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Notes -
Full indictment here
My completely amateur and unqualified opinion after reading the indictment - I dunno. It's not a nothingburger, but it feels way less solid than the documents charges. It's not exactly clear which actions are supposed to constitute which elements of which offense. Like, I feel like you could probably go through and make some argument that this conversation counts as conspiracy and that action counts as obstruction and whatever, but it's kind of been left as an exercise for the reader.
Count two probably gets there. It seems clear that Trump was actively involved in discussing and planning efforts to obstruct the certification of the election. Probably it turns on whether or not the DoJ can prove that he did so "corruptly", whatever that means in this context, but they probably can. I'm less confident of the other charges.
What about if Trump genuinely, actually believed the election had been rigged, the results were fraudulent, and that he was still in situ as president until a proper election could be run again? Would that be "corruptly" or not?
From @gattsuru's post, I think the answer is that if he truly honestly believed he was acting lawfully... he would still have been acting unlawfully but he wouldn't be guilty of a crime? I am not at all confident in that assessment though.
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It is funny. Trump claimed he has been elected to the office of president in 2016 and 2020. So isn’t he breaking the 22nd amendment by running if he truly believed he was elected in 2020?
Now of course he would say elected means by the electoral college (and he is probably right). But just a funny aside.
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There's something so weird about this to me.
Sure in the most absolutely tortured meaning of the word "obstruct". His claim was that the election as being presented was invalid, and he was trying to use the court/legislative system to elucidate the correct/legal outcome.
This would be like if I got a traffic ticket, showed up in court and argued that the ticket was given in error, failed, and was then charged with "obstruction" for challenging the state.
If every challenge to an election is henceforward seen as "obstruction" then where the hell does that leave us? It seems to make elections a sortof winner takes all battle where the winners take office, and the losers end up in jail.
You're forgetting the requirement that the defendant must corruptly obstruct the proceeding.
Note: I am not opining on Trump's guilt or innocence. I am merely stating that the particular fear you set forth is misplaced.
And who determines if you riot corruptly or uncorruptly?
Were the BLM riots over the 2020 summer corrupt or uncorrupt?
The jury does, based on jury instructions, which are based on the law re what "corruptly" means. Simply challenging a traffic ticket doesn't count.
Whataboutism is tedious even when it makes sense. This is even worse; acting corruptly is not an element of riot, or arson, or assault, or any other offense that the BLM offenders might have committed. So, your question makes no sense.
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Okay, so what about the Oakland Riots? All the people on social media having meltdowns? All the declarations of "not my president" and the antifa/black bloc rioting and property destruction and so forth? Should Hillary be hauled up and held responsible for those? There were very fraught people online calling for mass insurrection and violence in order to prevent the triumph of the jackbooted mobs who, emboldened by the result, would be pouring into the streets to attack and assault minorities and LGBT? There was at least one lady on SSC (as was) who was firmly convinced, and couldn't be shifted on this, that the election had been stolen by Russia hacking into the voting machines and changing votes to be for Trump. Thus it was illegitimate and a stolen election and he wasn't the real president.
There were a lot of protests before and after, some of which turned violent:
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The prosecution here absolutely happens without the Jan 6 riots - nothing about those riots happening or not changes the fact that Trump is an outsider to a system which absolutely loathes him and does not believe that him or his base deserve any say in the system that governs them, and is willing to trample over the laws and mores to get him (see Crossfire Hurricane).
Though that said, in the hypothetical world where the Jan 6 riots don't take place, I'd imagine that the FBI informants in the crowd would simply organise another incident to take its place.
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Where this leads is that opposing parties will enact violence on "behalf" of their opponents, thereby nullifying any ability to make election challenges.
Why that, and not "my violence is speech, your speech is violence" shenanigans?
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I was disagreeing, but could understand where you were coming from until "pretty quickly". Do you think Epstein was caught pretty quickly?
Epstein was hiding in the open. His crimes were well publicized for a very long time. The reports were out there. I don’t think his recent stuff was any new information. It was just old information that got treated differently.
In some ways a lot like Hunter Biden. People have seen his laptop for years and business partners had flipped.
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What are you talking about? The police knew about his prostitution Ponzi scheme and had the case buried by either the state prosecutor or the feds (can't remember which).
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It was valid to protest the election and certification.
Nothing Trump said incited violence, and his literal words send the protesters home.
The actual riots were incited by Federal provocateurs, it being well-established now that many of the people who entered the Capitol were literal agents for the FBI.
Even the NYT published this very washed-over account about FBI informants among the rioters:
https://archive.is/5J0Db
(The same news organizations will then call it a "conspiracy theory" to suggest that there were FBI informants at the Capitol. Not to mention the Ray Epps affair: https://twitter.com/DarrenJBeattie/status/1547396003690577921 )
Epps instigated the riot, uniquely among all Capitol protestors, went expressly to incite a riot, was given a sweetheart deal by the Feds, and is now given puff piece media coverage. As Beattie says, "Ray Epps is the smoking gun of the Fedsurrection narrative," and yet is defended by the New York Times, the January 6th Committee, and the FBI. Does that not constitute evidence? 2 and 2 make 4 even if no on says "4" out loud.
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Ah yes, the dude that actually tries to start a riot gets treated with kid gloves by the government and the media, as they come down like a ton of bricks on dude that enters the capitol in a buffalo hat. Makes perfect sense, and does not indicate he was working for the feds in any way.
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There's in important distinction to be made between spooks and snitches.
"Someone in the crowd was giving information to the FBI" is very different to "FBI agents instigated the riot".
DOJ has refused to specify how many informants they had in the crowd, even though we know of several. They've refused to elaborate on footage showing the Capitol being unlocked from the inside by Capitol agents. And they won't prosecute Ray Epps.
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Where is this well-established? A cursory Google search only returned that the FBI revoked the security clearance of one agent who joined the mob.
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I think actions like the fake elector scheme are pivotal for the argument to work. If all Trump had done was shout that the election was rigged and filed a few failed lawsuits, I don't think there would be a case.
Being involved in a scheme to have people falsely claim to be the duly chosen electors is a different kettle of fish.
The problem with the fake electors as a charge is Hawaii, which at least complicates the mens rea side of things.
These guys also seem problematic -- several of them broke state law in casting their vote, which covers off "corrupt", and they had a literal conspiracy-central website, so I presume charges are forthcoming?
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Agreed. On my read of the actual indictment, there are multiple purposes, and the crosstalk between them is what causes confusion of your type concerning what parts are supposed to support what charges. One purpose is to just yell "Trump falsely claimed" over and over again to provide negative affect and rally the troops. Another purpose is to actually present a cogent case, possibly one that could convince folks who are skeptical of the variety of different indictments as being thinly-veiled lawfare against a major political competitor.
Disclaimer: I'm a perennial skeptic on most of the various charges to date; I vastly prefer that we lived in a world where most of the facts presented in this indictment never happened; they are truly moving democracy in the wrong direction; nevertheless, I think it's important to be clearheaded about what is alleged, whether it's actually criminal, and why.
So the first thing I think the skeptic does is to ignore basically all the fluff about the former purpose. If you just read pretty much all the "Defendant falsely claimed" statements as "Defendant believed" (though perhaps was just wrong on the facts, once they all come to light), then nearly 90% of this indictment simply disappears. It's certainly not a crime to just be wrong on the facts or to have a situation where some people are saying one thing and others are saying another result in you believing the wrong thing, even if your belief is heavily influenced by personal political motivations (i.e., you really want to believe that there was something nefarious).
Then, I think what is nearly the only sentence in the indictment that might matter is "66. On the same day, at the direction of the Defendant and Co-Conspirator 1, fraudulent electors convened sham proceedings..." This is what needs to be fleshed out to convince the skeptic. AFAICT, nearly every other sentence about the fake elector scheme is pointing only to "co-conspirators". They quote conversations between other folks, but what did Trump actually do here, and what was his level of knowledge (required for the charge)? If they had quotes, one would imagine they would be dropped here alongside the others. 63 is trying to build the case for knowledge of Co-Conspirators 1/6. "...it's a crazy play so I don't know who wants to put their name on it." "Certifying illegal votes." '...none of them could "stand by it".' These are things straight out of a Matt Levine article that you don't want to have in your indictment, but usually when Levine is pointing them out, it's because it is a quote directly from the defendant or a quote of something said directly to the defendant ("Can you believe we're getting away with this crime?" sort of thing.) But even here, probably the best smoking gun they could muster for the knowledge requirement (otherwise they would have included better), it's still two layers away from Trump (co-conspirators 1/6 aren't even alleged to be part of this conversation, so at best, this is really "other people disagreed in their private conversations, elsewhere"). In a non-politicized trial of just a regular defendant, they would absolutely need to build a better record than this at trial to secure a conviction. Perhaps that could be done at trial, but at least as far as the document we have goes, it's still significantly lacking.
EDIT: I didn't want to actually dig up a real example from a real Matt Levine article when I wrote this, but I'm reading today's column, and it has a perfect example that has come up before:
Now that's how you drop a quote in an indictment to show that a particular individual has real knowledge that he's part of a conspiracy to commit illegal acts!
This is the rub for me, on almost all of this. If the people involved actually believed the election was stolen nothing outside of the Jan 6 event is criminal. If you believe that your state committed vote fraud, then you certainly would send a protest slate of electors, especially if the only avenue remaining is that the electors are disputed. If you believed that the election had been stolen from you, you absolutely would seek redress in the courts. You absolutely would be screaming from the housetops. And if you believed that the government was stealing the presidency from your tribe, you’d absolutely go to the Capitol to protest.
To me, the mob doesn’t matter much, because getting a mob of angry people to do something stupid is easy. Maybe a cop shoves a protester, maybe someone simply suggested the riots, maybe somebody threw a rock. But if you have a crowd of angry people that feel that their country has stolen political power from them, especially in the numbers present, a riot of some sort was going to happen. People riot after winning the cup in major sporting events. It takes nothing more than high emotions and some precipitating event.
I think the best way to tease this apart is to ask the counter factual of if the election had been stolen and people knew it, how would their behavior be any different than what we actually saw. And I just don’t see anything where I can put my fingers down and say “if they thought the election was stolen, why did they do this”. Everything seems pretty consistent with the idea that Trump and his inner circle absolutely believed in the stolen election. Being mistaken isn’t a crime.
Depends on the crime. Some laws operate on strict liability - I drove through a red light honestly believing that it was green, but I still broke the law by doing so. And yes, this does mean that you can commit crimes entirely by accident.
Some laws operate on a "reckless disregard for the truth" standard. That is, you have some responsibility to ensure that the beliefs you are acting on are in fact true. So if you are mistaken, that can be a crime if it the truth of the situation was knowable to you and you chose not to look. This typically applies in defamation law - you can't just say any crazy lie and say "but your honour I really believed he was a pedo" and get away with it.
Being mistaken often is not a crime. But it's not true as a blanket statement.
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Same notion then basically all riots are violent political coups. All the blm riots etc. They all obstructed government operations. Interfered with law enforcement from doing their job. In a broader sense people voted for a higher level of police force and thru rioting they tried to decrease the police force (and were largely successful). And blm riots were largely based on false stats.
I think it’s easy to define crime like (x) person shot (y) person and he died.
Especially since there is clearly no direct connection in this case between riots and anything Trump did. He never said go riot. So I have a little trouble seeing your point that riots mean other things become illegal.
And broadly just for culture war I feel like each said keeps fighting and there’s been so much bad blood on both sides and no one is completely innocent from doing wrong. I think the right would always use RussiaGate as the original sin.
Not many of the Jan 6 rioters had any goals of making Trump POTUS. Proud Boys goals were new and fair elections without mail in voting. Trump never once told anyone to violently takeover the U.S. which is categorically different than calls made by people associated with the current White House around the summer riots.
The problem is Trump didn’t lead a coup he led a protest which isn’t illegal.
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Like when BLM…attacked the White House?
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As others have pointed out, the "fake electors" (alternate electors) were part of the mechanism by which they were trying to use the courts/legislature to get the correct/legal outcome of the election.
Right... but that effort included fraudulent representations. It's akin to getting some random to walk onto the Senate floor, declare himself a Senator, and cast the deciding vote. It's not a thing you're allowed to do.
It's only considered fraudulent after the fact, when it's failed. How can they have known themselves to be fraudulent when it had never been tried before, and, in fact, was supported by many as a legitimate alternative?
Article II: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors"
How exactly did these people end up considering themselves electors?
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Because there is a prescribed process for selecting the electors of each state and that process did not select them, it selected other people.
The fact that a fraudulent process successfully fooled some people does not make it not fraudulent.
Guilty by axiom. How many years do you want to give these electors for testifying to the illegitimacy of an American election?
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Most people don’t think of fraud as something done pretty much in the open and on a political claim.
Fraud is akin to telling someone you have a technology that can test blood but don’t have it. That’s not what really happened here.
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