The more these continue, the more convinced I am that Trump will be indicted and convicted before the primaries for 2024 begin. He's got too many things circling him now. He's never been successful at avoiding trouble indefinitely; he always buys or blusters his way out.
Too late by then if these Republicans take over both houses in the mid terms as some are predicting. And if so a number are going to be Q-anon Trump approved wackos who the fanatics got to choose in the primaries this year. :^(
July 6th will mark a year and a half since January 6th 2021. Warp Speed needed pretty quick. They had Trump on record telling people to vote for him twice back in 2020, that alone should've had him hauled off to the clink! This was why he was so sure there was going to be fraud, any fraud would've served him, and there was some, almost always turning out to be someone voting for Trump twice.
"Last time I checked, we didn't have to be at war for someone to commit treason."
It depends on the basis of the charge. According to Article III Section 3 of the Constitution "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
Courts have defined "Enemies of the United States" as only those against whom a legally declared state of war exists. So we would have to be at war to charge someone with treason for adhering to the Enemy, but not for warring against the United States.
To be convicted of levying war against the United States, one must commit an overt act that uses organized force with the intent to overthrow the government. And the intent must be wrongful. It would be difficult to prove all of those elements in connection with the events of Jan 6, which is why the participants who are being charged are being charged with various lesser offences.
There shouldn't be any lack of charges to hold Trump on that treason would be needed anyway, but he certainly seems to more about hate for a lot of what the United states is, foremost that it is a democracy with one vote per citizen, than patriotic despite his actually hugging and kissing a flag on stage (pretended it was his "hot" daughter?). Just his words as president encouraging people to vote for him twice and then trying to use that to say there was massive fraud ought to be enough to bar him from any office if two impeachments somehow mean nothing, but then his involvement in a jewelry importation tax avoidance scheme should have prevented his ever holding a casino operators license. How do you rebuild a nation of laws with all these judges appointed for their political persuasion and fanaticism? Start with explicit conflict of interest laws with Cheney and Trump as prime examples for the need?
Who could want to be where the U.S. still is at this time other than it's enemy? What is "great" about this mess engineered chiefly by one party acting maliciously and recklessly, again or unprecedentedly? It's like a bad rerun of when Andrew Johnson practically undid the entire bloody Civil War debacle once Lincoln was out of the way. Many Trump picked Republicans with little experience or a positive record are taking the place of the saner ones right now. If people punish themselves (those who can still vote and aren't provisional balloted over a missing dotted i or other scrutinized detail, aren't going to abrogate their responsibility even if they have to stand all day in a line deliberately made long with anyone providing food or water become a criminal, or don't simplistically blame Biden for everything) and the Republicans do take back one or both houses it's really is going to get even worse for 99% of the people.
For my money, it easily meets the criteria of an assemblage of men actively waging war against the government.
You have a body of men and women who expressly state what they are there for, namely to overturn an election result they don't like/believe in. They then invade the capitol when the joint session of congress is in the process of formalising the result they wanted to overturn. This was not a peaceful protest. Police, protecting the government, were physically attacked and injured.
None of this is in any way ambiguous: they were attempting to place their own chosen candidate in the place of the democratically-elected head of government.
So we have plain open action against the government.
The only question remaining I would say is how to characterise Trump's involvement. I would say that his pronouncements in his speeches that day probably too vague to clear the hurdle of saying he was part of a conspiracy in this attempt to overthrow the new head of government. When Liz Cheney says there were witnesses to Trump saying maybe the supporters had the right idea about hanging Pence, I think he's guilty of woefully failing his responsibilities as President, but I'm not sure it proves he is part of what was going on, just failing to do anything about it.
What they need to prove is (1) co-ordination between Trump (or his aides) and the organised groups who invaded, such as the Proud Boys, and (2) that it wasn't a plan to just assemble and protest, but he was conspiring with them to do what they actually did.
If they can prove that, I'd say it's treason.
In the words of Chief Justice John Marshall, who presided over the trial of former VP Aaron Burr: "Iif war be actually levied, that is, if a body of men be actually assembled for the purpose of effecting by force a treasonable purpose, all those who perform any part, however minute, or however remote from the scene of action, and who are actually leagued in the general conspiracy, are to be considered as traitors. But there must be an actual assembling of men, for the treasonable purpose, to constitute a levying of war."
"You have a body of men and women who expressly state what they are there for, namely to overturn an election result they don't like/believe in. They then invade the capitol when the joint session of congress is in the process of formalising the result they wanted to overturn. This was not a peaceful protest. Police, protecting the government, were physically attacked and injured."
If you charged them with treason, some of them are going to say "The President and other public figures, ie Rudy Giuliani, told us the election results were fraudulent, and that a coup was being conducted by the left. I believed them, so I was there to prevent the overthrow of the government, not overthrow it myself."
Others would say they were just there to protest.
Proving otherwise is a big hurdle. Then you'd have to prove that each person you charged was part of an organized effort.
Prosecutors aren't going to jump through those hoops, when there are a plethora of other charges they can use, including felony charges, that don't require you to prove those elements.
As it pertains to the vast majority of people who stormed the capitol on Jan 6, it simply isn't worthwhile to pursue a treason charge.
"What they need to prove is (1) co-ordination between Trump (or his aides) and the organised groups who invaded, such as the Proud Boys, and (2) that it wasn't a plan to just assemble and protest, but he was conspiring with them to do what they actually did."
If there are ringleaders about whom you could prove these facts, then I agree, a treason charge would be appropriate, and worth pursuing. So far, I don't think we've seen any evidence of that. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but if so, we haven't seen it yet.
They were there on a specific date named by Trump for something that was going to be happening that day which he and others grossly misinformed them about. They weren't there to "protest" the day before or the day after. Also there are reports that the security numbers for that day were intentionally kept low via political interference, and the speed of reinforcements also willfully hampered. It's really only if someone wants desperately to cook up some alternative logic deniability scenario that there is all that much to talk about other than adding a bit more detail. Time being of the essence lest it happen again only perhaps successfully next time around...
Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 15 June 2022 at 6:08pm
"Prosecutors aren't going to jump through those hoops, when there are a plethora of other charges they can use, including felony charges, that don't require you to prove those elements."
On top of that, if you go for treason and you lose, then the extremists who encouraged and supported the invasion, along with the media and other apologists who have attempted to justify it would claim vindication.
I would not bring a treason charge in this environment unless I strongly believed I could win the case.
"They were there on a specific date named by Trump for something that was going to be happening that day which he and others grossly misinformed them about. They weren't there to "protest" the day before or the day after."
I don't think that is relevant. Lots of protests occur on the same day as the event that is being protested. I think some of your other points are good. Things like the level of security are worth looking into, especially if Trump had anything to do with reducing the number of personnel, but more is needed to prove a case
It just needs to be made clear that this was not about just the conduct of one man on one day. This was a campaign that started at least since he identified Biden as his most formidable likely opponent, which it is clear he knew about since the phone calls that triggered the first impeachment.
It's why he fired his first campaign manager for telling him the bad news that he was likely to lose to Biden.
John, if you watch most of the coverage of the hearings, they seem to focus on the notion that, "everyone knows what happened that day, so what are we likely to learn in these hearings that we didn't already know?"