Republican voters are not universally behind former guy Donald Trump: Political polls give Trump too much credit

A New York Times editorial board echo:

After three other criminal indictments were filed against him, Donald Trump was accused on Monday of racketeering. In a new indictment, Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., charged him with leading what was effectively a criminal gang to overturn the 2020, presidential election in that state.

Fani Willis Fulton County Georgia District Attorney

In fact, the grand jury indictment says Trump and 18 others violated the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO law, established by the federal government and more than 30 states and used to crack down on Mafia protection rackets, biker gangs and insider trading schemes. The Georgia indictment alleges that Trump often behaved like a mob boss, pressuring the Georgia secretary of state to decertify the Georgia election and holding a White House meeting to discuss seizing voting equipment.

Mr. Trump and a group of associates that included his then chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and one of his lawyers at the time, the former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, were also accused of a series of crimes that go beyond even the sweeping federal indictment filed this month by the special counsel Jack Smith. The former president, for example, was charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree forgery, for arranging to have a false set of Georgia electors sent to Washington to replace the legitimate ones for President Joe Biden. That same act also resulted in a charge against Trump of conspiracy to impersonate a public officer and a series of charges relating to filing false statements and trying to get state officials to violate their oath of office.

Taken together, these four indictments — which include more than 90 federal and state criminal charges implicating his official conduct during his term and acts afterward, as well as in his personal and business life — offer a road map of the trauma and drama Trump has put this nation through. They raise serious questions about his fitness for office that go beyond ideology or temperament, focusing instead on his disdain for American democracy.

And yet these questions will ultimately be resolved, not by the courts, but by the electorate. Republican primary voters, in particular, are being presented with an opportunity to pause and consider the costs of his leadership thus far, to the health of the nation and of their party, and the further damage he could do if rewarded with another four years in power.

Put aside, for the moment, everything that happened in the eight years since Trump first announced his candidacy for president. Instead, consider only what is now on reams of legal paper before the American people: evidence of extraordinarily serious crimes, so overwhelming that many other defendants would have already negotiated a plea bargain rather than go to trial. This is what he faces as he asks, once again, for the votes of millions of Americans.

“I’m being indicted for you,” the former president has been telling his supporters. “They want to silence me because I will never let them silence you.” But time and again, Trump put his ego and ambition over the interests of the public and of his own supporters. He has aggressively worked to undermine public faith in the democratic process and to warp the foundations of the electoral system. He repeatedly betrayed his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the nation’s laws. His supporters may be just as angered and disappointed by his loss as he is. But his actions, as detailed in these indictments, show that he is concerned with no one’s interests but his own. Among the accusations against him:

He took dozens of highly classified documents, some involving nuclear secrets and attack plans, out of the White House and stored them at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence, where guests of all kinds visit each year. Then, despite being asked multiple times, he refused to return many of these documents, instead working with his aides and confidants to move and hide the boxes containing them and to destroy video surveillance records of those acts, even after a subpoena from the Justice Department.

He attempted to overturn the 2020, election by using what he knew to be false claims of voter fraud to pressure numerous state and federal officials, including his own vice president and top officials of the Justice Department, to reverse voting results and declare him the winner.

He sought to disenfranchise millions of American voters by trying to nullify their legally cast ballots in order to keep himself in office. In doing so, he colluded with dozens of campaign staff members and other associates to pressure state officials to throw out certified vote counts and to organize slates of fake electors to cast ballots for him.

In one example of the personal damage he caused, Trump led a scheme to harass and intimidate a Fulton County election worker, Ruby Freeman, falsely accusing her of committing election crimes. The Georgia indictment — accusing him of the crime of false statements and writings in official matters — says he falsely called her a “professional vote scammer” who stuffed a ballot box with fraudulent votes for President Biden.

After having extramarital sex with an adult film actress, he falsified business records to hide $130,000 in hush-money payments to her before the 2016 election.

That list does not include the verdict, by a New York State court in May, that Trump was civilly liable for sexual assault against E. Jean Carroll. Nor does it include the ongoing asset and tax fraud prosecution of the Trump Organization by the New York attorney general, Letitia James.

Time and again, Trump has demanded that Republicans choose him over the party, and he has exposed and exploited some genuine rifts in the G.O.P., refashioning the party to suit his own agenda. The party will have to deal with those fault lines and may have to reconfigure itself and its platform. But if Republicans surrender to his demands, they may find themselves led by a candidate whose second term in office would be even more damaging to America and to the party than his first.

A president facing multiple criminal trials, some prosecuted by his own Justice Department, could not hope to be effective in enforcing the nation’s laws — one of the primary duties of a chief executive. (If (God forbid❗) he is re-elected, the former guy Trump could order the federal prosecutions to be dropped, though that would hardly enhance his credibility.) 

In other words, a man accused of compromising national security would have little credibility in his negotiations with foreign allies or adversaries. No document could be assumed to remain secret, no communication secure. The nation’s image as a beacon of democracy, already badly tarnished by the January 6th attack, may not survive the election of someone formally accused of systematically dismantling his own country’s democratic process through deceit.

Moreover, the charges in the Georgia case are part of the larger plot described in the federal indictment of Mr. Trump this month. 

But, Ms. Willis used tools that weren’t available to Mr. Smith. Georgia’s RICO statute allows for many more predicate crimes than the federal version does, including false statements, which she used to bring the charge against several of the defendants in the fake-elector part of the scheme.

Altogether, the Fulton grand jury cited 161 separate acts in the larger conspiracy, from small statements like false tweets to major violations like trying to get the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to decertify the state’s election by “unlawfully altering” the official vote count, which was in President Biden’s favor. Though some of the individual acts might not be crimes themselves, they added up to what Ms. Fanni Willis, D.A., called a scheme by “a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in various related criminal activities,” all for the benefit of the former president of the United States.

Those legal tools are part of a broad American justice ecosystem that is, at its core, a mechanism for seeking the truth. It is not designed to care about politics or partisanship; it is supposed to establish facts. To do so, it tests every claim rigorously, with a set of processes and rules that ensure both sides can be heard on every issue, and then it puts the final decision to convict in the hands of a jury of the defendant’s peers, who will make the weighty decision of guilt or innocence.

And that is what makes this moment different from all the chaos of the past eight years. Mr. Trump is now a criminal defendant four times over. While he is innocent until proven guilty, he will have to answer for his actions.

But almost certainly before then, Trump will have to answer to Republican voters. His grip on the party has proved enduring but not universal; while he is far ahead of the other candidates, a recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed that he is the choice of only 54 percent of likely primary voters. And about half of Republican voters told pollsters for Reuters/Ipsos that they would not vote for him if he was convicted of a felony.

The indictments — two brought by elected prosecutors who are Democrats, all of them arriving before the start of Republican presidential primaries — have been read by many as political, and Republicans have said without evidence they are all organized for the benefit of Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump has amplified that message and used it to drive fund-raising for his campaign. Although the outcome of these indictments may have a political impact, that alone does not make them political. To assume that any prosecution of a political figure is political would, in effect, “immunize all high-ranking powerful political people from ever being held accountable for the wrongful things they do,” said Kristy Parker, a lawyer with the advocacy group Protect Democracy. “And if you do that, you subvert the idea that this is a rule-of-law society where everybody is subject to equal justice.”

Mr. Trump has repeatedly offered Republicans a false choice: Stick by me, or the enemy wins. But a healthy political party does not belong to or depend on one man, particularly one who has repeatedly put himself over his party and his country. A healthy democracy needs at least two functioning parties to challenge each other’s honesty and direction. Republican voters are key to restoring that health and balance.

Congressman Jim Jordan has his butt kicked- Finally!

Echo opinion essay published in the Los Angeles Times by Robin Abcarian.

Trump prosecutor Fani Willis responds to meddling MAGA Republican Jim Jordan: Butt out, sir!

Congressman "Gym-Jim-Jordan"

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, a die-hard MAGA Republican who does not let the U.S. Constitution stand in the way of defending his leader, sent Fulton County, Georgia District Atty. Fani Willis a list of demands for documents and information related to her racketeering investigation and indictment of former President Trump and his many, many co-conspirators.

He accused her of timing the indictments to impair Trump’s presidential campaign. He implied that her office had inappropriately used federal funds for the investigation. And he alleged that she had improperly coordinated with Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith, who has charged the former president with conspiring to subvert American democracy and with illegal handling of classified documents.  “Please provide this information as soon as possible but not later than 10:00 a.m. on September 7, 2023,” Jordan wrote.

Did Willis reply by Jordan’s deadline?

Did she ever❗😀

“Chairman Jordan,” she wrote on September. 7, “I tell people often ‘deal with reality or reality will deal with you.’ It is time that you deal with some basic realities.”

First, and most important, she told the pugnacious former Ohio State assistant wrestling coach to butt out 💥😣❗

“Your attempt to invoke congressional authority to intrude upon and interfere with an active criminal case in Georgia is flagrantly at odds with the Constitution,” Willis wrote. “That violation of Georgia’s sovereignty is offensive and will not stand.”

Jordan’s attempted interference is hardly unexpected. His behavior, as the New York Times noted during the House Democrats’ first successful Trump impeachment, was “part pit bull, part rat-a-tat auctioneer.” He is nothing if not performative, appearing in Congress with his sleeves rolled up, ever ready to pin his political enemies to the mat. (a.ka. "Gym-Jim-Jordan!*)

On Thursday, turning to the federal case against Trump, Jordan tried to ratchet up pressure on special counsel Smith. He announced he was launching an investigation into whether Smith’s office tried to extort from a lawyer by implying his application for a judgeship would be looked upon favorably by the Biden administration if his client, Trump Mar-a-Lago employee Walt Nauta, became a cooperating witness.

“Please provide this material as soon as possible, but no later than 5 p.m. on September 21, 2023,” wrote Jordan.

I will have my popcorn ready. 

In responses, she gives Jordan the “Explain like I’m 5” treatment (a popular request on Reddit). Noting that Jordan is not a lawyer, she asks him to allow her “the opportunity to provide a brief tutorial on criminal conspiracy law.”

The timing of the Georgia RICO indictments, she wrote, is the result of uncooperative witnesses who required subpoenas to compel their cooperation. Nor should Trump’s status as a political candidate make him immune from criminal prosecution. After all, he was “fully aware” of her investigation at the time he announced his candidacy.

“Here is another reality you must face,” she said. “Those who wish to avoid felony charges in Fulton County, Georgia, should not commit felonies in Fulton County, Georgia.”

My favorite portion of her letter comes at the end, where she suggests that instead of wasting everyone’s time (my words), he might use his status as chairman of the Judiciary Committee to engage in “productive activity.”
But back to Fani Willis.

Her response to Jordan was notable not just for the way she shut him down but for her volubility. “While settled constitutional law clearly permits me to ignore your unjustified and illegal intrusion into an open state criminal prosecution,” she wrote, “I will take a moment to voluntarily respond to parts of your letter.”

My favorite portion of her letter comes at the end, where she suggests that instead of wasting everyone’s time (my words), he might use his status as chairman of the Judiciary Committee to engage in “productive activity.”

He could, she offered, lead an effort for increased federal funding to states and cities for victim-witness advocates, the “grossly underpaid” professionals who take care of victims and witnesses in prosecutors offices. He could push for greater federal grant funding so that the country’s backlog of untested rape kits could be cleared. (DNA from 40 serial rapists, she said, was discovered in 1,500 untested Fulton County kits dating back to the 1990s, thanks to limited federal funds.) 

Also, Jordan could find money for overwhelmed state crime labs that are unable to complete timely tests on seized drugs, including fentanyl, or on firearms used in violent crime? 

How about expanding the Credible Messengers program, which matches kids in legal trouble with adult mentors who have turned their lives around?

Or maybe, just maybe, she wrote, Jordan might want to urge the Department of Justice to investigate “the racist threats” that she and her staff have received because of her investigation.

Willis, who is Black, has been deluged with verbal assaults and death threats — not just from random Trump-loving racists, but from the former president himself, who has described her as a “rabid partisan” and “racist.”

She has weathered the storm with grace.

“It’s not what they call you, it’s what you answer to,” she recently told Maria Boynton, host on a popular Atlanta radio station. Although her name has been bandied about as a potential Democratic gubernatorial candidate in purpling Georgia, Willis said she’s dreaming of a future away from politics.

Now halfway through her first four-year term, she’d like to serve two more, then kiss the law goodbye.

“After that,” said Willis, 52, who has brought dozens of homicide cases, “I want to be a person who throws parties. I figure I’ve seen the worst of life, now I want to go do something where everybody is happy.”

I’d hire her in a heartbeat. 

@robinkabcarian

*Because #GymJimJordan was associated with a coach who molested male adolescent children in a wrestling gym and he didn’t do anything to help them. One story told was that he was complained to about the coach pleasuring himself in the gym shower and he reportedly said “yeah he does that”, like it was not a problem.

Georgia Governor Kemp says, "Special session to impeach Willis is 'not feasible and may be unconstitutional'.”

Echo report published in the Georgia Recorder by Stanley Dunlap and Ross Williams: Georgia Governor Brian Kemp chastised a state lawmaker for demanding a special legislative session in order to impeach the Fulton County Georgia prosecutor leading a sweeping election collusion case against the former guy Donald Trump and his inner circle.

Kemp joined state House Speaker Jon Burns on the list of Georgia GOP elected officials who have rejected Trenton Republican Sen. Colton Moore’s calls for a special session to punish Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for prosecuting the former president and 18 co-defendants on allegations that they illegally conspired to overturn the 2020, presidential election results in Georgia and several other states.

Holding a special session by the end of the year has always been a long shot that not only would require the governor’s support but it would have required three-fifths of both the House and Senate to sign on. Some of Georgia’s Democratic state lawmakers would have to go along with a proposed special session, making it a political non-starter.

Former buy US President Donald Trump and all 18 of his co-defendants in Georgia’s election interference case have turned themselves in to face charges, meeting a deadline for their surrender.

Kemp cast Moore’s effort as misguided, comparing it to calls in 2020, to call a special session to overturn Trump’s narrow election loss to Democratic President Joe Biden, which Kemp also rejected.

“Fast forward to today, nearly three years later, memories are fading fast. There have been calls by one individual in the General Assembly and echoed outside of these walls by the former president for a special session that would ignore current Georgia law and directly interfere with the proceedings of a separate but equal branch of government.”

Moore is taking criticism for using dangerous language colleagues have characterized as inciting violence and posting contact information for Republicans who have spoken against his plan to call for a special session.

The former mayor of New York City, (aka, the drunkard friend of "the former guy" Trump) who also previously served as Trump’s personal lawyer, Giuliani faces the same number of charges as Trump – more than any other co-defendant. Prosecutors have accused Giuliani of spearheading the effort in Georgia by making false statements and soliciting false testimony, conspiring to create phoney paperwork, and asking state lawmakers to violate their oath of office.

He has denied any wrongdoing. He surrendered on Wednesday and was released on $150,000 bond.

Brietbart "Barfcart!"

(😏Ugh!- Paleeze!) "We need to be taking action right now, because if we don’t, our constituents are going to be fighting in the streets,” he said Tuesday, on an episode of Steve Bannon’s (barf-cart!) War Room. “Do you want a civil war?"- "OMG"  "I don’t want a civil war. I don’t want to have to draw my rifle. I want to make this problem go away with my legislative means of doing so, and the first step to getting that done is defunding Fani Willis.”

On Tuesday, Burns called for a lowering of the political temperature, writing in a letter to the Republican caucus that attempts to punish Willis “flaunts the idea of separation of powers, if not outright violates it.”

Other Republican senators have floated the idea of using the state’s new prosecutor oversight commission to investigate Willis, including Sen. Clint Dixon, who said he would submit a formal complaint on October 1, the first day the oversight group will be accepting complaints.

“Once the Prosecutorial Oversight Committee is appointed in October, we can call on them to investigate and take action against Fani Willis and her efforts that weaponize the justice system against political opponents,” the Gwinnett Republican wrote in a social media post. “This is our best measure, and I will be ready to call for that investigation.”

But Governor Kemp also casted doubt on a plan that has also been promoted by Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch, the chamber’s third ranking member behind Butts County Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a potential defendant in the election case.

Governor Kemp said the new oversight board gives the public some legal recourse against local prosecutors who they believe are acting unethically.

“Up to this point, I have not seen any evidence that D.A. Willis’ actions or lack thereof warrant action by the Prosecuting Attorney Oversight Commission, but that will ultimately be a decision that the commission will make,” Kemp said. “Regardless, in my mind, a special session of the General Assembly to end run around this law is not feasible and may ultimately prove to be unconstitutional.”

A special prosecutor is supposed to be appointed to decide whether or not to prosecute Jones, who as a state senator in 2020, served as a false GOP elector and also urged lawmakers to hold a special session in order to contest Biden’s nearly 12,000 vote victory over Trump. Earlier this year, a judge disqualified Willis from pursuing any charges against Jones since she raised money for the eventual Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 2022.

In an interview published Tuesday in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Gooch said he is open to holding legislative hearings to consider punishing Willis after the regular session resumes in January. The prosecutor’s oversight process is another option, he said.

In August, Jones appointed three prosecutors to serve on the oversight commission that could be asked to investigate Willis.

“She’s politicizing this and we want to make sure these people get a fair trial and a fair shake,” Gooch told the AJC (Atlanta Journal Constitution).

Willis defended her decisions in the case as being an unbiased prosecution of concerted efforts to disrupt the election processes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and other states. On August 14, she unveiled a 51-count indictment accusing Trump and his co-defendants of racketeering.❗

Also, Trump asked a judge to waive his upcoming arraignment as he entered a not guilty plea on 13 charges that allege he was a key ringleader in an election collusion criminal enterprise.

On August 14, Fulton grand jury indictments resulted in multiple felony counts against 19 defendants, including Trump and his former personal attorneys Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, ex-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and several false Electoral College voters, including freshman Georgia state Sen. Shawn Still, a Norcross Republican, and David Shafer, a former Georgia Republican Party chairman and state legislator.

Read the 98-page indictment here.

Rudy Giuliani booked in Fulton County Jail charged with the same RICO crimes as he prosecuted in NYC

James Comey revealed his experience with Rudy Giuliani in his book, "A Higher Loyalty".  Early in his development as a prosecutor, Comey admired the New York City Police Commissioner Giuliani from afar, being how, at the time, he was his subordinate. This naivety turned to cynicism as Comey became familiar with Giuliani's puffed up management style. (page 19-22 in hard cover).  This learning curve was realized when he attended a press conference with Giuliani, where he was told to stand still, not move and be quiet because, "The most dangerous place in New York is between Rudy and a microphone."

Rudy Giuliani's mug shot released by the Fulton County Sheriff's Office, confirming that the former New York City mayor had a booking photo taken after surrendering to face charges related to his and others' alleged efforts to overturn Georgia's 2020 election results.

Rudy Giuliani Was Always Like This.

Reported in The New York Times opinion by Jamelle Bouie: Giuliani is charged with 13 felony counts, including racketeering (violating the Georgia RICO Act) and false statements and writings.

Rudy Giuliani was indicted in Georgia for his role in what prosecutors called a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020, presidential election in that state.

The district attorney for Fulton County, Fani Willis, charged Giuliani with 13 counts related to election tampering, including “solicitation of violation of oath by public officer” and “conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree.” The indictment names 18 other defendants, including former president Donald Trump, who have each been charged under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (or RICO) Act. 

Of course, the irony is that Giuliani made his name as a U.S. attorney using the federal RICO Act to undermine and dismantle the mob.

It is not hard to find commentators asking a simple question about the events of the past few years: What happened to Rudy Giuliani? How did “America’s mayor” — the man who rocketed to national fame after the Sept. 11 attacks — come to disgrace and debase himself in defense of Donald Trump? 

Why would Giuliani, the archetypal tough-on-crime and law-and-order politician, embrace a lawless effort to “stop the steal”?

It’s an understandable question, but it starts from a mistaken premise. It assumes there’s something different about Giuliani — that there was, at some point, a decisive break in Giuliani’s personality or political beliefs that placed him on his current trajectory. But there wasn’t. The line from “America’s mayor” to indicted co-conspirator is a straight one. The answer to "What happened to Rudy Giuliani?" is Nothing happened. He is the same man he’s always been.

Just look at one of the formative moments of Giuliani’s political career. On Sept. 16, 1992, thousands of off-duty police officers crowded in front of New York’s City Hall to protest against Mayor David Dinkins. “The cops held up several of the most crude drawings of Dinkins, black, performing perverted sex acts,” Jimmy Breslin, the Newsday columnist, who was present at the riot, wrote. “‘Now you got a n****r right inside City Hall,’ one officer reportedly said,” Breslin continued. “‘How do you like that? A n****r mayor.’” Other officers chanted slogans like “Dinkins gotta go!” and “The mayor’s on crack!”

The cops were there to oppose a bill that would have removed the police from the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, an oversight body that handled allegations of police misconduct, and, crucially, would have made it independent of the Police Department itself. Faced with the prospect of potentially greater civilian accountability, New York City police officers took their anger to the streets.

Tensions were already high in the city — earlier in the summer, an officer had killed Jose Garcia, a young undocumented immigrant from the Dominican Republic, leading to protests and rioting — and fanning the flames on this particular day was none other than Rudy Giuliani, who had lost to Dinkins in the 1989 New York mayoral election.

Giuliani, the author Andrew Kirtzman recounts in “Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor,” “walked to the flatbed truck outside the perimeter of the building, where thousands were gathered, and hopped up to the makeshift stage. After a handful of other politicians delivered their speeches, Giuliani took the mic and the crowd roared. Shedding his suit jacket and rolling up the sleeves of his white button shirt, he ripped into Dinkins.”

“The mayor doesn’t know why the morale of the New York City Police Department is so low,” he said, jabbing his finger in the air. “He blames it on me, he blames it on you. The reason the morale of the Police Department of the City of New York is so low is one reason and one reason alone: David Dinkins!”

Giuliani never acknowledged or condemned the racism of the police riot. And why would he? His performance galvanized supporters and almost certainly contributed to his narrow victory over Dinkins in his rematch with the incumbent mayor in 1993.

What does any of this have to do with the Rudy Giuliani of 2023? Well, if we think of Giuliani as the personification of American resilience in the face of terrorism, then his turn against democracy and the rule of law is bewildering and inexplicable. 

But, if we think of Giuliani as the scowling demagogue who stoked the flames of chauvinism and racial hatred against New York’s first Black mayor for his own gain, then there’s little other than his carefully crafted image in the press that separates the Giuliani of ’92 from the Giuliani of ’23.

And that’s the point. Even at the moment of his greatest political triumph, Giuliani was a fraught and divisive figure. 

It was the press that labeled him “America’s mayor.” That the epithet continued to stick through the subsequent decade, in the face of scandal and political failure, is only a testament to the persistence of myth in American political coverage, because it is only after internalizing the myth of Giuliani that anyone could be shocked by his steadfast allegiance to Trump.

With clear eyes, it is easy to see that the two men are of a type. They share the same demagogic instincts, the same boundless resentment, the same authoritarian manner — it is not for nothing that Giuliani reportedly tried to get the 2001 mayoral election canceled so that he could stay in office beyond the limit on his term — and the same willingness to indulge in racism and use it for their own political purposes.

If there is a question to ask in the wake of Giuliani’s indictment, it isn’t What happened to Rudy? but rather, why was it so hard for so many people to see the truth of who, and what, he always was?

For the average person who is confused by the 91 Trump indictments - think one word= "Fascism"

An echo opinion by Jennifer Rubin, published in The Washington Post:

"Someone’s going to get hurt. Someone’s going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed. And it’s not right.” 

Special Counsel Jack Smith (Shaye Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman)....who brought down the hammer and gave Trump his second indictment; now another is coming in Fulton County Georgia, when prosecutor Fani Willis is made grand jury charges public.

But the purported criminal enterprise did not stop, either in Georgia or in D.C.

Special counsel Jack Smith, for practical and legal reasons, chose not to indict defeated former president Donald Trump on charges of instigating the violence on Jan. 6, 2021. Smith wants a solid, slimmed-down case without First Amendment complications, which could arise in focusing on Trump’s “Stop the Steal” speech on the Ellipse.

Instead, Smith’s indictment portrays Trump as opportunistically taking advantage of the angry mob. That left many democracy defenders unsettled. Hasn’t violence always been part of Trump’s playbook, and wasn’t Trump egging on the violent mob?

Fortunately, Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis puts the question of Trump’s responsibility for mob violence front and center.

Right up front, the indictment handed down Monday by a grand jury in Atlanta alleges:

Members of the enterprise, including several of the Defendants, falsely accused Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman of committing election crimes in Fulton County, Georgia. These false accusations were repeated to Georgia legislators and other Georgia officials in an effort to persuade them to unlawfully change the outcome of the November 3, 2020, presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. In furtherance of this scheme, members of the enterprise traveled from out of state to harass Freeman, intimidate her, and solicit her to falsely confess to election crimes that she did not commit.

In fact, the indictment describes defendants traveling to election worker Ruby Freeman’s home to mislead and intimidate her. 

Willis alleged Trump defamed Freeman to Georgia officials (claiming she was a “a professional vote scammer and a known political operative” and saying that “Ruby Freeman, her daughter, and others were responsible for fraudulently awarding at least 18,000 ballots to Joseph R. Biden at State Farm Arena in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia.”) Trump told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger that Freeman had stuffed ballot boxes. 

In a one-hour phone call with Georgia election officials, former guy Trump insisted he won the state and threatened vague legal consequences.

Trump tweeted references to a conspiracy about Freeman to his followers. We know those people included cult Trumpzis who were menacing election workers, making threats and endangering the lives of Freeman and others.

Former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani is also accused of bantering about lies concerning Freeman (who he falsely stated had been “quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they’re vials of heroin or cocaine”). These lies reverberated through social media, putting a target on Freeman’s back and helping escalate threats against Georgia officials.

The indictment works to refocus our attention on the mob Trump and Giuliani allegedly tried to incite, to the threats the MAGA horde lobbed toward election officials and others, and to the gripping testimony from Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, at the House Jan. 6 hearings. From everything we’ve seen, these Georgians’ lives were made a living hell.
Without the Georgia case and without Trump identified as the head of the alleged criminal enterprise, there would be no justice for those victims, no accounting for the use of mob violence to corrupt the democratic process.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present” and an expert on fascism, told Insider that Trump resorted to inciting the crowd to violence when his other schemes failed “because he truly believes that violence is a way you can change history.” She added, “The thing about autocrats today is that they’re all corrupt, but they’re also violent. They use all of these tools at the same time. So, we can’t isolate one and say that Jan. 6 was just about this or just about that. It was everything. It was a process of months and it culminated in violence.”

The element of thuggishness reflective of authoritarians throughout time and around the globe should not be whitewashed in Trump’s prosecution. It’s easy to make Trump’s alleged attempted coup, run mostly by lawyers and focused on memos distorting and misrepresenting constitutional principles, seem sophisticated, legalistic and without human victims.

But, at bottom, the alleged plot rested on the threat of violence both in D.C. and in Georgia.

And let’s not forget this is all part of Trump’s playbook.

As Ben-Ghiat recalled in a recent interview, “Since 2015, he [has] used his rallies … as radicalization sites. And over and over, he told his supporters at these rallies that violence was a good way to solve conflict.” She reminded us, “How many times did he say, ‘Oh, you know, in the good old days, we used to be able to punch people, and nothing happened’? So, that discourse of violence, which encouraged January 6, is part of this.”

In December 2020, Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling held an emotional news conference, at which he said: “Mr. President, it looks like you likely lost the state of Georgia. We’re investigating. … What you don’t have the ability to do — and you need to step up and say this — is stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence.” He added, “Someone’s going to get hurt. Someone’s going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed. And it’s not right.” 

But, the purported criminal enterprise did not stop, either in Georgia or in D.C.

In some legal venue, Trump and his cohorts need to be held accountable for infusing our politics with violence and the threat of violence, for the damage done to Freeman, for the police officers wounded on Capitol Hill, and for the trauma inflicted by the mob they stand accused of orchestrating. That might be a courtroom in Fulton County, Georgia.

Indeed, that would be a service to our democracy and a historical lesson cementing Trump’s legacy as a fascist strongman.

What is it Republicans do not "get"? Donald Trump indicted in Manhattan, Washington DC, Florida and Georgia

Echo editorial opinion published in The Boston Globe:

EDITORIAL- Georgia indictment puts Trump at the top of an organized crime ring.

The district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, brought racketeering charges against the former president and 18 codefendants, showing the alleged attempt to overturn the 2020, election was not mere rhetoric but the work of an organized criminal enterprise.

Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, has been on Donald Trump’s case since he left office. One month after the former president was caught on tape, in January 2021, pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes” — conveniently just enough to overcome Joe Biden’s victory there — she started probing Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the election results in her state. And on Monday, after investigating him and his inner circle for more than two years, Willis obtained an indictment of Trump and 18 codefendants on racketeering charges, marking the fourth time the 45th president of the United States has been criminally charged since leaving office.

While the move to indict a former president has gone from unprecedented to an all-too-familiar fixture in the news over the past five months, the Georgia indictment stands out for its breadth. Unlike federal special counsel Jack Smith’s last indictment of Trump, which focused on a narrow set of crimes Trump allegedly committed in his effort to overthrow the government, Willis delivered sweeping charges that outline the markings of an organized criminal enterprise. And by doing so, the indictment helps crystalize how Trump and his inner circle operated in brazenly illegal conduct, not just through deception and lies but through intimidation tactics and pressure campaigns against lawmakers and election workers, going so far as to breach voting machines.

Indeed, by bringing charges under the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act — or RICO, which was designed to target gangs and other organized crime groups — Willis was able to bundle together a set of criminal charges that connect all the dots and underscore a broader plot. 

Special Counsel Jack Smith's indictment of Trump is devastating: A reckless criminal has finally met his match.

Rather than pursuing each involved individual for their own alleged misconduct in separate cases, this will put the whole scheme and its proponents on trial, telling the story of how a group of individuals, at the behest of the former president, conspired to achieve a common illegal goal — overturning the lawful presidential election results.

The case zooms out, in other words, from Trump’s individual actions to show that not only is he responsible for the specific instances of his own misconduct but also for crimes that others potentially committed in concert with, and because of, him and his attempt to hold onto power. His codefendants include high-profile figures like his former lawyer Rudolph Giuliani and his former chief of staff Mark Meadows — an important step that will hopefully serve to deter a future president’s cronies from playing along with such a crooked plot, knowing that they could face prison time for doing so.

As the indictment alleges, the 19 codefendants, as well as an assortment of unindicted coconspirators, “constituted a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in various related criminal activities including, but not limited to, false statements and writings, impersonating a public officer, forgery, filing false documents, influencing witnesses, computer theft, computer trespass, computer invasion of privacy, conspiracy to defraud the state, acts involving theft, and perjury.”

Those charges included a campaign to smear and harass an election worker, Ruby Freeman, by baselessly accusing her of election fraud. Some of the codefendants are charged with breaching voting machines and stealing data, including personal voter information — which would be breathtakingly hypocritical, given the former president’s purported concern for election integrity. The indictment goes on to say that the individuals listed “functioned as a unit for a common purpose of achieving the objectives of the enterprise.”

What Willis does in these criminal charges is show the American public what has been clear about Trump since he demanded personal loyalty from his political appointees and retaliated against anyone who dared to cross him: that he operates like a mob boss. And what has been clear since the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021: Trump’s effort to overturn the election he lost was not simply a matter of him lying and telling his supporters that he had won but that he conspired with almost anyone willing to help him to find some way — any way — to stay in power, Constitution be damned.

For an elected Democratic prosecutor to bring charges against a former Republican president unavoidably looks partisan. But that appearance is deceiving. The crimes Trump is accused of reach a level of seriousness that merit both the state and federal justice systems holding him accountable. And with both the Georgia case and the Department of Justice’s criminal charges related to his alleged effort to overturn the election, the American justice system — at both the state and federal levels — is so far showing that it’s working as it should to protect elections from subversion.

Preponderance of evidence against Trump guilty of conspiracy to defraud the US

What Donald Trump’s Trial Might Look Like- Echo essay published in The New Yorker by Amy Davidson Sorkin.

Presidents have been impeached, but none has ever been asked, after leaving office, to turn himself in for arraignment. The January 6th committee’s final actions could help to change that.

On October 14th, the day after the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol voted to subpoena Donald Trump, in response, released a long letter of “anger, disappointment, and complaint.” 

He said, the committee had “perpetuated a Show Trial the likes of which this Country has never seen before,” with “no Due Process, no Cross-Examination, no ‘real’ Republican members, and no legitimacy.” (And, he added, it got “very poor television ratings.”) The committee, of course, was not staging any sort of trial; it was conducting an inquiry into a series of events that culminated in Congress members fleeing a mob. But at its final public meeting, on December 19th, it voted to send criminal referrals to the Department of Justice regarding four felonies that Trump might have committed. If he wants a proper trial, the committee may have helped him to get one.

This photograph gets my vote for being the best in her career! House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rips a copy of President Donald Trump's State of the Union address at the Capitol on Feb. 4, 2020.

One of the referrals is for violating a statute in the U.S. criminal code that deals with inciting, assisting, or giving aid or comfort to an insurrection. The others are for obstruction of an official proceeding (namely, the counting of electoral votes), conspiracy to defraud the United States, and conspiracy to make a false statement. Referrals like these do not oblige the D.O.J. to begin a prosecution, or to pursue the exact charges that they specify. Initially, those choices lie with Jack Smith, who, in November, was named special counsel for the department’s investigation into January 6th, with a focus on Trump. (His remit also includes the question of whether Trump improperly kept classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.) If Smith recommends that Trump be charged, Attorney General Merrick Garland would have to sign off, and a grand jury would have to approve an indictment.

There is no exact model for what such a trial might look like. Presidents have been impeached, but none has ever been asked, after leaving office, to turn himself in for arraignment, with the prospect of arrest if he failed to comply. No judge has had to consider the question of cash bail for a billionaire who once lived in the White House, or asked the former head of state to turn over his passport. The voir dire of potential jurors would be an unprecedented spectacle; so would the mug shot.

Trump, however, would not be alone in facing trial as a result of January 6th. The D.O.J. has charged some nine hundred defendants, and has successfully prosecuted several members of the Oath Keepers on charges that match or parallel some of those in the committee’s referral. Trump, unlike the Oath Keepers, did not enter the Capitol on January 6th. 

From the White House, though, to take one example from an executive summary of the committee’s final report, he “repeatedly and unlawfully pressured” Vice-President Mike Pence to reject several states’ electoral votes in favor of fraudulent ones. (John Eastman, the former law professor who helped Trump devise what became known as the “fake electors” scheme, was the subject of committee referrals, too.)

The committee’s nine members—including the Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger—ran a tightly managed process. In televised hearings, they were able to play the snippets of videotaped testimony that they judged most effective. Prosecutors at trial, by contrast, have to deal with the live testimony of the witnesses before them. The rules of discovery mean that Trump’s lawyers would have access to full transcripts of depositions and to any exculpatory material the prosecutors possess. Evidentiary disputes, such as the one over whether Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony that a Secret Service agent told her about an altercation in a Presidential vehicle counted as inadmissible hearsay, would be addressed not by tweets but by litigation. Another point of contention would be whether Trump knew that he’d lost the election and was thus acting corruptly. Witnesses such as Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager, and Greg Jacob, Pence’s counsel, could speak to that. But Trump could call witnesses, too—and prosecutors could cross-examine them. He would also get to decide whether to take the stand himself, a decision in which his vanity would surely be a factor.

Trump has made many frivolous claims of executive privilege, including one, involving a document request from the January 6th committee, that the Supreme Court rejected. A trial would no doubt bring new objections and appeals, some of which might be more substantive. All of this would take time, and the first Republican primaries for 2024 are fast approaching. An indictment and a trial would not legally bar Trump from running for President again. (Indeed, any attempt to block him from office if he’s convicted would face what are almost certainly insurmountable constitutional challenges.) And whoever is sworn in as President in January, 2025, would have the option of pardoning Trump.

But a Presidential pardon would be limited to federal crimes. The first indictment of Trump related to January 6th may come at the state level, in Fulton County, Georgia, where District Attorney Fani Willis appears to be in the late stages of her own investigation. Willis has a repertoire of Georgia laws to draw on, including a statute on criminal solicitation of election fraud, which would seem to describe the phone call in which Trump demanded that Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “find” him more than eleven thousand votes. A special grand jury has been sitting for months, and has heard testimony from a range of witnesses, including Governor Brian Kemp. Georgia would likely be the focus of any federal trial as well, because the Trump team’s attempts to overturn the election there were especially blatant. In addition to the Raffensperger call, which was recorded, the effort to advance the fake-elector scheme in Georgia left a rich paper trail. Incidentally, Georgia trials, unlike federal ones, can be televised.

Trials inevitably have uncontrollable aspects, even when the defendants are more predictable than Trump. They are rightly harder and riskier for prosecutors than hearings are for members of Congress. What’s at stake for Trump is his freedom, not just his television ratings: the charges that the January 6th committee referred carry sentences of up to twenty years in prison. But the adversarial nature of the process can be highly productive. The committee came up with a good deal of evidence; a trial is where it can be tested. ♦

Published in the print edition of the January 2 & 9, 2023, issue, with the headline “Trump on Trial?.”

Courage and the Fulton County Georgia District Attorney

Fani Willis Strong!

Up to 50 Subpoenas Expected as Grand Jury Begins Trump Inquiry: New York Times

Courageous in the pursuit of truth and jurisprudence!

Ms. Fani Willis, a Democrat, has said in the past that Mr. Trump created a threatening atmosphere with his open criticism of the investigation. At a rally in January, he described the Georgia investigation and others focusing on him as “prosecutorial misconduct at the highest level” that was being conducted by “vicious, horrible people.” Ms. Willis has had staffers on the case outfitted with bulletproof vests.

ATLANTA, Georgia (YahooNews) echo report by Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is stepping up the pace of her investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, questioning a wide array of witnesses and preparing a rash of subpoenas to top Georgia state officials, state lawmakers and a prominent local journalist for testimony that will start next week.

The district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., is weighing racketeering charges connected to G.O.P. attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who won a surprise victory against a Trump-backed opponent in Tuesday’s Republican primary, is slated to be one of Willis’s lead witnesses when he appears before the grand jury next Wednesday, sources confirmed to Yahoo News.

“Based on her pugnacity, it looks like it’s full steam ahead,” said one lawyer representing a client who has been contacted by Willis’s team of investigators and prosecutors. “She’s much more aggressive and determined than I expected.”

HKS: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/why-electoral-integrity-matters (Harvard Kennedy School)

Willis’s investigation appears to now represent the biggest single legal threat to Trump, given that there have been no clear signs that prosecutors at the U.S. Department of Justice or the New York district attorney’s office are actively preparing to bring criminal charges against the former president. 

Willis has assembled a team of about 10 prosecutors and agents for the Trump probe. Earlier this month a group of them flew to Washington to meet with investigators from the Jan. 6th, committee, who shared details from confidential witness testimony and other material relevant to Trump’s efforts to flip Georgia’s 16 electoral votes, said a source familiar with the probe.

Initially Willis was expected to focus on Trump’s Jan. 3, 2021, hourlong phone call to Raffensperger in which the then president repeatedly implored him to “find” just enough votes to change the election results and suggested he could face criminal penalties if he did not.

But, sources familiar with the investigation say Willis’s agents and prosecutors are casting a much wider net in an apparent effort to establish that Trump’s phone call was only one piece in a broader conspiracy — potentially prosecutable under an expansive state racketeering law — to pressure or intimidate state officials and lawmakers to change the results of the 2020 election by promoting bogus claims of voter fraud.

“The process of hearing from witnesses is starting June 1,” said Jeff DiSantis, a spokesman for Willis. He declined further comment.

In recent weeks Willis’s team, including an outside special counsel and at least four prosecutors and investigators, has interviewed witnesses about efforts by Georgia Republican lawmakers to appoint an alternate slate of electors who would certify Trump as the winner of the state’s electoral votes. The team has also questioned legislators who sat for a controversial series of hearings in which Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani made demonstrably false statements about a video he claimed showed evidence of voter fraud. That assertion had already been debunked by state officials and the FBI.

Elena Parent, a Democratic state senator who attended the hearings, told Yahoo News that she was questioned by Willis’s team a couple of weeks ago and then received a subpoena to testify before the grand jury on June 22. (Parent shared a copy of the subpoena with Yahoo News.)

Parent said the Willis team — led by Nathan Wade, a private lawyer and friend of Willis’s who has been hired as a special counsel by her office — questioned her about the circumstances of how Giuliani came to appear before two legislative committees on Dec. 3, 2020, the remarks he made before the lawmakers and his questioning of witnesses he brought with him that day. They wanted to know about “everything that happened with the hearings,” Parent said. But she said they also “zeroed in” on vile death threats she received after her comments at the hearing and a mocking tweet about Giuliani’s appearance she posted later that day.

Parent had noted in a Dec. 3, 2020, tweet that Raffensperger’s office had already explained how Joe Biden had legitimately won the state’s electoral votes. “Now we are being forced to listen to bonkers conspiracy theories out of Rudy Giuliani’s team,” she wrote. “What a disservice to the public.”

Willis had publicly promised to hold off on subpoenaing witnesses before Georgia’s primary so as not to be accused of seeking to interfere in the election. But the state’s primary voting ended on Tuesday and Raffensperger himself defeated a Trump-backed opponent, Rep. Jody Hice, garnering 52 percent of the vote, enough to avoid a runoff. 

Bradford Jay Raffensperger is an American politician, businessman, and civil engineer, serving as the Secretary of State of Georgia since 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served in the Georgia House of Representatives.

As a result, Raffensperger will now be among the lead witnesses next week while multiple Georgia state officials — including Gov. Brian Kemp, Attorney General Chris Carr and others in Raffensperger’s office — are bracing for what they have been told will be a wave of subpoenas.

“There’s likely to be a flurry of people being brought in [before the grand jury] in the next few weeks,” said one witness who has been contacted by Willis’s team and told to expect a subpoena.

But there are already signs that Willis will face considerable legal challenges. Republican lawmakers have refused requests to sit for voluntary interviews and have hired an outside counsel who is expected to raise challenges to any subpoenas on the grounds that the lawmakers had legislative immunity barring them from being questioned about their official actions.

In another move that could produce a legal skirmish, Willis’s office has also contacted Greg Bluestein, the lead political reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and told him to expect a subpoena. Bluestein was a witness to events surrounding the Dec. 14, 2020, effort led by Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer to appoint an alternate slate of electors pledged to Trump despite Biden’s victory in the state. Bluestein has written that after being tipped off to a gathering of the rogue Trump electors in the state Capitol, he tried to attend but was blocked from doing so after being told it was an “education” meeting, a scenario that could be used by Willis’s prosecutors to show that the Trump electors were being secretive about what they were doing. (Bluestein declined comment, but legal experts expect lawyers for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to challenge the subpoena.)

But Raffensperger remains the star witness, with his phone call from Trump most likely the core of the case. Although he sought during his reelection campaign to court conservative Trump voters by pledging to fight for a constitutional amendment that would bar noncitizens from voting, he has never wavered from his position that there was no evidence of fraud that would change the results of the 2020 election. And he reaffirmed that with strong and pointed words about the improper pressure he came under from Trump in remarks he made in a brief victory speech to a group of supporters.

“We investigated everything and it wouldn’t have overturned the results of the race,” he said. “My thinking was the vast majority of Georgians are looking for honest people for elected office. Standing for the truth, and not buckling under pressure, is what people want.”