Donald Trump has been charged, along with 18 others, with a total of 41 election-related crimes in Georgia, including charges of racketeering, which is normally used to target members of organized crime groups and carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
The indictment says this...
"Trump and the other defendants charged in this indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump,"
The first part of the indictment that says this..."Trump and the other defendants charged in this indictment refused to accept that Trump lost,..." and this is totally bizarre. Any candidate is permitted to review an election to the point that they, not some attorney general, are satisfied that they actually lost before conceding, and before the election has actually been certified by Congress, which, at this point, had not happened. So, during the point in time in question - that is, before the certifications of the election by Congress - Trump was absolutely within his rights to question the outcome of the election, especially if some of his advisors had been telling him that there was even a long-shot reason to do so, and especially if he thought that the outcome made no sense.
Regarding the charge of trying to unlawfully change the outcome of the election, the case stems, in large part, from a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call in which Trump urged Georgia's top election official, Brad Raffensperger, to "find" enough votes to reverse his narrow loss in the state. Without this call, the charges would very likely not have been brought against Trump.
Trump said this to Mr. Raffensperger, “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes..."
This quote has appeared repeatedly in the press as purported proof that Trump was asking Mr. Raffensperger to do something illegal, namely, to falsify the results of the presidential election in Georgia, effectively handing it to Trump by inappropriately according him the 11,700 votes he would need to beat Biden.
In fact, during the telephone call between Raffensperger and Trump, which was witnessed by numerous other persons, Trump always included the request to find 11,700 votes within his purported belief and understanding that he actually won the state by between 200,000 and 300,000 votes. Asking that 11,700 votes be attributed to him was Trump asking that a fraction of the votes he thought were actually attributable to him be properly attributed, therefore allowing him to win the state, which he repeatedly states in the telephone call that he thought he did win.
Absent this context, the press reports that include the quote above regarding the request to "find" 11,700 votes are extremely misleading - that is not all that he said regarding this matter, and what the press leaves out is the actual crux of the matter, which is that he repeatedly said that he thought he won.
More to the point, at no time did Trump say anything like, "I know I lost the election, could you just send me 11,7000 votes so that I can win, and if you do, I'll make sure you are taken care of?"...
Not only that, but unless one of his associates is going to testify that he acknowledged that he actually thought that he had lost in private, and he was trying to perpetrate a fraud in asking for the 11,700 votes, there will be no evidence presented at his trial supporting the charges of "...conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election..." simply because there would be no evidence that he had the guilty mind necessary to make out the charge.
In short, if the evidence shows that he still believed that he won when he asked for the 11,700 votes, and he still believed that a fraud had been perpetrated, he likely cannot be convicted.
Here is a URL of the call with Raffensperger. I defy anyone to say that Trump had thought that he actually lost, and he had the guilty mind necessary to form an illicit conspiracy to steal the election. The transcript simply doesn't support this interpretation.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/03/politics/trump-brad-raffensperger-phone-call-transcript/index.html
No comments:
Post a Comment