Here’s a better breakdown of exactly what was changed: The Superseding Trump Indictment Is about Obstruction as Much as Immunity
I went through everything that had been added or removed from the superseding indictment against Trump…The changes include the following:
- Removal of everything having to do with Jeffrey Clark
- Removal of everything describing government officials telling Trump he was nuts (such as Bill Barr explaining that he had lost Michigan in Kent County, not Wayne, where he was complaining)
- Removal of things (including Tweets and Trump’s failure to do anything as the Capitol was attacked) that took place in the Oval Office
- Addition of language clarifying that all the remaining co-conspirators (Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, and — probably — Boris Epshteyn) were private lawyers, not government lawyers
- Tweaked descriptions of Trump and Mike Pence to emphasize they were candidates who happened to be the incumbent
- New language about the treatment of the electoral certificates
And this is what the author Emptywheel makes of the changes in light of the Immunity ruling:
If Jack Smith succeeds in preserving this indictment — and that’s still a big if — then he will do so by making the argument that Trump, in his role as candidate, had the intention of using a mob to target the guy who played the ceremonial role of counting the vote. It would result in a collection of judicial holdings that presidential candidate Donald Trump had a mob target his Vice President in an attempt to remain President unlawfully.
Sure, John Roberts and his mob might yet try to overturn that. John Roberts might endorse the idea that presidential candidates, so long as they are the incumbent, can kill members of Congress to stay in power.
But doing so would clarify the absurdity of such a ruling.