S/C Jack Smith: Issues Third Indictment Against Trump Outlining Four Serious Major Charges

Hey GOP: Biden won; Trump lost get over it

What follows is a great article written by Peter Baker, currently Chief White House reporter for the NY TIMES, and a political analyst for MSNBC. He previously was a reporter for The Washington Post for 20 years

His article is here addressing the core of the United States of America v. Donald J. Trump latest 4-charge indictment by S/C Jack Smith (formatted to fit the blog).

Flashback to 1787 in Philadelphia with this Baker introductory question: “Can a sitting president spread lies about an election and try to employ the authority of the government to overturn the will of the voters without consequence?”

The question would have been unimaginable just a few years ago, but the Trump case raises the kind of specter more familiar in countries with histories of coups and juntas where dictators win, prevail, and then rule with a one-man iron fist.

Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought the case and has charged Trump with one of the most sensational frauds in the history of the United States – that is one “fueled by his lies and animated by his motives and the thirst for power.”

Smith’s 45-page, four-count Federal indictment (.pdf format) is here. Trump believed his claims of the 2020 election fraud were real, saying in part: “The defendant (Donald J. Trump) knew that they were false and yet he made them anyway to create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger and erode public faith in the administration of the election.”

For Trump and the many allegations made against him on all sorts of subjects during his time on the public stage, everything else feels small by comparison.

Unlike the indictment by NYS for Trump allegedly covering up a payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels and Smith’s previous indictment for allegedly jeopardizing national secrets (at Mar-a-Lago and other places after he left the White House), these new charges are the first to deal with actions taken by a president while in office related to January 6 and the so-called “fake electors” scheme.

While he failed to keep his grip on power, Trump has undermined the credibility of elections in the United States by persuading 3 in 10 Americans that the 2020 election was somehow stolen from him, even though it was not and many of his own advisers, numerous attorneys, and even his own family members know it was not stolen away from him.

Bringing the recent case to court may not restore that public faith in the justice system since millions of Trump’s supporters and a growing number of Republican leaders have embraced his narrative of victimization while dismissing the prosecution without waiting to read the indictment as merely part of a far-reaching, multi-jurisdictional and sometimes even bipartisan “witch hunt (Trump’s fav phrase)” against him.

Trump has been laying the ground work for this latest indictment for months making it clear to his backers that they should not trust anything S/C Smith or any DOJ prosecutors tell them.

Trump wrote on his social media site on August 1: “Why didn’t they do this 2.5 years ago? Why did they wait so long? Because they wanted to put it right in the middle of my campaign. Prosecutorial Misconduct!”

Trump’s campaign equated DOJ prosecutors with fascists and communists saying: “The lawlessness of these persecutions of President Trump and his supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930’s, the former USSR, and other authoritarian, dictatorial regimes. President Trump has always followed the law and the Constitution, with advice from many highly accomplished attorneys.”

(My note: What a crock!!!)

Trump’s defenders argue that he had good-faith reasons for contesting the election results in multiple states and that he did nothing more than pursue his legitimate, legal options.

That view (sadly) is shared by some 74% of Republicans in a new poll by The NY TIMES and Siena College.

Those Republicans maintain that is criminalizing a political dispute in what amounts to victor’s justice — with Biden’s administration punishing his vanquished foe (Trump).

But as this new Smith indictment methodically documents, Trump was told over and over again by his own advisers, allies, and administration officials that the allegations he was making about the 2020 election being stolen from him were not true, and yet he publicly still continues to spew them.

For example: Trump was told they were not true by not one but two of his own AG’s, multiple other DOJ officials, and including Trump’s own election security chief, CISA Director Chris Krebs – whom Trump fired one day after Krebs pronounced: “The 2020 election was the most secure in U.S. history.”

Krebs has also stood by his assessment in a later interview with “60 Minutes,” saying: “We did a good job. We did it right. I’d do it a thousand times over.”  

Note that those dissenting voices were all Trump appointees.

Trump even was told by then Vice President Mike Pence and his campaign officials and the investigators that they hired, and by Republican governors, GOP Secretaries of State, and legislators that there was no voter cheating, etc.

As one Trump senior campaign adviser put it at the time: “It was all just conspiracy garbage beamed down from the mother ship.”

Despite all that, Trump has never backed down in the years since the 2020 election, even as each and every Trump assertion after assertion has been debunked.

Not a single independent authority who was not allied with or paid by Trump — no judge, no prosecutor, no election agency, or governor has ever validated any substantial election fraud that would have come close to reversing the results in any of the battleground states, much less the three or four that would have been necessary to change the winner.

The one who tried to defraud the United States, Smith charged, was Trump, with bogus claims that he knew or had every reason to know were bogus, all in a bid to stay in power.

The former president will argue that this is all politics and that he should be returned to office in next year’s election, and so far millions of Americans have taken his side as we head into the 2024 election cycle.

My 2 Cents: Now the justice system and the electoral system will engage in a 15-month race to see which will decide his and the country’s fate first and foremost. The real verdict on the Trump presidency is yet still to come after this trial and hopefully a guilty verdict – then what – only time will tell since nothing like this has ever happened in our entire American history – this is truly a first by any standard.

Finally, let’s hope the trial of Trump is televised for the nation and world for that matter to see justice prevail… that is an absolute must – we’ll see if Chief Justice John Roberts agrees with this historical moment and authorizes it to be televised in a somber public forum without any hype or turmoil for the public’s historical education. We shall see. 

My related post is here and it shows, as usual, the Trump “owned GOP” blaming the DOJ and President Biden for 2024 election interference, which is totally bogus. 

Thanks for stopping by.