The First Count of Smith’s Indictment: Trump’s Campaign for Election Fraud and Pence’s Contention with the House of Representatives
Smith is trying to get Trump and six other people to reveal what they’ve been involved in in order to expose criminal schemes that reached the highest level of American government. This is the case that, if successful, can once and for all strip Trump of any pretense of good faith or good will. The outcome of this case is uncertain because it depends on Trump’s state of mind.
At the risk of oversimplifying an indictment that contains four distinct counts — conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights — it can be broken down into two indispensable components. It will have to be proven what Trump knew. Second, it will be necessary to prove what he did. Let’s take, for example, the first count of the indictment: 18 U.S.C. Section 371, conspiracy to defraud the United States. The statute is designed to criminalize any interference or obstruction of a “lawful governmental function” by “deceit, craft or trickery.”
In the weeks after the 2020 election, the legal systems was in a defensive crouch, repelling patently frivolous claims designed to reverse the election results. Since the insurrection on January 6, 2021, the legal system has changed from a defense to an offense. The men and women who penetrated the Capitol were charged first. Prosecutors pursued the organizers of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who were involved in a conspiracy to keep Trump in the White House.
At the time, Trump refused to acknowledge what his own advisers were telling him. There was no evidence of widespread fraud that would change the election’s outcome.
In the weeks after the election,Trump’s campaign sued in states that he didn’t win. Courts repeatedly rejected the Trump team’s election fraud claims.
Instead, he continued to perpetuate his false claims of fraud. During the time of Election Day and January 6, 2021, the House Jan. 6 Committee states, Trump raised nearly $250 million.
Trump, leaning on legal theories proposed by outside attorney John Eastman, wanted Pence to refuse to count certain Electoral College votes — a theory that Pence rejected as unconstitutional.
Eastman is currently fighting to retain his law license. The State Bar of California opened a case against him in June and has argued that Eastman knowingly and willfully pushed false allegations of voter fraud during the 2020 election.
The fake-elector scheme was being pursued by Trump advisers, who were pushing Republican officials in states that had Biden win to put forward alternate electors.
But as Congress was meeting on Capitol Hill, Trump was hosting a rally down by the White House. He told the crowd that they should fight like hell and march to Congress, after repeating his claims of election fraud.
On that day, Trump’s supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol, injuring scores of law enforcement officers, causing a panicked departure of the nation’s political leaders and threatening the peaceful transfer of power after Trump lost the 2020 presidential election.
The Justice Department immediately launched a nationwide investigation — one of the largest in the department’s history — to track down those who broke into the Capitol and to hold them accountable. Over 1,000 people have been arrested in connection with the attack.
The federal indictment of Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election came soon after similar election interference charges were made public against a Trump ally in Michigan.
Trump is currently facing dozens of criminal charges in two other cases. His alleged hiding of classified documents in Florida is one of the factors that has resulted in two separate investigations in New York.
Former President Donald Trump was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury on four counts related to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to court documents.
Associated Press Article Jan. 6 Activists, rioters, and Trump’s judicial investigation” by Judge Tanya S. Chutkan
The AP wrote, “Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, has consistently taken the hardest line against Jan. 6 defendants of any judge serving on Washington’s federal trial court, which is handling the more than 800 cases brought so far in the largest prosecution in Justice Department history.”
According to The Associated Press, Chutkan stood out for her tough punishment for Jan. 6 rioters. Chutkan imposed harsher penalties than the federal prosecutors wanted for the rioters.
In this case, Trump is also facing a serious Washington, D.C., federal judge with years of experience, Tobias said. The case has been assigned to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan.
The prosecutors accuse Trump and his associates of attempting to influence election proceedings in the U.S. and of ordering officials in several states to overturn the results.
Six people are labeled as co-conspirators in the indictment. They are given individual numbers but not their names in the court document.
Tobias noted that prosecutors used this charge especially during the Civil Rights era to prosecute those who intimidated and terrorized Black voters at that time as well.
After the Civil War, it was passed as a way to stop Black voters in the South from being harassed by members of the Ku Klux Klan and similar organizations.
Trump’s Attorney General in Michigan and the Case of his J.P. DePerno: How Election Fraud and State Legislation Worked Together
And all of these investigations are happening separately from the Justice Department’s sprawling and complex investigation into the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
Matthew DePerno — the most recent Republican nominee for Michigan attorney general, who worked with Trump’s team to try to contest his 2020 loss in the state — was arraigned Tuesday on state charges for an alleged effort to unlawfully gain access to voting machines.
And it works. In March of this year, Trump only had 45% of the vote in GOP polling, according to a RealClearPolitics average. But a day after he was charged in a hush-money scheme to an adult film actress, his numbers had jumped to 50%.
Because of the number of scandals and allegations against him, Trump has conditioned his supporters to rally around him.
Franco Ordoez, NPR White House correspondent, explained in an interview with All Things Considered that the attacks from Trump and his supporters are all about the process.
And their descriptions line up with that of people who could be of interest to investigators, such as former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Sidney Powell, and former DOJ attorney Jeffrey Clark.
Attorneys helped promote false election fraud claims. Co-conspirator 3 is described as an attorney who privately acknowledged that the unfounded election fraud claims were “crazy.” A Justice Department official was trying to use the department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures.
Trump is the only person who is charged and he is the only defendant in this latest indictment. But the court document scatters some clues for the future in terms of who else might potentially face charges.
“The attack on our nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” said the special counsel in a short statement before reporters. The indictment said that it was fueled by lies. Lies by the defendant, targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government.”
Source: 5 things to know about the latest charges against Donald Trump
Trump’s 3rd indictment: U.S. loses AAA rating; heat and the brain — the case of Henrietta Lacks
A court summons to appear in court on Thursday is not likely to derail Trump from being the leader in the Republican primary. If he pleads not guilty (as he has with the other indictments), we could be hearing about his trial as he makes his case for the White House.
On a lush, wild island not far from the front lines of the war in Ukraine, a family maintains the traditions of warriors called Zaporizhzhian Cossacks by training people to fight with swords, maces and bare hands. The 17th-century warriors are venerated for their insistence on freedom and self-governance. See photos of their training facilities and traditional weapons, and hear their complex history.
The next time you have a brain fart, blame it on the heat. Multiple studies have suggested that higher temps can have multiple effects on our cognitive performance, from slowing down reaction times and lowering productivity to making us moody and irritable.
Henrietta Lacks’ family has settled with the biotech company it says used cells taken without Lacks’ consent more than 70 years ago. Lacks was being treated for cancer in the 1950s when Johns Hopkins University doctors took cells from a tumor without her knowledge. The cells played a role in the development of the vaccines. Her descendants say she and other black women were not compensated for their genetics.
Source: Up First briefing: Trump’s 3rd indictment; U.S. loses AAA rating; heat and the brain
Up First: Defying the Wall Street Wall in the Era of Super-Budget Recovery in the State of the Art with a Big Credit Score
Fitch Ratings, one of the nation’s big credit watchdogs, downgraded the federal government’s AAA rating to AA+ yesterday, citing a “steady deterioration in standards of governance.” Washington narrowly avoided a potential catastrophic federal debt default in August.
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