Trump "says" he got a letter from Jack Smith about being the target of the Jan 6 investigation, and he "says" he expects another indictment. He "says" he got the letter on a Sunday. He said this on his “Truth Social” network, which in point of fact is anything but truthful.
Since nearly everything Trump has ever said has been a lie before, during, and after his presidency, why would you believe him now? There was and is no US postal delivery on Sunday. It would either be a lie, or else a special courier delivery. Do not believe any of this until Jack Smith himself addresses it, or until the letter itself is produced in front of the public.
Myself, I do expect there to be an indictment of some kind related to the Jan 6 insurrection, and I do expect it to be felony level. I also expect to see a felony-level indictment issued from Georgia for election interference there. Those expected two indictments, plus the classified documents case and the NYC hush money business fraud case, make a total of all 4 of the originally-anticipated felony indictments against Trump. If he's in court defending himself against any of these, he will be too occupied to run for office, and he (and his lawyers) know that. Expect delay-delay-delay, on any grounds at all, no matter how flimsy.
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Update 7-28-2023: the classified documents indictment just got some charges added, and a third defendant added. Still no indictment yet for the Jan.6 thing. Or election interference in Georgia.
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The fact that his polls and his fundraising go up at each indictment verifies my contention that this man is the center of a personality cult-of-belief. I am talking about a cult-of-personality exactly like that of Adolf Hitler and his Nazis, exactly like David Koresh and his Branch Davidians, exactly like Lenin and his Bolsheviks, etc, etc, etc. Facts do not matter to cult believers. You cannot argue facts with them, facts are unimportant. Only belief matters, no matter how mistaken it might really be. We’ve recently already seen this with the Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS, and many more.
These cults are quite dangerous. Many of these cults ended in disaster, some not yet, and this one will, too. And polls indicate that at least 40% of Republican voters are such cult believers blindly supporting Trump, no matter how many egregious crimes he is accused of. That party has clearly been hijacked by an extremist cult. It is now a clear and present danger to our democracy, and has been, since before the 2020 general election.
According to testimony aired by the House Jan 6 committee, Trump wanted to go to the Capitol and lead the insurrection himself on Jan 6, but his secret service agents took him instead to the White House, making him very angry. His idea was to lead the insurrection into massive violence, justifying a presidential declaration of martial law. With enough support from high-ranking cultists in the military leadership, that martial law gets turned into a military dictatorship with Trump as the dictator, which is what the Trump personality cult really wants. That is a key part of their belief system, long posted on Qanon and other far-right sites. Go see for yourself. His advisor General Flynn even said so, in public.
In the picture below, note the partially-obscured Qanon flag lower left. This was taken at the rally on the Ellipse, right before the insurrection started, January 6, 2021.
And it is this intent to overturn his own government and become a military-supported dictator, that I really hope the Jack Smith investigation and indictment(s) are all about! As far as I am concerned, this insurrection plan leading to martial law and dictatorship, was treason. Even more so than the Confederates ever committed, by waging war on the US to secede. At least they never tried to actually topple the government, they just tried to get out from under it.
Update 1 Aug 2023: one shoe just dropped, the DOJ indictment for the Jan 6 thing. There was no sedition charge as best I can tell, but the counts were all very serious federal felonies. Trump has been summoned for arraignment Thursday (3 Aug). That leaves the Georgia thing yet to come.
Update 3 August 2023: Mr. Trump has been arraigned today on the DOJ Jan 6 charges. I downloaded and read the indictment. It is very detailed, and includes lots of supporting evidence. The sooner this goes to trial, the happier I will be, and the better off we all will be.
Update 16 August 2023: The "fourth shoe finally dropped", and a few days earlier than "everybody" expected. Fulton County Georgia just issued an 41-count felony indictment late last night, against 19 defendants. 13 of those counts are against Donald Trump, and a couple of those have a mandatory sentence of 5 to 20 years if convicted.
That makes 4 felony indictments against Trump, with trials looming. Two are federal cases, two are state cases (New York and now Georgia). He could be a convicted felon by the time of the 2024 election, perhaps multiply-convicted.
Second on the list of defendants in the Georgia indictment is Rudy Giuliani. Included among them are Trump's Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, several lawyers who helped engineer the multiple attempts to stay in power, and Jeffrey Clarke, a rabid supporter that Trump wanted to put in as Attorney General, stopped only by the mass resignation threat from DOJ. All 19 defendants have 10 days, until 25 August, to surrender to Fulton County authorities for arraignment.
The Republican Party has no business running a 4-time indicted felon for President, and anybody with any critical thinking skills knows that! It may be legal, but it is not right! Yet, they have been doing exactly that in Texas for multiple years now, with indicted felon Ken Paxton re-elected as the state AG. (He is out of office now, under impeachment, and his trials loom in the courts and the Texas Senate.)
That is what you get after 40-some years (standardized testing began in 1979) of dumbing-down public school education, with school funding tied to a low-bar standardized test: no critical thinking skills, leading to the widespread belief in lies and conspiracy theories, instead of actual facts. And "right-wing media" (of multiple kinds) amplified the spread of this crap with their lies and echo-chambers.
Update 25 August 2023: Yesterday, Trump was processed and posted bond for the Georgia indictment. Unlike the other 3, they did fingerprints and a mug shot. They processed him at the jail, not the courthouse. One of his co-defendants failed to come up with a bond agreement before surrendering, and ended up staying in jail. The mug shot was probably the first time he could not control the circumstances of any publicity about him. His expression certainly reflects that.
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