And the Hits Just Keep On Coming
It was shaping up like a bit of a horse race between Jack Smith and Fani Willis as to who was going to criminally indict Donald Trump first for his purported attempts to overturn the 2020 election results. In the past few days there has been a lot of speculation about Willis, the District Attorney for Fulton County, Georgia, and just how ready she was to bring her indictment. We have seen the Jersey barricades going up around the Atlanta courthouse and we have had quotes from her saying she is ready to go (without any sense of detailed timing or anything that is holding her up). But this morning, Andrew Weissman, ex-General Counsel for the FBI, the lead investigator of the Mueller Investigation and now an MSNBC legal commentator, said that he though that Jack Smith would bring forth his indictment today. And at 5:43pm EDT, Jack Smith did just that. His indictment of former president Donald Trump has four specific counts against him and consists of 45 pages of detailed allegations that go into the January 6th “coup”, but also the actions between the election date and Joe Biden’s inauguration designed to upend the election through unlawful means and thereby fraudulently alter the election results. The specific counts are:
1. Conspiracy to defraud the United States,
2. Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding,
3. Obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and
4. Conspiracy against the rights of the electorate.
It doesn’t get more impactful than that. My guess is that the New York Times may just publish a headline tomorrow in its historically largest type font of 96 points. This has happened several times, for Pearl Harbor, for the JFK Assassination, and when we walked on the moon. That is the scale of and the seriousness of this event and its potential impact on the United States.
I would go on, but anything I say will be said over and over again in the coming days. The only thing that occurs to me is that this is still not the end of the Donald J. Trump hits. There is still the Fulton County election interference case to be brought by Fani Willis. As repetitive as that seems based on this federal indictment now filed, it is still meaningful because a state and local criminal charge is not as easily brushed aside by some political turnover by the Republican Party should they win the next presidential election. So, let me just say that I suspect that the hits will just keep on coming.