By now, two months before the presidential election, voters should have seen a verdict in the federal criminal case against the three-time Republican nominee accused of conspiring to overturn the result of the previous contest. (That's a sentence I never thought I'd write.)
But there is no verdict against the accused Donald Trump, the biggest loser in American history. Thanks to the Supreme CourtHis right-wing supermajority — half of whom were handpicked by Trump and two of whom should have recused themselves — dawdled for half the year before issuing a surreal statement. decision in July, granting the former president and all future presidents broad immunity from criminal liability for official acts, including purportedly official acts intended to undermine the foundations of democracy: free and fair elections.
Opinion columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
That's where the argument that no one is above the law ends.
However, thanks to special prosecutor Jack Smith, voters at least have a revised indictment against Trump in the January 6 case. On Tuesday, a new grand jury indicted him on the same four counts of conspiracy and obstruction of justice that he is charged with in Last year's accusationstripped of supporting material that might conflict with the Supreme Court's new evidence about what is or is not an official act.
It is too late for a trial, and therefore a verdict, before November 5. And the Trump team will almost certainly argue all the way to the Supreme Court that Smith’s “superseding indictment” violates the judges’ immunity ruling.
But at the very least, the reworded impeachment is a useful refresher for those who have forgotten or become accustomed to Trump’s anti-democratic outrages, which made him the first American president to resist the peaceful transfer of power.
And more than that, the charges are a reminder of why Trump wants to be president again: to avoid criminal liability and possibly prison. If reelected, he could thwart the rule of law, not uphold it as the oath of office requires. Trump could—would—make the Jan. 6 case go away, along with the separate federal charges Against his will, for keeping classified documents, he has promised to pardon hundreds of accused and convicted January 6 insurrectionists, whom he crudely calls “hostages” of the government. He could also pardon himself, of course, for his alleged federal crimes (but not the state charges).
Following the grand jury action last week, former Justice Department official and MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissmann helped… tweeted“For those doing the counting, FIVE separate grand juries (dozens of citizens) have already found probable cause that Trump committed multiple felonies.”
Yes, for all of Trump's daily lies that he is being persecuted by the “Biden-Harris regime” and its “weaponized” Justice Department, the facts are that many average Americans have heard the evidence and decided against Trump. They have done so not only in those five grand juries, but also in several state trial juries that found him responsible for sexual abuse and defamationand guilty of 34 counts of falsification of business records to conceal payments to a porn star to silence voters ahead of the 2016 election.
With that latest ruling, Trump achieved another despicable first: no other president has been convicted of felony crimes. Sentencing in the New York hush money case was delayed until Sept. 18, thanks to confusion over the Supreme Court's immunity decision, and Trump has called for a More delay —After Election Day, of course. Judge Juan M. Merchan should proceed with sentencing. Sure, Trump would protest, but all we’ve seen so far is excessive legal deference to the lawless former president, despite his incessant complaints about witch hunts.
Which brings us back to Smith’s revised indictment from January 6, and its welcome reminder of Trump’s unprecedented power grab. The 36 pages are a maddening must-read for undecided voters, a tour of his falsehoods and intrigues from the 2020 election to the violence of January 6, 2021. Yet nearly four years later, instead of being held accountable, Trump is up for reelection.
Smith took pains to stay out of Trump’s purportedly official acts, in keeping with the Supreme Court’s twisted ruling. For example, accounts were published of his nefarious efforts to force Justice Department aides to lie about election fraud, as a pretext for lawsuits; they were his executive branch employees. But campaign aides should be fair game for prosecutors, and the indictment still recounts Trump’s refusals to accept their claims and evidence that he had lost, that there was no fraud. Instead, Trump kept his aides spreading lies — “conspiracies passed down from the mothership,” one wrote in an email cited in the indictment — and working on illegal lists of alternate state electors.
The document contains some details of Trump’s pressure on Vice President Mike Pence. “You’re too honest,” the liar-in-chief once burst out, exasperated that Pence would not agree to throw out electoral votes from pro-Biden battleground states during Congress’s certification on Jan. 6. And it includes Trump’s private and public haranguing of state officials to do his illegal bidding; they are not federal, and presidents have no official role in counting states’ votes.
Unfortunately, for now all we have are the charges, no trial and no verdict. But that fact defines what is at stake in the 2024 election: a vote. for Trump is a vote against Your responsibility. It's that simple.
@jackiekcalmes
