Politics

The four count indictment Special Counsel Jack Smith handed down against Donald Trump alleges that on Jan. 6, approximately two hours after the mob broke into the Capitol, “the Defendant” joined others in the outer Oval Office to watch the attack on television.

“See, this is what happens when they try to steal an election. These people are angry. These people are really angry about it. This is what happens,” the Defendant said.

This is what Trump wanted. He wanted his supporters to be angry, furious, and incensed if he lost the 2020 election. This was the whole point. This is what Trump wanted from the moment he began lying about a “stolen” election months BEFORE the 2020 election. He wanted violence. He wanted chaos. He wanted his supporters to be so damn pissed off that they would use violence to keep him in office.

He wanted, as Smith spelled out in the indictment, “...to create an intense atmosphere of mistrust and anger.” This was always his plan. Violence was always his ace in the hole if everything else he tried to do to keep himself in power failed.

Please don’t breeze past this fact: The former President of the United States believed violence was ultimately how he could execute his attempted coup. He incited that violence for months, and he exploited that violence on Jan. 6.

You can’t read this 45-page indictment and not understand that Donald Trump tried everything he could to overturn the election results, knowing his argument was based on nothing, and that he’d use his power as Commander in Chief of the armed forces to remain in office. (I repeat: Trump wanted to use the military.)

“This was his plan all along. He wanted, he needed, depended upon, encouraged, and incited violence. And he was prepared to order the military to act violently on his behalf.”

Per the indictment, when Trump was warned by his Deputy White House Counsel on Jan. 3 that there was no “outcome-determinative fraud in the election,” and that if Trump remained in office there would be “riots in every major city in the United States,” the unnamed co-conspirator 4 responded, “Well [Deputy White House Counsel], that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”

The indictment paints a picture of Trump and his co-conspirators systematically trying everything possible to overturn the election results—making false claims, pushing election officials in various states to ignore the vote counts, creating slates of fraudulent electors, and then pressuring top officials in the Justice Department to lie and conduct sham investigations.

None of it worked.

Trump’s penultimate play to stay in power was to pressure the vice president to fraudulently alter the election results. And Trump, true to form, repeatedly threatened violence to try to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence to do something he had no authority to do.

On Jan. 5, in one of the last of his many attempts to pressure the VP, Trump “grew frustrated” and told the VP that if he didn’t do what Trump wanted he’d “have to publicly criticize the VP.” Upon hearing this, the VP’s chief of staff “was concerned for the Vice President’s safety and alerted the head of the Vice President’s Secret Service detail.”

With none of his overtures to the VP working, Trump and his co-conspirators employed their final play to keep Trump in power: They unleashed the dogs of violence.

On the morning of Jan. 6, he directly incited his supporters to engage in violence to stop the proceedings at the Capitol. In his speech that morning, he lied to his supporters. He falsely told them that the vice president had the authority to stop the proceedings and that the VP might in fact alter the election results. Co-Conspirators 1 and 2 also lied about the VP in their speeches that morning to the same crowd. Trump then directed his supporters to go to the Capitol to obstruct the certification proceeding and exert pressure on the VP to take the fraudulent actions Trump already knew the VP had previously refused to do.

Violence. This was the traitor’s final play.

It's really what underlined everything Trump had done and said from that moment in July 2020 when he said the only way he could lose the election was if it were stolen. He planted the seeds of violence before a vote had even been cast. In the indictment, Jack Smith says the whole point of the Defendant’s lies was to be “destabilizing.” To cause violence.

“We fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Trump charged his supporters that morning as he pointed them to the Capitol and told them to go “take back their country.” And of course, the coward promised to go to the Capitol with them, but never did.

When violence unfolded at the Capitol, Trump refused to stop it. He smiled and watched it.

People have long been confused about why Trump just sat there in the White House all afternoon, completely unperturbed by what was happening. There should be no confusion: This is what he wanted. This was the plan.

And during the violence, he continued to spur it on, attacking the VP by tweet, accusing him of not having the courage to act. “See...this is what happens when you steal an election...these people are angry,” said the President of the United States, knowing it was all a lie.
A photo including Pro-Trump Supporters at the U.S Capitol Building

Later that night, the indictment alleges, Trump and his cronies further exploited the violence of that day. “As violence ensued, the Defendant and Co-Conspirators exploited the disruption by redoubling efforts to levy false claims of election fraud and convince Members of Congress to further delay the certification based on these claims.” They were still calling lawmakers to further perpetuate the Big Lie, even after the violence at the Capitol.

One of the most frightening lines in the indictment was a reference to a Jan. 4 conversation between the defendant's senior counsel and co-conspirator 2, during which the senior advisor said no one would support the defendant’s proposal to have the VP alter the election results, and if VP did it, “You’re going to cause riots in the streets.” Co-Conspirator 2 responded that there had previously been points in the nation’s history where violence was necessary to protect the republic.
A photo including activists and allies at the New York Public Library calling for the Indictment of Donald Trump

In other words, violence was “necessary.” This, in essence, was Trump’s doctrine.

Judge Tonya Chutkin, who’s been chosen to preside over Trump's trial for this indictment and who has presided over a number of the trials for the Jan. 6 defendants, said this during one of those earlier Jan. 6 trials: “It has to be made clear that trying to violently overthrow the government, trying to stop the peaceful transfer of power, and assaulting law enforcement officers in that effort is going to be met with absolutely certain punishment.”

This is what Donald Trump did. This was his plan all along. He wanted, he needed, depended upon, encouraged, and incited violence. And he was prepared to order the military to act violently on his behalf.

It's bad enough that Trump refused to concede and accept his election loss. It’s bad enough that he refused to participate in the peaceful transfer of power. It’s bad enough that he lied about the election and tried to pressure others to engage in fraudulent activities to overturn the election. But it’s traitorous that he relied on the threat of violence rather than concede he lost a free and fair election in the United States of America.

We cannot, we must not become so inured to Trump’s madness that we normalize what he’s done. He tried to violently overthrow our government, and as Judge Chutkin said, he “must be met with absolutely certain punishment.”

Trump’s ass belongs in jail.