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Notes -
Trump has been indicted (again), this time in Georgia, under RICO charges. The charges against him and a large number of co-conspirators relate to efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Full indictment here.
We've seen a range of charges laid against Trump in varying jurisdictions, and I think it's fair to say the cases have varying strength. These new charges seem to me to be on the strong end of the spectrum.
Helpfully, the indictment is painfully clear at every point as to what particular acts constitute which particular crimes or elements of crimes. This makes it a lot easier to assess for an uneducated layman like me. On at least some of the charges, it would appear that he's deeply screwed. E.g. "Solicitation of Violation of Oath by Public Officer" seems to be open and shut, and carries a minimum 1 year sentence. He also has no capacity to pardon himself if he is elected President, as these are not federal charges.
As far as I can tell Trump's only hope to escape conviction here is jury nullification.
Are you joking or something? There's no way I'm reading a ~100 page indictment, but if that is your idea of a strong charge then the rest of it is probably not worth reading anyways.
Have you listened to the Raffensberger call? It's extremely clear (to me) that Trump is claiming that there are many fraudulent ballots in Georgia (he goes on and on about it, and why he thinks so) -- then asks the people on the call to try to locate some of them. It's right there in the first few minutes.
It may be less clear to you for whatever reasons, but surely this is at least a plausible interpretation of what Trump is trying to say -- and if this were the case, he is definitely not asking anyone to violate their oath. Finding such votes would be required by their oath, surely?
I'm aware that the media has widely reported that Trump was asking R. to fabricate some votes so he could win (probably significantly poisoning the jury pool in the process) but presumably the court will hear the actual call rather than reading Washington Post clippings -- and if you think this interpretation is open-shut I really don't know what to say.
Also included in your quote is the request made to David Ralston, speaker of the house, asking him to convene a special session of the house for the purpose of appointing fake electors.
If Trump thinks the election has been stolen, then the electors aren't fake (from Trump's point of view, obviously).
This sounds about the same as the Smith indictment, and is far from open-shut for the same reasons. (mens rea, essentially)
I don't believe this is true. Even if you think fraud has occurred, you can't just appoint electors based on what you think the result would have been. There's a process that has to be followed.
Even if Trump believes that the process has been corrupted, it's still illegal for him to solicit a public official to subvert the process.
By analogy, let's say I buy a lottery ticket but then someone steals it from me. The lottery gets drawn, and I am convinced I had the winning numbers. The lottery won't pay me out based on my insistence that I would have had the winning numbers if they hadn't been stolen. I am not then allowed to rob the lottery office to rectify the theft I suffered - even if I am correct that I had the numbers.
Now, perhaps I am misunderstanding the law in some important way here - I am not a lawyer, and much less a Georgia lawyer. But my understanding here is that the effort to solicit a public official in a plan to appoint electors who could not be lawfully appointed is straightforwardly illegal.
The electors aren't fake either way. They are proposed alternative electors, which is how past elector disputes have been done. There was never any conspiracy to present them as the primary electors.
The irregular Georgia electors submitted a "Certificate of Vote" to Pence's office where they claimed to be the primary electors, as did the irregular electors in Arizona, Michigan and Nevada. The irregular electors in Michigan are being prosecuted locally for falsifying an official document. It looks like most of the irregular electors in Georgia have rolled and are going to testify against Trump.
The irregular electors in New Mexico and Pennsylvania worded their certificates to be contingent on their later being determined to be the real electors, which keeps them out of legal trouble, but means the certificates are less useful for the Eastman/Chesebro scheme to have Pence overturn the election on Jan 6th.
Aha! The whole time I was writing about the Georgia charges, I was thinking “this wouldn’t have been a criminal charge if they’d covered their asses better.” It’s good to know some of the other groups agreed.
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