He will be judged in a court of law

I put in some hours over the weekend reading Special Prosecutor Jack Smith's coup-attempt indictment of the former president. It's true what the legal-eagle commentators insist: it is relatively easy reading. What seems many years ago, I tried to do the same with the Mueller report. That was hard going. This mostly is not.

As someone who followed the House of Representative's January 6 hearings closely, there was not much I found novel. Your mileage may wary ... but here are some points that stuck out to me as somewhat new.

• The Trumpkins kept on trying to line up Senators and Congresspeople to delay the transfer of power even while the mob was chasing legislators about the Capital -- and after.

As violence ensued, the Defendant and co-conspirators exploited the disruption by redoubling efforts to levy false claims of election fraud and convince Members of Congress to further delay the certification based on those claims. (p. 6)

On the evening of January 6, the Defendant and Co-Conspirator 1 attempted to exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol by calling lawmakers to convince them, based on knowingly false claims of election fraud, to delay the certification... (p. 41)

That's some monomaniacal fixation on an impossible task and purpose -- and beyond stupid.

• Smith highlights righteous remonstrances from Republican legislators refusing to violate the law and their consciences. From House Speaker Rusty Bowers of Arizona:

As a conservative Republican, I don't like the results of the presidential election. I voted for President Trump and worked hard to reelect him. But I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election.

I and my fellow legislators swore an oath to support the U.S. Constitution and the constitution and laws of the state of Arizona. It would violate that oath, the basic principles of republican government, and the rule of law if we attempted to nullify the people's vote based on unsupported theories of fraud. Under the laws that we wrote and voted upon, Arizona voters choose who wins, and our system requires that their choice be respected. (p. 11)

Ever since I heard Bowers testify before the January 6th Committee, I've held in mind that Mormons like him believe God had a hand in the development of the U.S. Constitution. Not my way of thinking or doing history, but almost certainly a support in what must a terrible personal crisis.

From Michigan's Republican House Speaker:

... I fought hard for President Trump. Nobody wanted him to win more than me. I think he's done an incredible job. But I love our republic, too. I can't fathom risking our norms, traditions and institutions to pass a resolution retroactively changing the electors for Trump, simply because some think there may have been enough widespread fraud to give him the win. That's unprecedented for good reason. And that's why there is not enough support in the House to cast a new slate of electors . I fear we'd lose our country forever. This truly would bring mutually assured destruction for every future election in regards to the Electoral College . And I can't stand for that. I won't. 9p. 19)

• I wondered while reading the indictment -- why didn't the fake elector scheme leak before January 6? There were eight states and presumably more than 100 people involved. People talk. 

 

And those of us who feared that Trump might not go quietly when he lost the election had been prepped even before November 3 to be ready for whatever stunt he might try. I think especially of our UniteHERE comrades who organized a party outside ballot counting in Philadelphia which made it hard for Trumpists to invade the space. 

 

Yet all those investigative journalists who worked to reveal Trump plots before the election didn't surface the fake elector scheme. I might not have noticed -- I was still making calls to try to win the Georgia U.S. Senate seats for Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. But it seems as if the certification threat should have leaked and then publicized, beyond just highlighting Trump's upcoming rally.

Do read the indictment for yourself.

• • •

Side notes on the language of the indictment:

• I guess we're all going to have to learn the expression "outcome-determinative," an ugly but economic way of describing the non-existent voting fraud that Trump claimed would have changed the results. I get it, but I don't like it. My problem.

• I found the use of "knowingly" (thirty instances!) a little confusing. For example, this: "the Defendant made multiple knowingly false statements ...". The contention in that sentence is that Trump "knew" he was pushing bull-bleep. "Knowingly" is an attribute of the Defendant, not of the lies he told. Maybe it's just me, but I found this way of expressing this murky. It may be solid legalese.
 
Photo: Kevin Fogarty/Reuters