceless bureaucrats who had regulated the country into despair. When he turned to the crowd in the courtroom:
He saw faces that laughed in violent excitement, and faces that pleaded for help; he saw their silent despair breaking out into the open; he saw the same anger and indignation as his own, finding release in the wild defiance of their cheering; he saw the looks of admiration and the looks of hope.
As the crowd surged around him, he smiled in answer to their smiles, to the frantic tragic eagerness of their faces; there was a touch of sadness in his smile. “God bless you, Mr. Rearden!” said an old woman with a ragged shawl over her head. “Can’t you save us, Mr. Rearden? They’re eating us alive, and it’s no use fooling anybody about how it’s the rich that they’re after…”
It is just that same magical connection which happens between Trump and his supporters at a MAGA rally, and that is why Jack Smith, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and President Joe Biden want to put Trump behind bars. He gives people hope, and hope is dangerous when you have a plan to subjugate them. To succeed, tyranny needs willing victims, and Trump – like any Ayn Rand hero or heroine – fights back. That’s the true reason his enemies hate him.
“We fight like hell,” Trump said on Jan. 6, not in regard to violence but in regard to protecting our country from the thugs who would transform it into a dictatorship. “And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
That’s the fighting spirit which makes me know my dream of Trump rejecting the court’s authority, like Hank Rearden did, will never come to fruition. While it would have a hint of poetic justice, that’s not what Trump is after. He wants real justice, political justice, freedom for all, and that means he has to stand up, stand tall, stand firm. When he says that the government is coming through him to get to you, he’s not joking……
MORE READING
