The Voter as Judge and Jury

The Most Important Verdict Concerning January 6th Will Be Handed Down on November 5th

The brief by Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team that was released yesterday, details why Donald Trump’s plot to steal the 2020 election is not covered by the immunity the Supreme Court asserts presidents have for official acts. It is a powerful document and you should read every word of it.

No seriously. Take the time read it. It is compelling. While you may be familiar with the general narrative, the details are compelling. Whether offering evidence of Trump’s absolute contempt for the will of the voters and the law or his lack of concern for the well-being of his own vice president, probably the one public official who had been most loyal to him during the preceding four years, it brings to life what is the greatest crime committed by any public official in U.S. history.

More than that, while I read it, it evoked the nature of the demi-monde of the ne’er do wells with which Trump surrounded himself as he plotted to remain in power despite massive, conclusive evidence that Joe Biden had beaten him at the ballot box. The Rudy Giulianis and the Steve Bannons, the D-team of lawyers he turned to after his original set of legal advisors told him he had no case to contest the election…this entire crew appears in all their slimy despicableness throughout the 165 page document. Each of them knew that the American people had voted Trump out of office. Each knew that Trump had no reason to contest the election. But they did not care. Instead, they sought to manufacture plots and when they were rejected by the courts, to foment a public rebellion…anything to retain for Trump and those close to him the ability to control the U.S. government and use the highest office in the land to serve their own personal goals and greed.

Perhaps you have heard the story so often during the past four years that you have grown numb to that core fact. They knew they had no claim to the presidency. They sought to hold it anyway. They sought to hijack the most powerful government in the world, to trashcan the Constitution, and lord only knows what they would have done had they remained in power.

It was an attempted coup. That is not an overstatement. It was exactly the same as if they had marched into the White House with armed troops and seized it.

Our country has no future if such behavior is protected by our corrupt Supreme Court’s fabricated notion of presidential immunity. The door will be open sooner or later to another president to remain in power whether the voters want him there or not. Our democracy will be dead.

It is a deeply disturbing picture made all the more horrifying by the fact that Trump and his cronies are trying again to seize power. What is more they have not been in any way chastened by the experience of 2020. If they have learned anything from it it is how to prepare better for the next coup.

Consider the fact that Trump discarded the vice president who would not go along with his criminal scheme and has replaced him with a running mate this time around who this week, on national television, made it clear that he is all in with Trump, the election thief. He would not acknowledge that Trump lost in 2020. He has not said he would certify as Mike Pence did, election results. He has helped fabricate some of the (completely specious) reasons why next month’s election results might be fabricated.

It is positively terrifying to consider J.D. Vance’s refusal to acknowledge Trump lost alongside the Jack Smith brief.

But it gets worse. Consider also what we know about Trump relationship with America’s enemies and his disregard for U.S. national security. Robert Mueller may not have prosecuted Trump for obstruction of justice and he was not sure whether collusion with Russia was a crime. Or perhaps it is fairer to say that Attorney General Bill Barr blocked further prosecutions in the wake of the Mueller report. But that does not minimize the fact that Mueller clearly made the case that Trump and those around him were colluding with the Russians in order to help get elected. Further, we have seen Trump time and again mouth Kremlin talking points, advance Kremlin interests, cozy up to Vladimir Putin and then, when challenged on it, dismiss it all as a “myth” and then do it all again.

There is no question that Trump has often put Russian national interests ahead of those of the United States. There is no question that Russia—which also knows how Trump tried to illegally seize power before and is supporting his candidacy again—wants Trump back in the Oval Office.

We also know from the Mar-a-Lago documents case that Trump stole national security documents. That is a fact that does not require a trial to be confirmed. The documents were, in violation of the law and despite repeated attempts to retrieve them, kept illegally at Trump’s residence and he went to great lengths to hold on to them…just as he did with the presidency, despite the law, contrary to the law.

That case was “thrown out” by corrupt judge Aileen Cannon. But Cannon’s decision is being appealed and legal experts consider it likely to be overturned.

Never mind that for now. The case will not be brought to trial before the election. Never mind that Barr buried the Mueller case. Never mind that the Supreme Court has made it impossible to try Trump for his attempted coup prior to when voters must make their decisions on November 5.

While our justice system has, it must be said, failed us thus far with regard to these very serious crimes committed by the former president—for a variety of reasons including efforts by powerful people to short-circuit it, the court of last resort so long as we are still a functioning democracy is the electorate.

On November 5, every voter will asked to be a judge. While prosecutors like Mueller or Smith have had to narrow their focus to conform not only with the letter of the law but also with what a jury or judge might find digestible, voters are entitled to take the sum of what we know regarding all these case together. What is more they can incorporate the evidence of their own eyes—of statements Trump has made on the campaign trail about his desire to suspend the Constitution or be a dictator—into the judgment they ultimately make. They can and indeed must also factor in statements like those from the debate that should disqualify Trump’s running mate Vance. Indeed, they can also factor in other court decisions—like Trump’s felony convictions or that he was found liable for rape or that his family foundation was shut down for fraud or that many of his closest advisors have gone to jail—into the decision they make. And of course, they also can contrast all that legal evidence and with the character and accomplishment of the prosecutor against whom the felon is running.

Furthermore, if they do as they should and defeat Trump, while he will surely contest their decision, in the end it will be final. That in and of itself is a fact that should be weighed against the evidence, augmented greatly by Jack Smith’s most recent brief, that if Trump wins on November 5th, the judgment of the voters may never again be considered final…or indeed may never again be considered at all.