To borrow a quip from the Beatles, the long-awaited coup indictment is truly “the toppermost of the poppermost.” To borrow a phrase popularized during the Watergate scandal, this indictment is “the big enchilada.” Like you, presumably, I never thought I’d see the day when an ex-president of the United States would be formally accused of crimes that are tantamount to treason.
Granted, millions of Americans are benumbed by Donald Trump’s rampant criminality, while millions more rabidly embrace it. I only wish that all zombies and zealots would take the time to read the fact-packed document unsealed Aug. 1 by the Department of Justice, because it’s far more than a narrative of how we came close to losing our democracy at the dawn of this decade. It’s ultimately a five-alarm warning of what awaits us in the near future unless the failed coup’s ringleader is convicted by a jury of his peers and jailed into old age.
There will be plenty of time in the days ahead to assess, with best guesses, the impact that this third and most crucial Trump indictment will have on the 2024 presidential race, and whether a decent share of Republican-leaning voters will recognize the cosmic folly of supporting, for the world’s most important job, a criminal defendant fighting 78 felony counts in three separate cases. But, for today, it should be enough to simply highlight the coup narrative, which could easily be titled “Fascism for Dummies.”
Thanks to confessional material shared with the federal grand jury by a galaxy of Trump insiders – most notably, Trump’s vice president – the indictment demonstrates that “the defendant perpetrated three criminal conspiracies” during the post-election period when he refused to accept defeat and knowingly spread “pervasive and destabilizing lies” about nonexistent election fraud. He conspired “to defraud the United States” by impairing “the lawful federal government function” of collecting and counting votes. He conspired “to corruptly obstruct and impede” Congress’ ceremonial certification of the election. And he conspired against the average citizen’s “right to vote and to have one’s vote counted” when he ginned up fake slates of electors to replace the real ones.
Special counsel Jack Smith did three smart things. First, he indicted only Trump (not the six unnamed co-conspirators, whose lawyers could’ve slowed the court process), thus boosting the prospects of a speedy trial long before the ’24 election. Second, he ignored the thorny issue of whether Trump had specifically ordered the Jan. 6 goons to commit violence, instead focusing solely on the fact that Trump “exploited” the violence once it happened, to pressure Congress not to certify Joe Biden’s victory. And third, in Smith’s quest to prove criminal intent (crucial in a jury trial), he listed all the ways that Trump knew he had lost before “knowingly” lying over and over about how his purported win had been stolen.
Trump knew he had lost, according to the indictment, because he was informed of that incontrovertible fact “on multiple occasions” by his own veep, by his highest senior appointees at the Justice Department, by his Director of National Intelligence, by the Homeland Security Department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (“whose existence the defendant had signed into law”), by the “senior White House attorneys selected by the defendant to provide him candid advice,” and by the state and federal courts (sometimes helmed by his own judicial appointees) who’d “rejected every…post-election lawsuit filed by the defendant.”
Trump’s own advisors got fed up with his lies. One senior campaign advisor lamented in an email that “our research and campaign legal team can’t back up any of the (election fraud) claims … I’ll obviously hustle to help on all fronts, but it’s tough to own any of this when it’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.”
Mike Pence was Trump’s last resort. Pence is the star of the indictment.
If and when this case goes to trial, it would be a hoot to see Pence in the witness chair, because, having escaped the MAGA noose, he’s well positioned to harpoon the whale. Turns out, he has shared his contemporaneous notes with the feds. He took notes during the dying days of the regime when Trump repeatedly and falsely insisted that Pence had the power to reject Biden’s electoral college win at the Jan. 6, 2021 ceremony. Pence repeatedly pushed back, prompting Trump to tell him on Jan. 1: “You’re too honest.”
Bingo! Trump knew that he was dishonest. That quote will come up at trial.
On Dec. 29, Trump told Pence that “the Justice Department (was) finding major infractions,” i.e., voter fraud. That was a lie. On Jan. 4, according to Pence’s notes, Trump told him: “Bottom line (we) won every state by 100,000s of votes.” That was a lie. Trump also told him: “We won every state.” That was a lie. Trump also told him: “What about 205,000 (more) votes in PA than voters?” That was a lie. According to the indictment, Justice Department officials had told Trump that was a lie “as recently as the night before.”
On Jan. 5, for the umpteenth time, Pence told Trump that he had no power to stop the certification of Biden’s win. No matter! Hours later, “the defendant approved” this public statement: “The vice president and I are in total agreement that the vice president has the power to act.” (That explains why the Jan. 6 goons wanted to hang the veep. They thought the veep had double-crossed them.)
To lighten the mood here, I’m reminded of a fun moment in the TV show “Arrested Development,” when crooked real estate magnate George Bluth Sr. sits in prison and softly intones, “There’s a good chance I may have committed some light treason.”
But this is no time for levity. Mike Murphy, a veteran sane Republican strategist, arguably said it best: “Donald Trump did far more to subvert our democracy than the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Party ever dreamed of.”
And this wanton mutt will not stop unless or until our democratic system of laws puts him down. Bring on that speedy trial. The ultimate stress test is at hand.
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, September 1, 2023
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