The Indictment of Donald Trump Is The Real Threat To Democracy | Opinion

And this is how Trump faces the key charge in the “case:” that in exhausting every possible means to contest the results of an unprecedented election that Smith believes Trump believed he lost pressing states to pursue alleged fraud and decertify election results, preparing alternate slates of electors, and pursuing sometimes untested but by no means baseless constitutional remedies the former president committed a “conspiracy to defraud the United States.”

That is, the case rests on the premise that Trump knew he lost, so everything he did to try and win was criminal.

Never mind that prosecutors never charged Democrats for their past baseless claims of fraud or illegitimacy in the 2000, 2004, or 2016 elections, and objections to the certification of electors; nor in 2016 for scheming to get electors to go rogue; nor in 1960 for creating an alternate slate of electors.

Never mind that prosecutors have never pursued conspiracies to “defraud the United States” even in notable cases that might scream for it, most notably concerning those who perpetuated the known fraud that was Russiagate on the country.

Special Counsel Smith, incidentally, links Trump’s efforts to January 6 without charging him with incitement of an insurrection while omitting the mass of exculpatory evidence that would challenge such a charge.

Smith pads his indictment with instances of assorted officials and Trump haters telling the president he was wrong, as if that constitutes evidence he knew the truth and was lying.

And, as has become remarkably routine, Smith also just happened to drop this indictment within days of the latest revelations of conduct pointing towards a Biden impeachment inquiry.

All of this does little to dispel the blatantly political nature of the indictment, and the special counsel itself.

The politics is the point. So too is the brazenness.

The Biden Justice Department is not only interfering in the 2024 presidential election based on what happened in 2020, but threatening all political actors who might challenge the ruling class going forward.

via www.newsweek.com

Ben Weingarten.

This might seem biased and it probably is somewhat, but all the accusations he makes seem reasonable to me. This is how republics fall apart.