This shouldn’t be a hard case to decide, which means in bizzaro world U.S.A., it will be decided wrongly. From Jonathan Turley at jonathanturley.org:
Below is my column in The Hill on how the second indictment of Donald Trump could fail even if Special Counsel Jack Smith could prove that the former president knew that he was lying after the election. Proving his state of mind will be controversial, but, even if successful, it would not necessarily be determinative in the constitutional challenges to come.
Here is the column:
The latest federal indictment of former President Donald Trump was handed down this week with all of the authority of papal infallibility. Pundits lined up to proclaim that case as the greatest prosecution in history.
Former Obama administration acting Solicitor General Neil Katyal even declared that the indictment touched off “the biggest legal case in our lifetimes, perhaps almost ever. It’s up there with cases like Dred Scott, it is up there with Brown v. Board of Education.” What was missing was any serious consideration of the implications of allowing the government to criminalize false statements in a campaign.
Trump was not charged with conspiracy to incite violence or insurrection. Rather, he was charged because he “spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won.”
