Donald Trump Indicted Over Events of Jan. 6th

[Webster]

(The Guardian) Trump informed he has been indicted - report
Donald Trump has been informed he has been indicted by a federal grand jury regarding the special counsel’s probe into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, sources with direct knowledge have told ABC News.

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Donald Trump indicted over efforts to overturn 2020 presidential election
A federal grand jury hearing evidence in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election has voted to indict the former president, according to a court document.

Smith has been looking into Trump’s efforts to remain in office following his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden, including the deadly 6 January 2021 riot in which his supporters overran the Capitol building in Washington DC.

Trump is already facing criminal charges in Florida for illegally hoarding classified documents from his presidency, and prosecution in New York for a hush-money payment to an adult movie star. He is also expected to face state charges in Georgia over Trump’s efforts there to reverse his defeat to Biden in the 2020 election.

Trump currently leads in polling for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination by a wide margin.

 

[Webster]

(The Guardian) Trump indicted on four charges
Donald Trump has been indicted on four counts involved with trying to overturn the 2020 election by special counsel Jack Smith.

The former president faces the charges:
--Conspiracy to Defraud the United States
--Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding
--Obstruction of and Attempt to Obstruct an Official Proceeding
--Conspiracy Against Rights

The indictment lists six co-conspirators but does not name them: four attorneys, a justice department official and a political consultant.
-Indictment: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149.1.0_1.pdf

 

[Webster]

(The Guardian) Indictment includes six co-conspirators
The indictment lists six co-conspirators but does not name them. They are:

--Co-Conspirator 1: An attorney who was willing to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies that the Defendant’s 2020 re-election campaign attorneys would not.
--Co-Conspirator 2: An attorney who devised and attempted to implement a strategy to leverage the Vice President’s ceremonial role overseeing certification proceeding to obstruct the certification of the presidential election.
--Co-Conspirator 3: An attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud the Defendant privately acknowledged to others sounded “crazy.” Nonetheless, the Defendant embraced and publicly amplified Co-Conspirator 3’s disinformation.
--Co-Conspirator 4: A Justice Department official who worked on civil matters and who, with the Defendant, attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud.
--Co-Conspirator 5: An attorney who assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.
--Co-Conspirator 6: A political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins writes that the co-conspirator 1 will likely be Rudy Giuliani, who served as Trump’s attorney at the time in the wake of his 2020 presidential election loss.


Politico’s Kyle Cheney writes that the second co-conspirator appears to be John Eastman, who was in the vanguard of lawyers plotting schemes involving “fake electors” and other ploys to help Trump thwart Joe Biden’s win in 2020.

 

[Webster]

(The Guardian) Trump indicted in 2020 election interference probe - summary
A grand jury has indicted Donald Trump for multiple alleged crimes in connection with his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The indictment was filed by the special counsel Jack Smith in federal district court in Washington DC. It accuses the former president of charges including conspiring to defraud the United States government, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiring against rights, and obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding.

The 45-page indictment lays out in stark detail how Trump knowingly spread false allegations about fraud, convened false slates of electors, and attempted to block the certification of the election on January 6. Federal prosecutors said Trump was “determined to remain in power” in conspiracies that targeted a “bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election”.

Prosecutors said that for two months after his election loss, Trump spread lies to create an “intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger” and “erode public faith in the administration of the election”. They cited an example in Georgia, where Trump claimed more than 10,000 dead people voted in four days even after the state’s top elections official told him that was not true.

The indictment included six un-indicted co-conspirators as part of Smith’s probe, including four unnamed attorneys who allegedly aided Trump in his effort to subvert the 2020 election results, as well as an unnamed justice department official and an unnamed political consultant.

While unnamed in the document, the details in the indictment show that those people include Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and Jeff Clark, a former Department of Justice employee.

The indictment filed this evening is the third criminal case filed against the former president and current frontrunner in the 2024 GOP presidential race. In a lengthy statement issued as the indictment was released, Trump’s campaign called the indictment “nothing more than the latest corrupt chapter” in what it characterized as a politically motivated “witch hunt”.

 

[Webster]

(The Guardian) In the minutes after the Trump indictment was filed in federal district court in Washington, conservative commentators rapidly scrambled to his defense. Rightwing pundits lined up to compare the charges to “criminalizing thoughts” and the dropping of “fifteen dozen” atomic bombs – and that was just on Fox News.

Rightwing TV channel Newsmax, which has drained some of Fox News’s audience in recent months, brought on Rudy Giuliani, an unnamed co-conspirator in Tuesday’s indictment, who railed for seven minutes about Hillary Clinton’s emails and Biden being a “crooked president”.

In America’s rightwing media ecosystem it was a largely united front. News outlets repeatedly pressed the idea that Trump’s free speech was being criminalized: that the former president had done nothing more than talk about the election being stolen.

The effort, perhaps deliberately, ignored prosecutors’ allegations that Trump had convened false slates of electors and attempted to block the certification of the election on 6 January.

One America News Network pivoted to Hunter Biden – always a source of interest among right-wing news – with an OANN correspondent pushing an emerging conspiracy theory that the Trump indictment was timed to coincide with Biden Jr’s tax charges trial.

Elsewhere, a senior editor of the Blaze website suggested that the Republican-led House should force a government shutdown – which could see about 800,000 federal employees furloughed or forced to work without pay – in the hope that the case against Trump would collapse.

Perhaps the most berserk take, however, was the one pushed by Trump’s own campaign. “The lawlessness of these persecutions of President Trump and his supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union, and other authoritarian, dictatorial regimes,” the campaign posted to Truth Social. On a day when the rightwing media seemed willing to do and say anything to defend their man, none of them was willing to go as far as that.

 

[Black Angel]

But.. but it was just a tourist visit! They even had an adorable granny.. the poor thing looked lost, but she seemed so sweet, like she would knit you a nice Confederate flag blanket with matching tea cozies!

I don't believe it, I know for a fact that Hillary Clinton, Hunter Biden and his PENIS, and BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA was all in on it!

And it was all masterminded by Ray Epps.. who just happened to find it in Ashley Biden's diary.. while she was showering with her father..

*adjusts tin foil hat*

Did I miss any body?

And serious note, why is some of the GOP piling on to Trump after literal years of silence and gaslighting?

Is he no longer in possession of the kompromat that kept them under his thumb all these years?

A man like Trump doesn't have friends, he has co-conspirators, handlers and victims (extortion, fraud and otherwise.)

 

[Webster]

Did I miss any body?

No, I think you hit the high points there, Angel.

 

[Black Angel]

I want to know who the SCOTUS justices were when Sidney Powell said she knew of at least 2 that were on board.

My most obvious guess is the Supreme Court Jester Clarence Thomas, and Alito.

But because she said at least, that means possibly one other.

And Ginni Thomas should be among those indicted, but she is above the law.. so I'm not holding my breath..

 

[Webster]

(The Guardian) Donald Trump last week pleaded not guilty to charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election by conspiring to block Congress from confirming Joe Biden’s victory over him. He also pleaded not guilty to charges that he obstructed the certification by directing his supporters to descend on the Capitol on the day of the January 6 attack.

He is also accused of – and has pleaded not guilty to – scheming to disrupt the election process and deprive Americans of their right to have their votes counted. John Lauro slammed the indictment as politically motivated and full of holes. He said: This is what’s called a Swiss cheese indictment – so many holes that we’re going to be identifying.

Lauro suggested that his side would argue that Trump’s actions were protected by his constitutional right to free speech as well as presidential immunity. Taking aim at Biden, the Democratic incumbent, Lauro added: This is the first time in history that a sitting president has used his justice department to go after a political opponent to knock him out of a race that creates grave constitutional problems.

Lauro confirmed that he planned to file a motion to dismiss the conspiracy charges, as well as another to transfer the case from Washington DC’s federal courthouse to one in West Virginia, a state where Trump won 69% of the votes in 2020, his second largest margin of victory in a state after Wyoming.

“We would like a diverse venue and diverse jury to have an expectation that will reflect the characteristics of the American people,” he said. “I think West Virginia would be an excellent venue.”

Lauro was brought on to Trump’s legal team in mid-July. He has defended a string of controversial clients who include Dewayne Allen Levesque – manager of the Pink Pony nightclub in Florida who was acquitted of charges of racketeering, conspiracy, and aiding and abetting prostitution – and the disgraced NBA referee Tim Donaghy, who admitted to taking payoffs from bookies in exchange for a one-year, three-month prison sentence.

Trump will not accept a plea deal in the criminal conspiracy charges, Lauro told CBS.

 

[Webster]

And Ginni Thomas should be among those indicted, but she is above the law..

There's a difference between unethical - which no one argues against w/regards to Ms. Thomas - and illegal; its' like the alleged ethics breaches agst. some of the justices, Angel.

Unethical? Yeah, by today's standards.
Illegal? No, because you don't retroactively apply today's rules/laws to past events.