Why would you indict someone who's committed no crime?
Garland's elevator is stuck in the basement, but he's not that stupid.
WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 26: Attorney General Merrick Garland testifies during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies hearing to discuss the fiscal year 2023 budget of the Department of Justice at the Capitol on April 26, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Greg Nash - Pool/Getty Images) (Photographer: Pool/Getty Images North America)
I have no love for the yes man AG Garland. But I have to believe he’s not that stupid to go and try to indict former President Trump. Sure we have a partisan witch hunt that’s looking into the to do about nothing get together last year. But nothing will come from it. Now a few loons keep screaming for indictments of Trump.
The usual riff raff. Obscure Progressive web sites and college professors. The case for indictment? Pence pressured to not certify. E-mails saying the same thing. Peaceful rally gone a bit rowdy. Blah, Blah, Blah. This from the WP why that’s all bull.
University of Michigan law professor Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney, has made the most thorough case for indictments. Trump pressured Vice President Mike Pence to block congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential race. Trump engaged in this pressure campaign even though many people — including federal judges, state officials and his own advisers — had indicated that he lost the election, the widescale fraud he kept invoking had not occurred, and the Constitution now demanded that Biden take office.
This course of behavior, McQuade argues, broke two laws. It was a corrupt attempt to obstruct or impede an official proceeding, and it was a conspiracy to defraud the U.S.
Federal judge David Carter made much the same argument as McQuade in a March 28 ruling. Ordering Trump legal adviser John Eastman to turn over documents to the House committee on the Jan. 6 riot, Carter found that Eastman and Trump “more likely than not” engaged in obstruction and conspiracy to defraud.
First, prosecuting the case would mean proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump knew he had lost the election and Eastman’s legal theories were bunk. The evidence that McQuade and Carter have produced leaves room for that doubt. Trump regularly speaks as though he believes things that he has ample reason to believe are false. I would not envy the jury trying to rummage through the attic of his mind.
That Trump was entirely sincere in believing his bonkers claims about the election would be his best strategy in court. Everyone who said during his presidency that he should be removed for mental incapacity under the 25th amendment would have to give credence to this defense, if they wished to be consistent.
The next problem is the awkwardness, and possible folly, of applying broadly written statutes in a way that implicates separation-of-powers concerns that were remote from anyone’s contemplation when they were adopted by the framers of the Constitution. This could also be the basis for a legal challenge to a prosecution. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Administrative Procedures Act does not apply to the president even though it includes no explicit exemption for any member of the executive branch.
The statutes that would be used against Trump include no exemption for members of Congress, either. It’s not hard to picture the tables being turned. What if, next year, Republicans control Congress and use its committees to launch investigations of the Biden administration? What if Democrats decide these are political stunts and do what they can to slow down the Republicans? Would they then be impeding or obstructing an official proceeding?
If Trump gets indicted under the theory now being advanced, the odds that Republicans would say so approach 100%. Each party is already too eager to criminalize the other’s politics.
The third drawback to indicting Trump: It would be more dangerously divisive even than McQuade, to her credit, concedes. His supporters should not, of course, get a veto over a well-grounded prosecution. But they would be all the more zealous in his defense because there would be serious arguments against this prosecution. And the strife would worsen as the parties engaged in escalating tit-for-tat prosecutorial excess. Garland’s caution, then, could be a form of statesmanship rather than cowardice.
No evidence to indict President Trump yet lots of evidence to prove a fraudulent election of bribem. It is absolutely a witch hunt by the demonazis.
I am 99.9999% positive that none of the federal elections in the past 100 years had multiple locations that suddenly stopped counting ballots before they were finished.
On a separate issue, I've long had problems with electronic ballot tabulators and paper ballots. With the old push a lever machines, your anonymity was assured, even though the sign in log had the voting slip number written next to you name. Now, however, your paper ballot can be retrieved and matched to your voting slip number -- thereby revealing who you voted for.