Third Arrest for Trump
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@George-K said in Third Arrest for Trump:
OTOH - Barr says the indictment is fair.
Former Attorney General Bill Barr said Wednesday he believes Donald Trump “knew well he lost the election” and suggested the indictment against the former president in connection with the special counsel’s January 6 investigation is fair.
“At first I wasn’t sure, but I have come to believe he knew well he had lost the election,” Barr said during an appearance on CNN.
On Thursday, Trump is slated to have his first court appearance in the case, which centers on his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his actions leading up to the January 6 Capitol riot.
The former president has been charged with four counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.
The 45-page indictment alleges that Trump “pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.”
Whether Trump truly believed the election was rigged is central to the prosecution’s case. In order to secure a conviction, Smith will have to demonstrate that Trump understood he had lost the election and was asking his co-conspirators to engage in criminal activity.
While Trump’s lawyers have said Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election are protected under the First Amendment, Barr dismissed that defense.
“As the indictment says, they are not attacking his First Amendment right. He can say whatever he wants, he can even lie. He can even tell people that the election was stolen when he knew better,” Barr said. “But that does not protect you from entering into a conspiracy.”
He also dismissed another potential Trump defense: that he was just following the advice of advisers.
“It would not come out very well for him” if Trump made that defense in court, Barr said. “I think he’d be subject to very skilled cross examination, and I doubt he remembers all the different versions of events he has given over the last few years.”
While Trump and other Republicans have suggested the indictment is politically motivated, Barr offered a defense of Smith and his work.
“He is the kind of prosecutor, in my view, that if he thinks someone has committed a crime, he, you know, hones in on it and really goes to try to make that case,” Barr said. “There’s no question he’s aggressive but I do not think he’s a partisan actor.”
He went on to suggest that more evidence is likely coming that will prove Trump knew the election was not stolen.
“We’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg on this,” the former attorney general said. “I think there is a lot more to come, and I think they have a lot more evidence as to President Trump’s state of mind.”
Barr has become a vocal critic of his former boss since he resigned from the Trump administration in December 2020, shortly after he noted the Justice Department had not found substantial evidence of widespread voter fraud.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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Obama’s or other President’s over reaches - and there are many - are different. They understood the puts and takes.
Trump doesn’t understand the constitution or the ideas behind it. He probably loves this country and you may even get some good policies out of him. But he’d rather rule the country like it was a business he owned - not as an administrative steward of a public office.
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Obama’s or other President’s over reaches - and there are many - are different. They understood the puts and takes.
Trump doesn’t understand the constitution or the ideas behind it. He probably loves this country and you may even get some good policies out of him. But he’d rather rule the country like it was a business he owned - not as an administrative steward of a public office.
@xenon said in Third Arrest for Trump:
Obama’s or other President’s over reaches - and there are many - are different. They understood the puts and takes.
I talked about this just a bit the other day, but I'd just like to point out a little something...Lincoln suspended habeus corpus in 1862 and continued to do so, even after SCOTUS ruled it unconstitutional.
Do you think Lincoln - who has a pretty nice monument in D.C. - understood the puts and takes of the office?
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@Mik said in Third Arrest for Trump:
I do.
Smith and his team have made history in the worst way by attempting to fully criminalize disinformation by seeking the incarceration of a politician on false claims made during and after an election.
This indictment is reminiscent of the case against former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. His conviction on 11 corruption-related counts was unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court in 2016, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing that federal prosecutors relied on a “boundless” definition of actions that could trigger criminal charges against political leaders.
Smith is now showing the same abandon in pursuing Trump, including detailing his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, before the riot while omitting the line where Trump told his supporters to go to the U.S. Capitol to “peacefully” protest the certification.
While the indictment acknowledges that candidates are allowed to make false statements, Smith proceeded to charge Trump for making “knowingly false statements.”
On the election claims, Smith declares that Trump “knew that they were false” because he was “notified repeatedly that his claims were untrue.”
The problem is that Trump had lawyers and others telling him that the claims were true. Smith is indicting Trump for believing his lawyers over his other advisers.
Let’s acknowledge that Trump was wrong. The election wasn’t stolen. He lost, and Joe Biden won.
But how do you prove legally that Trump truly didn’t believe his false claims? And even if you can prove that Trump lied, how do you legally distinguish his falsehoods from the lies other political leaders have told over the years? When, in politics, does making a false statement cross the line into criminal behavior? Those are questions Smith and his team must answer in court, and ones that Trump’s defense team is likely to raise.
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@Mik said in Third Arrest for Trump:
I do.
Smith and his team have made history in the worst way by attempting to fully criminalize disinformation by seeking the incarceration of a politician on false claims made during and after an election.
This indictment is reminiscent of the case against former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. His conviction on 11 corruption-related counts was unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court in 2016, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing that federal prosecutors relied on a “boundless” definition of actions that could trigger criminal charges against political leaders.
Smith is now showing the same abandon in pursuing Trump, including detailing his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, before the riot while omitting the line where Trump told his supporters to go to the U.S. Capitol to “peacefully” protest the certification.
While the indictment acknowledges that candidates are allowed to make false statements, Smith proceeded to charge Trump for making “knowingly false statements.”
On the election claims, Smith declares that Trump “knew that they were false” because he was “notified repeatedly that his claims were untrue.”
The problem is that Trump had lawyers and others telling him that the claims were true. Smith is indicting Trump for believing his lawyers over his other advisers.
Let’s acknowledge that Trump was wrong. The election wasn’t stolen. He lost, and Joe Biden won.
But how do you prove legally that Trump truly didn’t believe his false claims? And even if you can prove that Trump lied, how do you legally distinguish his falsehoods from the lies other political leaders have told over the years? When, in politics, does making a false statement cross the line into criminal behavior? Those are questions Smith and his team must answer in court, and ones that Trump’s defense team is likely to raise.
@George-K said in Third Arrest for Trump:
But how do you prove legally that Trump truly didn’t believe his false claims?
Speaking hypothetically ... would an authenticated video, audio, or textual record of Trump admitting to knowing that his claims were false do it?
And even if you can prove that Trump lied, how do you legally distinguish his falsehoods from the lies other political leaders have told over the years?
That those other politicians don't have authenticated records of them admitting to knowing that their claims were false?
When, in politics, does making a false statement cross the line into criminal behavior? Those are questions Smith and his team must answer in court, and ones that Trump’s defense team is likely to raise.
When in politics? Why make an exception for politics? Is the law or we the people suppose to let politicians lie more or lie more severely than other walks of life without commensurate accountability?
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@George-K said in Third Arrest for Trump:
But how do you prove legally that Trump truly didn’t believe his false claims?
Speaking hypothetically ... would an authenticated video, audio, or textual record of Trump admitting to knowing that his claims were false do it?
And even if you can prove that Trump lied, how do you legally distinguish his falsehoods from the lies other political leaders have told over the years?
That those other politicians don't have authenticated records of them admitting to knowing that their claims were false?
When, in politics, does making a false statement cross the line into criminal behavior? Those are questions Smith and his team must answer in court, and ones that Trump’s defense team is likely to raise.
When in politics? Why make an exception for politics? Is the law or we the people suppose to let politicians lie more or lie more severely than other walks of life without commensurate accountability?
@Axtremus said in Third Arrest for Trump:
When in politics? Why make an exception for politics? Is the law or we the people suppose to let politicians lie more or lie more severely than other walks of life without commensurate accountability?
Good question and a good point. The police are under no obligation to be truthful during an interrogation.
That those other politicians don't have authenticated records of them admitting to knowing that their claims were false?
Biden admitted he didn't have the authority to relieve student debt, and then he promised to do it. Sounds like fraud to me.
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@George-K said in Third Arrest for Trump:
But how do you prove legally that Trump truly didn’t believe his false claims?
Speaking hypothetically ... would an authenticated video, audio, or textual record of Trump admitting to knowing that his claims were false do it?
And even if you can prove that Trump lied, how do you legally distinguish his falsehoods from the lies other political leaders have told over the years?
That those other politicians don't have authenticated records of them admitting to knowing that their claims were false?
When, in politics, does making a false statement cross the line into criminal behavior? Those are questions Smith and his team must answer in court, and ones that Trump’s defense team is likely to raise.
When in politics? Why make an exception for politics? Is the law or we the people suppose to let politicians lie more or lie more severely than other walks of life without commensurate accountability?
@Axtremus said in Third Arrest for Trump:
That those other politicians don't have authenticated records of them admitting to knowing that their claims were false?
When in politics? Why make an exception for politics? Is the law or we the people suppose to let politicians lie more or lie more severely than other walks of life without commensurate accountability?
Strassel addresses some of these as well:
Take Mr. Trump out of the equation and consider more broadly what even the New York Times calls Mr. Smith’s “novel approach.” A politician can lie to the public, Mr. Smith concedes. Yet if that politician is advised by others that his comments are untruthful and nonetheless uses them to justify acts that undermine government “function,” he is guilty of a conspiracy to defraud the country. Dishonest politicians who act on dubious legal claims? There aren’t enough prisons to hold them all.
Consider how many politicians might already be doing time had prosecutors applied this standard earlier. Both Al Gore and George W. Bush filed lawsuits in the 2000 election that contained bold if untested legal claims. Surely both candidates had advisers who told them privately that they may have legitimately lost—and neither publicly conceded an inch until the Supreme Court resolved the matter. Might an ultimate sore winner have used this approach to indict the loser for attempting to thwart the democratic process?
And why limit the theory to election claims? In 2014 the justices held unanimously that President Barack Obama had violated the Constitution by decreeing that the Senate was in recess so that he could install several appointees without confirmation. It was an outrageous move, one that Mr. Obama’s legal counselors certainly warned was a loser, yet the White House vocally insisted the president had total “constitutional authority” to do it. Under Mr. Smith’s standard, that was a lie that Mr. Obama used to defraud the public by jerry-rigging the function of a labor board with illegal appointments.
She makes the same point I did about Biden and student debt:
What’s the betting someone told President Biden he didn’t have the power to erase $430 billion in student loan debt. Oh, wait! That’s right. He told himself. “I don’t think I have the authority to do it by signing with a pen,” he said in 2021. The House speaker advised him it was illegal: “People think that the president of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not,” Nancy Pelosi said. Yet Mr. Biden later adopted the lie that he did, and took action to defraud taxpayers by obstructing the federal function of loan processing—until the Supreme Court made him stop.
The she talks about election denier Stacy Abrams.
If even a former president can be hit with conspiracy charges, what’s to protect a mere congressman, or a failed candidate, or a consultant? For how long did Stacey Abrams falsely dispute her loss in the 2018 Georgia governor’s race and pressure Georgia lawmakers to alter election procedures in ways that might undermine voting integrity on the basis of untruths? Would the advisers who egged her on in that pursuit qualify as co-conspirators, like the lawyers in Mr. Smith’s indictment?
And other election deniers:
The press is rooting for the special counsel to go after Republican lawmakers who on the basis of Mr. Trump’s claims objected to slates of electors on Jan. 6, 2021. Let’s line them all up, including dozens of Democrats who objected to slates in 2001, 2005 and 2017—on the basis of lies and with the purpose of conspiring to obstruct (as the Smith indictment puts it) “the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified.”
And, of course, Adam Schiff is an example of saying something you know is false.
We now know that Rep. Adam Schiff looked at a classified surveillance warrant application against a Trump adviser, lied about its contents publicly, memorialized those lies in an official memo, and used it to help gin up an investigation that definitely impeded the function of the Trump administration. We have evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigation officials behind that application—James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok—used a dossier full of lies to get that warrant. Fortunately for them, special counsel John Durham chose not to take a flyer by indicting them for conspiracy.
And ends with a note of caution.
Smith fans will say this is a special case, the “big” lie, a one-time necessity for justice. Yet once a bar is lowered, it will be lowered further. Remember when impeachments, special committees, the stripping of committee assignments, and contempt citations were rare? Of course future prosecutors will take this precedent and expand it in ever more novel ways.
There are any number of things as certain as death and taxes. One is that politicians will lie, and act on those untruths. Now that might make them felons.
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