A Sense of Doubt blog post #3088 - Trump Indicted a Third Time: Conspiracy and Coup

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3088 - Trump Indicted a Third Time: Conspiracy and Coup


I suspect that the image above is photoshopped, but maybe not. It looks good, though pixelated.

Trump indicated again.

And the stupid has already begun again in earnest.

A Trump lawyer actually said on TV, more than once, as if this will be their defense, that the First Amendment PROTECTS ALL SPEECH.

That's just not true.

The First Amendment actually (and amazingly) protects our right to lie to one another.

It does not protect our right to lie in a scheme to defraud people or nations.

No.

The common talking point for the MAGA-infested GOP is that Biden has weaponized the justice department and FBI against his political opponent (Trump) as a form of election interference.

There's no evidence for this idea other than the crap spewing from the pie holes of these MAGA cowards.

Adam Kinzinger sacrificed his political career and put himself in the cross-hair of wacko MAGA thugs after voting TWICE for Trump but then Jan 6th was a bridge too far. Kinzinger suggested that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is appearing angry as he spews the MAGA lies because he's angry that he has to spew the MAGA lies to stay in power since he knows better, AND he claimed he was done with Trump on January 7th, 2021 which lasted about three weeks. Coward.

Trump is being persecuted and did nothing wrong.

No, Trump is being held accountable for alleged crimes and will have his day in court to defend himself.

Trump is taking a bullet for the "people" who support him to protect them from the "radical left" who want to come after them.

Um... I can't believe that anyone would actually believe that stupid aggrandizing bullshit.

The DOJ is going after Trump because of CRIMES they claim he committed.

Period.

That's what the DOJ and FBI do. They go after people who commit crimes no matter what their political affiliation.

Hoax, Witch Hunt, Most terrible thing ever in our country, blah blah blah...

I hate the "witch hunt" analogy most of all.

NOT THE SAME.

Trump with his millions, his own jet, his own golf courses, his privilege. Just fuck off.

Plus, Trump is grifting people out of more millions to pay his legal fees. He makes boat loads when he is indicted. I am just stunned by this fact.

This kind of thing -- indicting a former president -- has never happened before.

That's true.

So what?

Jeffrey Dahmer was also a very unique type of serial killer.

All these indictments are based on flimsy and "novel" legal arguments.

Okay, maybe the hush money one as many legal experts have claimed.

Not the other two. Fraud is common and so is mishandling of classified documents and obstruction of justice (refusing to turn them over when caught with them).

There are different standards of justice for Biden than for Trump.

Hardly. In the documents case, Biden returned the documents immediately, and Trump tried to hide them, keep them, and destroy evidence that he was hiding them and keeping them as well as opening his big mouth about top secret information to people who should not hear about top secret information.

We have a two-tier system of justice.

Yes, we do. But it's not a split between "the radical left" and the MAGA GOP.

It's rich-poor.

It's white-black.

It's men-women.

It's people who repeat bullshit that's repeated on FOX News and people who think for themselves and get news from a lot of sources.

Trump has the right to raise concerns about an election as many others have done and were not prosecuted for it.

True.

If you read the indictment, it dismisses this point right away.

Trump had the right to do that.

What he did not have the right to do was to conspire with others to cheat to stay in power, to lie to defraud people out of votes (and money), and to egg up thousands of people to storm the capital intent on killing Mike Pence, Pelosi, and others.

He is not being charged with "raising concerns illegally"; he's being charged with conspiring to defraud the country and interfere with the peaceful transition of power for an election HE LOST by over SEVEN MILLION VOTES.

I cannot wait to see how this turns out.

Thanks for tuning in.

NY Times the Morning - 2308.02

Donald TrumpHaiyun Jiang for The New York Times

‘Fueled by lies’

The two previous indictments of Donald Trump focused on his personal conduct, one involving a sex scandal and the other his handling of classified documents. Yesterday’s indictment is different. It involves arguably the most central issue in a democracy: an attempt to subvert an American election.

“At the core of the United States of America vs. Donald J. Trump is no less than the viability of the system constructed” by the founders, our colleague Peter Baker, The Times’s chief White House correspondent, wrote. “Can a sitting president spread lies about an election and try to employ his government’s power to overturn the will of the voters without consequence?”

In today’s newsletter, we’ll explain the details of the indictment and focus on the new information that prosecutors released yesterday.

The charges

The new indictment lays out a scheme that, by now, is widely known: Trump falsely claimed the 2020 election results were rigged and tried to rally federal officials, state lawmakers and his supporters, including rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn his loss to President Biden.

The indictment accuses Trump of four crimes: conspiracy to violate Americans’ right to vote, conspiracy to defraud the government, obstructing an official proceeding and conspiring to do so. Unlike the previous indictments, the charges stem primarily from actions Trump took while he was president.

(You can read the full indictment, annotated by Times reporters, here.)

“The attack on our nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” Jack Smith, the special counsel who led the Justice Department investigation in the case, said yesterday. “It was fueled by lies — lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.”

In a statement, Trump called the new charges “election interference” and compared the Biden administration to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

What’s new

Much of the indictment builds on the work of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack. But the indictment also presents some new information. Examples include:

Trump tried repeatedly to persuade Mike Pence that the vice president had the power to overturn the election results in Congress. When Pence said that he did not believe he had that authority, Trump allegedly responded, “You’re too honest.” The indictment said that Trump had six co-conspirators, but it did not name them. The Times reported several likely candidates, including the former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Prosecutors could charge co-conspirators in the coming weeks. A deputy White House counsel warned one alleged co-conspirator, believed to be Clark, that if Trump tried to stay in office, there would be “riots in every major city in the United States.” That co-conspirator’s response seemed to suggest that Trump could use his power as commander in chief to crush the protests: “That’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.” The top charges are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

What’s next

Trump will be arraigned in federal court in Washington in the coming days and will likely be asked to enter a plea to the charges.

The federal judicial system uses a random system for assigning cases to judges, and Judge Tanya Chutkan, a Barack Obama appointee based in Washington, will oversee this case. She has overseen trials of the Jan. 6 rioters, issuing harsh sentences against them. Previously, she also rejected Trump’s attempt to avoid disclosing documents to the House’s Jan. 6 committee, writing, “Presidents are not kings.” (Read more about Chutkan in The Washington Post.)

The timing of a trial remains uncertain, but it could be next year, when Trump is also set to face trials for his handling of classified documents and his attempt to hide a sexual encounter. Separately, a Georgia prosecutor is investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results there and may soon file charges.

Will these cases hurt Trump’s 2024 campaign? So far, they have not. If anything, Republican primary voters have rallied to support him. Still, polls suggest that many swing voters believe Trump has committed crimes, and the spectacle of multiple trials could damage his general election campaign. For now, he and Biden are running very close to one another in the polls.

“Trump likes to project bravado, but he is extremely angry and unsettled about this indictment, according to people who have spoken with him,” our colleague Maggie Haberman, who covers Trump, wrote. “This particular indictment touches a lot of people in his orbit in a way the previous two do not.”

More on Trump

“Despite having lost, the defendant was determined to remain in power,” prosecutors wrote about Trump. Read four takeaways from the indictment. Smith, the bearded, fast-walking special counsel, has moved quickly to investigate Trump. Yesterday, he praised the law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6. Ron DeSantis described the indictment as a weaponization of the federal government. Here’s how other Republican presidential candidates reacted. In a separate case, a Michigan Republican who tried to overturn the state’s 2020 result was charged in a plot to access voting machines.

This guide helps you track all the Trump investigations. “From the looks of this indictment, the prosecution’s case is going to be thorough and relentless,” Randall Eliason writes in Times Opinion.

Former President Donald Trump has been indicted on four criminal counts over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. We annotated the indictment to help you better understand the charges.

Read the annotated document here. →

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2308.02 - 10:10

- Days ago = 2952 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.