The indictment focuses heavily on efforts to pressure election officials in Georgia, where Trump could be hit with a fourth indictment as soon as Sept. 1 for election fraud claims in a separate investigation.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, the trial judge overseeing Trump’s case in Washington, is an Obama-appointee who has been one the toughest in terms of sentencing against Jan. 6 rioters.
Barbara McQuade, a criminal law expert at the University of Michigan, told USA TODAY that even if Trump were charged, convicted and sentenced to prison, he would still be able to run for president.
The three exclusive requirements to run for president are to be a natural-born citizen, to be at least 35 years old and to have been a resident of the U.S. for at least 14 years, according to the U.S. Constitution.
Trump told reporters in March that he “won’t even think about leaving” the 2024 race despite his legal troubles.
− Sudiksha Kochi
Donald Trump wants to move the trial – to West Virginia
Hours before his arraignment, Trump says he wants his Jan. 6 trial moved out of Democratic-dominated Washington, D.C., to more Republican-friendly territory, perhaps West Virginia.
“IMPOSSIBLE to get a fair trial in Washington, D.C., which is over 95% anti-Trump,” Trump said on his Truth Social account after suggesting West Virginia as an alternative.
It feels like a legal longshot, but venue will likely be one of many topics to be discussed in pre-trial motions and hearings.
In his post, Trump also said he he has “called for a Federal TAKEOVER in order to bring our Capital back to Greatness,” but didn’t explain what he meant.
Perhaps it was a reference to his 2024 presidential campaign.
-David Jackson
Trump arraignment time
The former president is expected in court at 4 p.m. Thursday.
In anticipation of his arrival, television production trucks and cameras continued to line the street Thursday morning outside the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse.Security increased overnight outside the courthouse and fences appeared around the perimeter of the building, as former President Donald Trump is expected to make his first appearance in the case related to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 president election results.Journalists are currently being let into the courthouse as they attempt to gain access to a seat in the courtroom or into the overflow room for members of the media.— Miles J. Herszenhorn
Trump has no post-arraignment speech scheduled – yet
One thing that’s different, so far, about this third arraignment: Trump has no post-plea event scheduled, at least not yet.
After previous arraignments in different cases in April and June, Trump hosted rallies at his homes. The first was at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., the second at his summer home on the golf course at Bedminster, N.J.
After his June arraignment in Miami, Trump also made an unscheduled stop at a local Cuban restaurant to soak up support from some of his voters.
As of now, the schedule calls for Trump to simply return to Bedminster after his court appearance in Washington, D.C. – though it seems likely that he will get his message out in some form or fashion.-David Jackson
Donald Trump issued one of his periodic official statements, expressing his regret about the course of Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine. He did not use the name Putin.
Nor, for that matter, did he use the word attack. Instead, Trump framed the invasion as a problem the two countries have tragically failed to work out together.
This remarkable construction deserves closer analysis, but first it’s worth understanding the context. Trump infamously described Putin as a “genius” for massing troops on Ukraine’s border. He has repeatedly declined efforts by allies such as Sean Hannity to coax him into condemning the invasion.
His official statements have followed a handful of familiar themes. Russia’s invasion is Joe Biden’s fault (“Putin is playing Biden like a drum!”). Trump strengthened NATO (“I hope everyone is able to remember that it was me, as President of the United States, that got delinquent NATO members to start paying their dues, which amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars”).
But the most peculiar aspect is Trump’s habit of using the passive voice. That is not a construction he employs frequently, but in this case, it serves his purpose of presenting Russia’s invasion as if it were a natural disaster — a tragedy that occurred naturally with no author or source of blame. He has used this device repeatedly.
February 22: “If properly handled, there was absolutely no reason that the situation currently happening in Ukraine should have happened at all.”
February 24: “If I were in Office, this deadly Ukraine situation would never have happened!”
March 1: “The RINOs, Warmongers, and Fake News continue to blatantly lie and misrepresent my remarks on Putin because they know this terrible war being waged against Ukraine would have never happened under my watch … There should be no war waging now in Ukraine, and it is terrible for humanity that Biden, NATO, and the West have failed so terribly in allowing it to start.”
March 15: “Now with what’s going on with Russia and Ukraine, among many other things, the great and wonderful people of Hungary need the continued strong leadership of Prime Minister Viktor Orban more than ever.” (Note that, among the NATO countries, Orbán has taken a uniquely pro-Russia stance. So Trump’s argument that “what’s going on with Russia and Ukraine” makes his election more important directly implies that Orbán’s refusal to support NATO’s response to the invasion makes him more valuable.)
Only once did Trump use an active-voice construction to identify Russia as the aggressor (“If the Election wasn’t Rigged … Russia would not have attacked Ukraine”). On every other occasion, he has relied on verbal contortions to mask its author.
Other Republican leaders have used direct language to describe the invasion. Mitch McConnell (“Putin’s initial aggression was just a small foretaste of what this thug had planned for Ukraine. Now we are watching his full brutality unfold”) and Kevin McCarthy (“Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is reckless and evil. The United States stands with the people of Ukraine and prays for their safety and resolve. Putin’s actions must be met with serious consequence”) have not felt the need to dance around Putin’s culpability.
Trump’s latest statement goes beyond this familiar passive voice and wonders openly why both countries have failed to settle their differences. “It doesn’t make sense that Russia and Ukraine aren’t sitting down and working out some kind of an agreement,” he muses, which would be true if you were starting from the premise that neither country intended to destroy the other. If you begin with the premise that Russia set out to subjugate its neighbor and Ukraine merely wishes to coexist peacefully, then the lack of diplomatic progress makes perfect sense.
Not long ago, Donald Trump tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” In a followup tweet he specifically referenced the “Second Amendment.” His deranged supporters apparently heard him loud and clear, because on Thursday they grabbed their assault rifles and stormed the Michigan state capitol building, under the guise of “protest.”
These people are domestic terrorists. The only reason they’re even still alive is that they’re white; otherwise law enforcement would have given them one warning and then shot them. Donald Trump is directly responsible for this domestic terrorist incident in Michigan. We’re all lucky that no one died in the incident. But in a month where Trump has already negligently gotten fifty-something thousand Americans murdered, that’s a small mercy.
For some reason, perhaps only because there was no body count, this Michigan domestic terrorist incident isn’t being clearly linked to Donald Trump’s tweet. As of yet there’s no mainstream media narrative demanding that he answer for the incident. Like the coward that he is, he won’t address it unless he’s forced to.
Donald Trump knows that his already-fading chances of winning in November will fall to zero if he can’t find some way to corruptly tilt things in his favor. He’s already gone as far as trying (and failing) to blackmail Ukraine into rigging the election for him, which tells you how desperate he is. Now he’s found another angle.
The unpredictability of the worsening coronavirus crisis means that it may not be safe to vote in-person in November. So naturally, Donald Trump and the GOP are trying to leave people with no choice but to vote in-person. Lower turnout generally gives an advantage to the worse candidate, and what better way to reduce turnout than to force people to risk dying of a horrible virus just to vote?
For this reason, the Democrats are trying to make sure the next coronavirus financial relief package includes a provision for nationwide mail-in voting. Considering Trump is already asking for another relief package, and he still hasn’t gotten around to distributing the funds from the first package, he has little leverage here. If he wants another relief bill, he’ll have to swallow mail-in voting. The thing is, if this happens, he’ll lose.
t’s why Trump has suddenly decided that he’s fanatically opposed to the idea of mail-in voting. Nevermind that some states already do this, and it makes things easier for everyone involved, with no voter fraud whatsoever. Facts don’t matter to Trump. Nor does it apparently matter to Trump that he’s voting by mail. Once the media exposed this, he went berserk about it:
Absentee Ballots are a great way to vote for the many senior citizens, military, and others who can’t get to the polls on Election Day. These ballots are very different from 100% Mail-In Voting, which is “RIPE for FRAUD,” and shouldn’t be allowed!
What stands out here is that there is no functional difference between absentee voting and mail-in voting. They’re the same thing. Donald Trump is trying to argue that one thing is two different things. Even if he wanted to argue that absentee voting should only be for people who can’t travel home to vote, he could easily hop on Air Force One and vote in his home state, so his argument goes out the window – unless he wants to argue that it’s unsafe for him to travel during the coronavirus crisis, in which case his argument also goes out the window.
