Trump and the Jan 6 investigation

[bilateralrope]

Trump says he’s received a target letter from special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 investigators

It’s the clearest sign yet that Trump may soon face his third criminal indictment — this time for his effort to subvert the 2020 election results.

By KYLE CHENEY
07/18/2023 09:32 AM EDT
Updated: 07/18/2023 10:07 AM EDT

Donald Trump said Tuesday he expects to be indicted by special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 grand jury, citing a “target letter” he received from investigators on Sunday.

Such a letter “almost always means an arrest and indictment,” Trump, who has already been criminally indicted twice in recent months, wrote on Truth Social.

Trump said the letter, which is prosecutors’ typical precursor to a charging decision, offered him a chance to speak to the grand jury, which meets at the federal courthouse in Washington D.C., later this week. Targets of criminal investigations rarely speak to grand juries, and Trump has not exercised that right in the two other criminal cases in which he’s been charged.

The letter is the clearest sign yet that Smith is close to seeking an indictment for Trump’s role in the effort to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021.

While the specific crimes that Trump may be charged with are not clear, Smith’s team has been eyeing potential obstruction charges related to Trump’s actions in the days leading up to Jan. 6 and on that day itself — including pressuring his vice president, Mike Pence, to unilaterally block the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

Investigators have also examined Trump’s consideration of a plan to seize voting machines from the states, his campaign of false claims that the election was stolen and his role in advancing a plan to assemble bogus slates of presidential electors to stoke a conflict ahead of Jan. 6.

It’s unclear whether other figures associated with Trump’s effort are also in Smith’s sights. Investigators have interviewed dozens of prominent figures in Trump’s orbit, including Pence, in recent months. Attorneys John Eastman and Jeff Clark — two Trump associates considered key allies in his effort — had their phones seized last year.

Trump revealed the target letter as he prepares to fight on another front to delay a criminal trial — also resulting from charges brought by Smith — related to his hoarding of national security secrets at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump’s attorneys will be in court in Fort Pierce, Fla. on Tuesday afternoon asking for the trial to be postponed until after the 2024 election, a prospect that Smith’s team has vehemently opposed.

Trump is facing an extraordinary array of criminal charges and investigations. In addition to the two cases Smith has mounted, he’s facing charges in Manhattan for allegedly falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment scheme to a porn actress accusing him of an extramarital affair in 2016. And a district attorney based in Fulton County, Ga. has convened a grand jury that is expected to consider charging Trump and allies for efforts to subvert the 2020 election in Georgia.

Many aspects of Smith’s Jan. 6 investigation were previously pursued by the House select committee on Jan. 6, which interviewed hundreds of figures associated with Trump’s scheme to seize a second term despite losing the election. The committee concluded that Trump was at the center of a complex, months-long effort to sow doubt about the election results and then orchestrate several attempts to reverse the outcome despite no evidence of significant fraud.

The panel focused in particular on Trump’s effort to pressure state and local officials to appoint “alternative” slates of presidential electors in seven states won by Biden and then use those slates as a pretense to disrupt the Jan. 6 session of Congress — when the Constitution and federal laws require Congress to meet and certify the election. That session, also according to the Constitution and law, is managed by the vice president, who doubles as president of the Senate.

When no state officials acquiesced, Trump turned to a cadre of lawyers, including Eastman, who promoted fringe alternatives to keep Trump’s prospects alive. Eastman famously pressured Pence and his top aides to violate provisions of the Electoral Count Act — the law that has governed the Jan. 6 session of Congress since 1887 — to advance the effort.

Prosecutors and the select committee have also focused on Trump’s effort to assemble a massive crowd in Washington on Jan. 6, part of his plan to pressure Pence and GOP lawmakers to help reverse the results, and then to steer it toward the Capitol after Pence made clear he wouldn’t go along with the plan.

Trump inflamed the crowd with his rhetoric and then stoked anger further when he attacked Pence — even as violence was underway at the Capitol — accusing him of lacking “courage.” Pence and lawmakers were forced to evacuate and delay the count of electoral votes for six hours while law enforcement and the National Guard worked to clear the mob.

It sounds like another federal criminal indictment for Trump will be coming soon. So he'll stick to his strategy of attempting to delay and pardon himself.

[Broomstick]

I find it darkly amusing that what the Republicans have been threatening to do to Hilary for decades now is apparently actually happening to Trump.

[LadyTevar]

I find it darkly amusing that what the Republicans have been threatening to do to Hilary for decades now is apparently actually happening to Trump.

Funny how you don't hear them crying "Lock (her) Up" now.

[Lord Revan]

This leads to interesting question do presidential candidates have immunity from prosecution or does one actually have to be elected to president to get this in the US that is.

[LadyTevar]

This leads to interesting question do presidential candidates have immunity from prosecution or does one actually have to be elected to president to get this in the US that is.

No, Candidates are not immune.
And according to the radio, the judge in FL will start Trump's trial in MAY. The Prosecuters wanted December, the Defense wanted "after the Election".
To be fair -- May is after the Caucauses and General Elections start.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I find it darkly amusing that what the Republicans have been threatening to do to Hilary for decades now is apparently actually happening to Trump.

Funny how you don't hear them crying "Lock (her) Up" now.

Now it's the other side saying "Lock him up". At least that's what I say to Trumpers

And even if he can pardon himself (which would require admitting guilt) that only applies to Federal offenses, not state-level ones.

[bilateralrope]

The Georgia investigation is due to indict in august. If that doesn't make Trump flee to a non-extradition country, nothing will.

That leads to a question for the mods: Do you want to consolidate all the Trump cases into one thread ?

[bilateralrope]

Trump indicted for bid to overturn 2020 election

Special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with four felonies, alleging a multifaceted effort to spread disinformation and disenfranchise American voters.

By KYLE CHENEY and JOSH GERSTEIN

08/01/2023 05:46 PM EDT

Updated: 08/01/2023 09:56 PM EDT

Federal prosecutors have charged Donald Trump with conspiring to seize a second term after losing the 2020 election, alleging a months-long campaign of deceit and abuses that ended with him sitting idly while a violent mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol.

In a 45-page indictment unveiled Tuesday, special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with four felony counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. The indictment also accused Trump of trying to exploit the violent Jan. 6, 2021, assault on Congress to continue his effort to cling to power.

“The attack on our nation’s capital on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” Smith declared during a brief appearance before reporters shortly after the indictment was made public. “It was fueled by lies — lies by the defendant — targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.”

The indictment identified six individuals as co-conspirators in Trump’s effort to overturn the election, but none of those people were charged Tuesday. Though the alleged co-conspirators were not named, the descriptions correspond to a cabal of Trump lawyers who embraced increasingly fringe strategies as Trump’s bid to remain in power faltered. They include Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell.

Trump’s case was initially assigned to U.S. District Court Tanya Chutkan, an Obama-appointed judge who has been among the harshest critics of Jan. 6 defendants and their conduct.

The indictment describes a breathtaking, multifaceted effort by Trump to reverse his defeat to Joe Biden at the polls, one that grew increasingly desperate — and crossed into criminality — as his legal options dwindled. It depicts Trump at the apex of a wide-ranging scheme that included amplifying “knowingly false” claims about election fraud, leaning on state legislators to falsely assert that the election outcome was in doubt and assembling false slates of presidential electors to force a conflict.

When, in the weeks after Election Day, Trump’s lawsuits challenging the results foundered and state officials balked at his pressure campaign, Trump turned to the Jan. 6 session of Congress, a joint meeting presided over by his own vice president, Mike Pence. Trump began publicly and privately leaning on Pence to assert the unilateral authority to refuse to count Biden’s electoral votes in as many as seven states. Instead, Trump wanted Pence to declare the election results in doubt and ask state legislatures to consider reversing the outcome.

That effort, Smith concluded, amounted to an unlawful scheme to obstruct Congress’ constitutional duty to count electoral votes — and it laid the groundwork for the mass violence that followed, when a mob of Trump supporters, seeded with members of extremist groups and conspiracy theorists, stormed the Capitol, hundreds of them bludgeoning police officers, in an effort to prevent Congress from finalizing Biden’s victory.

Trump now faces criminal charges in three separate cases as he mounts a bid to be re-elected president in 2024. Last month, Smith’s team charged him with hoarding classified documents and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them — charges that prosecutors expanded last week. In March, the Manhattan district attorney charged him with falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment to cover up an alleged affair with a porn star.

The district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, is also investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election result in that state, which Biden narrowly won. She is expected to announce charges this month.

Smith announced the new indictment Tuesday evening at a Justice Department satellite office — a setting intended to convey his independence from the politically appointed leadership of DOJ. About two dozen prosecutors and investigators stood in the back of a conference as their boss — who is accompanied by a 24-hour security detail — spoke.

In his stern, three-minute statement, Smith mentioned Trump by name only once and did not refer to his former office. The prosecutor called the police officers who defended the Capitol “heroes” and said charging Trump was consistent with DOJ’s efforts to pursue other crimes committed that day.

The special counsel did not respond to or acknowledge reporters’ questions, including queries about why the alleged co-conspirators remain uncharged and how the indictment might affect the 2024 election.

“Our investigation of other individuals continues,” Smith said.

The indictment tracks closely with evidence amassed by the House Jan. 6 select committee in 2021 and 2022 but adds key new wrinkles. For example, the indictment indicates that Trump called two U.S. senators at 6 p.m. on Jan. 6 — even as the riot was still raging in parts of the Capitol — in a further attempt to block Biden’s election. It also notes that, at 7 p.m., his White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, urged him to call off Republican legislators who were intent on raising objections to the election results. Trump refused, according to the charges.

The indictment also underscores the deep unease inside Trump’s campaign as he pressed his increasingly fringe plans. It describes campaign officials refusing to sign a press statement about the scheme to appoint false electors in the states. It alleges that Giuliani “falsely assured” those signing the fraudulent elector certificates in Pennsylvania that they would be used only if Trump succeeded in litigation.

The indictment also indicates that Pence kept contemporaneous notes of some interactions with Trump, including a Dec. 29, 2020, exchange in which he recalled Trump falsely telling him that the Justice Department was finding “major infractions” related to election fraud.

Trump is scheduled to appear in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Thursday afternoon for an initial court appearance before a magistrate judge. He is expected to plead not guilty.

Trump’s new judge is a tough Jan. 6 sentencer — and has a history with him

Meet Tanya Chutkan, the Obama appointee who was randomly chosen to preside over Trump’s newest case.
By KYLE CHENEY and JOSH GERSTEIN

08/02/2023 04:30 AM EDT

When Judge Tanya Chutkan presides over the new criminal case against Donald Trump, it won’t be her first time tangling with the former president and his lawyers.

In fact, the U.S. district court judge already dealt the ex-president one of the most significant legal blows of his lifetime, triggering perhaps the greatest deluge of evidence about his bid to subvert the 2020 election — a scheme for which he now stands charged with serious crimes.

The Obama-appointed jurist ruled in fall 2021 that the House Jan. 6 select committee could access reams of Trump’s White House files — a ruling that was subsequently upheld by an appeals court and left undisturbed by the Supreme Court. That evidence — call logs, memos, internal strategy papers and more from the desks of Trump’s most trusted advisers — became the backbone of the committee’s evidence and shaped much of the public’s understanding of his effort to seize a second term he didn’t win.

Much of that evidence resurfaced Tuesday in special counsel Jack Smith’s four-count indictment of Trump, which referenced call logs and White House records that were already familiar to Americans who tracked the Jan. 6 committee proceedings. Chutkan was randomly selected Tuesday to preside over Trump’s latest criminal case, his third in the last four months.

“Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President,” Chutkan wrote in her 2-year-old ruling, a rebuke that is sure to echo as she prepares to preside over the newest criminal case against the current GOP frontrunner for the presidential nomination in 2024.

Chutkan, 61, was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and came to the U.S. for college as a teenager, attending George Washington University and then law school at the University of Pennsylvania. She spent more than a decade as a public defender in Washington, D.C. She later worked for the law firm Boies Schiller & Flexner before being confirmed as a federal trial judge in Washington in 2014.

Chutkan has avoided some of the most pointed criticisms of Trump that some of her colleagues on the federal bench in D.C. have delivered as they’ve sentenced defendants who participated in the Jan. 6 mob that attacked the Capitol as part of Trump’s bid to remain in power. Judge Reggie Walton has called Trump a “charlatan.” Judge Amit Mehta has said Jan. 6 defendants were “pawns” of Trump and his allies. Judge Amy Berman Jackson has chastised Republicans for refusing to level with Trump about the 2020 election.

“It is not patriotism, it is not standing up for America to stand up for one man — who knows full well that he lost — instead of the Constitution he was trying to subvert,” Jackson said at a sentencing last year.

But Chutkan has delivered some of the harshest sentences to Jan. 6 defendants and made her disgust and horror over the attack clear, lamenting the prospect of renewed political violence in 2024 and noting that no one accused of orchestrating the effort to subvert the election had been held accountable.

“You have made a very good point,” she told Jan. 6 rioter Robert Palmer at his December 2021 sentencing, “that the people who exhorted you and encouraged you and rallied you to go and take action and to fight have not been charged.”

“The issue of who has or has not been charged is not before me. I don’t have any influence on that,” she said. “I have my opinions, but they are not relevant.”

But Chutkan also said that reality wasn’t a reason to go easy on those who bought into the election lies and acted upon that belief.

“The people who planned this and funded it and encouraged it haven’t been charged, but that’s not a reason for you to get a lower sentence,” she said. “I have to make it clear that the actions you engaged in cannot happen again. Every day we’re hearing about reports of antidemocratic factions of people plotting violence, the potential threat of violence, in 2024.”

Chutkan has alluded more specifically to Trump in other Jan. 6 sentences, including her first — to misdemeanor defendant Carl Mazzocco, who Chutkan said “went to the Capitol in support of one man, not in support of our country.”

During those early months of the Jan. 6 investigation, Chutkan also staked out territory that some of her colleagues were reluctant to tread: She pointedly rejected the equivalence some defendants were drawing between violence adjacent to Black Lives Matter protests and the riot at the Capitol.

One Trump-appointed judge, Trevor McFadden, had raised sharp questions about whether Jan. 6 defendants were being treated more harshly than people accused of similar conduct during the summertime violence of 2020.

“I think the U.S. attorney would have more credibility if it was even-handed in its concern about riots and mobs in this city,” McFadden said at the time.

Chutkan, while sentencing a defendant in a different case, appeared to allude to her colleague’s remark, before saying she “flatly” disagreed.

“People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by the police of an unarmed man. Some of those protesters became violent,” Chutkan said of the protests and rioting that followed George Floyd’s death. “But to compare the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights, to those of a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and ignores a very real danger that the January 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy.”

Looks like Trump has to deal with a reasonable judge for these charges.

[LadyTevar]

Now to sit back and watch the shitstorm.

I understand Trump's going spastic on his personal Twitter-wannabe.

[bilateralrope]

His PAC is running low on money. So I have to wonder how much of his tantrum is genuine and how much is fundraising so he can continue attempting to delay until he can get a pardon.

[Highlord Laan]

His PAC is running low on money. So I have to wonder how much of his tantrum is genuine and how much is fundraising so he can continue attempting to delay until he can get a pardon.

His mindless cultists keep sending him money.

[bilateralrope]

His PAC is running low on money. So I have to wonder how much of his tantrum is genuine and how much is fundraising so he can continue attempting to delay until he can get a pardon.

His mindless cultists keep sending him money.

But not as much money as he's spending.

[Lord Revan]

There also might be the fact that Trump isn't spending that money in the right place. Luxuries won't help win a court case or get elected.

[Solauren]

His PAC is running low on money. So I have to wonder how much of his tantrum is genuine and how much is fundraising so he can continue attempting to delay until he can get a pardon.

His mindless cultists keep sending him money.

Good! Eventually, they'll all run out of money, so the next idiot after Trump can't use them!

[LadyTevar]

His PAC is running low on money. So I have to wonder how much of his tantrum is genuine and how much is fundraising so he can continue attempting to delay until he can get a pardon.

A PARDON!? Does he actually in some part of his tiny little brain thinks that's even REMOTELY going to be possible?!

Besides -- to get a Pardon, you have to be convicted first.

[LadyTevar]

There also might be the fact that Trump isn't spending that money in the right place. Luxuries won't help win a court case or get elected.

From what I understand his PAC is currently (attempting) to pay all his legal bills. I wanna know where the REST of the money is coming from.

[Ralin]

A PARDON!? Does he actually in some part of his tiny little brain thinks that's even REMOTELY going to be possible?!

Besides -- to get a Pardon, you have to be convicted first.

Ya do realize the idea is that he'd be pardoning himself, right?

[Crazedwraith]

If he was inclined to pardon himself why didn't he do it when he had the power?

[Gandalf]

A PARDON!? Does he actually in some part of his tiny little brain thinks that's even REMOTELY going to be possible?!

Besides -- to get a Pardon, you have to be convicted first.

Ford pardoned Nixon for crimes he "may have committed" or whatever the exact term was. No need for a conviction.

[Elfdart]

I thought it quite fitting that Il Douchebag is being charged under (among other things) the provisions of the Klan Act.

I get the impression that since Giuliani, Meadows and the others aren't being charged that they already rolled over on Trump.

[Ralin]

If he was inclined to pardon himself why didn't he do it when he had the power?

1) Until very recently the idea of a former president being charged with crimes was a borderline impossible fantasy.

2) This would have required Trump to have recognized the possibility that he could lose or had lost the election.

3) It's very questionable whether a president can pardon themselves.

4) Just in general Trump was weirdly adverse to using his pardon powers.

I thought it quite fitting that Il Douchebag is being charged under (among other things) the provisions of the Klan Act.

I haven't fact checked this yet, but I read that the indictment is also 45 pages long

I get the impression that since Giuliani, Meadows and the others aren't being charged that they already rolled over on Trump.

It's the people vs Donald Trump, not the people vs Donald Trump et al. No sense making the trials of the century even more complicated than they're already going to be. Priorities and all.

Also hadn't known this but I read elsewhere that there's precedent saying that naming an unindicted co-conspirator in the indictment is a due process violation.

[bilateralrope]

A PARDON!? Does he actually in some part of his tiny little brain thinks that's even REMOTELY going to be possible?!

Besides -- to get a Pardon, you have to be convicted first.

DeSantis is talking about pardoning Trump. There are probably other Republican hopefuls who don't like the idea of anyone in their party having to obey the law.

Though I'd guess that Trump is planning to pardon himself.

If he was inclined to pardon himself why didn't he do it when he had the power?

He probably didn't think it was possible for him to be charged.

Also a pardon can only be for crimes committed before it happened. So it wouldn't have saved him from any of the classified documents charges, while possibly being used as evidence of his guilt in state cases. Or even Federal cases if the Supreme Court overrules the pardon, as self pardons are questionable enough that I'd expect one to be challenged.

[bilateralrope]

I get the impression that since Giuliani, Meadows and the others aren't being charged that they already rolled over on Trump.

It's the people vs Donald Trump, not the people vs Donald Trump et al. No sense making the trials of the century even more complicated than they're already going to be. Priorities and all.

Also hadn't known this but I read elsewhere that there's precedent saying that naming an unindicted co-conspirator in the indictment is a due process violation.

Maybe they are cooperating. Maybe there isn't enough evidence to indict them yet or they are being pressured to flip..

Maybe Jack Smith is keeping the trial simple to minimise delays because he'd prefer to have it done before the election.

[Ralin]

Also a pardon can only be for crimes committed before it happened. So it wouldn't have saved him from any of the classified documents charges, while possibly being used as evidence of his guilt in state cases. Or even Federal cases if the Supreme Court overrules the pardon, as self pardons are questionable enough that I'd expect one to be challenged.

Yeah, that too. None of those would have happened in the first place if Trump had been capable of wrapping his head around the idea that they were a big deal and he could have consequences for them

[Lord Revan]

Also a pardon can only be for crimes committed before it happened. So it wouldn't have saved him from any of the classified documents charges, while possibly being used as evidence of his guilt in state cases. Or even Federal cases if the Supreme Court overrules the pardon, as self pardons are questionable enough that I'd expect one to be challenged.

Yeah, that too. None of those would have happened in the first place if Trump had been capable of wrapping his head around the idea that they were a big deal and he could have consequences for them

I think this the most important part, I suspect Trump understood at some level that the documents and the Jan 6 events were a big deal, but I suspect he thought himself to be protected from any negative consequences and thus did things that were monumentally stupid.

I think the thought he could use those things to further his own clout/ego without them ever causing issue to him.