. They don’t care about the facts of what is alleged. They wanted the Georgia vote overruled. That explains the outrage over this error and the indictment. For them, this is normal. If you can steal an election by rejecting a states winner and electoral votes , that’s just normal politics.
Cherry picking among the 161 acts, I see. Legally, he only has to be found guilty of TWO of the 161 acts to be guilty of the RICO charge. Here's one that we ALL heard for ourselves in his despicable phone call to Georgia's top election official.
I actually took the time to listen to the entire one hour long phone conference call Trump had with Georgia. A few facts that don't get a lot of mention: 1. Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, initially rejected the idea of accepting the call, because he thought it was "inappropriate" according to his recollection. But later he agreed to take the call, which would signify that he rethought the appropriateness of taking the call and then decided it was appropriate to take it. 2. On the call was Trump, his attorneys, Ga Sec of State and an attorney for the state of Ga. This call is often portrayed as a call Trump made to Raffensperger directly, but in fact, there were several other parties on the phone, including an attorney for the state of Georgia. It's highly unlikely Trump thought he was going to get away with something illegal given that there was a state attorney on the call and Raffensperger had made it clear several times they checked with the GBI on some of the fraud claims and didn't find anything. So if Trump was attempting something nefarious, that means he was attempting coerce the Ga Sec State, a Ga state attorney and the GBI. That's a stretch, even for someone of Trump's ego. The media too often portrays this as a one-on-one call Trump made to Raffensperger. Very misleading. 3. most of the hour long call is Trump and his lawyers going through several instances of where they thought there was fraud in the voting. Trump repeated several times that he won the state by 400,000 votes. Obviously, he is probably very wrong about that number, but it wasn't what the media portrayed. Trump and his attorneys lay out many specific examples of where those 400,000 votes would have been. He didn't just call Brad up and say "find me 11,000 votes". That has been the media narrative, but that wasn't the gist of Trump's call whatsoever. 4. After running through all the various scenarios the Trump team felt were fraudulent, towards the end of the call Trump says “Brad, we just want the truth. It’s simple.” That line doesn't get a lot of play in the media. I wonder why. I'll concede Trump was lobbying hard on the call, but I don't think he broke the law on that call. There may be some other evidence which suggests crimes by others, I haven't looked at it all, but one consistent theme I've been seeing is that Trump truly believed what he was saying. There's no evidence out there anywhere that suggests he didn't believe it. He was likely wrong to a large extent, but he has a right to challenge peculiarities in the vote. All campaigns do this if the race is close. The big problem here is that you really have to have a smoking gun to indict a former president. Otherwise, it runs a great risk of being an acquittal or mistrial and if you're going to indict a former president, current front runner opposition candidate, your case has to be air tight. There is no direct threat or bribe or anything like it in the call. Even if Trump was to be convicted, he would likely win on appeal, because state of mind is so central to cases like this and I think it's clear, be it delusional or whatever you want to call it, Trump believed he had the votes. If he is convicted and then it's overturned on appeal, it's worse than if he's acquitted, which would already be horrifically bad for our politics. A former president should only be indicted if those charges are going to stick and never be overturned on appeal.
"There's no excuse for posting the list of charges on the website. It was either someone within the clerk's office acting maliciously towards Trump (most likely scenario) or gross incompetence." Conspiracy lovers always believe "someone acting maliciously toward Trump" is the "most likely scenario", despite all logic to the contrary. It's far more likely that some individual (not "they") screwed up big time.
What stage are we at now? Denial? Bargaining? 1. Or he was getting pressure to at least hear what the President of the United States had to say. 2. This doesn't absolve Trump in anyway, although it does make the crime even dumber to do so with all those people on the line. 3. Trump and his lawyers already had the opportunity to make their case in the court system and they lost. They knew they lost and their claims were frivolous. At the time Trump made the call the votes had been counted and re-counted. 4. He didn't want the truth, he was solely pushing for the result to be switched to him as the winner. He had lost in court, he had advisors telling him he lost, lawyers telling him he lost. There was no excuse at that point to genuinely believe he still won. If you believe that then you're effectively treating Trump like a child who can't process and understand basic facts.
Any naive, delusional belief that Trump was seeking "truth" in his phone call to Georgia's top election official was blown out of the water by Trump himself when he clearly said: "I just want to find 11,780 votes . . . ." As we all know, 11,780 votes is exactly what he needed to change the election outcome in Georgia. Trump's stupidity in revealing his true intent in a phone call with several witnesses listening is no excuse. It's just further proof that he's a moron.
His attorneys actually stated several times on the phone call that the courts would not hear their case. Whether or not that was the right decisions by the court, it's not like they didn't try to litigate the issues. Either way, it's not illegal to call the GA Sec of State or Raffensperger wouldn't have taken the phone call to begin with. Trump didn't do anything illegal by pointing out areas of concern. Yes, he was advocating a recount of votes. Campaigns do this sort of thing all the time. There's a reason the media only tells us Trump was asking Raffensperger to find 11,000 votes, because if you had the context of the one hour call, you'd know that was a sub-point to a much larger scale discrepancy that Trump was claiming.
Trump telling him what he wants him to do is not illegal. The GA SoS can either say yes or no. He said no and that was the end of it. In terms of insurrection, President Trump left the White House on the last day of his term without having to be told to do so. When actual insurrections happen, the leader of the insurrection doesn't voluntarily depart from office. He left Biden a letter in the Oval Office desk drawer, which was apparently very generous towards Biden (his words, not mine). That doesn't sound like someone who was trying to take over the government.
When a President tells you he wants something is akin to your boss saying he wants something. He took the call because it was the freaking President and he kept calling. He recorded the call, because he knew it was corrupt. CYA.
Quite a thread. I've no comment (it's not like anyone's mind will be changed) except to note I am compelled to admire the effort it took to rationalize and/or excuse Trump's and his co-conspirator's attack on American democracy. I think the OP needs an armband for his futile but admirable effort.
Well, that settles it. A document is leaked and therefore Trump is innocent. Sarcasm aside, a grand jury chose to indict, so it’s a bit hard to say that the DA’s case has no merit. Since you do not have all the facts and details of the case, I don’t see how you are able to definitively say he and his co-defendants are not guilty. We have courts for this reason, and if he is innocent, he will be cleared of all charges.
He wasn't just identifying areas of concern. He was making statements of fact for which he had no evidence. I think perhaps the worst part of that call is that Trump outright accused Raffensperger and his lawyer of committing crimes and put them on notice that they were letting those crimes happen and would have exposure. Read the full transcript and listen to Trump's audio call with Georgia secretary of state | CNN Politics And you are going to find that they are — which is totally illegal, it is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. And that’s a big risk. But they are shredding ballots, in my opinion, based on what I’ve heard. And they are removing machinery and they’re moving it as fast as they can, both of which are criminal finds. And you can’t let it happen and you are letting it happen. You know, I mean, I’m notifying you that you’re letting it happen. So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state. And flipping the state is a great testament to our country because, cause you know, this is — it’s a testament that they can admit to a mistake or whatever you want to call it. If it was a mistake, I don’t know. A lot of people think it wasn’t a mistake. It was much more criminal than that. But it’s a big problem in Georgia and it’s not a problem that’s going away. I mean, you know, it’s not a problem that’s going away.
A lot of hogwash here. 1. The solution to issues with the election is in the courts. Trump's lawyers brought nonsensical conspiracy theories to court but wouldn't certify under their own names that they had anything but speculation as the origin of these theories. 2. The solution to election problems is not to state that you won and to tell those responsible for counting to just change the numbers. That is a crime, plain and simple. A very serious one. 3. Even if you lost under nefarious circumstances proven or not, you don't get to try to flip the results with subterfuge. In 99.99% of circumstances, you have to live with the results and try to correct it in the next election cycle.
Think about what you're saying . . . . That it's alright for the President of the US to bully State election officials in an attempt to illegally change vote counts to illegally change election results. And, YOU KNOW that's what he did. As for the circumstances that led to Trump leaving for Mar-a-Lago with his tail between his legs . . . . To the detriment of all true Americans, Trump refused to acknowledge, for the first time in US history, that he lost the election, despite his own AG, his own election security officials, and his own campaign advisors telling him repeatedly that he lost the election. To the detriment of all true Americans, Trump ensured that, for the first time in US history, there wasn't a peaceful transfer of power. To the detriment of all true Americans, Trump didn't allow his out-going administration to cooperate with the incoming Biden administration's transition into office. Don't kid yourself. Self-centered, wannabe-dictator Trump only left office on inauguration day, because . . . . . -- all his legal court cases had failed due to lack of evidence of election fraud. -- all his illegal attempts to overturn the legitimate election failed, because true Americans, including key Republicans in Georgia, Arizona and elsewhere, stood up to his bullying. -- the Joint Chiefs of Staff assured all true Americans (plus Trump and his mob) that the military would uphold the US Constitution and not intervene in the election.
You'd think his lawyers would move for an immediate dismissal if they were remotely intelligent. At the very least, it sounds like grounds for a mistrial.
I'm very confident it would be a losing argument, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if they make it.
The trial hasn’t started yet, and is in fact many months away. The grand jury is not the same as the jury that will sit for the trial. So not sure how this could possibly be “grounds for a mistrial”, particularly with the likelihood the members of the grand jury were not influenced or even aware of the clerical issue. Hypothetically, what would be your grounds for a mistrial? Sounds like some fanciful wishful thinking to me.
