Trump is newly charged with violations of 18 USC 371, 18 USC 1512(c)(2), 18 USC 1512(k), and 18 USC 241.
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1. The Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, was the forty-fifth President of the United States and a candidate for re-election in 2020. The Defendant lost the 2020 presidential election.Read all of it.
2. Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway—to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.
3. The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won. He was also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures. Indeed, in many cases, the Defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful.
4. Shortly after election day, the Defendant also pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results…
Stay tuned to Marcy Wheeler ("Emptywheel") for the best, most detailed analytic insights ongoing.
UPDATE
I have now been carefully through all 45 pages of this latest indictment. Every American should do likewise.
Read the indictment.
For those who have been closely following Trump’s attempt to subvert the results of the 2020 election, there was little new information contained in the indictment. In straightforward language with mountains of evidence, the 45-page document explains how Trump, acting with six (so far unnamed, but easily recognizable) co-conspirators, engaged in a scheme to repeatedly make false claims that the 2020 election was stolen or rigged, and to use those false claims as a predicate to try to steal the election. The means of election theft were national, not just confined to one state, as in the expected Georgia prosecution. And they were technical—submitting alternative slates of presidential electors to Congress, and arguing that state legislatures had powers under the Constitution and an old federal law, the Electoral Count Act, to ignore the will of the state’s voters. But Trump’s corrupt intent was clear: He was repeatedly told that the election was not stolen, and he knew that no evidence supported his outrageous claims of ballot tampering. He nonetheless allegedly tried to pressure state legislators, state election officials, Department of Justice officials, and his own vice president to manipulate these arcane, complex election rules to turn himself from an election loser into an election winner. That’s the definition of election subversion. — Richard L. Hasen
THE CRAZY RAMPS BACK UP
Broadly,
TRUMP MOCKS IT
