Wed thread: Trump is finally charged for the Big Lie that defrauded U.S., fueled an insurrection
The special counsel did a masterful job, with a detailed indictment and charges that appear difficult for Trump to defend against. Is he going to prison, finally?
Boom! There it was, in the 5 p.m. Eastern Time hour yesterday. Donald Trump was indicted on four counts in the January 6th plot to overturn an election, which fueled an attack on the Capitol. I was live on my SiriusXM program, reporting out the breaking news.
As I read through the detailed indictment later and followed along with what trusted legal experts are saying, it’s quite clear that, to have any chance of a defense, Trump will have to explain in court exactly where he got his information regarding the many lies claiming voter fraud that he told, instance after instance.
And there are so many. The indictment states repeatedly that Trump and his six co-conspirators "knowingly" lied with the intent of overturning a free and fair election. That means Special Counsel Jack Smith has ironclad witnesses attesting to Trump saying he lost the election and to being told by his own Department of Justice officials, state officials and judges that he lost.
But there is no way that Trump will testify, and even if he did, he can’t possibly explain who told him that tens of thousands of dead people voted in Georgia, for example, or that hundreds of thousands of votes were "dumped" in Detroit—things he said over and over again, even after being told by election officials and his own DOJ officials that these claims were false—because he concocted most of these claims himself.
And when he did get information from someone else, that person was lying, and he often knew they were lying or "crazy," as he said about Sydney Powell before he then amplified her claim that Dominion voting machines had changed votes from Trump to Joe Biden.
But Trump’s attorney is already laying out a wild, weak defense.
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