From Heather Cox Richardson:
Almost exactly a year ago, on August 1, 2023, a grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted former president Donald J. Trump for conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. The charges stemmed from Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. A grand jury is made up of 23 ordinary citizens who weigh evidence of criminal activity and produce an indictment if 12 or more of them vote in favor.
The grand jury indicted Trump for “conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the government”; “conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified”; and “conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.”
“Each of these conspiracies,” the indictment reads, “targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election.” “This federal government function…is foundational to the United States’ democratic process, and until 2021, had operated in a peaceful and orderly manner for more than 130 years.”
The case of the United States of America v. Donald J. Trump was randomly assigned to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who was appointed by President Obama in 2014 and confirmed 95–0 in the Senate. Trump pleaded not guilty on August 3, after which his lawyers repeatedly delayed their pretrial motions until, on December 7, Trump asked the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals to decide whether he was immune from prosecution. Chutkan had to put off her initial trial date of March 4, 2024, and said she would not reschedule until the court decided the question of Trump’s immunity.
In February the appeals court decided he was not immune. Trump appealed to the Supreme Court, which waited until July 1, 2024, to decide that Trump enjoys broad immunity from prosecution for crimes committed as part of his official acts. Today the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back to Chutkan, almost exactly a year after it was first brought.
I can't get past this story. We are right now in Trump's second or third coup attempt. We can pretend otherwise, but that won't make it not so. Another coup plot backed by murderous dictators and dirty global oligarchs and violent white supremacists and Maga Repugs and Billionaires and police unions and now SCOTUS, backing a candidate for potus so ridiculously and obviously violent, criminal, and treasonous that damning evidence for several of his highest crimes were recorded or on TV!
I know, he still may not win. Democracy can still prevail, hopefully. But, meanwhile, all his people on the ground in government positions and in the red states are doing everything they can to rig the election for him and the mainstream media, NY Times/WaPo et al, pretend Trump and the GOP have legitimate support on issues like crime or economics, meaning presumably more tax cuts for the rich and financial fraud?!
Again, this is not serious and at the same time will mean only more serious ruin for the country. Trump, the candidate for law and order?! Come on! Even if you hate all the people he hates you gotta have a better sense of self-preservation than this nuclear meltdown of a political movement.
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