Trump Confesses!
This is an admission, and a massively un-American statement
“he [Pence] could have overturned the Election!” — Former President Donald Trump
“This is what prosecutors call guilty knowledge. And also, intent…” — Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance
A year after the Jan. 6 coup attempt, crimes hidden in plain sight — the insurrectionists’ seditious conspiracy, Donald Trump’s election-interference phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the submission of fraudulent electoral college slates — are finally getting the public attention they deserve. It’s causing many to question why Trump seems immune to scrutiny, while Trump himself provided possible reasons at a rally in Conroe, Texas on Jan. 29. He raised the specter of violence if he’s charged with any crimes, while baselessly accusing two Black prosecutors of being racists, and also dangling promises of pardons, which could constitute obstruction of justice. He followed up by openly admitting he had tried to get Vice President Mike Pence to “overturn the election.”
“If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere, because our country and our elections are corrupt,” he told his audience, in the midst of an 80-minute lie-packed speech. Minutes later, he promised to “treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly,” if he runs and wins in 2024, “And if it requires pardons we will give them pardons. Because they are being treated so unfairly.”
In fact, as early as late August, the Washington Post reported that, “Federal judges in Washington are questioning whether rioters who have admitted to storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 in support of President Donald Trump are being treated too leniently.”
Never-Trump Republicans were quick to condemn Trump’s most recent remarks.
“Trump uses language he knows caused the Jan 6 violence; suggests he’d pardon the Jan. 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy; threatens prosecutors; and admits he was attempting to overturn the election,” said Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, co-chair of Jan. 6 Select Committee on Twitter. “He’d do it all again if given the chance.”
On Jan. 30, Trump released a statement attacking recent congressional efforts to definitively close
any loopholes in the Electoral Count Act. It concluded by saying, “he [Pence] could have overturned the Election!”
“‘He could have overturned the election.’ This is an admission, and a massively un-American statement,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger, another GOP Select Committee member, tweeted. “It is time for every Republican leader to pick a side… Trump or the Constitution, there is no middle on defending our nation anymore.”
To understand Trump’s seeming immunity in a non-sinister light, there’s no better guide than legal/national security blogger Marcy Wheeler’s late August post, “How A Trump Prosecution for January 6 Would Work.” In it, Wheeler argues that if Trump is charged, the DOJ will follow the patterns it’s already established: “Of around 200 January 6 defendants charged with obstruction, I can think of few if any against whom obstruction has been charged based solely on their actions on the day of the riot, and Trump is not going to be the exception to that rule .... DOJ would rely on Trump’s words and actions leading up to the event to prove his intent,” and “they would charge him in a conspiracy to obstruct the vote count that intersected with some of the other conspiracies to obstruct the vote count, possibly with obstruction charges against him personally.”
She also cites two stand-alone crimes that might be charged separately: Trump’s call to Raffensperger and his public statements that made Pence a target for assassination threats.
Wheeler went on to note the “Manners and Means” alleged in the conspiracy indictments, and laid out what might be alleged against Trump. These include things that aren’t criminal in and of themselves, but that cumulatively contribute to a criminal enterprise, as well as things whose criminality might be in doubt. Examples include:
• Agreeing (and ordering subordinates) to plan and participate in an effort to obstruct the vote certification
• Encouraging the Proud Boys to believe they are his army
• Personally sowing the Big Lie about voter fraud to lead supporters to believe Trump has been robbed of his rightful election win
• Asking subordinates and Republican politicians to lie about the vote to encourage supporters to feel they were robbed
• Encouraging surrogates and campaign staffers to fund buses to make travel to D.C. easier
• Using the Jan. 6 rally to encourage as many people as possible to come to D.C.
• Applauding violence in advance of Jan. 6 and tacitly encouraging it on the day
• Recruiting members of Congress to raise challenges to the vote count
• Asking members of Congress to delay evacuation even as the rioters entered the building, heightening the chance of direct physical threat (and likely contributing to Ashli Babbitt’s death)
With this in mind, it’s much easier to understand how pressure is building up against Trump, whether or not the DOJ ultimately decides to charge him. Let’s consider four recent coup-related developments, and where they could lead.
The Oath Keepers conspiracy
On Jan. 12, the Department of Justice charged 11 Oath Keepers with seditious conspiracy, including the group’s founder Stewart Rhodes. Not only does it break new ground in terms of the seriousness of charges, it has implications that go far beyond the specific individuals involved, as Wheeler explained.
First, it “makes it clear that the intent of mobbing the Capitol was formulated well in advance of the event.” (This doesn’t absolve Trump of responsibility for inciting the mob that day, due to other evidence of Trump’s involvement in wider efforts to overturn the election.)
Second, it’s one of several recent indictments that eliminated coordination between the Oath Keepers and the Willard Hotel, where Trump allies had set up a “war room,” not because it’s unimportant, but because “I think they’ve just decided to move onto making other people sweat about their communications with now-charged seditionists appearing in the indictment, while hiding how much more they’ve learned about the Willard in recent weeks.”
Third, there are other indications of broader connections, including a potential shared interlocutor between Stewart Rhodes and Sean Hannity. In short, a wide range of people not part of the Oath Keepers may have their own questionable, if not criminal, conduct exposed in an Oath Keepers conspiracy trial, including figures like Sean Hannity and Roger Stone (who had Oath Keeper “bodyguards”) who are very close to Trump.
Coordinated slates of fraudulent electors
On the week of Jan. 10, several outlets began reporting on fraudulent electoral college slates submitted by Republicans in seven states, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. These existence of such slates had been known at the time of the insurrection, and the group American Oversight first obtained copies of documents from the National Archive in March 2021, with the blatantly fraudulently claim to be “the duly elected and qualified Electors or President and Vice President.”
But they finally gained high-profile attention as a result of references in two key couprelated documents, the how-to-overturn-theelection memo prepared for Trump by attorney John Eastman, and the draft letter to Georgia state officials written by former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark, intended to bully them into invalidated Joe Biden’s win in their state. “Under state law, I think clearly you have forgery of a public record, which is a 14-year offense, and election law forgery, which is a five-year offense,” Michigan Attorney general Dana Nessel told MSNBC, even as she referred the matter to federal prosecutors, as did several other state attorneys general.
On Jan. 20, news broke that Trump campaign officials, led by Rudy Giuliani, were responsible for coordinating the effort. That night Rachel Maddow played a tape recording of a Trump campaign official leaving a scripted voicemail message for a Michigan state legislator, requesting their help to “send a slate of electors that will support President Trump and Vice President Pence.”
More details emerged, culminating on Jan. 28, when the Jan. 6 Committee subpoenaed 14 people involved as chairpersons or secretaries of the slates from seven states. Electors in several states refused to go along with these schemes, recognizing their illegitimate nature, and had to be replaced. Threats of both state and federal felony prison terms will likely produce significant witness cooperation. Because the Trump campaign was involved in coordinating this effort, Trump himself could conceivably be criminally charged.
Seizing voting machines
On Jan. 20 the National Archives and Records Administration turned over more than 700 pages of contested Trump Administration documents to the Jan. 6 Select Committee. Politico reported that among them was a draft executive order that would have directed the defense secretary to seize voting machines. It claimed authority derived in part from National Security Presidential Memoranda 21, a document not publicly known before, an indication it was drafted by a knowledgeable high-level advisor.
Further details emerged slowly until Jan. 31, when the New York Times reported that Trump had been intimately involved in exploring the possibility of using two other departments as well to seize voting machines — the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. Trump had already rejected using the military, and Attorney General William Barr had rejected using the DOJ before Trump directed Giuliani to ask DHS to seize the machines, the Times reported.
Trump’s active involvement in pursuing this radical scheme casts an even more sinister light on his last-minute leadership replacements at the departments of Justice and Defense, and provides additional evidence that would go to establishing criminal intent in a possible conspiracy charge. In an instructive parallel, the Oath Keepers’ conspiracy indictment includes planning and preparation for moving arms into the Capitol from a safe house in Virginia, which was similarly not followed through on.
Election interference in Georgia
As already mentioned, Trump’s electioninterference phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, saying, “I just want to find 11,780 votes,” is a prime candidate for charging Trump with a stand-alone crime; but there’s no indication it’s being pursued by the DOJ.
However, it is being pursued by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, though as part of a broader inquiry. On Jan. 20, Willis wrote a letter requesting a special grand jury for the probe, which would allow her to subpoena witnesses, including Raffensperger, who thus far “have refused to cooperate with the investigation absent a subpoena requiring their testimony.”
The request required a majority of judges to be approved, which was done within just four days. The grand jury will convene on May 2 and continue for up to 12 months. Trump isn’t the only person being investigated. Willis has previously confirmed that she’s also investigating a November 2020 phone call between U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and Raffensperger, the abrupt resignation of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta on Jan. 4, 2021, and comments made during December 2020 Georgia legislative committee hearings on the election.
But Trump is clearly in the cross-hairs, and he knows it, as shown by his remarks in Texas, and Willis was quick to respond to his threats, with a letter to the FBI’s Atlanta field office, requesting protective resources that would include “intelligence and federal agents,” as well as a risk assessment of the Fulton County Courthouse and Government Center.
“Security concerns were escalated this weekend by the rhetoric of former President Trump,” she wrote. “This rhetoric is more alarming in light of his statements at the same event regarding those convicted of crimes, including violence, for actions at the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He stated that if elected President in 2024, he may pardon people who have been convicted of crimes related to illegal acts related to the attack in the U.S. Capitol.”
More darkness ahead — and a ray of light
“He promised pardons for people who are enemies of our country,” former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuaid said on MSNBC. “It’s a dangerous place to be going down the road,” which could get him charged with a crime.
Threatening violence on the one hand, and promising pardons on the other are typical of how Trump has sought to thwart the justice system since he first became president. But he has a much longer history of evading accountability. A forthcoming book by criminologist Gregg Barak, Criminology on Trump, argues that “By most measures, Donald Trump belongs in the same annals where we place our now-legendary crime bosses,” according to a preview article at T he Crime Report website.
“To understand how we got to this point, my book examines three generations of Trump businesses. It attempts to show how long before he became president, he was operating a criminal enterprise composed of various illegal schemes and rackets as part of the Trump Organization,” Barak explained. “This book is also an historical account of the intermingling of illegal and legal activities that Donald Trump pursued in order to obtain the power of Commander-in-Chief, what he did with that power once he had obtained it, and finally the lengths to which he would go to keep from losing that power.”
Before Trump came right out and admitted his intent to overthrow the election, proving criminal intent had routinely been cited as a major obstacle to prosecuting him. That obstacle is now gone. But Barak shows that there’s another way past it as well — and it’s always best to have multiple angles of attack. That way past is the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), which has been used to take down other crime families, and could be used against the Trump family as well.
“RICO could be employed for much of but not all of Trump’s diversity of lawlessness, civilly and/or criminally,” Barak told Random Lengths. “It could be potentially very effective especially in the case of conspiracies but not necessarily with respect to overturning the election conspiracy, but I would not rule it out.”
But when asked about a related matter — if it could be used with respect to Trump’s moneymaking off the “stop the steal” campaign, Barak responded enthusiastically.
“Absolutely,” he said. “And, the beauty is that the government could confiscate and freeze all the money raised by the fraudulent ‘stop the steal’ campaign while the adjudication/litigation process plays out for months/years. Prosecuting for this type of fraud not using RICO would not allow for such state intervention/sanctions.”
In short, there is a clear path forward to extricate America from Trump’s extravagant lawlessness. All that’s necessary is a firm resolve to take it.