I NEVER THOUGHT there was much to the rumours and innuendo about “Russian collusion” with respect to the 2016 American presidential election.
I was not surprised when the long-awaited Mueller Report, while less than a total exoneration of Donald Trump, did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia to influence the result in favour of the 45th President of the United States.
In a similar vein, I also believe the indictment of the former commander-in-chief by a Manhattan grand jury at the behest of district attorney Alvin Bragg in connection with payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels is a clear instance of prosecutorial overreach. The theory of the case is weak and Bragg – a liberal Democrat who boasted that, as a deputy state attorney general, he had “sued the Trump administration more than 100 times” during his bid for district attorney – is motivated in large part by political considerations. As an aside, it is bizarre that the US elects prosecutors.
I only reiterate my own analysis, which has drawn the ire of some on the left, in anticipation of criticism that my view of the latest indictment of the top-ranked GOP contestant to take on President Joe Biden is tainted irretrievably by ideological bias. I guarantee you that it is not.
In my estimation, the three counts of conspiracy and one count of obstruction contained in the 45-page document we got sight of this week are very different. The indictment is an equally stunning and disturbing read.
Sagely, it concedes that Trump “had a right, like every American, to speak publicly regarding the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won” and that he was “entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means.”
And shrewdly, the indictment centres on what Trump, as well as unnamed co-conspirators acting on his behalf, did and said prior to the events on January 6th, not his remarks to a riled up crowd of fervent backers in Washington, DC that morning. If it had been mainly predicated on the latter, the near blanket protection on speech conferred by the 1st Amendment would ultimately be core to a quite possibly successful defence.
Instead, the indictment records in painstaking detail the conduct of the then-president and the six co-conspirators after Election Day, 3 November 2020. Initially, it is contended persuasively that Trump and the co-conspirators knew that their arguments that the election had been stolen were false. For Trump had been told that he lost by his vice president, Mike Pence, the Justice Department, the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, senior White House attorneys and staffers and elected and appointed legislators and officials who were allied to Trump.
In short, anyone who retains an iota of credibility apprised him of the unfortunate reality: Joe Biden won the race. A Deputy White House Counsel put it bluntly in December 2020: “there is no world, there is no option in which you do not leave the White House on January 20th (2021).”
Undaunted, however, Trump and his close acolytes sought to subvert the will of the people and damage American democracy and its crucial organs in the process.
The indictment describes their efforts in Georgia, in Pennsylvania, in Michigan, in Nevada, in Arizona and in Wisconsin to turn losses into wins. Dead women and men had cast ballots. There were more votes than there were voters. There had been “vote dumps” and machines were corrupted. Tens of thousands of non-citizens had voted.
Despite there being not one shred of evidence to substantiate these ludicrous accusations and the co-conspirators’ knowing them to be false, they leaned heavily on prominent politicians and other figures, lots of whom had endorsed Trump, to do their bidding.
The then-president himself pressured Justice Department personnel and Mike Pence, his theretofore faithful number two in the executive branch, to do likewise.
In sum, and allowing for the fact that there is little information in it that wasn’t already in the public domain, this indictment is explosive. Of the litany of harsh condemnations of Donald Trump’s behaviour I have come across over decades, first as a wealthy private citizen and subsequently as an atypical world leader, it is, to me, the most chilling.
Of course, Donald Trump’s high-priced litigators will raise myriad legal defences of varying merit. Since their client is deeply unpopular in the capital city and may consequently be unable to get a fair trial, they will urge a change of venue.
They will assert that the relevant federal statutes are too vague and that the legislative intent behind them was not to penalise what Trump and the co-conspirators are declared to have done. Accordingly, they are inapplicable.
They may posit that Trump was merely following the guidance of counsel; specifically, he was adhering to law professor John Eastman’s advice that Pence could reject slates of electors from states where voter fraud was alleged. The 1st Amendment will be invoked, as will the proposition that a president should stay immune from being charged criminally for what he may have done when in office.
The lawyers will dispute that Trump knew his suspicion of electoral malfeasance in multiple states was false. Legal wrangling will transpire in court in the months and years ahead. If precedent is any dictate, Trump will endeavour to extend this and all of the other proceedings ad infinitum. For now, in front of the court of public opinion, he will continue to repeat that this is election interference, that he is a victim of persecution, that the Department of Justice has been weaponised by liberal Democrats and President Biden and that “deranged Jack Smith” will not rest until he gets him.
Sadly, as polling has invariably shown, Trump’s massive base of die-hard supporters will nod and cheer in complete agreement. They will not be moved, no matter what. Truth be damned. “What about Hunter?” is their defiant reply.
Even more sadly, judging by the failure to date of Ron DeSantis and other candidates for the Republican presidential nomination to catch fire, plenty of grassroots conservatives aren’t necessarily Trump fanatics, yet are gravitating to him because they have some degree of sympathy for the beleaguered billionaire.
I’ve been asked on several occasions to explain how it feels that politics in the US – and the American project more broadly, for that is what it still is – has reached this unfathomably low ebb. With all that we know about Donald Trump and all the legal peril he is in, how could a vast swathe of Americans be prepared to once again entrust such a manifestly deficient human being with the presidency?
I won’t attempt to answer these questions here. Suffice it to say that we are where we are, and it is not a good place.
Larry Donnelly is a Boston lawyer, a Law Lecturer at the University of Galway and a political columnist with TheJournal.ie.
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