Office Hours: Trump’s last stand
His pending arrest for his attempted coup
Friends,
In a matter of days (perhaps even today) Donald Trump will be indicted — a form of arrest warrant — for seeking to prevent American democracy from choosing its president in 2020. A so-called “target letter,” which Trump received Sunday, is almost always followed by an actual indictment.
This is how the rule of law is supposed to work.
But put on your seat belts, because Trump and much of the Republican Party will go ballistic. Many appear to have given up on the rule of law and are determined to turn this nation into an authoritarian state.
The target letter involved Special Counsel Jack Smith’s criminal investigation into Trump’s efforts to hold onto power after he lost the 2020 election. Trump was given four days to report to a grand jury — an invitation he is expected to decline.
Trump is likely to be indicted in this case, and very soon. (Recall that just days after he received the first target letter in June — involving Trump’s handling of national defense material after he left office and his alleged obstruction of efforts to retrieve it — Trump was charged with 37 criminal counts covering seven different violations of federal law.)
This pending indictment is the mega one.
In the weeks following the 2020 presidential election, all of America and the world witnessed Trump insisting he had won despite zero evidence (including his own Justice Department’s view that he had lost the election). Trump pushed Republican governors, Republican secretaries of state, Republicans in Congress, and his own vice president to reverse the outcome of the election. He arranged false slates of electors. At one point he considered whether to use the apparatus of government to seize voting machines. And he encouraged followers to come to Washington and then encouraged them (at a rally near the White House) to march to the Capitol, just as Biden’s electoral victory was being certified. Members of the mob stormed the building, some chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” and others hunting for Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
It appears that a grand jury will soon authorize a judge to indict Trump for this. It’s possible he may soon go to trial.
Trump and Republicans are sure to use this indictment to rally the Republican base.
Yesterday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy suggested that the reason Trump might be indicted is that his poll numbers in the 2024 campaign have risen. “President Trump went up in the polls and actually was surpassing President Biden for reelection, so what do they do now? Weaponize government to go after their number one opponent,” McCarthy told reporters.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis characterized the pending indictment as “an attempt to criminalize politics and to try to criminalize differences.”
Trump’s indictment and pending trial are likely to become the central drama in the 2024 election. Trump will campaign on little else. I expect Republicans to center their campaigns on attacking the Justice Department for becoming “politicized.”
The choice will be stark: democracy and the rule of law, or authoritarianism and Trump.
Today’s Office Hours discussion question: How will America choose, and will we be stronger for it?
I believe the biggest reason tfg is throwing a rod at all this,is because he's never been held accountable for anything in his miserable life.When he was younger,his old man bailed him out,got him out of military service,etc.Then as an adult,he either sued the people he owed money to,or filed for bankruptcy.Again,no accountability.
So now he's being made to face the music.And despite all his screaming in Caps or threats towards the people who have his ass dead to rights,it ain't working out like he's used to and guess what, y'all,he is scared shitless.The thoughts of prison and being powerless and without all the control over everything is just terrifying to him.And it serves him right.I hope they throw the book at him,and then pick the damned thing up and throw it at him some more.
If this was any of us ordinary working class slobs under the same accusations as he's under,hell,we would have already been told we're gonna face a firing squad or spend life in Leavenworth,if not both.At the very least,he deserves the latter.
Hoping they give him everything he certainly has coming to him.
Trump has pushed the GOP so far out on the limb of tenuous credibility that no shred of integrity can be found in almost any legislator seeking to stay in office. Simply put, they can’t make it past the primaries without his blessing, or withstand his ire.
Without Trump bolstering this imperiled limb through the sheer power of his myth, no politician would’ve been so brazen as to supplant democracy with #RepubloFascism on their own.
It takes a special kind of crook who sees himself as impervious to law to normalize hatred and blatant lies as a foundation for a political party, one willing to operate for many years without a set platform to run on.
Wouldn’t it be nice if Trump soon found himself
facing a quintet of juries? Might he then flee to Hungary to avoid cuffs and bars?