While we are waiting for the Supreme Court to get its act together on the various cases against Donald Trump for trying to overturn democracy, the special counsel’s office of Jack Smith should start prosecuting his co-conspirators.
Despite protests to the contrary, we know that Donald Trump is guilty of the crimes charged against him. In court, he is entitled to the presumption of innocence, but in the political arena he is not. In public discourse, we need to treat him as guilty. If, somehow, he gets a trial before the election and a jury lets him off the hook, then we can apologize and say that a court didn’t convict him. “Turns out, he might not be guilty.” But until then, the public should consider him guilty based on evidence in the public domain.
Guilty of what? Both states and the federal government have charged him with felonies. But I want to concentrate on the fake electors scheme, which is part of the charges made against Trump in the case filed in the District of Columbia (Case 1:23-cr-00257-TSC), which has four charges:
- Count 1: 18 USC § 371 Conspiracy to Defraud the United States.
- Count 2: 18 USC § 1512(k) Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding.
- Count 3: 18 USC § 1512(c)(2),2 Obstruction of and Attempt to Obstruct an Official Proceeding.
- Count 4: 18 USC § 241 Conspiracy Against Rights.
Count 1 lists a number of co-conspirators involved in the fraudulent electors scheme. In the indictment, they are referenced as “Co-Conspirator” with a number, but the media has largely tracked down the names of these conspirators as follows:
- Co-Conspirator 1: Rudy Giuliani
- Co-Conspirator 2: John Eastman
- Co-Conspirator 3: Sidney Powell
- Co-Conspirator 4: Jeffrey Clark
- Co-Conspirator 5: Kenneth Chesebro
- Co-Conspirator 6: likely Boris Epshteyn
In the following, where the indictment lists co-conspirators, I’m going to use their probable names, with the caveat that this is what the media believes is the case. I’m also not going to use quotation marks with extracts from the indictment, except where this needs to be clarified, so that we can see what the indictment is telling us without undue trivia getting in the way.
In this, I’m using The Trump Indictments: The Historic Charging Documents with Commentary by Melissa Murray & Andrew Weissmann as my source. Everything I present here is from their book, but you can see the actual indictment embedded in the NPR article here.
The indictment alleges that Donald Trump conspired with Kenneth Chesebro, an attorney who assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding [the January 6 count of Electoral Votes]. The indictment also alleges Donald Trump conspired with Boris Epshteyn, a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.
Chesebro then wrote a set of “Fraudulent Elector Instructions” on 9 December 2020, which explained how Trump-supporters could “mimic legitimate electors in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.” In this memo, Chesebro explained that in some states it would be virtually impossible to mimic legitimate electors because of state laws.
Mark Meadows furthered this scheme by forwarding Chesebro’s original memo to Trump campaign staff, writing, “We just need to have someone coordinate the electors for states”.
John Eastman called Ronna McDaniel [the Chairwoman of the Republican National Committee] on 6 December 2020 to ensure that the plan was in motion. During the call, Eastman told McDaniel that it was important for the RNC to help the Defendant’s Campaign gather electors in targeted states, and falsely represented to her that such electors’ votes would be used only if ongoing litigation in one of the states changed the results in Trump’s favor. (This never happened. No law suits succeeded.)
Rudy Giuliani spoke with Epshteyn about attorneys who could assist in the fraudulent elector effort in targeted states, and received from Epshteyn an email identifying attorneys in the targeted states. Chesebro then called an Arizona attorney on Epshteyn’s list. That attorney sent an email recounting the call, which said Chesebro wanted them to send the electors even without the signature of the governor, so that Congress could fight over whether to accept them as valid electors.
The day before the vote count, Chesebro sent an email message to Giuliani telling him the plan was to use the fraudulent electors even if no litigation was successful in any state. Instead, the plan was to falsely present the fraudulent slates as an alternative to the legitimate slates at Congress’s certification proceeding.
What we can see from the Donald Trump conspiracy indictment is that the following people were very likely part of this illegal scheme and should be indicted:
Co-Conspirator 1: Rudy Giuliani
Co-Conspirator 2: John Eastman
Co-Conspirator 5: Kenneth Chesebro
Co-Conspirator 6: Boris Epshteyn
In addition, since Mark Meadows apparently furthered this scheme, I think he should also be included.
Since the special counsel’s office has a lull in their activity created by the Supreme Court, their office, or another office in the Department of Justice, should pursue a case against at least these five alleged co-conspirators. These are people the DOJ has itself alleged broke the law, at least 18 USC § 371 Conspiracy to Defraud the United States. it is therefore public knowledge that a grand jury has probable cause to believe all of them broke the law.
So where is Justice?
Since the SCOTUS has tried to put Jack Smith on vacation over the next six months or so, he and his team have plenty of time to go after these co-conspirators and even look into the apparent fraud. Why are they sitting on their hands?
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