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The latest Trump indictment
So the indictment from Fulton County, Georgia was released about 11:30 last night, and I stayed up too late reading it. (It's 97 pages, but a quick read because a lot of it is repetitive legal boilerplate.)
It forms an interesting contrast with the Federal indictment for Jan. 6 and related activities. Where Jack Smith went minimalist, Fani Willis went maximalist. Smith's charges are the absolute minimum he could possibly file and respect himself in the morning: he avoids any charge that carries a penalty of disqualification from office, lest he be accused of interfering in the 2024 Presidential election (which he will be anyway), and he avoids any complex charge that's hard to explain or for which Trump might have a reasonable defense. He's looking for a quick, clean kill. Willis's charges are centered on conspiracy and racketeering: she lists 161 distinct acts, many of which aren't crimes in themselves and many of which took place outside her jurisdiction (Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada, DC), which form a coherent story of a corrupt organization coordinating to overthrow the legally certified results of an election. And where Smith charges only Donald Trump (while holding a handful of unindicted co-conspirators in his back pocket, of whom presumably some will take plea deals to testify against Trump and others will be prosecuted), Willis charges 19 different people and mentions 30 other unindicted co-conspirators, largely "electors" who signed papers claiming to be the lawfully chosen electors of their various states. In answer to a question at the press conference, yes, she intends to try all 19 defendants together.
Charges include, in addition to the RICO charge against all 19 defendants, 40 other charges against one or more of the defendants: forgery, impersonating public officials, submitting false official documents, unauthorized possession of ballots, computer theft and invasion of privacy (from when several defendants visited a county courthouse on Jan. 7, 2021, scanned all the ballots and imaged all the hard drives), making false statements to public officials (the Georgia legislature and several Georgia election officials), and most obviously soliciting public officials to violate their oaths and commit election fraud.
Now we wait for four different criminal trials, in four different states, to be scheduled and heard.
It forms an interesting contrast with the Federal indictment for Jan. 6 and related activities. Where Jack Smith went minimalist, Fani Willis went maximalist. Smith's charges are the absolute minimum he could possibly file and respect himself in the morning: he avoids any charge that carries a penalty of disqualification from office, lest he be accused of interfering in the 2024 Presidential election (which he will be anyway), and he avoids any complex charge that's hard to explain or for which Trump might have a reasonable defense. He's looking for a quick, clean kill. Willis's charges are centered on conspiracy and racketeering: she lists 161 distinct acts, many of which aren't crimes in themselves and many of which took place outside her jurisdiction (Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada, DC), which form a coherent story of a corrupt organization coordinating to overthrow the legally certified results of an election. And where Smith charges only Donald Trump (while holding a handful of unindicted co-conspirators in his back pocket, of whom presumably some will take plea deals to testify against Trump and others will be prosecuted), Willis charges 19 different people and mentions 30 other unindicted co-conspirators, largely "electors" who signed papers claiming to be the lawfully chosen electors of their various states. In answer to a question at the press conference, yes, she intends to try all 19 defendants together.
Charges include, in addition to the RICO charge against all 19 defendants, 40 other charges against one or more of the defendants: forgery, impersonating public officials, submitting false official documents, unauthorized possession of ballots, computer theft and invasion of privacy (from when several defendants visited a county courthouse on Jan. 7, 2021, scanned all the ballots and imaged all the hard drives), making false statements to public officials (the Georgia legislature and several Georgia election officials), and most obviously soliciting public officials to violate their oaths and commit election fraud.
Now we wait for four different criminal trials, in four different states, to be scheduled and heard.
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