Sheesh. At least when reptiles eat their own there is one less big mouth around. I wish that’s the way it worked for Republicans.
Are we absolutely sure Trump didn’t think he was endorsing Mel Brooks for Senate?
True.
But it wouldn’t be the first time. He wanted Pence to do it, which would have been just as illegal, no matter what noises have been made about it.
They only have to win the primaries.
No, they didn’t. They followed a Constitutionally approved and designated process. That isn’t attempting to overthrow the government.
Trump was not the government. Impeaching him was no more attempting to overthrow the government than voting against him was.
Of course that would be illegal. They have no authority to do any such thing.
Ignorance of the law isn’t a legal defense against being thrown in jail for anything else. Why would it be one for sedition, even if one presumed that they were actually that ignorant?
Sedition is a tough one, one that I’d actually rather err on the side of innocence for the most part, as if it is too broadly defined, then it is too easy to become a political tool to silence dissent.
If I call my congresscritter, and demand that he make me president of the USA, have I actually committed a crime? I don’t think so. And I don’t think if should be different even if the person making that call is an ex-president, even one I loathe and detest.
Trump has already committed enough crimes, both in his political and his business life, that he should face consequences for. This seems reaching to me, and if he’s not going to be prosecuted for the much more egregious crimes that he has committed, he’s certainly not going to be prosecuted for this much more nebulous action.
Trump has exactly two goals in making endorsements. (Well really one, if you count “anything that benefits Trump” as one goal.) First, Trump is out to punish his political enemies, including anyone who voted for impeachment, or who doubted his great landslide victory, or who criticized him generally, so he endorses opponents to those people. But second, Trump is out to increase his own power and influence within the Republican Party, and to that end, he needs to establish the myth of his endorsement as the ultimate deciding factor to the greatest extent possible. Bottom line is that Trump needs to endorse winners and not losers, so that he can claim that they won because of him, as he does in the case of any winner that he endorsed, no matter how little impact his endorsement actually had.
So the ball got rolling when Brooks fell behind in the polls. Brooks had been in a much stronger position when Trump endorsed him, but he later fell behind and looked increasingly unlikely to win, which is exactly the opposite of what Trump would like to have you believe about the powers of his endorsement. So Trump needed to bail, and bail he did.
(Trump would have you believe that his unendorsement was related to Brooks saying that he/we needed to move on from the 2020 election, but that’s apparently a reference to a Brooks rally in August 2020 (& earlier).)
Of course, that leaves Brooks in the position of needing to switch horses in a hurry. He had been running as the Trumpiest Trumpster out there, and now needed to become the anti-Trump. Hence the claim that the real reason for his falling out with Trump was over his principled refusal to go along with Trump’s attempted coup.
But that doesn’t mean that his claim isn’t true. When it comes to Trump, the range of possible is extraordinarily broad.
But Trump had legal people telling him it was legal. True, he was going to believe any lawyer and far out legal theory which benefited him, but his position was that it was legal and he had legal advice to that effect and he was operating within the legal framework. Having Brooks just declare him president was outside of any legal framework at all. It’s a fundamentally different situation.
I agree with that part.
I’m just pointing out that ‘Gee, Officer, I didn’t know that was illegal’ isn’t in itself legally a defense.
– it gets complicated because he’s done a whole lot of different things in an overall attempt to accomplish one single thing, for him to continue being POTUS. Since he clearly lost the election, that single thing is in its essence an attempt to overthrow the Constitutional processes that cause and allow the USA to exist. But to what extent the law allows the various methods he’s tried to be considered all as one clump, instead of as individually separable actions at least some of which probably aren’t prosecutable in themselves, I don’t know; and I don’t even know whether there is clear law on the subject.
Sure, but there actually has to be an offense. Sending American airlines a request that they give me the title to the 747 that I rightfully salvaged after the pilot left is not illegal, and neither is legally entering the halls of congress at night and taking a meaningless vote.
The Trump team filed dozens of cases in court whose sole objective was to overturn the election and put Trump in office. Legally they were all garbage but that doesn’t mean that it was illegal for him to file them.
As a joke or a publicity stunt, no. Intending for it to take effect, especially while seriously attempting to do so, would be another matter entirely.
I don’t give a lot of weight to this. Trump also had “legal people” telling him it was illegal, in no uncertain terms. The legal theories that Trump was relying on were similar to the legal theories that sovereign citizens believe, and belief in those theories is not a defense to any crimes they commit.
I believe that some of the pre-January 6th plots constitute conspiracy to defraud the United States, specifically the plot to pressure Mike Pence to refuse to certify the election and the plot to pressure the the DOJ to send a documents to the state legislatures alleging fraud when none existed. These were highly thought out and well documented conspiracies. Frankly, I don’t understand why Mark Meadows and Jeffrey Clark haven’t been charged, tying Trump to the plot might be a little trickier. Donald Trump is very good at keeping his fingerprints off his crimes. He was a criminal long before he became President, his years of working with Roy Cohn and the mob taught him well.
I think the recent revelations from Mo Brooks go to show how hysterically deluded Trump is, but unless he had expressed some sort of plan beyond “Find a way to make me President again and I’ll love you forever”, I don’t see much that’s legally actionable, it’s just the rantings of a crazy man.
As you may know, I’ve been following the election fraud fraud story pretty carefully, and it seems to me that while Trump wanted his cronies to do anything possible to keep him in office- regardless of legality- he didn’t hold himself to the same standard.
There were several times during the transition where Trump could’ve taken specific actions towards keeping himself in office, actions that some of his advisors were urging him to take, actions that might have worked.
He could’ve appointed Sidney Powell special counsel and authorized her to seize voting machines. He could’ve fired Jeffrey Rosen, made Jeffrey Clark head of the DOJ, and had him send letters to the states falsely declaring that they had found massive election fraud. He could’ve declared martial law at some point. He had advisors urging him to do all these things and the fact that he didn’t leads me to believe that at some level he knew he would get in trouble. I’m not pointing these things out to excuse Trump, my point is consciousness of guilt.
I would disagree. I think either the claims would be ignored, or if pushed would be taken to court and thrown out with the worst consequences being the lawyers being slapped down for even trying. Now if Trump used that vote to rally his supporters to and actually try to wield power that would be another thing altogether.
Keep in mind however that whatever plan Trump shared with Brooks, it was never implemented. Trump made the proposal, and Brooks said no that’s stupid you can’t do that. So while ignorance of the law may not be a defense it certainly isn’t an offense.
Mel Brooks is far too intelligent to be a GOP Senator.
I don’t think your assessment that the theories are similar has much weight at all.
Are there any legal people of the stature of John Eastman who back “the legal theories that sovereign citizens believe”? Eastman seems to have gone off the deep end over his Trump-related theories (as have various other formerly respectable lawyers) but he has a solid record as USSC clerk, law school dean, legal representative for several states, etc. etc. A guy relying on Eastman is not the same as some wild-eyed guy with a sovereign citizen theory.
Exhibits A and B:
Titles of the two:
Kamala Harris citizenship op-ed
and
2020 presidential election
This is analogous to the infamous John Yoo torture memos.
To further bolster the point, there was a time when Rudy Giuliani was a respected officer of the court.
It matters not a whit exactly what happened to each of these people. The mighty clearly have fallen.
I think John Eastman relinquished his “respected lawyer” status a couple of years ago, if not sooner - and now he’s on the level of Sidney Powell and Rudy Guiliani.
John Eastman sees himself as being engaged in “a cold Civil War.” These are his own words.
As to his unique legal theory as to the role of the VP in the Presidential election, this is not something he really believes. I can guarantee you he would not promote this theory if the VP was a Democrat. The same goes for his other recent unique legal theories which include:
A theory that says US born Kamala Harris is ineligible to be President or VP, because her parents may have been in the US on a student visa rather than a green card.
A theory that says the states can sell off their US dollars and issue their own cryptocurrency, therefore undermining federal monetary policy.
He has suggested that the states can take immigration into their own hands and set up their own border checkpoints, at both international and domestic borders.
And he’s pretty honest about this being mostly political theatre. When it comes to the border checkpoint idea, he and his co-author Steven Balch say:
Supporters could be directed to the borders, where they would demonstrate and provide cheer and comfort to the police and guardsmen. Demonstrations would also be mounted in major cities, making this a high intensity, media saturating, citizen involved campaign.
I promise you that John Eastman would not promote these theories if a Republican President was in power. In this article from American Greatness - which is my cite for many of the claims in this article, he’s barely pretending that his theories are legitimate.
That said, John Eastman is free to write and publish articles about wonky legal theories all day long, that’s covered by freedom of speech.
The problem happens when people conspire to take actions based on those legal theories, and people attempt to use those theories to commit crimes.
Some people have advanced legal theories that there is a section of Yellowstone Park where murder - or any other crime- may be effectively legal, because of a legal loophole that would make it impossible to empanel a jury.
Legal scholars can write about the Yellowstone Zone of Death as much as they want.
But if you and your buddies say “I hate Mike Pence. He’s going to be in the Yellowstone Death Zone next week. Let’s kill him, you bring the knife and meet me at 10PM near the backstage entrance of his rally. I’ll distract him while you wield the knife”……this legal theory is not going to help you if you get caught. Even if you never get to the point where you plunge the knife in.
And I say……and I think this is where our opinions may differ… that you would be in MORE legal trouble than if you said “I hate Mike Pence. He’s gotta die. We’ve got to find a way to kill him, even if it kills us.” The legal theory isn’t exculpatory, it’s incriminating.
Because in the first case, you had a concrete and specific plan, aka a conspiracy… and the Yellowstone Death Zone theory was part of the conspiracy. You planned to commit a crime. In the second case, you could make the argument that you were just running your mouth and actually had no intention of planning a crime.
Anyway, I hear the term “consciousness of guilt” being bandied about frequently with regards to Trump, the implication being that he can’t be convicted of a crime unless it can be proved that he was aware that what he was doing was wrong. While “consciousness of guilt” is a actual legal term, it doesn’t mean that the prosecution has to prove you knew you were doing something wrong in order to convict you, although intent may be an element of certain crimes.
People are convicted all the time for doing things that they didn’t know were illegal, for unintentional acts and mistakes. No one has to prove that Trump believed he lost the election to make it a crime for him to overthrow the government. It may make it easier to convict if there is evidence of consciousness of guilt, it’s a powerful form of circumstantial evidence, but it isn’t required.
There used to be this well-known principle of law, “Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse”. I never seem to see this mentioned anymore, with respect to Trump’s trumpgressions. Instead, it’s always the opposite, “If he can even remotely claim he didn’t know that the election was clean (or he didn’t know he was breaking the law), then he can’t be convicted of insurrection”. What’s wrong with this picture?
I think I’ll move to the Yellowstone Zone of Death. If they can’t prosecute murders, I shouldn’t have to worry about building codes and zoning ordinances.
It depends on the specific law.
Some laws have “knowingly” or something to that effect written into the law (e.g. a lot of campaign finance laws, IIRC).
And in the case of some crimes, knowledge is inherent to the nature of the crime. For example, if you sell someone what you legitimately think is a good deal and turn out to be wrong, that’s not fraud in the same manner that it would be if you deliberately sold someone a deal you knew was bad for them. In general, if the crime is itself not dealing “in good faith” then it obviously depends on what you knew about what you were doing.
Though the cases above are cases where the guy was ignorant of the true situation. The more typical case where “ignorance of the law is no excuse” is where the guy knows exactly what he’s doing but isn’t aware that it’s illegal. In the case of fraud, for example, if a guy knows he’s ripping someone off but is unaware that ripping people off is a crime, then that’s not a defense.
How that applies to Trump depends on the case. In the NY case about mis-stating property values, then if he thought the property could genuinely have these disparate values for different purposes, then he’s off the hook. The election shenanigans are more complicated. I think in the Georgia case, the fact that he genuinely believed there were valid Trump votes out there waiting to be found is probably a valid defense. In the Pence certification situation, probably not so much, I would think. But IANAL.
It doesn’t matter how sure I am that the bank made an error, I’m not allowed to hold it up to get my money back.
Now he has admitted on video he didn’t win.
Okay, wait a minute…we’re past April Fools Day. This may be legit. 