Donald Trump

Donald Trump’s claim that the election was rigged is nothing new. He was making that claim even BEFORE the election. In fact, that’s been his schtick for years. Jack Smith has indicated that he plans to make Trump's history of crying "rigged election" a focus of his upcoming trial.

In addition to this intrinsic evidence of false statements about the 2020 election, the Government will offer evidence reflecting the defendant’s historical record of making such claims. For example, as early as November 2012, the defendant issued a public tweet making baseless claims that voting machines had switched votes from then-candidate Romney to then-candidate Obama. During the 2016 presidential campaign, the defendant claimed repeatedly with no basis, that there was widespread voter fraud—including through public statements and tweets (for instance, on October 17, 2016, tweeting, “Of course there is large scale fraud happening on and before election day. Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive!”). The defendant’s false claims about the 2012 and 2016 elections are admissible because they demonstrate the defendant’s common plan of falsely blaming fraud for election results he does not like, as well as his motive, intent, and plan to obstruct the certification of the 2020 election results and illegitimately retain power. . . .

 

To ensure the destabilizing impact of his widespread election fraud claims, in the run-up to the 2020 election, the defendant repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transition of presidential power if he lost the election. The Government will offer proof of this refusal as intrinsic evidence of the defendant’s criminal conspiracies because it shows his plan to remain in power at any cost—even in the face of potential violence. For instance, at a September 23, 2020, news conference the defendant was asked whether, “win, lose or draw in this election,” in light of “rioting in many cities across this country—red and—your so called red and blue states,” he would “commit to making sure there is a peaceful transferal of power after the election.” The defendant responded, “Well, we’re going to have to see what happens. You know that. I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots. And the ballots are a disaster. And, and--”. A reporter interrupted the defendant and repeated, “I understand that, but people are rioting; do you commit to making sure there is a peaceful transferal of power?” The defendant responded, “I know. I know. We want to have—get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very trans—we’ll have a very peaceful—there won’t be a transfer, frankly; there’ll be a continuation. The ballots are out of control. You know it.”

Similarly, the Government will offer evidence that the defendant pursued the same strategy four years earlier, in 2016. In the presidential debate on October 19, 2016, the defendant was asked whether he would accept the results of that election, to which he responded that he would “look at it at the time.” The debate moderator followed up, “There is a tradition in this country— in fact, one of the prides of this country—is the peaceful transition of power and that no matter how hard-fought a campaign is, that at the end of the campaign that the loser concedes to the winner . . . and that the country comes together in part for the good of the country. Are you saying you’re not prepared now to commit to that principle?” The defendant responded, “What I’m saying is that I will tell you at the time. I’ll keep you in suspense. OK?” The defendant’s consistent refusal to commit to a peaceful transition of power, dating back to the 2016 presidential campaign, is admissible evidence of his plan to undermine the integrity of the presidential transition process when faced with the possibility of an election result that he would not like, as well as his motive, intent, and plan to interfere with the implementation of an election result with which he was not satisfied.

Let's dive deeper into the type of evidence that Smith might bring up at trial.

A Trumpanzee clown was bitching about the Democrats and singing the praises of Donald Trump to me on Facebook. I noticed that his Facebook page had a picture of Ronald Reagan at the top. I was never a big fan of Reagan's. I often disagreed with him on policy, but I never questioned his patriotism. And I always thought he did what he thought was right for the country--no matter how misguided I thought his actions were. I never for a moment thought that he put his own personal interests above that of our country.

Republicans want the January 6th Insurrection to disappear down an Orwellian memory hole, never to be heard of again. Or at the very least, they want to whitewash it to the point where we see the insurrectionists as little more than tourists who got a little carried away with their enthusiasm. Congressman Andrew Clyde denied that an attempted insurrection had occurred because those at the Capitol were unarmed. He acknowledged that there were some rioters and some acts of vandalism, but he said that to call it an insurrection was a "bald-faced lie." He then bizarrely claimed that the people who entered the Capitol looked like normal tourists.

Congressman Tom Reed posted the following statement on his official government Facebook page on October 23.

STATEMENT: Today, my family and I were threatened at our home in Corning.

The cowards used a dead animal and a brick with a family member’s name on it to try to intimidate us. We assure everyone such threats only energize us to stand stronger.

We thank the local police and federal authorities, who are already investigating this disgusting attack against my family. 

Across the country, politics has taken a disturbing turn. 

We have to overcome this. I know that we can. We are all Americans first. What unites us is far greater than our political differences

Congressman Tom Reed, like nearly all Republicans, used to distrust Russia and Vladimir Putin. He slammed his opponent, John Plumb, and President Obama during the 2016 election campaign for being soft on Russia. I managed to get snapshots of five of his Facebook posts before they disappeared.

Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.

— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) October 8, 2020

Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.

— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) October 8, 2020

Dictionary.com provides an unusually detailed definition and description of "stochiastic terrorism." Here is part of their article on the subject.

Stochastic terrorism is “the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted.”

The word stochastic, in everyday language, means “random.” Terrorism, here, refers to “violence motivated by ideology.”

Here’s the idea behind stochastic terrorism:

1. A leader or organization uses rhetoric in the mass media against a group of people.
2. This rhetoric, while hostile or hateful, doesn’t explicitly tell someone to carry out an act of violence against that group, but a person, feeling threatened, is motivated to do so as a result.
3. That individual act of political violence can’t be predicted as such, but that violence will happen is much more probable thanks to the rhetoric.
4. This rhetoric is thus called stochastic terrorism because of the way it incites random violence.

I wrote a column two weeks before the 2016 electon entitled "Donald Trump Is An Existential Threat To American Democracy."  I not only stand by that claim; I will double down on it. We are well on our way towards autocracy. Donald Trump has launched an unrelenting assault on the institutions that support our democracy, and his fellow Republicans are either looking the other way or they are rooting for democracy's demise. Mike Lee, a Republican Senator from Utah, let the cat out of the bag. He, at least, would not mind seeing our democracy die.

Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.

— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) October 8, 2020

The Justice Department is part of the Executive Branch of government and is under the control of the President--to an extent. The President can set broad policy for the Department and can pick, with the consent of Congress, the person he wants to lead the Department. But it was never intended for him to be able to use the Justice Department as tool to help his political allies escape punishment for their crimes or as a hammer to wield against his political adversaries. President Trump tried to use his influence via the Justice Department to try to reduce the sentencing guidelines for Roger Stone after Stone was convicted of obstruction of justice and witness tampering. This set off alarm bells, prompting Joyce White Vance, a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, to write:

Among the Founding Fathers’ chief goals was to do away with a government where the king was above the law and had absolute power over the lives of his subjects. In our system, the President, like every other citizen, is meant to be subject to the law. The Founding Fathers were explicit about that intention when they debated the shape the new government they were creating would take. And that quintessentially American view that no man is above the law has been the case up until the presidency of Donald Trump.

I wrote a column two weeks before the 2016 electon entitled "Donald Trump Is An Existential Threat To American Democracy."  I not only stand by that claim; I will double down on it. We are well on our way towards autocracy. Donald Trump has launched an unrelenting assault on the institutions that support our democracy, and his fellow Republicans are either looking the other way or they are rooting for democracy's demise. Mike Lee, a Republican Senator from Utah, let the cat out of the bag. He, at least, would not mind seeing our democracy die.

Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.

— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) October 8, 2020

Donald Trump has launched an assault on our democracy on multiple fronts.

1. He has politicized the Justice Department to help his friends and attack his enemies.
2. He has attacked our courts and judicial system.
3. He has attacked the free press and made it more dangerous for reporters to cover him.
4. He is a stochiastic terrorist who has endangered the life of Michigan's Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and others
5. He has refused to commit himself to the peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election

If William Barr gets his way you, the American taxpayer, will have to pay for the legal defense of a case that arose from just one of the 26 women who have accused Donald Trump of rape, sexual harassment, or sexual impropriety.