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Notes -
Full indictment here
My completely amateur and unqualified opinion after reading the indictment - I dunno. It's not a nothingburger, but it feels way less solid than the documents charges. It's not exactly clear which actions are supposed to constitute which elements of which offense. Like, I feel like you could probably go through and make some argument that this conversation counts as conspiracy and that action counts as obstruction and whatever, but it's kind of been left as an exercise for the reader.
Count two probably gets there. It seems clear that Trump was actively involved in discussing and planning efforts to obstruct the certification of the election. Probably it turns on whether or not the DoJ can prove that he did so "corruptly", whatever that means in this context, but they probably can. I'm less confident of the other charges.
There's something so weird about this to me.
Sure in the most absolutely tortured meaning of the word "obstruct". His claim was that the election as being presented was invalid, and he was trying to use the court/legislative system to elucidate the correct/legal outcome.
This would be like if I got a traffic ticket, showed up in court and argued that the ticket was given in error, failed, and was then charged with "obstruction" for challenging the state.
If every challenge to an election is henceforward seen as "obstruction" then where the hell does that leave us? It seems to make elections a sortof winner takes all battle where the winners take office, and the losers end up in jail.
I think actions like the fake elector scheme are pivotal for the argument to work. If all Trump had done was shout that the election was rigged and filed a few failed lawsuits, I don't think there would be a case.
Being involved in a scheme to have people falsely claim to be the duly chosen electors is a different kettle of fish.
As others have pointed out, the "fake electors" (alternate electors) were part of the mechanism by which they were trying to use the courts/legislature to get the correct/legal outcome of the election.
Right... but that effort included fraudulent representations. It's akin to getting some random to walk onto the Senate floor, declare himself a Senator, and cast the deciding vote. It's not a thing you're allowed to do.
It's only considered fraudulent after the fact, when it's failed. How can they have known themselves to be fraudulent when it had never been tried before, and, in fact, was supported by many as a legitimate alternative?
Because there is a prescribed process for selecting the electors of each state and that process did not select them, it selected other people.
The fact that a fraudulent process successfully fooled some people does not make it not fraudulent.
Guilty by axiom. How many years do you want to give these electors for testifying to the illegitimacy of an American election?
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