About This Weekend...

Programming Note: My plan for the next few days is to unplug and celebrate my birthday by demanding my family bring me sweet treats and other tributes while I knit and watch cheesy movies on the living room couch. So, expect lighter posting continued through the weekend, while I engage in a little bout of self-indulgence. Also, lots of time with our menagerie.

Of course, all bets are off if anything major happens.

Barring that, I’ll be back Sunday night with The Week Ahead. I’m doing some research that will help us put a little flesh on the bones of the charges Jack Smith is reported to be considering bringing against Trump. Since the news about the contents of the target letter almost certainly comes from the Trump camp, take it with a grain of salt. But, all three of the crimes being bandied about—conspiracy, deprivation of civil rights, and obstructing an official proceeding—are good fits for what we know about the facts. We’ll start studying the statutes soon.

The civil rights charge has garnered the most attention since this news broke. It was unexpected in some quarters and wasn’t included in the recommendations the January 6 Committee made to DOJ, but it seemed like an obvious pick early on (Tweet below). It’s a strong fit, with good support in the case law—prosecutors don’t want to try anything new and risky in a case like this; they want tried and true theories of law that appellate courts have affirmed in the past. We’ll take a look at that.

We can’t yet know how broad of a charge prosecutors might bring under this statute. It would be particularly satisfying if it included charges regarding the mistreatment of Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, the two Georgia poll workers who Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump spread vicious rumors about, claiming that they committed election fraud. Freeman and Moss’s testimony was among the high points of the January 6 Committee hearings. The two were working in the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia, when Ruby passed a ginger mint to her daughter Shay. Giuliani and Trump cooked up a malicious story that she was passing a USB drive that was somehow meant to fraudulently alter the vote tally. Giuliani and Trump also made up false claims about suitcases full of ballots.

There are a lot of different ways that a 241 count could be charged. It would be justice indeed to see an election-fraud-based charge against Donald Trump, who viciously spread baseless rumors about Freeman and Moss, disrupting their lives and exposing them to threats and the risk of violence. It took years for the Georgia State Election Board to dismiss the charges against them. It wasn’t until June of 2022 that they concluded the fraud claims were “unsubstantiated and found to have no merit.”

Of course we’ll have to wait until the indictment is made public to learn about the choices Jack Smith makes, but this one would get my vote for a most deserving inclusion. I hope you’ll consider sharing Civil Discourse with friends you think will appreciate our fact-based approach to legal analysis. Being well informed on these issues will be critical in the months ahead.

We’re in this together,

Joyce