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AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall
A D.C. grand jury indicted former President Donald Trump on Tuesday on charges related to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the Capitol riot on January 6.
The 45-page indictment (embedded below) charges Trump with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.
“This is nothing more than the latest corrupt chapter in the continued pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election, in which President Trump is the undisputed frontrunner, and leading by substantial margins,” the Trump campaign said in a statement received by PJ Media.
Donald Trump teased the indictment Tuesday afternoon, questioning the timing and calling it election interference and prosecutorial misconduct.
A trial is set for May 20, 2024.
As Trump points out, the timing of this indictment is extremely suspicious. Not only could this have happened any time over the past two and a half years, but it comes a day after Hunter Biden’s former best friend and business associate Devon Archer’s bombshell testimony exposing Joe Biden’s involvement in Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.
This indictment comes in addition to Trump’s federal indictment on 37 criminal charges in Miami last month over mishandling of classified documents, and the indictment in Manhattan over a misdemeanor campaign finance charge that was elevated to a felony by Soros-funded Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Both those cases were criticized by experts for being weak and political hit jobs.
Even Reuters noted recently that the J6 case against Trump will be extremely difficult to prove. “Although the overall picture of the prosecution’s case would likely be compelling, getting into the details and proving criminal conduct on Trump’s part would be difficult. The hardest task would also be the most valuable to any criminal prosecution — linking Trump to the violent assault on the Capitol,” the outlet reported. “Based on the evidence that has been made public to date, the government would probably struggle to show that Trump met with conspirators and plotted violence, which would be a smoking gun in any prosecution for insurrection.”
You think? The radical left has long claimed that Trump “incited” an “insurrection” on January 6, 2021, but the evidence has long belied those claims. Not only was President Trump still speaking when the violence at the Capitol began, but there’s also ample evidence that the riot was preplanned by various groups. Perhaps more importantly, Trump specifically called on his supporters to engage in peaceful protest. “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” Trump said in his speech.
The infamously partisan January 6 Committee refused to show exculpatory evidence during their hearings and even doctored evidence presented. “It was not a fair proceeding,” famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz explained last year. “And even if you say it was one-sided, it was unethical. Why was it unethical? Take, for example, President Trump’s speech on January 6th. I opposed that speech. I didn’t think it was done well. I didn’t think he should have done it. But he said at the end of the speech he wanted people to show their voices patriotically and peacefully. They doctored the tape! They edited those words out.”
While the evidence clearly exonerates Trump, the case is to be tried in Washington, D.C., where Trump is unlikely to get a fair trial.
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FLASHBACK: When Democrats Were All About Rogue Electors
BY MATT MARGOLIS |PJ MEDIA
(AP Photo/David Goldman, File)
Earlier the week, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed charges against 16 people who signed paperwork claiming that President Donald Trump had won the 2020 election, after widespread accusations of voter fraud and irregularities went uninvestigated.
The 16 Republican electors reportedly met in the basement of the state’s GOP headquarters, and, according to Nessel, signed multiple certificates claiming they were “the duly elected and qualified electors for president and vice president of the United States of America for the state of Michigan.”
“That was a lie,” Nessel insisted. “They weren’t the duly elected and qualified electors, and each of the defendants knew it.”
Now these electors face eight felony counts each. “The false electors’ actions undermine the public’s faith in the integrity of our elections and not only violated the spirit of the laws enshrining and defending our democracy, but we believe also plainly violated the laws by which we administer our elections in Michigan and peaceably transfer power in America,” Nessel said.
This act by Nessel reveals just how far the radical left will go to criminalize the questioning of election results that they won. Yet, how different is this from the effort by leftists back in 2016 who urged electors to vote for Hillary Clinton in order to stop Trump from taking office?
It’s true. On Nov. 24, 2016, Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig argued in The Washington Post that electors should defy the will of the voters in their states and cast their Electoral College votes for Hillary, even though Trump had rightfully won.
Properly understood, the electors can serve an important function. What if the people elect a Manchurian candidate? Or a child rapist? What if evidence of massive fraud pervades a close election? It is a useful thing to have a body confirm the results of a democratic election — so long as that body exercises its power reflectively and conservatively. Rarely — if ever — should it veto the people’s choice. And if it does, it needs a very good reason.
So, do the electors in 2016 have such a reason?
So according to Lessig, evidence of “massive fraud” casting doubt over a close election was a viable reason for electors to defy the will of the people. There were widespread allegations of voter fraud and irregularities in battleground states that were decided by a handful of votes in 2020 — allegations that went uninvestigated. But since the Democrat was declared the winner, the media claimed that a simple recounting of votes proved there was no fraud, even though recounting potentially fraudulent votes doesn’t disprove fraud. People who dared to point out these problems were mocked by the media and suppressed and censored by Big Tech.
But 2016 wasn’t the first time Democrats embraced the idea of trying to use the Electoral College to defy the will of the people and swing an election that hadn’t gone their way.
n 2004, John Kerry came close to contesting the election results in Ohio based on weak claims of problems with voting machines. Senate Democrats also didn’t want Ohio’s electoral votes to be counted and tried to delay certifying the results of the 2004 presidential election. John Kerry still said in 2018 that Bush took the election away from him. And to this day, countless Democrats still insist that Al Gore won the 2000 election.
None of these people were censored or faced legal consequences for their actions. And this tells you just how scary the Democrats are. They will punish those who question their power.
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BREAKING: J6 Grand Jury Delivers Indictment
By Spencer Brown | Townhall.com
AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
A federal grand jury empaneled in Washington, D.C. returned a new indictment on Tuesday evening in its ongoing investigation of the events following the 2020 election, including the events of and leading up to January 6, 2021.
But the grand jury’s indictment delivered to a judge on Tuesday remained sealed, the indictment — obtained by Townhall — confirms that Donald J. Trump is the defendant.
The indictment lists four violations of which the 45th president is being accused:
Count 1: Conspiracy to Defraud the United States
Count 2: Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding
Count 3: Obstruction of and Attempt to Obstruct an Official Proceeding
Count 4: Conspiracy Against Rights
The indictment follows a meeting Trump attorneys had with prosecutors working for Special Counsel Jack Smith last week in which Trump’s team was told to “expect an indictment.” That admonition came after a prediction from Trump himself on July 18 that he would soon face another “arrest and indictment” from the J6 grand jury after the president was notified of his status as a “target” of the probe.
What’s more, on Tuesday just before the sealed indictment was delivered, Trump took to Truth Social to say:
I hear that Deranged Jack Smith, in order to interfere with the Presidential Election of 2024, will be putting out yet another Fake Indictment of your favorite President, me, at 5:00 P.M. Why didn’t they do this 2.5 years ago? Why did they wait so long? Because they wanted to put it right in the middle of my campaign. Prosecutorial Misconduct!
In a longer statement released Tuesday afternoon, the Trump campaign said the indictment “is nothing more than the latest corrupt chapter in the continued pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election, in which President Trump is the undisputed frontrunner, and leading by substantial margins.”
Trump’s campaign asked “why did they wait two and a half years to bring these fake charges, right in the middle of President Trump’s winning campaign for 2024?” and wondering why it was “announced the day after the big Crooked Joe Biden scandal broke out from the Halls of Congress?”
Trump is expected to be arraigned in D.C. this Thursday.
Last week, Special Counsel Jack Smith announced a superseding indictment in the Florida-based case dealing with Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents that added a new defendant to the case as well as new counts against Trump for allegedly attempting to delete surveillance footage of Mar-a-Lago and sharing a plan of attack against a foreign country that he kept in his possession after leaving office.
Despite now facing separate legal proceedings over alleged hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office, and his actions after the 2020 election, Donald Trump remains the dominant frontrunner in polls asking Republican voters who they prefer in 2024.
Still, the growing list of legal battles are costing Trump — and his supporters — millions of dollars. In the latest campaign finance disclosures filed by the Trump campaign, the former president’s PAC said it spent more than $40 million on legal fees in the first half of 2023, an amount greater than the total raised by the Trump campaign over the same time period.
Earlier this summer, Trump became the first current or former president to be indicted on federal charges and, on Tuesday, he also became the first current or former president to be indicted twice on federal charges — while the Alvin Bragg hush money case moves ahead in Manhattan and the outcome of a probe in Georgia looms.
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NEW: Judge Rules Trump Protected by Presidential Immunity for 2020 Election Claims Made While in Office
By Mike Miller | RedState.com
AP Photo/Mark Humphrey
As the old saying suggests, this one ain’t over til it’s over, but a Pennsylvania judge ruled on Monday that then-President Donald Trump was protected by presidential immunity while in office for claims he made that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” and “stolen.” The operative words are “while in office.”
Specifically, Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas Judge Michael Erdos said a 2020 election worker can’t sue the former president over a tweet he posted and comments he made from the White House while a Pennsylvania state Senate committee met in November 2022.
Trump’s statements, made without evidence, claimed fraud in Pennsylvania’s election tabulations.
Erdos ruled:
Other legal proceedings may examine the propriety of his statements and actions while he was the president and whether, as the plaintiffs in this and other cases contend, it was this conduct, which served as the actual threat to our democracy. But this case is not the proper place to do so. Here, Trump is entitled to presidential immunity.
Trump lawyer Alina Habba said in a statement:
We are pleased with the Court’s decision to honor the long-standing principle of presidential immunity. Today, the Court made it clear that it is well within the president’s discretion to address the integrity of our election without fear of liability. We expect that the rest of Mr. Savage’s claims will similarly be disposed of as they are without merit.
Not to nitpick Ms. Habba’s statement, but it was (past tense) within Trump’s presidential discretion when he was (past tense) president, which Judge Erdos made clear in his decision.
Here’s more:
James Savage, a Pennsylvania voting machine supervisor in the 2020 election, filed two lawsuits — which have since been consolidated — alleging that Trump, Rudy Giuliani, two poll watchers, and others conspired to defame him. Savage says their statements led him to receive death threats and suffer two heart attacks.
Erdos ruled Trump has immunity for the tweet and the remarks at the state Senate hearing because both statements were made while he was serving as president. But the lawsuit also contains claims over a letter Trump wrote to the House Jan. 6 committee last October, which Trump is not immune from as it was written after leaving office.
In the October 13, 2022, letter, addressed to Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the committee’s chairman, the day after the Democrat-controlled committee voted unanimously to subpoena Trump for testimony about his role in the events of January 6, 2021, the former president wrote:
This memo is being written to express our anger, disappointment, and complaint that with all of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on what many consider to be a Charade and Witch Hunt, and despite strong and powerful requests, you have not spent even a short moment on examining the massive Election Fraud that took place during the 2020 Presidential Election, and have targeted only those who were, as concerned American Citizens, protesting the Fraud itself.
While the band plays on, the song remains the same.
The Bottom Line
While Trump is not protected over statements he’s made after leaving office, most of which he continues to make, the Pennsylvania judge’s Monday ruling was a win for the former president nonetheless. Where he — along with the country — goes from here is anyone’s guess.
