QUESTION: Since leaving office, how many criminal cases have been brought against Donald J. Trump to date?
ANSWER: Four. Two of them deal directly with his manipulation of several Electoral College checkpoints.
Before we review how the 45th President – and his loyal minions – tried to overwhelm and thwart the process, let’s briefly summarize the four legal cases for those keeping score at home:
New York state legal system – hush money to porn star and shady business practices
Last April the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, Jr., announced the indictment of Donald J. Trump for falsifying New York business records to conceal unlawful activity from the American public before and after the 2016 election. This includes the well-known $130,000 payoff to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. The trial is expected in early 2024. For more information: https://manhattanda.org/district-attorney-bragg-announces-34-count-felony-indictment-of-former-president-donald-j-trump/
Federal legal system, Southern District of Florida – illegally taking classified documents to Mar-a-Lago
U.S. Department of Justice Special Prosecutor Jack Smith is overseeing a case looking into Trump’s stealing of federal documents – including highly classified documents – and storing them in his Florida residence. The indictment contained 40 felony counts, many under the Espionage Act. In June, Trump pleaded not guilty in a Miami federal court. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has scheduled the trial for May 2024. Trump is indicted alone, although a few other unnamed co-conspirators are mentioned. For more information: https://apnews.com/article/trump-classified-documents-indictment-miami-court-e9412bb71b63ab1b7cfb8e8b122e9809
Some of the documents the former President stole and kept at Mar-a-Lago. (Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Justice)
Federal legal system, District of Columbia – attempting to overturn the 2020 election results and fomenting the January 6 insurrection
Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee aspects of the 2021 insurrection, subpoenaed election officials in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. These were states in which the 2020 Trump campaign tried to submit falsified elector slates as part of their attempt to overturn the 2020 Presidential election. Donald J. Trump is charged with four criminal counts, which include conspiring to defraud the government and to disenfranchise voters, and corruptly obstructing an official proceeding – the Constitutionally-prescribed counting and certification of the electoral votes on January 6, 2021.
This indictment was made in early August, and the trial date has been scheduled for March 2024. For more information: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/01/trump-indictment-jan-6-2020-election/
Georgia state legal system – fake electors
The Fulton County District Attorney, Fani Willis, convened a grand jury shortly after the infamous telephone call Trump placed to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, demanding that the Secretary of State “find” 11,780 additional votes – the exact number of votes that would have tipped Georgia’s 16 Electors into Trump’s column. Georgia was one of the states that submitted falsified electoral documentation. The grand jury recommended indicting not only Donald J. Trump but also 18 of his co-conspirators. The grand jury Indictments were made public in the late evening of August 14. The trial date for the first of the 18 co-conspirators is October 23. For further information: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/14/trump-indictment-georgia-election-2020/?utm_campaign=wp_todays_headlines&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_headlines
The last two cases in the summary above deal directly with the Electoral College. Three unique aspects of the Electoral College predispose it to fraud and manipulation, and underpin both the federal and Georgia criminal cases:
The swing state
Electors voting
Counting the electoral votes
The swing state — By now we know that voters in only a handful of “swing” states decide the outcome of each Presidential election. The two-party duopoly conspires with the “winner-take-all” method of allocating a state’s electoral votes to ensure that most states are considered “safe” – no general election candidates ever bother to campaign there. In 2020, Joseph R. Biden won these key swing states:
Arizona
Georgia
Michigan
Nevada
New Mexico
Pennsylvania
Wisconsin
Donald J. Trump lost the popular vote in each of these states – an unassailable fact supported by the voting data in each of these states. These are the states in which fake electors “voted” and tried to submit their votes to the U.S. Senate and Federal Archives.
Electors voting — On the first Tuesday that follows the second Wednesday in December (following a Presidential election) Electors physically meet in each state capital and in the District of Columbia to cast their votes. These Electors pledge to cast their votes for the Presidential/Vice Presidential ticket that has won the popular vote in that state. This is a formal process often overseen by the jurisdiction’s Secretary of State (or other high election official), and each Elector signs a formal document, often imbued with the state seal or other insignia. The Governor certifies this document before it is sent to the U.S. Senate and the Federal Archives.
In the seven swing states listed above unsanctioned parallel meetings of “electors” met to sign pieces of paper and egregiously proclaim that the losing Presidential ticket had indeed “won” the election.
This screengrab taken from MSNBC distinctly shows the difference between the officially certified electoral slate from the State of Michigan (on the left) and the fake one submitted by the bogus “electors.” In fact, all seven fake electoral slates had been written on plain white paper and all of them used the same font, suggesting there was some level of coordination.
Official versus falsified electoral slates, state of Michigan. (Screengrab taken from MSNBC video that aired January 11, 2022)
Counting the electoral votes — U.S. law mandates that the electoral votes submitted by the 50 states and District of Columbia be counted before a joint session of Congress, presided over by the Vice President. This counting takes place on January 6 following a Presidential election. It is no surprise that the 45th President — who lost his bid for reelection — planned to hold a rally on the Ellipse just south of the White House specifically ON THAT DATE. “Be there – will be wild!” he tweeted days before.
Through inflammatory and careless rhetoric, he riled up his supporters so much that they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue and stormed the U.S. Capitol — as the electoral votes were being counted. The January 6 insurrection happened because of the Electoral College.
We’ll unpack the two cases that deal directly with the subversion of the Electoral College process in subsequent posts. These criminal cases are:
The federal case — attempting to overthrow the 2020 election and fomenting an insurrection
The Georgia case — fake electors
Remember that — without the obsolete and undemocratic Electoral College — these egregious crimes against our democracy almost certainly would not have happened.