Don’t expect some bombshell facts to be revealed in the indictment of Trump for the events concerning January 6th. Sometimes something new arises in a cause celebre where so many facts and strands of possible history are assembled, as when years later the real espionage was revealed that cleared Dryfuss of his name. Looking into the details of a political cause celebre usually ends in nothing, as when Jim Garrison tried to figure out who killed JFK and what happened on the grassy knoll in Dallas. We never did find out why Nixon had gone along with the Watergate cover up. Maybe it was his bad demons overcoming his statesman-like alternative instincts, as bloody as he required it to be in dealing with Vietnam. What can be said about the indictments of Trump is that they reveal just the facts covered by the House Jan. 6th Committee with added on details that a political junkie might relish. Of more interest and moment is how arcane and contrary to ordinary psychology are the legal proceedings themselves and those will not be addressed, except here, much less reformed.
Distinguished commentators on the law, ex judicial officials themselves, say that the reason for offering up those people who worked at Mar a Lago is to show he had a guilty intent in that he was covering up his having government documents and so must have known it was wrong to take those papers. Jurors might be inclined to think that Trump must have known he had no right to those papers, quite aside from his admission that the one he flaunted around was still unclassified in that as an exPresident he could no longer do so. But we don’t know what he was showing around. Maybe it was just boasting and there would have to be witnesses to testify that they had read the plans to invade Iran. Maybe just Joe McCarthy shuffling papers about the non existent names of those State Department Reds.
Anyway, that is false psychology. A person can truly believe that they are in the right and therefore feel free to hide their doings so as to protect what they think is their right as happens when Huck schemes with Tom Sawyer to free Jim. The legal claim that evasion is evidence of guilt is just an assertion that is useful just so as to incriminate someone. Lawyers offer a reason so as to treat it as a proof. That does not mean there is no way to assess whether Trump was allowed to have secret papers in his possession. He could make the case that he could indeed declassify papers simply with a mental act to do so, but no lawyer is willing to say so in a court of law. Or he could explain why he needed these documents and offer proof that the Defense Department were warmongers against Iran but as an aside rather than as an explanation in a report or address that he was a whistleblower doing his duty as an ex-President, but he hasn't done that. The lack of an excuse is not an excuse and so his retaining the secrets is either vain or slovenly orf to sell for money or for any other number of reasons to which one can speculate, none of them legitimate or to be tested as legitimate.
The same false psychology and the more palatable reasons for thinking Trump criminally liable are also operative in the central case having to do with the insurrection that was regarded as justified because the election had been stolen from him. Prosecutors may offer witnesses that show experts and key politicians told Trump that he had legitimately lost the election and conclude that Trump lied about the election results. But that would just mean that Trump should have known that he rightly lost. It does not prove he believed he had lost, whether for vanity or an inherent conspiratorial nature. Most people would follow the experts, but it will be Trump on trial and so it is necessary to prove in a particular case rather than as a general practice people in such circumstances are liars. Moreover, even if prosecutors can show that Trump admitted the election was not rigged, that would not settle the matter because Trump is a notorious liar and so might be lying at some occasion for lying that the election was legit, Trump has the liar’s defense, which is that you can’t trust anything he says. Checkmate. But not quite. If he believed the election was rigged, then he might not assert that as a fact but offer the reasons for thinking so in a statement or an interview, which he never has. You might think him incapable of the rational thought required to prepare or read such a report, but that may well be the ultimate defense, which is Trump’s mental incapacity to think through thoughts, something clear since he announced in 2015, and then the national electorate is to be chastised for ever having voted for so damaged a person, but that means Trump can and should be defeated by an electorate rather than a judiciary that would put him in an asylum rather than a jail but left off because he is harmless so long as he does not run for public office, Michael Cohen to have been blamed for his own troubles because he did not shy away from the guy as soon as getting wind of him.
Rather than the recondite aspects of the indictment, look at what is obvious on the face of it as its central features however many years it takes for a person to become aware of what is obvious and therefore undeniable and conclusive. It isn't that the meeting at the Willard Hotel of conspiratorial figures doesn’t show that the attack on the Capital was planned rather than just a protest that got out of hand, but that even better evidence of Trump’s malign intent is available on tape out of his own mouth for all to see. Jack Smith has avoided these issues so as not to be open to the accusation that what Trump did was an expression of free speech, but I will dig into that because it is the heart of the matter. Trump in his speech to the crowd on Jan. 6th was inciting riot if you pay attention to the rhetoric of his words even if he did not say explicitly that the followers should riot. He said that they should be strong. Maybe that is a reference to be clear in their determinations, to be resolved that their beliefs were proper, but it is also to say that they are determined to prevail in preventing the certification of the electoral vote, and what else were they doing milling about except to do just that when he was told to. Being just short of incendiary words does not make the words incendiary.
Further, when Trump finally asked the rioters to go home, to cease rioting after having Trump for hours watching on tv that they had been rioting, Trump says to them that he loves them. “Loves them” for what? For merely being partisan? No, an easy inference is that he was endorsing what they had done, which was to threaten the elected Senators and Congresspeople. That is the clear meaning of the language and that is his crime, to egg on and afterwards praise an insurrection. Not just unstatesmanlike but also criminal. That is the gist of the case even if Alan Dershkowitz thinks Trump was just letting off blather. Moments count. They reveal the real motive. Words tell you what people say in their Jack Smith pile up the illegal activities Trump and his associates engaged in. What Trump said is something about which he did not lie and places him as what he was: a destroyer of the Constitution. hearts and that is enough.
Prosecute Trump. I want him shamed though he likely won’t live long enough to go through the appeals process so that he will ever have jail time. Nixon tried to rehabilitate himself during the eternity between resignation and his death. Trump will not try rehabilitation because he will be a martyr to his cause, himself. We will just be rid of him if even his supporters decide he is too sullied to be dealt with. So I am already bored and passed beyond the indictment or future indictments to the 2024 election because the Constitution cannot protect thbed people if thbe people have gone sedriously astray.