Charge Trump With Inciting an Insurrection and Prevent Him From Running Again –
The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –
After the House Select Committee investigating Trump’s insurrection adjourned the prime time hearing Thursday night, the first in a series of hearings that seem destined to end in a call for the first ever major criminal indictment of a former president of the United States, Attorney General Merrick Garland must have stoked the fire in his Bethesda home and poured himself a double scotch.
He has a lot to think about. It will be a long legal and political calculation on his part. He must wonder how in the world he ended up in history as the first AG to have to face the consequences of bringing a criminal case against a president.
The next day, over in his D.C. apartment, Trump’s dedicated rabble rouser and brain trust Steve Bannon convened his War Room podcast cabinet and, in the attempt to remain relevant and have an impact on Trump’s fate, dared Garland to indict Trump.
“I dare Merrick Garland to take that crap last night and try to indict Donald Trump!”, Bannon declared, which made Google clickbait news through a blog no one has ever heard of, The Post Millennial.
As reported, Democratic pundit and former Republican Ron Filipkowski took to Twitter to post a clip of Bannon “fuming about a criminal indictment of Trump.” Bannon references the Jan. 6 committee hearing from Thursday night and says, “I dare Merrick Garland to take that crap last night and try to indict Donald Trump! Because we’re gonna win in Nov. and we’re gonna impeach you and everybody around you! F*ck – screw the WH – we’re gonna impeach you!”
The video was taken from Bannon’s show “The War Room” on the so-called “Real American’s Voice” channel. It’s a podcast, although Bannon says he objects to calling it that.
In any event, Garland doesn’t have to just “try” to indict Trump. All he has to do is approve it and it will be done. It will be written.
Bannon is still banned from Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube, so he has to go somewhere else online to get attention, along with Trump himself, whose own social media channel has faced technical issues and let’s face facts, is not exactly catching on with the American public.
“Bannon’s speculation revolve around the highly publicized Jan. 6 committee setting up a pretence (sic) to indict Trump,” the blog reports inaccurately.
The blog also cites Bennie Thompson, the committee chair, who said: “Ultimately, Donald Trump, the president of the United States, spurred a mob of domestic enemies to march down (to) the Capitol and subvert American democracy,” and openly called the insurrection an “attempted coup.”
Many former members of the Trump administration, including former Attorney General Bill Barr and Ivanka Trump, have gone on the record to rebuke the claim that Trump was inciting the riot because he believed the election was rigged, the blog says, oddly. Although during the hearing, the committee played a video clip of testimony in which Barr said there was no evidence of fraud and called Trump’s efforts “bullshit,” and another of Ivanka saying she agreed with Barr.
Trump’s former campaign and White House chief strategist also knows claims of fraud in the election are false. But Bannon must feel he has no choice but to keep the “Big Lie” narrative going to keep his following and Trump’s engaged.
“Trump won the presidency and he is the legitimate president of the United States and your guy’s illegitimate and the American People are awakening to that,” Bannon blathered on.
Bannon was out on bail under federal charges when Trump pardoned him right before finally moving his gold-plated, Covid-stained crap out of the White House. But he now faces a trial for contempt of Congress next month for listening to Trump and refusing to cooperate with the committee.
In a show of pure unadulterated balderdash, Bannon had his shyster of a lawyer subpoena House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the select committee as part of his defense and demanded the release of all the White House records in the case, a move of political misdirection that should fool no one, certainly not Merrick Garland.
Meanwhile, the national newspaper of record carried a story on Saturday asking the key question and showing the case before the committee and the attorney general, a story which he no doubt read carefully.
Jan. 6 Committee Appears to Lay Out Road Map for Prosecuting Trump
“The first prime-time hearing into the Jan. 6 attack confronted the fundamental question that has haunted Donald J. Trump since he left office: Should he be prosecuted in a criminal court?”
According to The New York Times: “He had means, motive and opportunity. But did Donald J. Trump commit a crime?”
“A House committee explicitly declared that he did by conspiring to overturn an election. The attorney general, however, has not weighed in. And a jury of his peers may never hear the case.”
What?
Why not?
The Times says these things are “almost certainly going through the mind of Mr. Garland, a mild-mannered, highly deliberative former federal appeals court judge who has largely kept mum about his thinking. A Justice Department spokesman said Mr. Garland watched the hearing but would not elaborate.”
Of course Democrats have attacked the attorney general for not already prosecuting Trump, with good reason, even though a federal judge said in an opinion back in March in a related civil case that the former president and a lawyer who advised him had most likely broken the law by trying to overturn the election.
Garland has so far resisted the pressure, surely weighing the timing of things and waiting until the right moment to make his decision and strike.
While he has called the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack the most urgent work in the history of his department, he has refused to forecast where the inquiry will go as investigators continue evaluating evidence.
“We are not avoiding cases that are political or cases that are controversial or sensitive,” he told NPR in March. “What we are avoiding is making decisions on a political basis, on a partisan basis.”
While it is somewhat understandable that lawyers and judges who are Democrats are still trying to holdup the principle that justice should be blind and based on the facts and not a political calculation, the other side has already abandoned that principle a long time ago and made it clear they will abuse the justice system at every opportunity to keep themselves in wealth and power, even at a cost of destroying democracy itself in the process.
It’s too bad they won’t just come out and say it. If they don’t like democracy and want to change this country from a republic into something else, say a Christian monarchy or oligopoly, if they would come out and say that we could have a public debate about it. Why do they have to lie and cheat to get what they want?
The committee displayed a mountain of evidence that Trump was trying to get his own loyalists to take over the Department of Justice and trump up false charges of election fraud so he could accomplish his coup and become America’s first dictator.
For two hours Thursday night, the select committee detailed what it called Trump’s “illegal” and “unconstitutional” seven-part plan to prevent the transfer of power from one administration to the next. The panel invoked the Justice Department, citing charges of seditious conspiracy filed against the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who clearly spearheaded a conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government, all inspired by Trump’s blatant public call to do just that.
The committee is clearly laying out a road map for the AG and DOJ to follow, and they are laser focused on the fact that it was Trump himself who led the conspiracy and incited the insurrection.
As the Times pointed out, however, a congressional hearing is not a court of law. It will up to career prosecutors in the Justice Department, and ultimately the decision of Mr. Garland, Biden’s choice for attorney general.
And let’s be very clear about this. There is no way Garland can avoid taking into account the political calculous in this situation, as Bannon’s dare indicated.
If something is not done to prevent Republicans who support Trump from taking over the House and Senate in November, they will dismantle the select committee, obliterate its work, and go about investigating President Joe Biden, Garland, and anybody else who disagrees with them. They will lay the groundwork for Trump’s return to the Oval Office in 2024. His coup will finally be realized.
And there is only six months until the election to make this happen.
So let us, the New American Journal editorial board, now join Steve Bannon in his call for Mr. Garland to issue an indictment of Trump — and put him on trial for at least one of his crimes to prevent him from running for public office again.
While the committee seems to be leaning toward recommending charges of conspiracy to commit fraud or obstruction of Congress, let us once again recommend a charge of inciting insurrection: conviction for which would prevent Trump from ever running for public office again and put a stop to his shenanigans and even act as a deterrent to those who would follow him down a similar political path.
Committee Chair Thompson cited Lincoln in his opening statement, after all, which seems relevant, since after the Civil War, Congress passed a law against inciting another insurrection against the U.S. government. Remember, some of the rioters on Jan. 6 were carrying Confederate battle flags. They were quoted by the FBI in trying to incite an insurrection to carry out another civil war.
So even if Congress and the Department of Justice are reluctant to get into a political fight by putting Trump on public trial and convicting him of some criminal act and placing him behind bars, it would seem that a simple charge of inciting an insurrection could be used under Title 18 U.S. Code § 2383 – Rebellion or insurrection.
“Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”
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