The Jan. 6 Case Against Donald Trump Is Part Of America’s Founding Story
INSIDE: Elon Musk ... Liz Cheney ... Eric Adams
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
The Story Of What Happened On Jan. 6 Is Ours To Own
In what is likely the last big Jan. 6 development before the election, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered the unsealing Wednesday of the 165-page filing by Special Counsel Jack Smith that presents his best case for why presidential immunity doesn’t shield Donald Trump from criminal prosecution for subverting the 2020 election.
The case laid out by Smith broadly follows the already-familiar contours of the conspiracy to overturn the results of an election Trump lost. It’s a narrative we know because we saw most of it with our own eyes. What we couldn’t see directly was pieced together by the House Jan. 6 committee and journalists working tirelessly to document the conspiracy’s many disparate elements and to identify the vast cast of characters that ended the United States’ streak of peaceful transitions of power.
There remains great civic value in repeating that story for ourselves and for future generations so that it becomes woven into our collective memory like the Boston Tea Party or the firing on Fort Sumter or the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
The Jan. 6 debacle is a part of the nation’s founding story, even though it comes nearly 250 years later, because the same principles that animated its creation were under sustained attack, the same threats that the constitutional system was specifically designed to protect against were on full display, and the reactionary forces of chaos and destruction that always linger just over the horizon advanced to within minutes and feet of prevailing over democracy and the rule of law.
Smith and investigators have amassed an overwhelming body of evidence of Trump’s culpability. The challenge for prosecutors in light of the Supreme Court’s ahistorical decision on presidential immunity is to demonstrate that Trump fomented, led and engaged in the conspiracy in his capacity as a private citizen running for the presidency, not in his capacity as sitting president. Alternatively, Smith also argues that in some instances where Trump’s conduct was as president, the rebuttable presumption of immunity can be overcome. But the delicate dance of overcoming the Supreme Court’s heavy thumb on the scale of justice, isn’t the core value of Smith’s work. The real value of the fact-based narrative presented by Smith is the story it gives all of us to remember and repeat.
As I read through Smith’s filing, I shared Rick Hasen’s “red-hot anger and wistfulness” that the Supreme Court has hamstrung the timely prosecution of Trump and that this case may never go to trial if Trump wins in November. Coupled with U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s dismissal of the slam-dunk indictment of Trump in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, we have edged to the precipice of irretrievably undermining the rule of law by creating a presidency beyond the law, at least when the White House is held by Republicans and given unlimited rein by this corrupt Supreme Court.
In the face of such extreme threats to democracy, it can seem quaint, trivial, or even pointless to continue to document the transgressions being committed against the will of the American people, which is fundamentally what Jan. 6 was all about. But the careful, meticulous, and relentless collecting of evidence, recording of facts, and repeating of the stories we tell ourselves about what happened and who was responsible powerfully cement in our national consciousness the story of who we are, where we came from, and what we must overcome to get where we want to be as a democratic, pluralistic country.
A Point Of Pride
I want to acknowledge briefly the work of the TPM team for its early, consistent, and ongoing coverage of the 2020 election subversion conspiracy because it in so many ways presaged the case Special Counsel Jack Smith laid out in full yesterday.
We have done too many stories to note them all here, and I will inevitably overlook some of the work of our team, so apologies to them for that, but here is a sampling of a handful of some of our most significant stories:
January 25, 2021: The Capitol Mob Was Only The Finale Of Trump’s Conspiracy To Overturn The Election
July 5, 2022: How The Fake Electors Scheme Could Give The DOJ A Way Into Trumpworld
August 4, 2022: Why The Fake Electors Are About A Lot More Than Fake Electors
December 12, 2022: The Meadows Texts: A Plot To Overturn An American Election
February 10, 2023: How The Fake Electors Scheme Explains Everything About Trump’s Attempt To Steal The 2020 Election
February 12, 2024: The Chesebro Docs: How a Coterie of Attorneys Designed the Plan For Trump To Stay In Power
Infographic Of The Day
NYT: How Donald Trump could use the Justice Department to target his perceived political adversaries
Important
TPM’s Nicole Lafond: DHS Warns Every Level Of Election Admin Could Be Targeted By Domestic Extremists Next Month
Exclusive
WSJ: Elon Musk Gave Tens of Millions to Republican Causes Far Earlier Than Previously Known
2024 Ephemera
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) will make a campaign appearance with Kamala Harris on Thursday in Ripon, Wisconsin, the birthplace of the Republican Party.
Donald Trump, 78, has still not released his medical records.
The cash-starved National Republican Senatorial Committee is making a last-minute shift in its TV ad strategy.
CA Alleges Catholic Hospital Illegally Denied Abortion Care
The state of California is suing Providence St. Joseph Hospital of Eureka for allegedly breaking the law by refusing emergency abortion case to a woman carrying twins when her water broke at 15 weeks.
California Bans Legacy Admissions
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed into law a new ban on legacy admissions at private colleges and universities that is scheduled to go into effect in the fall of 2025.
NYC Mayor Adams Could Face Additional Criminal Charges
During a hearing in federal court in Manhattan, prosecutors indicated that more charges against NYC Mayor Eric Adams are possible and that new charges against additional defendants are likely.
Hurricane Helene Update
Hurricane Helene’s death toll rose to 180, making it the third deadliest hurricane to strike the U.S. and its territories in the last 50 years.
After visiting the Carolinas on Wednesday, President Biden will be surveying storm damage in Florida and Georgia on Thursday.
The hidden toll of hurricanes: “An analysis of more than 500 tropical cyclones that have hit the United States since 1930 found that the average hurricane leads to as many as 11,000 excess deaths — a figure hundreds of times higher than official mortality estimates.”
Want better media? Support a better media company!
TPM is reader-funded, unionized, and mission-driven. Read our mission.
I read through all 165 pages of the SC filing released by Judge Chutkan, and what struck me is the inclusion of multiple pages of direct testimony from Mike Pence detailing the enormous pressure applied by tRump for the former to subvert the Electoral Count Act for the purposes of "disqualifying" or otherwise refusing to accept the legitimate electoral votes from several key states. Pence repeatedly attempted to tell tRump that for him - Pence - to do anything other than his simple "ministerial duties' would be unconstitutional and illegal, but tRump brushed it all aside and demanded that Pence "do the right thing"...ironically, Pence ultimately did the "right thing" and did certify Joe Biden's EC majority.
Jack Smith lays out in excruciating detail the entirety of events leading from the initial efforts immediately after the election to interfere with the actual ballot-counting, thence to attempt to enlist several "battleground" state officers and legislators to somehow contrive to assemble "fake electors" - and documents are included where tRump lawyers and campaign officials use those words exactly - to supplant the duly appointed electors as signed off by states' governors; when those ploys failed, it was the Mike Pence option, and when that failed, tRump resorted to fomenting mob action upon the Capitol. In particular, Smith includes tRump's "2:24 p.m. tweet", that faulted Pence for failure to "send back" state electors and derail the count...and which then led the mob to demand Pence's head.
What a fascinating and chilling document, and if the MSM doesn't make use of it in its entirety, and publicize it with the energy it committed to "Hillary's emails", they then will have failed the American people and their duty and obligations as "the Fourth Estate".
Thank you David for your
opening essay. I have read
Jack Smith's filing and smiled
at his referrals to Federalist
Papers/James Madison, the
Constitution and President
Lincoln. Too bad Chief
Justice Roberts ignored
these in his "rule for the
ages", that may come back
and bite.
I also read the report on the
long term deaths from
hurricanes. Very sobering.