After being overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court, special counsel Jack Smith returned to the fray this week, filing an amended indictment against former President Donald Trump for his attempt to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. This is the January 6 trial, take 2.
The criminal candidate has already been convicted in New York of 34 offenses related to the purchase of the silence of porn actress Stormy Daniels. He is desperate to overturn the conviction and delay sentencing until after the November 5 election.
The “revival” of the criminal trial in the Capitol insurrection is a gross understatement. The trial will go nowhere by the time of the election. Trump’s election, which remains a realistic probability, which is in itself unrealistic given his unreformable antidemocratic character, would sound the death knell for the proceedings. His defeat would not make the upcoming trial any easier, however, courtesy of the United States Supreme Court.
In a decision that straddles the ideological divide between conservative and progressive justices, the Court last July granted the equivalent of a patent of innocence to a president in office, in this case Donald Trump in the unadorned costume of the chief orator of the rioters of January 6, 2021. The highest court in the land ruled that the president enjoys near-total immunity for crimes committed in office, definitively paving the way for the era of the imperial presidency in the United States for all past and future tenants of the White House.
The filing of a revised indictment by prosecutor Jack Smith is an attempt to salvage the indictment from the wreckage, while still complying with the Supreme Court’s requirements. The incriminating document has been reduced from 45 to 36 pages, although the original four charges remain intact.
The narrative behind Donald Trump’s efforts to block the certification of the vote and overturn the election result in his favor is still being cut out of significant passages. For example, Trump’s pleas to the Justice Department to launch bogus investigations into election fraud or to pressure key states are no longer part of the official story of January 6. Conversations with political staff and White House lawyers are also being dropped. These are now official acts of a president in office.
This is to say the damage that the Supreme Court of the United States has caused to the principle of checks and balances, so important for the vitality of American democracy. Future presidents will be able to easily instrumentalize the Department of Justice for political ends without being worried about their actions, except in the eyes of the electorate.
The Supreme Court’s insane ruling didn’t stop Smith from preserving the core of the prosecution’s theory. Trump’s lies and thunderous calls for an uprising on social media, his pressure on former Vice President Mike Pence, and his outlandish attempts to replace Georgia’s electors with compliant supporters all remain at the heart of the case.
To a certain extent, conspiracy is permanent for Donald Trump and his supporters. They continue to concoct conspiracy theories about the theft of the 2020 election and the large-scale fraud of the Democratic camp. It is a constant figure in Trumpist rhetoric: blaming and imputing to the adversary, without proof, the facts and actions committed by his own camp.
In recent weeks, Trump has again accused the “radical Democratic left” of cheating and stealing the 2020 election. He has also put a damper on his ability to recognize a possible defeat… “because they cheat.” Confidence in the electoral system is the first victim of this insidious campaign.
This fabulous deception has taken on an unexpected twist with the coronation of Kamala Harris at the Democratic convention. Trump is now talking about a coup d’état suffered by poor Joe Biden, since the latter had been designated as the candidate by universal suffrage at the end of the Democratic primaries. Whether the argument is well-founded or not, if Trump is defeated, he will find puppets in robes to argue that the transfer of delegates from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris, on the floor of the Democratic convention, was illegal.
In fact, there is only one election that Donald Trump is willing to acknowledge: his own. In one form or another, we will be treated to a remake of January 6 if he loses. In a country as polarized and divided as the United States of 2024, the centrist and moderate voter will never have been more important. The keys to the democratic edifice are in his hands.