Defendant Donald John Trump lost the United States presidential election held on November 3, 2020. One of the states he lost was Georgia. Trump and the other Defendants charged in this Indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.
- The State of Georgia vs. Donald John Trump et al
This week's featured post is "Why I'm Optimistic about 2024".
This week everybody was talking about the weather
It's hard to keep up with Climate Change Summer. Last week we were still digesting the burning of LaHaina. Friday, Canada was evacuating Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, as wildfires approached. Yesterday, a tropical storm hit Los Angeles, something that literally never happens. Las Vegas is expecting heavy rain and strong winds. Most of the towns and buildings in the path of Hilary were built under the assumption that this can't happen.
As usual, I won't try to keep up with breaking news. But I do want to make two observations:
- It's time to stop arguing about climate change. Anyone who won't admit what we can see with our own eyes is not worth talking to.
- For years we've been hearing that computer models of the climate were unreliable and could be inaccurate. Such doubts have been spread by people who want to deny the problem. But it's just as likely that the errors in the models make them too conservative. We need to think about the possibility that climate change could be worse than scientists' predictions.
The usual suspects are trying to connect aid to Ukraine with the federal emergency response to Maui, as if Hawaii were being ignored and cutting Ukraine aide would help Hawaians. Beau of the Fifth Column covers the Maui aid process pretty well.
As for Ukraine, it's as if Democrats said, "Why are we spending money on Trump's secret service detail rather than helping people in Maui?" These decisions should all be made on their own merits.
and the Trump trials
The Fulton County indictment, Trump's fourth, dropped Monday night. It covers some of the same actions as Jack Smith's January 6 conspiracy indictment -- Trump's "perfect phone call" to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger figures in both, for example -- but Fani Willis has written a much more sweeping narrative. While Smith's is laser-focused on Trump, leveling four charges and leaving his co-conspirators unnamed, Willis' indictment charges 19 people with 41 crimes. Trump and Rudy Giuliani are charged with the most crimes, 13 counts each.
What structures the indictment is a RICO charge, a claim that Trump led a corrupt enterprise that committed a number of individual crimes in service of a single illegal goal:
Defendant Donald John Trump lost the United States presidential election held on November 3, 2020. One of the states he lost was Georgia. Trump and the other Defendants charged in this Indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.
Smith's indictment, unlike Willis', is streamlined to get to trial quickly. Smith has requested a January 2 trial date, while Trump's lawyers produced the laughable suggestion of April, 2026. Judge Chutkan is expected to announce the real trial date by August 28.
A number of other issues will come before Chutkan soon: What to do about Trump's direct defiance of her order not to make "inflammatory statements" about the case that could be construed as threatening witnesses or trying to taint the jury pool.
And a different federal judge will have to decide Mark Meadows' motion to move his trial from Georgia state court to federal court and then dismiss the charges. Even if Meadows gets his way about removing the case from Georgia courts, the trial will still take place under Georgia law, and presidential pardons would still be off the table. Dismissing the charges seems unlikely.
Trump will likely file similar motions. Lawrence Tribe et al explain why they should fail.
Several detailed summaries of the Georgia indictment are out there. Here's Lawfare's.
The 98-page indictment itself is a bit dull to read, largely because it endlessly repeats a number of phrases that I assume have significance in Georgia law. For example, the RICO charge is split into 161 individual acts, not all of which are illegal in and of themselves. Each one concludes with some version of "this was an overt act in futherance of the conspiracy". Each of the 41 charges gets its own section, which ends with "contrary to the laws of said State, the good order, peace, and dignity thereof."
By the end, I was amusing myself by picturing a liturgical performance of the indictment, with the acts and charges as a call-and-response: A cantor chants the content, and the congregation responds "this was an act in furtherance of the conspiracy" or "contrary to the laws of said State, the good order, peace, and dignity thereof," as appropriate. At every mention of an unidentified person (Individual 24, say), a background choir intones "whose identity is known to the grand jury".
If you want to stage such a performance, feel free to take the idea and run with it. Just mention my name in the program and send me a YouTube link.
The Georgia indictment goes into detail on several incidents that are barely mentioned in the federal indictment. For example: trying to bully election worker Ruby Freeman into confessing to fictitious election fraud, and illegally gaining access to voting machines and voting-machine software in Coffee County.
I had heard about both of these incidents before, but did not appreciate how they fit into the larger conspiracy. The woman who offered Freeman "protection" if she confessed was not just a rogue actor inspired by Trump's lies; she conspired with Harrison William Prescott Floyd, who was director of Black Voices for Trump; Robert Cheeley, who participated in Rudy Giuliani's presentation to Georgia legislators, the one in which Freeman was originally slandered; and Scott Graham Hall, who was also involved in the Coffee County voting-machine break-in.
The Coffee County incident also involved Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, fake elector Cathy Latham, and a number of other conspirators.
Acts like these may not have the scope of the fake-elector plot or pressuring Mike Pence to violate the Constitution, but they are the kind of building blocks RICO cases are built on, because they are clearly criminal. There's no other way to spin the video of Trevian Kutti telling Ruby Freeman she needs to be "moved" within 48 hours to avoid some unspecified consequence. "I cannot say what will specifically will take place. I just know that it will disrupt your freedom and the freedom of one or more of your family members. ... You are a loose end for a party that needs to tidy up." Terrorizing a public official is classic racketeering.
There's a legal debate going on about whether the 14th Amendment bars Trump from ever serving as president again. I won't comment because I haven't done enough research to have an opinion worth sharing.
Sadly, Trump has cancelled the press conference today that was going to introduce "A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia". This REPORT was going to completely exonerate him from the charges in the Fulton County indictment.
I say "sadly" without irony, because I welcome any development that commits Trump to a fixed position. Rhetorically, Trump is at his strongest when he can float above the discussion, making loose references to a hazy collection of theories that he never quite commits to. While any single claim is probably absurd and easily refuted -- Fox News, for example, paid $787 million to Dominion Voting Systems rather than try to defend his rigged-voting-machine lies in court -- the entire cloud is hard to get a handle on. Supporters can acknowledge the obvious problems with this claim or that one, while still believing that some other unspecified Biden-stole-the-election theory is true.
Trump fears going to court and is desperately trying to delay his trials because court processes are designed to cut through such fog. His lawyers will have to tell the jury a single coherent story, and he doesn't have one.
I wish he'd produce a similar "Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT" about the Mar-a-Lago documents. At various times he has implied that he declassified the documents, suggested the documents were planted by the FBI, and claimed "I had every right to have these documents" even if they were classified. These claims contradict each other and are all absurd, but when one is refuted his supporters can simply shift to another. By the time they come back around to their original excuse, they've forgotten why it's false.
So I'd love to see him commit to a single narrative, whatever it is. By all means, Mr. Trump, tell us your side of the story. Write a legal affadavit and sign your name to it -- preferably under penalty of perjury. Your cultlike followers may refuse to read the indictments against you, refuse to watch the January 6 hearings, and in general cover their ears against any unwelcome information, but I promise you this: I will read any REPORT you put out there. If you have exculpatory evidence, I want to see it.
Trump may not be announcing his first-and-best stolen-election claims, but Mike Lindell is, and it's the same old crap that has been debunked many times.
and Hunter
For almost a year, Republicans have complained that the US attorney investigating Hunter Biden wasn't given special-counsel status. Now he has been, and they're complaining about that too.
I seldom discuss Hunter Biden on this blog, for a simple reason: Until whatever Hunter is supposed to have done can be credibly connected to something his father did, I don't care. I don't need to see absolute proof before I get concerned, but give me something beyond MAGA wishful thinking. Hunter has never held a government office (unlike, say, Jared Kushner), and he appears to have had no direct influence on US policy.
He appears to have done some illegal things -- hence the plea deal that fell through -- though exactly what those are is never quite clear. He has also traded on his name, which is unsavory but annoyingly common and not illegal. Whatever he has or hasn't done, he should be treated like anyone else would be -- no better and no worse. If he ends up going to jail, I'm sure that will make his father sad. But that means nothing to me, because I care about the US government, not the Biden family.
Democrats would do well to write a broad anti-corruption law, one that would apply to future actions like the ones Hunter, Jared, Clarence Thomas, and Ginny Thomas are alleged to have committed. Holding high office should put restrictions and reporting obligations not just on the officeholder, but on close relatives as well. Republicans would of course oppose the law, and it wouldn't pass, but it would be a good issue to run on in 2024.
and you also might be interested in ...
The ten states with the lowest age-adjusted suicide rates are all blue states. The ten with the highest are nine red states and New Mexico. This probably has something to do with the availability of guns.
Kat Abu examines Fox News' persistent attacks on the very idea of being educated.
and let's close with something inevitable
Epic Rap Battles had to do a Barbie vs. Oppenheimer.
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