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The indictment of Donald Trump for speaking out against the results of the 2020 election, and in the words of the indictment, fomenting “a conspiracy to defraud the United States,” has been challenged by legal commentators from both political parties. These jurists consider the prosecutor’s “novel legal theories” dubious or even preposterous, not to mention unconstitutional. If successful, this politicization of the legal system that attacks one candidate for the presidency and benefits the other, carries with it a huge moral hazard.
Democrat legal scholar Jonathan Turley has identified this risk: “The hatred for Trump is so all-encompassing that legal experts on the political left have ignored the chilling implications of this indictment. This complaint is based largely on statements that are protected under the First Amendment. It would eviscerate free speech and could allow the government to arrest those who are accused of spreading disinformation in elections.”
This corruption of First Amendment law––one already judged unconstitutional in several Supreme Court decisions–– will further empower significantly the already growing threats to free speech. “Woke” Dems for decades have been weakening this foundation of every free government and society. But if Trump’s political enemies can treat the ex-president this way with impunity, then we all will be further down the road to tyranny.
Part of sketchy federal prosecutor Jack Smith’s shambolic reasoning is the charge that Trump “lied” about the integrity of the 2020 election. That Trump is a serial liar is a NeverTrump cliché, reflecting his enemies’ inability or indifference to distinguish rhetorical hyperbole, a feature of political speech since ancient Athens, from a willful lie. As Salena Zito memorably said, when Trump uses such exaggerations, “the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”
Moreover, how does Smith determine that Trump knew he was lying? As Kimberley Strassel writes, “But how do you prove legally that Trump truly didn’t believe his false claims? And even if you can prove that Trump lied, how do you legally distinguish his falsehoods from the lies other political leaders have told over the years?”
As Strassel explains Smith’s argument, though Trump has a First Amendment right to lie, “Yet if that politician is advised by others that his comments are untruthful and nonetheless uses them to justify acts that undermine government ‘function,’ he is guilty of a conspiracy to defraud the country. Dishonest politicians who act on dubious legal claims? There aren’t enough prisons to hold them all.”
Under this standard, Strassel continues, Al Gore and George W. Bush obviously believed they had won the 2000 election, and probably had advisors who told them they may not have when they filed lawsuits. Or take Barack Obama, who invented a presidential right to declare the Senate was in recess so he could make appointments without confirmation by the Senate. Obama, though probably advised that the ploy was unconstitutional, still claimed he had the authority. “Under Mr. Smith’s standard,” Strassel concludes, it was “a lie that Mr. Obama used to defraud the public by jerry-rigging the function of a labor board with illegal appointments.”
The fact is, no one knows if Trump is lying when he talks about the “stolen election.” But given Trump’s cocky self-assurance and hair-trigger sense of grievance, it’s more likely that he sincerely believes that he really did win.
More interesting is the claim, made by both Democrat and Republican NeverTrumpers, that the election was fair and square, and Trump knows that but persists in lying to salve his wounded ego, or more seriously, to illegally overturn Biden’s victory. And this assertion rests on a big fat begged question: That it is a self-evident fact that the election was legal, and there was only fabricated or dubious evidence suggesting otherwise.
But neither alternative, fair or “stolen,” at this point is a fact but an opinion with varying levels of supporting evidence. What happened after the election was the bipartisan establishment by fiat proclaimed that the probity of the election is a fact, as Attorney General William Barr did when on December 1, 2020––barely a month after the election–– he said there was no evidence of electoral fraud.
Yet there was plenty of evidence that something was anomalous about this election. It took place on the heels of violent protests including arson, property damage, and assaults, all openly supported by numerous Democrats. A confused, gaffe-prone, old white guy, Joe Biden, campaigned from his basement, while Donald Trump was attracting thousands of enthusiastic supporters to his rallies.
Covid panic and lockdowns provided an excuse for increasing the use of notoriously corruptible mail-in ballots, nearly double the number used in 2016. There were last minute changes in election laws, and other irregularities in handling, verifying, and counting mail-in ballots. And very suspicious was the unseemly haste shown by the bipartisan political establishment with its Oz-like “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” dismissal of legitimate concerns.
Nor was the election a landslide victory that would have made charges of fraud obviously incredible. The 2020 election, however, ultimately came down to a mere 49,000 votes among three states––a total, as Matt Margolis pointed out, that is a “much smaller number than the extra votes counted in New York City.” If votes in those three states had gone the other way, Trump would have won.
Finally, the progressive Dems have long operated under the principle of “any means necessary.” If they were willing to corrupt the FBI, the IRS, the CIA, the DOJ, Homeland Security, and the FISA court in order to knee-cap the Trump administration with a transparently dishonest “Russia hoax”; to hold rigged House impeachment and January 6 hearings redolent of Stalin’s show trials; and to viciously smear a Supreme Court nominee with decades-old preposterous charges of sexual assault––they certainly were not going to miss an opportunity to take back the presidency by juking the numbers of mail-in ballots and forging some signatures.
And don’t forget the irrational, hysterical, bipartisan hatred of Donald Trump that has driven the political guild’s bizarre behavior for six years, and empowered federal prosecutors to trash the law and the Constitution for political gain.
But none of these anomalies were thoroughly investigated on a nationwide level. Nor are they sufficient enough to support a claim that the election was in fact “stolen.” But it does show that believing the election was rigged is not a conscious lie, or a conspiracy beyond the bounds of reason, or the fever-dream of “smelly Walmart shoppers” and “deplorable” MAGA lowbrows.
This common sense take on the 2020 election suggests that the prosecutor’s “novel legal theory”–– predicated on reading Trump’s mind to show that he in fact lied, and then transforming that lie into a conspiracy to defraud the government––is an assault not just on justice, but on our right to free speech, just another tool like “political correctness,” “hate speech,” “microaggressions,” and “cancel culture” that have been chipping away at the First Amendment for decades.
But we know what the “lies” and “conspiracy” angst is all about. The Dems are stuck with a bumbling, stumbling, addled candidate underwater in the polls, obviously in cognitive decline, and tainted with credible hard evidence that at least since his VP days, he has participated in a criminal enterprise to monetize his office, and serially lied about it since the 2020 campaign. And his policy record at home and abroad is one of abysmal and expensive failures.
The Democrats’ game plan to compensate for these weaknesses is first to enraged MAGA supporters enough that they get him the nomination; then to bleed Trump financially as he fights four indictments, and to distracting him from campaigning; to have their minions in the media give front-page coverage to nothing other than Trump’s legal travails in order to misdirect voters away from Biden’s failures; and to make sure that the trials begin before election day. By then, they hope that a critical mass of voters will choose Biden as the lesser of two evils.
Finally, more troubling is the corrupt DOJ and FBI acting like a mashup of Tom Hagen and Luca Brasi, attacking Biden’s likely opponent in 2024, and using federal prosecutors to indict Trump, knowing an equally corrupt corporate media will spin the optics of the indictments and likely trials into a PR weapon for damaging Trump.
In other words these indictments are not about justice or truth or the Constitution. They are about raw, any-means-necessary power, and the “fundamental transformation” of our free Republic into a tyrannical oligarchy.
That’s what’s at stake in 2024: whether or not we can keep our Republic and our freedom.
When I asked a left leaning friend what has Trump actually done to make him such a figure of hate he replied “He’s unpresidential”
I think that JFK having his 19 year old mistress give a White House staffer a Lewinsky in the White House swimming pool while he watched was unpresidential (not to mention what Clinton had Lewinsky do in the Oval Office and who knows where else). How about Truman who threatened to punch out a reporter who gave is daughter a poor musical review? How about LBJ picking up his dog by the ears or having a meeting with his cabinet while sitting on the toilet deficating, or Obama making Netanyahu enter the White House through the back door and making him sit there cooling his heels while he ate dinner? I’d like to know your friend’s definition of “unpresidential” and how he applies it.
You often have powerful, summarizing comments like this one.
If “unpresidential” is the standard, then all we have is appearance. Act the part. That is literally how AOC got into Congress. I think many others probably did the same, but the tactics were less overt.
The power of image became an obvious issue with Richard Nixon, but we humans have always been suckers for appearance. Look! Shiny!
When Biden called half of our citizens “semi-fascist”, i.e. “semi-Nazis” –with Marines standing guard against a hellish-red background — I could not believe what I had heard. That wasn’t just “unpresidential”. It was evil.
Which implies, your left leaning friend, is not an educated, cognitive voter.
I have family members in the same category. They call me, a brownie, racist, stopped talking to me. So, i stopped helping them. Nevertheless, i still donate to MAGA and i hope we hold the leftists to the same standard they now made precedent. Investigate and lock up any of them who lied and expressed their rightful opinion. Jack Smith is but one of the thugs on the left. Turn about is fair play and direly needed.
The commie libs think Trump is unpresidential???? What about the Biden’s bags of cocaine left near the oval office??? Trump could never do worse than that!!
The Democrats will use any means possible to stay in power
Power is their only value.
Hunter: “hey, wait a minute, I highly value my crack pipe.”
If there is one bright spot to the theft of the White House, it’s the fact that there’s no longer any pretense whatsoever as to the level of Democrat deception and depravity they’re willing to bring to bear against the American people.
This entire farce of an administration; with every edict, every alphabet agency, every social injustice, every favoritism, every illegal entry, every non-virtuous ‘virtue signal’, every day a political prisoner is held behind bars, every department head who’s there not because of what they bring to the table but how they appear outwardly, every illegal deal broadcasts to the country and the world the lengths to which they’ll go.
Ask yourself when was the last time that presidential advisors advocated “just ignore the Supreme Court”?
While these truths are now self evident to us, Democrats are now aware of their evil visibility as well. A Diamondback rattlesnake is never more dangerous than when he makes his presence known by shaking his rattle, often because they feel cornered. Oftentimes…they are.
Unfortunately, these truths are not self evident to 43% of the population, if you can believe the polls. We’re being set up for another rigged election, that’s what.
It’s so obvious.Why can’t everyone see the truth.
Stupid cannot be fixed. For sure they will try to cheat. Ronna had better be preparing for it. The best way to fix the left is to use the same tactic on them. They set precedent; now left them feel what they started. We must do it in order to stop them and their growth.
NONE of these people care! They have the votes and leadership to do anything they want. IT’S MOB RULE NOW! THEY’RE LAUGHING!
We all watched Mr Biden take a week off to sleep on the beach. But, nothing is said about our brave ,
gallant congress people and senators taking a month off because they are so tired from spending
our tax dollars. but, not to worry, they will come back fresh and ready to look into all the things
Mr Thornton has written above.
In our godless and post-literate society, free speech has gone the way of religious liberty; it’s a matter of shrugging indifference, at best. People who don’t (not can’t) read or write care as little about the government speech police as fake Christians cared about church shutdowns during Covid. In both instances, they have no use for the thing they’re being denied. Now if the government banned hip hop skank Cardi B’s rap video sensation, “W.A.P.” (wet ass pussy), now that might cause a revolt.
Excellent article.
Time f or some to lose their American Citizenship and be sent to the Amazon Jungle to live away from all civilization and primitive natives
A great idea. It’s time. I would celebrate that.
Hunter: “I’ll go under one condition – I want a lifetime supply of cocaine.”
Trump’s persecutors will pay with their eternal souls for their evil. There is no joy in this. Pray for their repentance and reform.
I pray this for the reprobates attacking Trump = Psalm 109: 8 – “let his days be few, and let another take his office.”
Rush Limbaugh said the Left always tells us who they are afraid of and they always overplay their hand.
He was correct then and he’s still correct.
Rush is so missed. Every day i think of his ability to see evil.
Rush was very popular as a radio talk show host. He had 30 plus years in the business, and was known for his wisdom and his ability to explain the political madness we see today. His abilities and personality, and humor are sorely missed today.
Is there any possible way to make today’s Bruce Thornton post go viral? It’s too bad it can’t be mailed via USPS to every home in the country. The mailing would have absolutely no effect on a third of the recipients, other than to have them spit on it. But that leaves the remaining two thirds.
Great article! BUT please don’t use Biden’s age and race to disparage him like you did in paragraph 11: “A confused, gaffe-prone, old white guy, Joe Biden, campaigned from his basement …” This what the Dems do. Biden’s incompetence and corruption are not the result of him being old or white. Keep up the good work.
Jay Valentine has good ideas for defeating election fraud.
What are these good ideas?
see LindellEventDotCom on Aug. 16 & 17 – we will hear how to defeat election fraud.
American Thinker Dot Com / Jay Valentine
All this is going to pale into the horizon when they get close to the election, the demo’s are just going to scare and lure all the illegale immigrants, instantly they’ll have 8 million voters available.
Yes the 2020 election was rigged, we all know it was, but the difference of 49,000 voters is nothing compared to 8 million people establishing a life and don’t want to get shipped home…
Trump & the right need to start forming a fight against that, the other tough issue is going to be cleaning the swamp, the American people have the biggest anti democracy system in the world, the FBI, the IRS, the CIA, the DOJ, Homeland Security, and the FISA court are full of it …
Problem is that Democrats do not hold their own accountable. I see the Dems as either naive or deceptive. And unfortunately, then their naivety ends and they know the truth about their own party, they tend to lean towards deceptiveness rather than admitting their side has done illegal and/or immoral things and thus holding them accountable. This is likely because Democrats tend to see their self-identity wrapped up in politics moreso than Republicans. Thus to hold their party accountable is a blow to their own personal ego and pride. And Democrats are very prideful of their political beliefs. So even though they may be made aware of what’s going on within their party, the likelihood of them departing from their party, voting for the other side or criticizing their side is not very high. .
I don’t believe it’s about free speech at all. It is about setting up a series of phony beliefs prior to the election including a fake selection of electors to overturn the election just in case that Trump would lose. I don’t believe that the First amendment creates an exception for speech that lies within committing a crime or within the confines of criminal law.
Persons like this need to be investigated and exposed