2023-08-15 08:15:20
Trump will not go to jail alone, if the state of Georgia manages to prove the 13 charges of which he was accused yesterday. This is the fourth criminal case that has been opened against the former president in five months, but it is the mother of all accusations, because it includes 18 accomplices, among which are from the former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani to the chief of staff of the White House, Mark Meadows. Prosecutor Fani Willis intends to try them all at once, in what could be the trial of the century, all of them accused of criminally conspiring to alter the result of the November 3, 2020 elections that gave Joe Biden victory.
The 19 defendants now have until Friday, August 25 at noon to turn themselves in, although they will presumably negotiate with the prosecutor for an orderly way to do so, as has happened in the past. Unlike the other three open indictments, Willis was not required to advise Trump’s defense that she would be indicted, and she did not do so even out of courtesy. Everything was very fast, as she intends the trial to be, which she would like to hold in the next six months. “I have no interest in being the first or the last,” the woman who already made history in Georgia as the first African-American prosecutor in Fulton County said at a press conference.
“Everyone is innocent until proven guilty,” he recalled, highlighting the presumption of innocence. Also former first lady Hillary Clinton, who happened to be doing an interview on MSNBC around the time the Georgia grand jury delivered her verdict, cooled her temper. The indictment of a former US president for trying to steal the election “is nothing to celebrate,” she warned, but a sobering moment for the country. An even bigger case than Watergate, because if Nixon was accused of abusing his power, Trump took direct aim at the pillars of democracy. As far as is known, this is the first time that the leadership of the White House conspires against democracy to perpetuate itself in power as a third world dictatorship. “The only consolation is knowing that the system works,” recalled the woman who lost the election against him.
Clinton admitted in her book “What Happened” to spending days and days in bed choking back tears with glasses of wine and walks in the bush, but six years later she has emerged fresh, relaxed and talkative, just in time to see him fall into hands of justice Trump, who remains the absolute favorite of the conservative party to represent him in the next elections, could return to the White House or end up in jail. That’s how drastic his options are.
If the federal case that special prosecutor Jack Smith opened for him in Washington only ten days ago offers him the opportunity to forgive himself if he returns to the White House, on this new front, outside federal jurisdiction, he could not pardon him or the governor of Georgia. Laws in that southern state require a committee to vote on pardons.
The 98 pages made public last night, detailing a hundred charges corresponding to 41 crimes against 19 defendants, from signing false statements to impersonating a public official, going through asking them to violate their oaths, begin with a statement that they still don’t recognize many Americans: “Donald Trump lost the election.” Instead of going to bed, as Clinton did in 2016, “Trump and the other defendants refused to concede defeat and knowingly and purposefully joined in a conspiracy to illegally swing the election outcome in Trump’s favor.” says the indictment, which included tampering with voting machines.
It wasn’t a passionate reaction on election night, but a deliberate plan that they would carry out over the next two months. The plan contained “two or more acts of racketeering for criminal activity in Fulton County, Georgia, other parts of the state of Georgia, and other states.” Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Michigan, Pennsylvania are some of the states mentioned in the statement of charges in which “the organized crime company” acted to try to reverse the results.
There was everything. Trump acolytes appeared in front of members of the Georgia Legislature with “false statements” to “corruptly” request them to violate their oath to the Constitution by illegally changing the outcome of the November 3, 2020 election. to the country that Trump was the victim of voter fraud, they “intimidated” election officials “by asking them to confess to election crimes they had not committed.” It was Fulton County official Ruby Freeman, but also Attorney General Bill Barr, to whom Trump said: “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”
Members of this organized crime recruited individuals to present themselves as false elected representatives for the Electoral College, which votes for president in Washington, and signed false documents to prevent the certification of the results on January 6, 2021,
Four days before he launched his forces against the Capitol as a last resort to stop the certification, Trump was so desperate that he made the biggest mistake of his life. Something that, like mob bosses, always afraid of someone betraying them, they never did: On January 2, 2020, he personally picked up the phone and called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to convince him throughout a hour of conversation that he found “11,780 votes”, one more than Joe Biden got from him in that state, key to resolving the elections.
Raffensperger was recording it. When the votes were still being counted, a week after the election, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, Trump’s associate during his presidency, had called him to ask him to rig the result in what Raffensperger concluded was discarding legitimate votes from Biden. According to him, he even threatened him, but Graham denied it and that was his word against the senator’s. Hence, he was ready, tape recorder in hand, when the White House informed him that the president himself would call him. It had been two months of constant pressure and conspiracy theories that the Republican official, a Trump voter, had taken it upon himself to thoroughly investigate. That is why he was blunt with the president when it came to rebutting him.
Trump already faces 91 charges in four different jurisdictions, none of which will prevent him from running for office and ruling again, though he may have to do so from jail. It would be another milestone in the country’s history, which the former president constantly rewrites, and which has many chapters left.
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