Looks like our wannabe fascist is in big trouble again. But before we discuss his imminent third indictment, let’s set the stage by quoting Mitch McConnell.
Yes, of all people, Mitch McConnell. Early in 2021, during Impeachment II, the Senate Republican leader refused to convict Trump for stoking the violent Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. He said it wasn’t the Senate’s role to punish the guy; the proper forum was “the criminal justice system, where individual accountability is the paramount goal … We have a criminal justice system in this country. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable … (Trump) is still liable for everything he did while in office. He didn’t get away with anything yet.”
Fast forward to our current summer of consequences. Trump, the walking talking crime scene, has now shared what he calls the “horrifying” news that the forces of law and order will likely indict him yet again – this time for his coup plottings in the wake of his 2020 election loss. We won’t know the specific charges until Jack Smith officially drops the next hammer, but, reportedly, it looks like he’ll be arrested for (among other things) conspiracy to defraud the United States government. And he’ll be up against federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C. They’ll bring more heat than the temps in Phoenix.
The coup investigation is arguably the most important one. Indictment No. 1, announced in Manhattan, covers some of Trump’s aberrant behavior (hush money to Stormy) before he was president. Indictment #2, announced by Jack Smith in Florida, covers Trump’s storage of allegedly stolen classified docs after he was president. But the coup probe focuses on potentially criminal conduct while he was still president – namely, the multi-pronged efforts to thwart the will of the voters. (And lest we forget, a federal jury has found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll. Plus, the Trump Organization has been convicted on 17 felony counts, including tax fraud.)
Meanwhile – what a week in July that was for the rule of law! – the Georgia Supreme Court has speedily and unanimously nixed his bid to throw out the Fulton County DA’s coup case, squashing him like a cockroach. And up north in Michigan, 16 MAGA suckers who’d been inspired to sign on as fake electors, in a bid to overturn Joe Biden’s decisive statewide victory, were charged June 18 by the Michigan attorney general on a range of felonies.
Fascism takes root when suckered people marinate in lies; worse is when they act upon the lies. Fortunately, we still have functioning institutions that can mete out punishment. Each of the fake Michigan electors has been hit with eight felony charges that warrant jail time. They allegedly signed and submitted fake certificates claiming that they were authorized to cast votes for Trump in the Electoral College. I have no sympathy for those 16 suckered souls. This is what can happen when you follow a cowardly fraud down his rabbit hole. They’re risking jail simply because he couldn’t face the fact that he’d lost an election.
Amidst all the blood that was spilled during the Jan. 6 insurrection, it’s easy to overlook Trump’s fake-electors plot. We’ll likely hear more about it in the weeks ahead when the DA in Georgia, as expected, details her indictments. Indeed, all the puzzle pieces are beginning to cohere. In the words of Norman Eisen and Ryan Goodman, two rule of law experts, “We’ve reached a turning point in the effort to ensure there are consequences for those who deliberately attempt to undermine our democracy … (W)e are witnessing a new and necessary phase in this quest for accountability, one in which the federal and state wheels of justice work to hold people accountable not only for the violence on Jan. 6, but also for what got us there: the alleged scheme to interfere with the transfer of power.”
Nevertheless, as Jack Smith’s target letter portends, it’s the Jan. 6 insurrection – the attempt to subvert democracy with mob violence – that will land Trump in a Washington, D.C. courtroom. It’s impossible to forget that the guy sat on his ass watching TV that day, reaping all that he’d sown with his lies. It’s impossible to forget how much police officers suffered during Trump’s failed putsch. As cop Harry Dunn testified two summers ago during a House hearing, “There was an attack carried out on Jan. 6, and a hit man sent them. I want you to get to the bottom of that.”
Rest assured, that is now happening.
Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net and is distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, August 15, 2023
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