The January 6 Indictment Is HERE – And It’s Bulls***
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So finally, the other shoe dropped.
Yesterday, Jack Smith, the special counsel who was appointed to investigate Donald Trump's activities surrounding the election of 2020 and January 6th, and also appointed to look into his handling of classified documents, he has now filed a second case against Donald Trump.
The classified documents case is going to be held down in Florida.
Now, he has filed a federal indictment Alleging multiple crimes with regard to January 6th and election 2020.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump was indicted Tuesday in an unprecedented criminal case accusing the former president of trying to subvert the will of American voters through his attempts to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election.
Here was Jack Smith yesterday announcing the indictment and making it all about January 6th.
And as we'll see, this is sort of fascinating because it's political.
I mean, when I say it's political, I don't just mean that he is saying things that are political in nature.
I mean that this indictment itself is political.
See, in order for an indictment to actually have any teeth, the crimes that are statutory in nature, the elements of the crimes must be fulfilled.
Alleging that somebody did a bad thing to you doesn't make it a crime.
If I say something mean to you, you may not like it.
I may be being a jerk, but that doesn't mean that I just committed a crime.
A crime is a statutorily defined thing, and you have to hit the elements of that crime In order for him to go to jail over that crime.
The problem in this particular case is that there are a lot of things that a lot of people don't like about what Donald Trump did between the election of 2020 and January 6th.
I think, for example, he was not telling the truth when he suggested that the election had actually been won by him, that formal voter fraud, not just, you know, media rigging the election through informal means or changing of voter rules, but actual formal voter fraud changed the outcome of the 2020 election.
I think he knew that was not true and I think that he was lying about that, but I can't prove it.
Not only can I not prove it, the evidence, you know, again, is somewhat speculative because maybe he truly believed, this is gonna be his defense, that voter fraud did decide the 2020 election.
I think that Donald Trump did something that was, frankly, false.
And I think that he was lying to people when he suggested, between the election and January 6th, that Mike Pence had the unilateral ability to overturn election results.
That's not the way the Constitution is written.
However, could there be a legal theory to that extent that Donald Trump actually believed?
Sure, there could be.
Me thinking that Donald Trump did a bad thing does not make the bad thing a crime.
And when you start making bad things a crime, things you don't like a crime, free speech a crime, specious legal theory is a crime, now you are encroaching on actual American freedoms just to get Donald Trump.
And that's what Jack Smith is doing here.
Because as we will see, and we're going to go through the indictment in great detail today, as we will see, the things that Jack Smith is alleging are mainly things that are just, like, not good.
Like, not good things that are not provable crimes.
And he is stretching the definition of crimes to fit those not good things because he had a mandate, as all special counsels do, which is indict.
And as the old saying goes, once you get a case in front of a grand jury, they'll indict a ham sandwich.
And for Jack Smith, who's bringing this case in Washington, DC, it's almost being treated,
I think, legally as a backup to the classified documents case in Florida.
The classified documents case in Florida is the most significant legal threat to Donald Trump
because he appears to have fulfilled the elements of the crime.
Leave aside the double standard with Hillary Clinton, if you are just a jury looking at whether Donald Trump
did the things alleged in the indictment and do those fulfill the elements of the crime
with regard to classified documents, the answer is likely yes in the state of Florida.
The problem for Jack Smith is it's in the state of Florida.
You may get a juror who's willing to basically say, I don't think it's fair that you're trying him at all.
So the backup is file a bunch of real stretch charges in Washington DC where everybody hates Donald Trump's guts and hope that they're going to send him to jail on those bases.
Same thing that Manhattan DA is doing over in Manhattan with regards to these ridiculous Stormy Daniels charges.
He's figuring it's a Manhattan jury.
They hate Donald Trump.
They'll put him in jail.
And this is where it starts to seem incredibly political.
Again, not just political because everything is political, but political in the sense that there is an overt attempt at this point to stretch the law to get Donald Trump.
Here's Jack Smith yesterday announcing the charges.
Today, an indictment was unsealed, charging Donald J. Trump with conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding.
The indictment was issued by a grand jury of citizens here in the District of Columbia, and it sets forth the crimes charged in detail.
I encourage everyone to read it in full.
The attack on our nation's capital on January 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy.
As described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies.
Lies by the defendant, Targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the US government, the nation's process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election.
Okay, what he just alleged right there is not a crime.
Okay, January 6th, I agree, was really bad.
I think January 6th was terrible for America.
I'm not somebody who actually, you know, whitewashes January 6th or pretends that riots in general are okay as long as they're coming from my side.
I don't like riots.
I don't like violence against police officers.
I don't think that the riots in the Capitol were Going to achieve anything that was remotely approached by constitutional law.
I do think that the attempt to label everybody who's at the protest a rioter and everybody who is at the riot a rioter because a lot of people are just kind of wandering through the halls of Congress there.
Do I think that that's overblown?
Yes.
Am I somebody who has whitewashed or downplayed the egregious sight of people assaulting people on January 6th at the Capitol building?
No.
Do I think that it matches up against the 2020 riots, the most damaging riots in American history, the BLM riots across America?
No, I don't actually.
But, put all of that aside, what Jack Smith is saying, which is January 6th is bad and Donald Trump lied and that's the thing that's bad and therefore it's a crime, that is not a crime.
Even if you believe that Donald Trump's words fueled people into believing that they could overthrow the election and that therefore they went and they did the thing.
That is not a crime.
They're not charging him with incitement.
If they actually wanted to charge that crime, you'd have to charge incitement.
That's an actual crime.
If I incite a riot, that means that I go to a crowd and I say, let's go storm that building right there, right now, let's do it.
That's incitement.
There were some people who have been charged with incitement on January 6th.
Donald Trump is not one of those people.
That is not in this incitement.
And yet it's very clear that that's what Jack Smith is trying to charge him with, which means that it's political.
He's charging him for a crime that he is not alleging.
That is a serious, serious legal problem.
Now, the procedure in this case, and then we'll get to the actual content of the indictment, which I say is highly, highly political.
This thing is going to move fast.
Jack Smith says they're going to seek a speedy trial.
They're going to try and do it before the election.
Donald Trump is presumably going to claim that this needs to happen after the election because he's already facing two legal legal cases.
He's likely to face a fourth.
Right?
He's going to be, before the election, facing down charges in Georgia, in Washington, D.C., in Florida, and in New York.
And so he's going to argue, and his lawyers are going to argue, as Andy McCarthy has pointed out, that that makes him kind of a busy man as he's running a presidential election, so maybe they ought to delay the trial beyond the election.
We'll see if a judge buys that or not.
The judge in this particular case, it ought to be noted, is a U.S.
District Court judge named Tanya Chutkin, who's an Obama appointee.
She also happens to be the only federal judge in Washington, D.C.
who has sentenced January 6th defendants to sentences longer than the government request.
She's also the same person who, as a lawyer, represented Theranos at Boies Schiller and presided as a judge in the U.S.
House lawsuit against Fusion GPS.
This is a very left-wing judge.
There's been a point in this case, and it's fair for the left to point out that a Trump appointee is presiding over the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.
It is certainly fair to point out that Jack Smith is filing in a court in Washington, D.C.
with probably the most Trump-hating judge in Washington, D.C.
In Washington, D.C., with a Trump-hating jury, presumably, which is why he feels that he can get away with this.
Here he says they're going to seek a speedy trial and see if they can get Trump in the dock before the election.
Since the attack on our Capitol, the Department of Justice has remained committed to ensuring accountability for those criminally responsible for what happened that day.
This case is brought consistent with that commitment, and our investigation of other individuals continues.
In this case, my office will seek a speedy trial so that our evidence can be tested in court and judged by a jury of citizens.
OK, so here is here is the problem with with all of this.
Trump is going to come to court in Washington, D.C.
on Thursday.
So tomorrow he's going to show up in court.
We're going to get the whole.
OJ Simpson-style media coverage of the cars leaving Mar-a-Lago, of the plane arriving in Washington, D.C., and Trump going to the courthouse.
And when you aggregate all these charges, attempting to obstruct an official proceeding, for example, carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
I mean, these are really, really serious charges.
Will he be sentenced to that, even if he is convicted of those things?
Who the hell knows?
But the big problem here is that this is a political prosecution, and you can tell by the charges.
You can tell by the charges.
Again, this is coming from somebody who has a legal analyst, right?
As a lawyer.
I think that the charges against Trump in Florida are actually pretty strong.
The charges here are beyond weak, which means this is highly political for Merrick Garland's DOJ.
We'll get to that in just one moment.
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Okay, so let's go through this actual indictment.
So, there are essentially three criminal conspiracies that Jack Smith accuses Donald Trump of participation in.
This is page two of the indictment.
quote, shortly after election day, the defendant pursued unlawful means
of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.
In doing so, the defendant perpetrated three criminal conspiracies.
One, a conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit
to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function
by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified
by the federal government in violation of 18 U.S. Code section 371.
Okay, that is not what the statute is for.
That's not what the statute is for.
This statute, historically speaking, has been about stealing money from the federal government.
So this is a real stretch charge.
Hey, if you are going to accuse Donald Trump of fraud, this is not criminal fraud.
As National Review points out, quote, As the Supreme Court reaffirmed just a few weeks ago, fraud in federal criminal law is a scheme to swindle victims out of money or tangible property.
Mandacious rhetoric in seeking to retain political office is damnable, but it is not criminal fraud, although that is what Smith has charged.
Indeed, assuming a prosecutor could prove beyond a reasonable doubt Trump hadn't actually convinced himself the election was stolen from him, hyperbole, and even worse, our protected political speech.
So, again, the notion that it is defrauding the United States, not like you stole money from the post office, like, or embezzled from the EPA, but him actively challenging the election beyond the time when the Constitution says the states certify, that that amounts to fraud?
Nope, it doesn't fulfill that criminal statute.
Okay, that's conspiracy number one they're alleging.
Conspiracy number two.
A conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6th congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified in violation of 18 U.S.
Code 1512K.
Okay, so here the idea is that he was attempting to obstruct and impede a process of justice going forward.
Obstruction of justice.
When they said obstruction of justice, I thought that the charges, you know, before they released them, I thought maybe what the charges were going to be is that Donald Trump called up witnesses and threatened them to lie.
He said, I want you to lie to the January 6th committee, or I want you to lie to the Jack Smith office in this proceeding.
They don't allege any of that.
When they say obstruction of justice here, what they mean is that he was attempting to obstruct the legal counting of the votes.
But they don't have evidence for that.
What they say is that he had a specious legal theory and he articulated a lot.
That does not amount to obstruction.
Obstruction would be, I will threaten you with a thing.
I'm going to threaten you with death.
I'm going to threaten your family.
I'm going to threaten things in order to stop you from doing the thing.
What's the threat?
Where is it?
Okay, the elements are not fulfilled here.
We'll go through the indictment.
They're not even alleged, right?
This is my biggest problem.
You can tell when a case is bullcrap by what exactly is being alleged.
And so, for example, if you go back to the Derek Chauvin criminal case, I kept pointing out that the entire media, the entire country, kept saying this is a case about race.
And I kept saying, it's not even alleged in court that this is a case about race.
So when there's a gap between the public perception of a case and what's actually being alleged, well, then you can tell that the case is specious.
The same thing is true with regard to Donald Trump's case about election fraud.
I kept pointing out that Donald Trump did not even legally allege the fraud that he kept saying to the American public over and over in court, which means there's a gap, which means somebody is not being honest.
Okay, well, they are alleging here that Donald Trump obstructed justice, and then they provide no evidence of the actual obstruction.
There's no allegation that matches the crime that they're actually attempting to indict him on.
That gap means somebody is being dishonest, and in this case, it's Jack Smith.
And finally, a conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one's vote counted in violation of 18 U.S.
Code 241.
Again, this is not the right interpretation of the law, not even remotely.
This law was written, it was a civil rights law.
It was written in the aftermath of the Civil War to stop, essentially, white racists from preventing black people from voting or throwing their votes in the river or something.
That's not what happened here.
If you have a specious legal case and it ends up not being verified by a court, That does not mean you violated the law if the basic idea is that every time I advance a legal theory and the legal theory ends up not being justified by a court, somehow I have conspired against the right to vote.
Like, that means I can't ever file a voter case.
I mean, by this particular case.
Every time Democrats file a gerrymandering case on some legal theory, And they get overruled.
Then, presumably, they have now conspired to prevent somebody's right to vote, because the gerrymandering was legal, and they said the gerrymandering was illegal, but then that was turned down, so obviously they were trying to deprive somebody of their right to vote in accordance with the law.
That's not how any of that works.
Advancing specious legal theories is fully protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
We'll get to more of the indictment in just one second.
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Okay, so.
Back to the indictment.
So, the three criminal conspiracies alleged are not fulfilled.
Again, they were a conspiracy to defraud the United States.
The fraud statute doesn't apply.
A conspiracy to obstruct justice.
That doesn't apply because specious legal theories that you attempt to advance, that's not obstructing justice.
And a conspiracy against the right to vote and stopping people from having their votes counted, again, a specious legal theory does not mean that you have now violated somebody's right to vote.
That's not what any of that means.
And then we get to some of the actual allegations in the indictment.
So, they say the defendant's conspiracy to impair, obstruct, and defeat the federal government function through dishonesty, fraud, and deceit included the following manner and means.
First, the defendant and co-conspirators used knowingly false claims of election fraud to get state legislators and election officials to subvert the legitimate election results and change electoral votes for the defendant's opponent, Joe Biden, to electoral votes for the defendant.
That is, on the pretext of baseless fraud claims, the defendant pushed officials in certain states to ignore the popular vote, disenfranchised millions of voters, dismissed legitimate electors, and ultimately caused the ascertainment of and voting by illegitimate electors in favor of defendant.
Okay, so there's a key word in that particular paragraph, knowingly.
Knowingly false claims of election fraud.
So, they're gonna have a real tough time with this one.
They have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump absolutely knew that the election fraud claims were false?
Not that he should have known, not that people told him, but that he actively knew that the election fraud claims were false and he promoted them anyway for his own personal benefit.
Now, there are people around Trump who have basically said as much, right?
Bill Stepien, former campaign manager, a bunch of people around Trump have said, yeah, we knew that this kind of stuff was not true and we were still promoting it to the public.
But by we, do they mean that Donald Trump personally told them?
That allegation is not included in the indictment.
If it were, if there were some allegation here, a witness said, Donald Trump told me, yeah, I lost the election, do it anyway.
That would be a problem for Donald Trump.
If they said, if there were a tape like there is in the classified documents case where he's like, I know I lost the election.
The election front stuff is crap.
Let's do it anyway.
Joe Biden can't be president.
That would be a problem for him.
Knowingly is a very high standard.
It requires intent.
And as I've said for a very long time about the president of the United States, it is very difficult to establish intent for Donald Trump on intent crimes.
Very tough.
Because again, his intent shifts moment to moment.
Like almost every day, he shifts his intent.
And he fully believes the thing that he is saying today.
And he fully believed the thing that he was saying yesterday.
Okay, B. The defendant and co-conspirators organized fraudulent slates of electors in seven targeted states attempting to mimic the procedures that the legitimate electors were supposed to follow under the Constitution and other federal and state laws.
This included causing the fraudulent electors to meet on the day appointed by federal law on which legitimate electors were to gather and cast their votes, cast fraudulent votes for the defendant, And signed certificates falsely representing they were the legitimate electors.
Some fraudulent electors were tricked into participating based on the understanding their votes would be used only if the defendant succeeded in outcome-determinative lawsuits within their state, which the defendant never did.
The defendant and co-conspirators then caused these fraudulent electors to transmit their false certificates to the VP.
Okay, again, that's a specious legal claim.
And you know what?
It means nothing.
Nothing.
If Donald Trump convinces me to write a letter to my congressperson threatening that if my congressperson does not do X, Y, or Z, I become the legal congressperson from that district, that is a fraudulent legal claim that has no merit.
Is that a crime?
Hard to say that that's a crime.
It's a specious legal theory.
Specious legal theories are fully protected here in the United States of America, or they were until five minutes ago.
C. The defendant and co-conspirators attempted to use the power and authority of the DOJ to conduct sham election crime investigations and to send a letter to the targeted states that falsely claimed that the DOJ had identified significant concerns that may have impacted the election outcome.
Now again, all of this is really bad stuff, right?
It's not just specious legal theory, it's pretty obvious specious legal theory, in absence of evidence.
fraudulent electors as a valid alternative and urged on behalf of the DOJ the targeted
state's legislatures to convene to create the opportunity to choose the fraudulent
electors over the legitimate electors.
Now again, all this is really bad stuff, right?
It's been, it's not just specious legal theory.
It's pretty obvious specious legal theory in absence of evidence.
Also, did any of this constitute a crime?
If Donald Trump says to a lower level member of the DOJ, because this is what's actually alleged, I want you to send a letter to the state of Michigan and tell them that there was fraud.
And then that lower level member of the DOJ went to Attorney General Bill Barr and said, let's do it.
And Bill Barr says, no, there's no evidence of that.
And then the letter never gets sent.
Is that a crime?
Is it?
Very difficult to say that that's a crime, that that fulfills the elements of, for example, obstruction of justice.
D. The defendant and co-conspirators attempted to enlist the VP to use his ceremonial role at the January 6th certification proceeding to fraudulently alter the election results.
And this is my favorite part.
It says that they used knowingly false claims of election fraud.
Okay, so again, they keep going to knowingly.
That's very hard to establish.
When that failed on the morning of January 6th, the defendant and co-conspirators repeated knowingly false claims of election fraud to gathered supporters, falsely told them the VP had the authority to and might alter the election results, and directed them to the Capitol to obstruct the certification proceeding and exert pressure on the vice president.
They don't have evidence of this.
They don't have evidence that he directed them to obstruct the certification proceeding, right?
He never told them to go into the Capitol building.
He obviously did not tell them to go into the Capitol.
We saw it.
We were all there, right?
And finally, after it became public on the afternoon of January 6th, the VP would not fraudulently alter the election results.
A large and angry crowd, including many individuals defendant had deceived into believing the VP could and might change the election results, violently attacked the Capitol and halted the proceedings.
As violence ensued, the defendant and co-conspirators exploited the disruption by redoubling efforts to levy false claims of election fraud and convince members of Congress to further delay the certification based on those claims.
Again, not a crime.
Not a crime.
Bad.
Ugly.
Unpresidential.
Not a crime.
And we'll get to more of this in just one second.
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Okay, so some of the allegations here are things like Donald Trump wanted to fire somebody and then didn't, right?
This is one of the allegations that is made about the DOJ, that he was putting pressure on the DOJ to send certain letters and he threatened to fire his AG.
Honestly, one of the things that Trump did repeatedly throughout his administration is threatened to fire people, and then when it turned out that he couldn't legally fire the person or create significant blowback, he would just not fire them.
So for example, on page 31 of the indictment, It says, quote, Okay, and so?
in the Oval Office on the night of January 3rd, co-conspirator four suggested
the Justice Department should opine the VP could exceed his lawful authority
during the certification proceeding and change the election outcome.
When the assistant AG for the Office of Legal Counsel began to explain why the DOJ should not do so,
the defendant said, no one here should be talking to the vice president,
I'm talking to the vice president and ended the conversation.
Okay, and so?
Like, all right, so?
And at a certain point here on January 3rd, the defendant met with a briefing
on an overseas national security issue with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
and other national security advisors.
The chairman briefed the defendants on that particular issue.
When the chairman and another advisor recommended the defendant take no action because the inauguration was 17 days away, the defendant said, quote, yeah, you're right.
It's too late for us.
We're going to give that to the next guy.
That's a crime?
Where's the crime?
At some point, you have to describe the criming.
Not the bad stuff.
I agree that a lot of the stuff was bad.
The criming.
I need an explanation of the crime.
And again, over and over, this is just like, here's a list of bad things that Donald Trump did.
I agree, a lot of those things are really bad.
I don't think they are worthy of a President of the United States.
Also, not a crime.
So, the most specious part of this particular indictment is when you get to the actual events of January 6th.
Listen to the description in the indictment of January 6th and see if you can tell me where the crime occurs.
Okay, because remember, this is an indictment.
It's not a description of the bad stuff.
We know about the bad stuff.
In fact, the bad stuff is probably the reason that Republicans had a real tough time in the last midterm election.
There are political consequences to all of this.
It's also the reason why he was nearly impeached and convicted in the Senate.
Okay, here we go.
Shortly before 1 p.m., The Vice President issued a public statement explaining that his role as President of the Senate at the certification proceeding was about to begin, and did not include unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.
Before the defendant had finished speaking, a crowd began to gather at the Capitol.
Thereafter, a mass of people, including individuals who had traveled to Washington and to the Capitol at the defendant's direction, broke through barriers cordoning off the Capitol grounds and advanced on the building, including by violently attacking law enforcement officers trying to secure it.
The defendant watched events at the Capitol unfold on the TV in the dining room next to the Oval Office.
Hey now, there's been no allegation anywhere in this indictment that Donald Trump told people to break into the Capitol and violently assault police officers.
That's why he's not being charged with incitement.
If he had, that's an actual crime he is not being charged with.
At 2.13, after more than an hour of steady violence advancement, the crowd at the Capitol broke into the building.
Upon receiving news that individuals had breached the Capitol, the defendant's advisors told them there was a riot there and rioters had breached the building.
When advisors urged the defendant to issue a calming message aimed at the rioters, the defendant refused, instead repeatedly remarking that the people at the Capitol were angry because the election had been stolen.
Now, I have a question.
Bad.
Is that a crime?
Is that a crime that he didn't say a thing on Twitter?
I'm wondering how.
So, I mean, there are descriptions of activities here about things like Donald Trump retweeting things.
Retweeting things is not a crime, as you may know.
If retweeting things were a crime, I'd be in jail for life.
I retweet things all the time.
Again, it's a description of a lot of bad stuff, and it's not a description of crime.
And that is the nature of this particular indictment.
Which is, honestly, Jack Smith should be ashamed of himself.
It's egregious.
And it is, in fact, an assault on particular rights.
Because when you overcharge, and those charges violate things like the First Amendment, or the right to purvey legal theories, even if they are specious, what you are doing is you are saying to everybody else that their First Amendment activities may not be protected.
This is going to be the defense, by the way, that the Trump campaign is going to roll out.
They're going to roll out essentially two defenses.
One, when it comes to did Trump knowingly attempt to Purvey election fraud.
They're going to say knowingly is a real strong word.
And in fact, what they're going to do is they're going to relitigate the 2020 election, and they're going to say there are a lot of reasons for Donald Trump to believe that there was election fraud.
Now, it may be that there was no election fraud to the extent that Donald Trump was talking about, but to pretend that no credible person could have ever believed that there was any election fraud, that's a stretch.
This is exactly what John Laurel, his lawyer, is saying.
Here he was yesterday.
What about the stories that these campaign funds are now paying for legal fees and you're running out of cash in that front?
Well, I'm not involved in that, but the bottom line is the way that they're trying to take out Donald Trump is through the legal process.
So he's being forced to spend money on legal defense, which should be spent on the discussion of critical ideas and critical issues.
People want to hear the issues.
They don't want to relitigate 2020.
And that's exactly what the special counsel, I should say Merrick Garland, Merrick Garland and the Biden administration had to sign off on this indictment.
And what they've really done is invited now a relitigation of 2020, but this time in a criminal court, which is unprecedented.
Okay, so what are they going to do?
They're going to bring up a bunch of charges that Trump made in 2020, and the defense is going to be, well, I mean, would he have to be crazy to actually, you know, consider the possibility of those charges?
What the indictment says is a bunch of people told Donald Trump that the election fraud thing wasn't true.
Does that mean that Donald Trump had to believe them?
How many times have you been told that a thing isn't true?
Many times, I would imagine, across the course of your life.
Did you believe it every time somebody told you a thing wasn't true?
Presumably, sometimes you believed it, and sometimes you didn't.
They have to prove intent.
So that is point number one.
Point number two is he's gonna say, like, a lot of the activity is just protected free speech, which is clearly true.
Here's Laurel explaining.
Go ahead.
He was asking for the Secretary of State to identify votes that were not counted properly and factor that in.
find him one more vote than he would need to win the state.
That's not asking for a pause.
He's asking for votes that he did not get in that election.
He was asking for the Secretary of State to identify votes that were not counted properly
and factor that in.
And by the way, that discussion took place with dozens of people on a phone call with
lawyers involved and no one was suggesting doing anything illegal.
And no one during that call said, Mr. President, that's beyond the bounds.
This is politics.
This indictment is about pure politics.
We engage in vigorous debate in this country about politics.
What we don't do is criminalize political speech.
This indictment is a game changer.
It's the first time that we've taken political speech and said, We're going to criminalize it by the party that's in control against the party that's contesting the next election where the two individuals involved are going to be running for office.
That is an incredible set of circumstances.
I mean, it is, in fact, incredible.
And the DOJ being weaponized against the chief political opponent of the current president of the United States, while that same DOJ was trying to cut a backdoor sweetheart deal with the president's son, is a wild spectacle.
And it is going to be the centerpiece of the 2024 election if Donald Trump ends up being the nominee.
And we'll get to sort of the effects of this on both the primary and the general election in a little bit.
But the fact remains that this indictment is really specious.
It's really, really specious.
Again, National Review, which is not exactly a publication known for being Trump friendly.
National Review has a full editorial today talking about how this indictment should be tossed.
And by the way, even if Trump were convicted on some of these charges, there's a good shot the Supreme Court overturns the charges themselves because they are not properly formulated.
Jack Smith's entire indicting strategy here is January 6th is super bad.
Here's a bunch of crap I'm going to throw against the wall.
That is not an indictment strategy.
And here's the thing, Jack Smith knows better.
So up until this point, I've said with regard to Jack Smith, Jack Smith is a special prosecutor.
It's his job to identify crimes and charge them.
If he sees overwhelming evidence of a crime happening, it's not his job to undo what James Comey did wrongly in allowing Hillary Clinton off the hook in 2016 over classified documents.
It's his job to determine whether the elements of a crime are fulfilled and then to charge them.
So when it comes to, for example, the classified documents case in Florida, I can't blame Jack Smith for the indictment.
That's literally his job.
But this is not his job.
This is now political.
And this is pretty obviously coming from a Biden DOJ that, again, is politically biased.
It is impossible to read this current Trump indictment without at the same time reading the fact that the DOJ did not set up a special counsel for the Hunter Biden prosecution, that the DOJ appears to have attempted a sweetheart deal with Hunter, that the DOJ pretty obviously is attempting to avoid any further investigation into Hunter Biden's finances, specifically with regard to his own dad.
When you read those two in juxtaposition to one another, it looks like the current president of the United States is prosecuting the former president of the United States.
That's what it looks like.
That's what it smells like.
And by the way, this would now make it the second time.
Because remember, it was under Barack Obama that the FBI and the DOJ were targeting Donald Trump in 2016.
So it'd be the second time that Democrats in charge of the government and the auspices of legal power were essentially targeting Donald Trump.
That's Trump's entire case.
It's why he's going to be promoted in the primaries, by the way.
Every time he gets indicted, every Republican rushes to his defense, and they should on this particular indictment, because the feeling, quite properly, is this is a weaponization of law enforcement against the former president of the United States for political reasons.
That's what this is.
And it's pretty incredible.
We'll get to the actual consequences of this in just one second, politically speaking first.
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Okay, meanwhile...
So the media response to these indictments is obviously members of the media are ecstatic about all this.
Caitlin Collins of CNN, she tried to deny that the First Amendment protects any of Donald Trump's activity here.
And it's a very, very weak case that she's making.
But what does that matter?
She's CNN.
The President was told, given advice, that under these circumstances, the state legislatures have the ultimate ability to qualify electors.
He followed that advice.
Now, you may disagree as to whether or not those things actually occurred or not.
That's why we have political debate.
We don't have criminal trials over that.
We have the discussion like we're just having.
But it matters if those things actually occurred or not, John.
Not under the First Amendment.
But it matters if those things actually occurred because... No.
Not at all.
Because under the First Amendment... It does matter if it was actually fraud.
No, the First Amendment allows... John, let me stop you there because if he's saying that there was fraud, the First Amendment doesn't allow the President of the United States to go and claim there was fraud when he was told there was not fraud and then try to subvert the election by overturning legitimate electors.
I mean, it says it right here in the actual indictment.
Okay, so in other words, if she doesn't like what you say, the First Amendment doesn't protect it.
That's a hell of a standard for the First Amendment.
Obviously untrue.
Again, this is a very significant First Amendment development.
If it turns out you can advance a spurious legal theory, or advance an opinion which turns out to be wrong, or even if you believe a thing that is false.
Now you're not allowed to articulate a thing that others have told you is false but you believe to be true?
That's now the standard.
Neal Katyal, who is a legal analyst as well, he says this is one of the most significant cases in American history.
It is, but not for the reasons that the left believes it is.
Why do you think it was so important to do that for so many pages in this indictment?
Yeah, so it's a shouting indictment, Joy.
It's not just one of the most significant indictments.
It is the most significant indictment against Donald Trump.
It is the most significant legal case of our lifetimes.
It is One of, if not the most significant case in United States history.
It is up there with Dred Scott.
It is up there with Brown vs. Board of Education.
Because this goes to the essential question of who we are as a people.
Do we let someone, the President, act in this way?
That is so insane.
It's up there with Dred Scott, a case that led to the Civil War and declared that black people were not American citizens and could not be American citizens.
It's up there with Brown v. Board, which ended segregation in the United States.
It's up there with that?
Really?
And notice his language.
It's, are we going to let a man get away with this as president?
Get away with what exactly?
He's no longer the president of the United States, I noticed.
And he was impeached.
Twice.
And also, what's the crime?
You're gonna have to describe the crime in order for it to be legal.
One of the most significant... Man, these people are way out over their skis.
Here's the biggest problem, you know, in terms of kind of long-term interests of the United States.
So there's the short-term problem, which is don't bring spurious indictments that may land a person in jail for not committing the crime.
Because the fact is that if he does end in jail time at all, the president of the United... former president is 77 years old right now.
Presumably by the time this trial ends, he'll be 78 years old.
Which means that if he ends up in jail for 10 years, then that's a life sentence.
He's an elderly gentleman, lest we forget.
But put that aside.
One of the things that's going to happen here, and you can see it happening, is let's say that this indictment goes forward.
Let's say the judge lets it go forward.
Let's say that the jury convicts.
It will go to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court will look at these charges.
And the Supreme Court is very likely to say, by a 5-4 vote, That these charges are spurious and it is likely to overturn them.
That's exactly what happened to Jack Smith's case against, for example, the former Virginia governor Bob McDonald.
Turned out that was a spurious case, got thrown out.
It's quite possible this case gets thrown out.
Now imagine the political fallout from a Supreme Court on which three United States justices were appointed by President Trump, throwing out a case in which Donald Trump was convicted of conspiring to overturn an election.
Can you imagine what the political fallout is going to be?
You worry about the credibility of America's institutions and you pretend that you care about that if you're Joe Biden?
The only reason to set this up is to undermine the credibility of America's institutions either way.
It's a catch-22.
If they convict on spurious charges, half the country believes that it's bullcrap and indicts the entire justice system.
That's already on the table.
And now if it gets overturned, the other half also believes that.
So well done.
This is why you should not charge things that do not exist as crimes.
And well, the political fallout has been immediate.
President Trump immediately went to a level 11, which you can understand on an emotional level, although I don't think the comparison is correct.
President Trump put out a statement.
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?
Why was it announced the day after big crooked Joe Biden scandal broke out from the halls of Congress?
All that's fair.
The answer is election interference.
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.
President Trump has always followed the law and the Constitution with advice from many highly accomplished attorneys.
So, again, not a huge fan of Nazi Germany comparisons because the truth is the Nazis didn't actually just trump up legal charges.
They literally just killed you or put you in a concentration camp.
And so did the former Soviet Union.
If they did trump up legal charges, it was like a full-on show trial in which you were forced to confess because they beat you in the back room.
So, is the United States Nazi Germany or Soviet?
No.
But is it banana republic type crap?
Absolutely.
I mean, this indictment is Banana Republic-type garbage.
For sure, for sure.
Kevin McCarthy, the House Speaker, he put out a tweet, quote,
We've recently learned Hunter received money from China, contradicting President Biden's claim.
President Biden spoke with Hunter's business associates over 20 times,
contradicting what Biden previously claimed.
Biden's DOJ tried to secretly give Hunter broad immunity and admitted the sweetheart deal was unprecedented.
And just yesterday, a new poll showed President Trump is without a doubt
Biden's leading political opponent.
Everyone in America could see what was going to come next.
GOJ's attempt to distract from the news and attack the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, President Trump.
House Republicans will continue to uncover the truth about Biden, Inc.
and the two-tiered system of justice.
Other Republican lawmakers came out in defense of President Trump.
That included people like Ron DeSantis, who put out a statement pointing out that this is a double standard of justice.
That didn't stop Trump supporters from attacking Ron DeSantis as insufficiently submissive to the former president of the United States.
Representative Jim Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said when you drain the swamp, the swamp fights back.
President Trump did nothing wrong.
There's some staunch Trump defenders who called for cutting off money for the Smith investigation.
It would be a little bit late for that at this point.
Tim Scott suggested he was concerned about the weaponization of Biden's DOJ and its immense power used against political opponents.
Democrats, of course, were celebratory.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said, No one is above the law, including Donald Trump, unless your name is Hunter Biden or Hillary Clinton, in which case you're totally above the law.
We love you.
You're the best, even if you're like Jeffrey Epstein.
Man, didn't commit suicide.
In any case, this indictment must now play out through the legal process without any outside political or ideological interference.
We encourage Mr. Trump supporters and critics alike to let this case proceed peacefully in court.
Oh, now for peaceful.
Aw, isn't that cute?
I mean, forget all of 2020.
Forget the railroading of people like Derek Chauvin.
Now the legal process is totally fair and above board.
Meanwhile, Rashida Tlaib, a terrible human, she posted a similar account to X, which is Twitter, saying, quote, Trump must be held accountable for conspiring to overturn an election and inciting a violent fascist insurrection, giving away the quiet part right there that he wasn't charged with incitement.
You may have noticed.
Which is an actual crime.
Again, I point that out.
The entire incitement is about incitement.
They didn't charge him with incitement.
So, there is that.
Okay, so, what is the actual impact on the election?
Well, there's a pretty obvious impact, which is that if Trump is the nominee, the entire election is going to be about his legal troubles.
The entire election.
Because listen to this calendar, okay?
Here's the calendar from here on out.
Tomorrow, he has a January 6th D.C.
court appearance.
The first GOP debate happens August 23rd, 2023.
October 2nd, the Trump Organization civil suit begins.
January 15th, the E. Jean Carroll civil defamation suit begins.
January 29th, the Pyramid Scheme class action suit begins.
March 25th, the Hush Money suit brought by the Manhattan DA begins.
That's March 25th.
May 20th, the Classified Documents trial begins.
And now we don't know when this particular trial is going to begin.
I would assume that it's going to be somewhere in that timeline.
So the entire next year is going to be taken up by Donald Trump's trials.
He's going to be focused on it like a laser beam.
And that's going to be the strategy.
The strategy for Joe Biden is going to be just crowd out all other media coverage.
All of it.
That's going to be the strategy.
And Trump's going to be using all his money on his legal defense.
He already has.
He's already tapped into all of the election funds in order to pay his legal bills.
So that has two particularly strong ramifications for a general election.
Ramification number one.
If the entire election is about Trump's legal problems, very difficult for him to win.
Very, very difficult.
Because again, everybody's going to be focused in on the problems with Trump.
They're not going to be focused in on the problems with the current president of the United States, who is both corrupt and terrible at his job.
Problem number two is, if Donald Trump uses every dollar that is coming in to fight all of these spurious legal actions against him, you know where that money isn't going?
It's not going toward ballot harvesting.
It's not going toward the knocking on doors campaign.
It's not going to the on-the-ground things you need to win a tight election.
That's all part of the strategy here.
So, the fact is that all this stuff does hamstring Donald Trump in a general election in pretty incredible and dramatic ways.
Obviously.
And those are challenges that are gonna be hard for Trump.
Forget about all the other candidates.
Forget about all the Republican primary candidates.
Just on a practical level, these are serious obstacles for Trump.
Now, I understand the emotional appeal for Republicans.
Give him the chance.
His only chance is we have to give it to him.
We have to let him run for the presidency because that way he can pardon himself in the federal cases or if he wins then he has powers that he wouldn't normally have.
Also, we need to see the conclusion of this movie where Trump takes revenge or at least has the opportunity to take revenge against the DOJ that has been plaguing him.
I get it.
I get the emotional appeal.
I feel it myself.
I totally understand it.
Also, who is the most likely to win?
Because the only way you actually win and defeat the Joe Biden political machine and the DOJ run by Joe Biden is to make him not the president anymore.
And the only way to make him not the president anymore is to replace him with a Republican.
And the only way to replace him with a Republican is to run somebody who presumably is not going to be hampered for the next year by massive legal issues, spending every dollar on his legal defense and spending no time actually campaigning because he's too busy doing depots.
Depositions.
These are real on the ground concerns and that is not excusing any of the attacks on Donald Trump.
It isn't.
It's just a practical, real-life appraisal of the political situation on the ground.
Now, despite all those on-the-ground concerns, the real concerns about the general, in the primary, there's no question this dynamic helps Trump.
There's just no question about it.
Good evidence of this is Mike Pence's response.
So, Mike Pence, the former vice president, who actually was the guy who had to certify the election, which he had to legally do, okay?
There was no actual legal argument that he could overturn the election, that the vice president can simply throw out state-certified electoral votes.
If you think that's the case, wait until Kamala Harris does it, if Trump wins the election, and then see how you feel about it.
That's not the way the Constitution works, but Mike Pence put out a statement saying,
quote, today's indictment serves as an important reminder.
Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.
I'll have more to say about the government's case after reviewing the indictment.
The former president is entitled to the presumption of innocence,
but with this indictment, his candidacy means more talk about January 6th and more distractions.
As Americans, his candidacy means less attention paid to Joe Biden's disastrous economic policies,
afflicting millions across the United States and to the pattern of corruption with Hunter.
And I think for some good reason and some bad reason.
constitution is more important than any one man's career.
On January 6th, former President Trump demanded I choose between him and the
Constitution. I chose the Constitution and I always will. Okay, so the blowback
to Pence's statement has been extraordinary and I think for some good reason and
some bad reason. So he is saying two things and they are distinct things. Thing
number one is he is saying that Donald Trump's activities leading up to January 6th
were egregious and that he shouldn't be the nominee because somebody who displays
that sort of judgment should not be the nominee.
I have a lot of agreement with that sentiment.
I think that Trump's behavior between the election and January 6th was in fact egregious.
I think that the pressure he put on Mike Pence to take unconstitutional action was egregious and spurious.
I think all of those things.
Also, that's not the issue today.
Because the second thing that he should have said is the thing he should have said but didn't, which is still, this indictment is obviously a put-up job.
As always, two things can be true at once.
I don't know how often I can say this.
Donald Trump's behavior between the election and January 6th was unpalatable.
It was wrong.
He was saying things that were not true.
He was lying to people about those things, whether he believed that he was lying or whether he didn't believe it.
In fact, he was making allegations that were not even alleged by his own lawyers in court.
He was advancing a legal theory.
Absolutely.
It's an insane legal theory.
The vice president of the United States has the singular power to overturn electoral results that are certified by the states.
That's just it's a nutty theory.
OK, all of that can be true and also not a crime.
Also not a crime.
And right now, the issue is whether things that are not crimes should be charged as crimes, not whether Donald Trump's behavior during the election was good.
Donald Trump's behavior during the election was good has been litigated and relitigated one million times.
In the court of public opinion, it was litigated in impeachment.
It was litigated in elections that took place in January of 2021.
It was litigated in the midterm elections of 2022.
It will be litigated again, presumably, in 2024 if Donald Trump is the nominee.
But that's not the question.
The question of today, because that's when the indictment comes down, is does the DOJ have the power to charge people with non-crimes?
And that is a much broader issue than Donald Trump's activities on January 6th.
And that's the thing that Mike Pence is missing, and that is why people are shellacking him today.
Okay, meanwhile...
The double standard of justice that has become quite apparent to everybody continues.
The media continued to just studiously avoid any implication that Hunter Biden and Joe Biden had some sort of a corrupt bargain going on, which they pretty obviously did.
Here was CNN's Dana Bash trying to defend Hunter and Joe Biden's activities, despite the fact that we now have open testimony from Devin Archer to Congress suggesting that Joe Biden was on 20 phone calls with Hunter Biden's business partners, that Hunter and Joe obviously, I mean, Joe obviously knew about the businesses.
We know all these things, but here's CNN's Dana Bash trying to, you know, wave her hand away at it.
Does that mean that the president was involved in Hunter Biden's business dealings?
No, but we all understand Washington and we all understand that a lot of these relationships operate in the gray areas intentionally, especially when you have somebody who is either Related to a famous person or a powerful person or used to work for a powerful person, you want your clients to know that you can get them on the phone.
Okay, he's operating the gray areas.
They're gray.
No biggie.
It's the gray areas.
Meanwhile, you have Morning Joe.
One of their hosts, Jonathan the Liar, basically trotting out what is going to be the final form of the argument, which is, all of this is just because Joe Biden is such a nice guy.
This is going to be the final form of the argument.
It's going to go from, he knew nothing about Hunter's business dealings, and Hunter did nothing wrong and never took Chinese money, to, sure, Hunter did something wrong and took Chinese money, but he wasn't involved in the business, to, well, he was involved in the business and knew what was going on, on a general level, but he's an amazing father.
And that's where Jonathan the Liar is just going right forward here on MSNBC.
As far as Hunter Biden goes, there's no doubt.
I mean, it's pretty clear even those close to the Biden family suggest that some of his behavior is pretty unseemly.
That doesn't make it illegal.
And it also means we don't know the role that then Vice President Biden may have played.
And it seems like no, they haven't proven that he had anything to do with it.
They haven't proved that he profited from this at all.
Yet maybe he is guilty of turning a blind eye to some of his son's behavior.
And we should put this in context.
This is a time when Bo Biden, the president's other son, was ill and then dying and then passed away.
So perhaps he was not as attentive to what he should have been here?
The context is that this was a sort of very fraught and sad time for the Biden family.
And we know how important family is to the president.
And so do you hang up on your phone on your son?
Anytime, but certainly at a moment like that, and probably the answer is no.
He loves his family, which is why he's a corrupt elderly gent taking cash from his crack son, his crack snorting son, who schtups prostitutes on the regular.
Because he loves his family, guys.
That's gonna be the final... I do love Jonathan Lemire's argument right there, which is, unseemly doesn't mean illegal.
Meanwhile, over here, Donald Trump doesn't unseemly... That is certainly illegal!
Can you name the crime?
No!
But it's very unseemly, which means it's illegal.
The double standard here is perfectly obvious to everyone, perfectly clear at this point.
This is why, again, I think a lot of Republicans are wish-casting here.
Because we feel, and I think correctly, that the double standard of justice must be vitiated.
That it must be stopped.
Most Americans will feel that way.
We'll get to a general, and independents will say, this can't happen.
This injustice will not stand.
I don't know that's how independents are gonna react.
I think independents may just react by saying, okay, well, I'm hearing a lot of allegations about Trump, and I remember that guy, and I didn't like that guy that much the first time, and nobody's talking about Biden, so I'm gonna focus in on Trump, and I don't like Trump that much.
In order for Donald Trump to win the election, turnout for Joe Biden has to be low.
It cannot be even remotely high.
That's just the reality.
And so, again, I recommend that Republicans try to get out of their own heads a little bit and think about what independents might be interested in a general election.
And again, it would be very satisfying.
I will admit that the denouement of Trump's Season 8 here Would be utterly fascinating if he gets the nomination.
I have serious doubts as to whether the man can win a general election while he's under four simultaneous indictments.
Just on a practical level, even if I think those indictments are politically motivated and spurious in many of those cases.
All right, time for a couple of things.
I'm just going with things I hate here.
So a couple of things that I hate.
Okay, thing that I hate, number one.
So Lizzo, great heroine of the Republic because she's a fat lady.
Everyone is very high on Lizzo in the mainstream media because she is proudly very, very, very large.
And I'm not the one who made that an issue.
She made that an issue because she literally talks about it nonstop, how big she is.
Well, apparently, even Lizzo fat shames her own dancers.
Oh no.
In fact, this scandal that broke yesterday is so bad that Queen Bey herself, the Bey, the Beyoncé, she has a song in which she supposedly mentions, she mentions Lizzo.
It's in the lyrics.
And she skipped over Lizzo last night in her song.
We still are beating hearts.
What are the allegations against Lizzo?
Um, they're a little raunchy, folks.
But remember, she is all class, which is why she played a flute, a glass flute, owned by James Madison.
So, um, here is, uh, here is the latest allegation, courtesy of the New York Post.
Three of Lizzo's former dancers are suing the good-as-hell performer, as well as big girl Big Touring and Charlene Quigley.
Ooh, that's not so good.
to Amsterdam in February 2023, the plaintiffs claim Lizzo invited them
for a night out on the town, which ended in the city's red light district.
By the way, always an HR problem.
Bambi.com.
Okay, let me just recommend right now that, um, if you are an employer, don't take your employees to the Red Light District in Amsterdam.
That's not gonna go amazing for you.
The area is known for its sex theaters, sex shops, and clubs and bars where nudity is on full display.
So, um, apparently, the lawsuit states things quickly got out of hand.
Lizzo began inviting cast members to take turns touching the nude performers.
Catching dildos launched from the performer's vaginas and eating bananas protruding from the performer's vaginas.
So, first of all, hell of an act, it sounds like.
Catching dildos launched from the performer's- what is this, like Tom Brady?
The suit also claims that Lizzo allegedly pressured and goaded Davidson into touching one nude performer's breasts, which is excellent employer behavior.
Employers let it be known that Lizzo, who is a great heroine to us all, is a wonderful person who causes her employees to have to perform sex acts with prostitutes.
That's exciting.
The plaintiffs claim that just a month later, Lizzo deceived them into once again attending a nude show, thereby robbing them of the choice not to participate.
So first of all, I feel like after she deceived you the first time, that you might be suspicious.
If Lizzo, like, the first time she took you to the red light district and was like, eat that banana from that person's vagina.
And then the second time she's like, we're going to Chuck E. Cheese, gang!
Get in the van!
Like at that point you might be like, do you mean like the children's restaurant or is that a euphemism?
Davis claims in the lawsuit that at one point she had no choice but to soil herself on stage during an excruciating re-audition, fearing the repercussions of excusing herself to go to the restroom.
Eventually, Lizzo allegedly fired Davis on the spot after learning Davis had recorded one of their meetings, even though it was in order to have a copy of the notes the artist provided.
Rodriguez then resigned shortly thereafter, out of solidarity.
The lawsuit claims she feared Lizzo intended to hit her, and would have done so if one of the other dancers had not intervened.
Apparently, again, she weight shames her dancers, like claiming that they have gained too much weight.
Which, I gotta say, is like OJ claiming that you're too violent with women.
Lizzo claiming that you have gained too much weight, Lizzo has her own gravitational pull independent of the earth sufficient to draw in large barges.
Her weight shaming people is pretty egregious.
So yeah, not great there.
Not great stuff there from the Lizzo.
Well, what a sad story.
But Orange, you glad?
Orange, you glad that you don't work for Lizzo?
All right, guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.
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