The indictments keep on coming. This post is just a heap of Trump indictment stuff including an overlooked charge that should have been included in the indictments of last week. They could have charged the “stop the vote” scheme that Trump launched. And oh yeah, the overturning the election plan didn’t start in November 2020, it started in MAY 2020. That was Trump’s first tweet about how the election would be rigged unless he won it!
(btw I don’t have time to write much right now and barely have time to keep this thing running. If anyone wants to write for Bluesplaining contact me.)
From Just Security:
When former President Donald Trump said he had received a target letter in the federal January 6th case, media reports revealed a “surprise” statute in the Justice Department’s target letter. That statute, 18 U.S.C. section 241, should not have been a surprise: it is a powerful and oft-used tool by prosecutors.
An examination of the Justice Department’s prior use of the statute provides insight into how the Special Counsel could charge an aspect of Trump’s efforts to overturn the presidential election that has received scant attention, even though it is hiding in plain sight. A section 241 charge can and should encompass Trump’s efforts to stop the electoral count, a scheme that when it did not prove successful, morphed into the more prominent schemes: the use of false electors, the pressure campaign on Vice President Mike Pence, and the attempted use of the Justice Department to produce bogus fraud investigations.
But the initial phase of the conspiracy to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power was a coordinated scheme to “stop the count” of ballots after polling stations closed on election night. That scheme can and should be charged under the 1512 obstruction statute as well as the “surprise” 241 statute.
If Special Counsel Smith can prove that Trump and one or more other people conspired to block the counting of ballots, that could serve as a stand-alone Section 241 charge in an indictment. If not its own charge, then the scheme to stop the counting of ballots can form the basis for the initial part of the overall charged scheme to deprive Americans’ voting rights in the 2020 presidential election.
I. Justice Department and judicial precedent
Section 241 makes it a crime if “two or more persons conspire to injure … any person … in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” Despite what some legal commentators have asserted, this includes voting rights.
As with any conspiracy statute, Section 241 applies even if the conspiracy is not successful and even if the criminal scheme does not change the winner in an election (See, e.g., United States v. Nathan (7th Cir. 1957). More uniquely, Section 241 does not require the commission of an overt act to establish criminal liability. (That feature is irrelevant, here, given the numerous overt acts detailed below.)
Spanning over a hundred years, the Department of Justice has used the 241 statute with great success to prosecute conspiracies to prevent the proper counting of ballots in federal elections. Such schemes are within the heartland of Section 241 prosecutions. And equally important, the Supreme Court has a long history of upholding, over and over again, the statute’s application to such conduct.
A landmark Supreme Court decision in 1915 – United States v. Mosley – upheld the indictment of officers of a county election board who conspired to omit certain ballots from the vote count. Writing for the Court, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “It is not open to question that this statute is constitutional …. We regard it as equally unquestionable that the right to have one’s vote counted is as open to protection by Congress as the right to put a ballot in a box.” By the 1930s, the Justice Department brought several prosecutions for similar conduct – schemes to prevent the counting of ballots – under section 241.”
There is more here.
JACK SMITH IS A NATIONAL HERO, along with the members of the January 6th Committee. Just think, last year at this time we were all watching the Jan 6th Committee Hearings live on TV with a bowl of popcorn. This year we get the real-ass indictments, including the United States versus the devil known as Donald Trump. DA Willis in Georgia has some indictments coming soon – maybe this week (of August 7th) even.
Trump, meanwhile, is losing his mind in New Jersey at his crappy golf course and issuing threats to various witnesses and prosecutors, and he might soon be in jail as a result. What a piece of utter crap he is. A lack of anything human resides under that rotting orange lizard skin of his.
Everyone needs to read the indictments. If you are an American, read them, but especially the last one. It’s only 45 pages. You can do it.
The latest 4-count indictments from Jack Smith are below this hideous photo.
Feel free to download the pdf from here or read it below.
trump-indictment
Donald Trump belongs in jail. There IS a 2-tiered justice system in America. One for the extremely powerful and weathly, like Trump, and one for the rest of us. Anyone else who did what Trump had done would already be in jail. Are you kidding me? But he’s powerful and wealthy, so he’s treated with kid gloves. Everything he asked for, he got. Special treatment on steroids. A huge security motorcade, and his own entrance to the federal building via a secret door out of sight of media. No fingerprints during the arraignment. NO DNA, No mugshot. No bail money. No ankle monitor. And I bet he still has his passport. No one else gets treated that well during their arraignment, unless it’s another filthy rich slob.
