The indictment of the traitor and coward Donald J. Trump ends thus, on count four, Conspiracy Against Rights, namely the very right to vote:
“DONALD J. TRUMP did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree with co-conspirators, known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States — that is, the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.”
America’s most extraneous citizens are laughably arguing that Jack Smith’s indictment isn’t valid because it cites laws that are simply too old to have any relevance today. (Wait until they hear about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.)
But it’s perhaps amusing, and certainly intentional, that Smith chose to use the word “confederate” there. As the New York Times notes, the law in question was intended to go after Klan members and other white southerners who tried to intimidate and terrorize now-free Black people away from voting. Interesting how history rhymes.
And also interesting, and horrifying, just how integral violence was to Trump’s conspiracies to steal the election and overturn the very Republic in order to seize power.
One section of the indictment is going pretty viral:
The tweet from Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau reads, “The plan was to stage a coup and then use the military to put down any protest that ensued.” He’s reacting to #81 in the indictment, a description of a conversation between Co-Conspirator 4, Trump coup-plotter and Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, and a deputy White House counsel, on January 3, 2021. The same lawyer had told Trump the month before that “there is no world, there is no option in which you do not leave the White House [o]n January 20th.” In this conversation, the White House counsel was trying to convince Clark not to become acting attorney general, as Trump wished. There was no fraud. And if Trump seized the office, there would be “riots in every major city in the United States.” And Clark responded, “Well, [Deputy White House Counsel], that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”
In case that’s too subtle, it’s exactly as Favreau tweeted. The plan was to overthrow the United States — goddamned fucking literally, this is not some kind of Resistance Twitter hyperbole from 2017 — and then use the military to subdue the population, to attack civilians. (At the Daily Beast, William Vaillancourt notes that Oath Keepers head Stewart Rhodes, now convicted of seditious conspiracy, tried to get Trump to use the Insurrection Act.)
Let us keep our eye on that ball, because that Trump-sanctioned violence bleeds throughout this indictment, and was integral to their plot. January 6 wasn’t an accident that got out of hand. It was what they were counting on.
Rachel Maddow talked about this a lot last night.
On January 4, when a Trump adviser told Co-Conspirator #2, AKA coup-plotter attorney moron John Eastman, that “[Y]ou’re going to cause riots in the streets,” Eastman “responded that there had previously been points in the nation’s history where violence was necessary to protect the republic.”
The violence was part of the plan.
And then of course we flip over to the part of the indictment that describes January 6 itself. Trump had tweeted on December 19, after lying to his supporters for weeks about a stolen election, “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” And he kept reminding them to RSVP to the insurrection. And he kept lying to them and telling them Mike Pence had the authority to delay or otherwise stop the certification of the election, even though he had been told one-thousand fucking times at that point that he did not.
Just ginning them up and ginning them up and ginning them up.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes he’s pressuring Mike Pence to do something Mike Pence clearly had no authority to do, something Eastman conceded he didn’t want the Supreme Court weighing in on, because of how he knew they would have laughed it out of their courtroom.
Pence’s chief of staff started to get worried for Pence’s safety on January 5, when Trump told Pence that he was going to have to “publicly criticize him.”
Trump told his advisers on January 5 that the crowd the next day would be “angry.”
And Trump kept lying and tweeting and saying Mike Pence could change the outcome of the election, and he kept ginning them up and kept ginning them up.
Speaking to the crowd the morning of January 6, Rudy Giuliani called for “trial by combat.” And John Eastman ginned them up. And Trump famously ginned them up. Trump told them, “when you catch somebody in a fraud, you’re allowed to go by very different rules.”
At the Capitol, the riots were well underway, and then the invasion, and Trump refused to issue a statement trying to rein them in. He instead tweeted at 2:24 p.m. that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage.” One minute later they had to get Mike Pence the fuck out of there.
“Hang Mike Pence!” “Where is Pence?” “Bring him out!” “Traitor Pence!” They hung nooses and erected gallows, in case any of that was too subtle.
Even when Trump finally started calling his hordes off, his statements included lines about “this is what happens. These people are really angry. This is what happens.” Look what you made them do.
At 11:44 p.m. that night, as Congress was finally going about the task of finishing its constitutional duty, John Eastman emailed Mike Pence’s lawyer to beg him to do just one little tiny crime and please just adjourn for 10 days.
The election was certified 3:41 a.m. January 7.
(We are dramatically writing this from the indictment, but lawd we also remember it personally.)
The violence was part of the plan. It was necessary and they were counting on it. If they had to use it themselves against America — with their new fascist powers and a military that had to do anything Dear Leader demanded, even if it was illegal — so be it. Laws are for little people.
Besides, Trump had just incited a terrorist attack against the very Republic. What would have been so wrong about using the military to do another one?
There are a lot of things to focus on with these indictments, but again, it’s simple:
“The purpose of the conspiracy was to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the federal government function by which those results are collected, counted and certified.”
By whatever means necessary, apparently.
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