Donald Trump got 13 new felonies added to his rap sheet Aug. 14, when a grand jury in Atlanta indicted Trump on charges of conspiring with at least 18 other co-defendants in an attempt to fraudulently overturn election results, in a Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization.
The RICO indictment brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis increased the total number of felonies Trump faces to 91 so far, but federal special counsel Jack Smith reportedly is still bringing witnesses to testify before a grand jury in D.C., which might bring more charges against the disgraced ex-president.
As the Trump felony count approaches triple figures, he also faces civil lawsuits for business fraud, rape and defamation, as well as damages for violence inflicted upon law enforcement officers by Trump supporters who believed they were following his orders in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
Mainstream pundits are starting to join Republican partisans in suggesting state and federal prosecutors are piling on the former president in unprecedented fashion. They’re playing down the prospects of actually putting Trump in jail, but so far the indictments have put forward strong cases against Trump on scores of serious charges.
The day after the Georgia indictment, Trump reacted with his usual bluster, announcing he had “a large, complex, detailed but irrefutable report on the presidential election fraud which took place in Georgia” that he would present a week later, which he insisted would result in “complete exoneration.”
But two days later, Trump posted a statement on his social media site that “Rather than releasing the Report on the Rigged & Stolen Georgia 2020 Presidential Election on Monday [Aug. 21], my lawyers would prefer putting this, I believe, Irrefutable & Overwhelming evidence of Election Fraud & Irregularities in formal Legal Filings as we fight to dismiss this disgraceful Indictment … Therefore, the News Conference is no longer necessary!”
Of course, neither Trump nor his lawyers have been able to show credible evidence of fraud or irregularities, and now the criminal defendant is desperate to delay the trials until after the 2024 election, hoping he can win back the White House and pardon himself of the federal crimes. Jack Smith proposed a Jan. 2, 2024, start for the trial in D.C. on the federal charges from Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, but Trump’s attorneys countered with an April 2026 trial date — close to a year and a half after the 2024 presidential election. And Republican leaders appear complicit in the grifter’s efforts to, once again, duck accountability.
Fulton County DA Willis is seeking a March 2 start for the trial, but the RICO case is complicated, as she will weave 161 acts detailed in the 98-page indictment, many of which are not criminal acts on their own but promote the criminal enterprise, into violation of the Georgia RICO Act. And efforts to pressure election officials or secure fake electors in other states can be brought into the case because they promote the purpose of the criminal enterprise, which was, as the indictment states, to “unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.”
As Mark Sumner noted at Daily Kos Aug. 15, the Georgia indictment may be a much larger case than the federal indictments brought by Smith. “The case is broader in terms of the evidence to be heard, wider in the sense of the number of crimes to be considered, and deeper in that it travels the pyramid of the criminal enterprise from the orange peak down to state and local Trump allies at the base.”
The Georgia RICO law also carries a sentence of five to 20 years, which cannot be pardoned until after the sentence is served.
Trump also faces federal felony charges for refusing to return classified documents and obstructing investigations of the missing documents, with his aide Waltine Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira as co-defendants. They’ve all pleaded not guilty in the case, which is expected to go to trial in mid-2024 in Judge Aileen Cannon’s court, but might be delayed until after the election.
Trump also faces state felony charges in Manhattan, where a grand jury in March voted with District Attorney Alvin Bragg on the first indictment of a former president, in a case involving 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to violate campaign finance laws in connection with a $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet before the 2016 election.
Meanwhile, New York Attorney General Letitia James is ready to go to trial in October in the civil lawsuit against Trump, sons Don Jr. and Eric, the Trump Organization and others who she says repeatedly committed fraud between 2011 and 2021, by inflating Trump’s net worth and overvaluing properties in order to deceive banks and lenders. James also alleges that Trump also undervalued his properties’ value when filing his tax returns.
James is seeking at least $250 million in damages.
The judge in that case, Arthur Engoron, has said the Oct. 2 trial date is “set in stone,” and he has rejected requests by Trump’s lawyers for delays.
James also has turned over her findings to federal prosecutors and the Internal Revenue Service, which could result in more criminal charges against Trump.
E. Jean Carroll, who was awarded $5 million for battery and defamation on May 9 after a Manhattan federal jury found Trump had sexually abused Carroll in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s, will return to federal court in Manhattan Jan. 15 for trial of a second defamation lawsuit seeking another $10 million from Trump, who said during the CNN “Town Hall on May 10, “I have no idea who this woman [is] … this is a fake story, made-up story.” He also called Carroll a “whack job,” because, as Charles Jay noted at Daily Kos, “Trump just can’t control himself.”
Of course, we are obligated to remind you that Donald Trump is innocent until proven guilty. But remember that adage didn’t stop Trump from calling for the death penalty after five Black and Latino youths were accused of assaulting a White 28-year-old female jogger in Central Park in April 1989.
Less than two weeks after the widely publicized attack, Trump, then a local real-estate mogul, took out full-page ads in four New York City newspapers targeting the youths with the headline: “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!”
The teenagers, aged 14 to 16, were convicted of raping the jogger, though none of the boys’ DNA matched evidence collected at the scene. Thirteen years later, they were exonerated after a convicted rapist and murderer confessed to raping the jogger. Trump doubled down on his stance that some of the boys were involved in the attack. “These young men do not exactly have the pasts of angels,” he wrote in a 2014 column for the New York Daily News.
Well, Trump doesn’t have the past of an angel, either, but he deserves his months in court. And if convicted, he should serve his sentences in a real prison, not “home confinement.” Outgoing presidents should not get to write off a failed insurrection as a mulligan. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, September 15, 2023
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