Former President Donald J. Trump told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Wednesday that he would not commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election, as he again repeated his lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
“If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results. I don’t change on that,” Mr. Trump said, according to The Journal Sentinel. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”
In an interview with Time magazine published on Tuesday, he also dismissed questions about political violence in November by suggesting that his victory was inevitable.
When pressed about what might happen should he lose, he said, “if we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election.”
Mr. Trump’s insistent and fraudulent claims that the 2020 election was unfair were at the heart of his efforts to overturn his loss to President Biden, and to the violent storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by a mob of supporters who believed his claims. Mr. Trump now faces dozens of felony charges in connection with those events.
Mr. Trump’s vow to “fight for the right of the country” also echoes his speech on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, where he told his supporters that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” before urging his supporters to march to the Capitol.
Category Archives: election subversion risk
“Trump Again Vows Mass Deportations and Won’t Rule Out Political Violence”
Former President Donald J. Trump told Time magazine in an interview published Tuesday morning that if elected in November, he would deploy the U.S. military to detain and deport migrants and permit states to decide whether to prosecute those who violate abortion bans, while hedging on the possibility of political violence after the 2024 election….
Mr. Trump also brushed aside questions about political violence in November by suggesting that his victory was inevitable. But when pressed about what might happen should he again lose the election, he did not dismiss the possibility outright and did not proactively say anything to deter supporters from again resorting to it.
“I think we’re going to win,” he said. “And if we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election.”
A Biden campaign spokesman, James Singer, argued that Mr. Trump’s stated plans were unconstitutional and anti-democratic. “Trump is willing to throw away the very idea of America to put himself in power,” Mr. Singer said in a statement.
Mr. Trump and his allies have already laid the groundwork to advance their ideological agenda, and many of their preparations have been reported by The New York Times and other outlets.
Still the Time interview, which includes transcripts, offered a rare chance to hear Mr. Trump describe his policy views in his own words….
Trump in TIME Interview: “I Think a Lot of People Like” Talk of Dictatorship
Toward the end of our conversation at Mar-a-Lago, I ask Trump to explain another troubling comment he made: that he wants to be dictator for a day. It came during a Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity, who gave Trump an opportunity to allay concerns that he would abuse power in office or seek retribution against political opponents. Trump said he would not be a dictator—“except for day one,” he added. “I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill.”
Trump says that the remark “was said in fun, in jest, sarcastically.” He compares it to an infamous moment from the 2016 campaign, when he encouraged the Russians to hack and leak Hillary Clinton’s emails. In Trump’s mind, the media sensationalized those remarks too. But the Russians weren’t joking: among many other efforts to influence the core exercise of American democracy that year, they hacked the Democratic National Committee’s servers and disseminated its emails through WikiLeaks.
Whether or not he was kidding about bringing a tyrannical end to our 248-year experiment in democracy, I ask him, Don’t you see why many Americans see such talk of dictatorship as contrary to our most cherished principles? Trump says no. Quite the opposite, he insists. “I think a lot of people like it.”
“Why an Immunity Ruling in Trump’s Favor Might Not Alter the Shape of His Trial”
Charlie Savage in the NYT:
If the Supreme Court rules that Donald J. Trump is immune from being charged with crimes over official actions he took as president, it would be a momentous decision for the future of executive power and American-style democracy.
But it is far from certain that such a ruling would derail the election subversion case against him. In fact, there is a scenario in which the court could render such a ruling without altering the charges or the array of evidence that the special counsel, Jack Smith, wants to present to a jury.
Mr. Trump faces four criminal counts over his efforts to overturn his loss of the 2020 election, but none are exclusively centered on conduct Mr. Trump undertook in his capacity as president. Rather, the indictment tells a story that mixes both official acts with private ones, meaning actions Mr. Trump took in his role as a candidate for office. It then declares that each charge arises from the entire picture.
Among the accusations: Mr. Trump spread false claims of voter fraud, plotted to recruit false slates of electors from swing states, pressured Vice President Mike Pence to use their existence to block Congress’s certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s Electoral College victory, and urged lawmakers to use the attack on the Capitol by his supporters to delay any vote.
As of yet, no court has decided which of Mr. Trump’s actions are considered official presidential conduct, versus private, unofficial campaign activity. But during oral arguments before the Supreme Court on Thursday, Justice Amy Coney Barrett floated the possibility that Mr. Smith could “just proceed based on the private conduct and drop the official conduct.”
Crucially, however, a lawyer for Mr. Smith, Michael R. Dreeben, said that even if the court ruled out basing charges on Mr. Trump’s official actions, prosecutors believed that they could still lawfully present evidence about the official conduct as relevant context that would help jurors understand Mr. Trump’s private acts.
“There’s really an integrated conspiracy here that had different components,” Mr. Dreeben said. Mr. Trump, he added, used his official powers to try to ensure his private efforts to overturn the election were more likely to succeed, and the jury will need to see the entire picture to understand the sequence, why each step occurred and the gravity of the conduct.
Mr. Dreeben added that the facts of Mr. Trump’s official acts are relevant for interpreting his “knowledge and intent” about his private conduct.
A lawyer for Mr. Trump, D. John Sauer, urged the court to adopt a very different remedy. Not only should it find that Mr. Trump had immunity for his official actions, he said, but it should omit them from the case. Still, he acknowledged that Mr. Trump could be charged over private actions while he was president.
“The official stuff has to be expunged completely from the indictment before the case can go forward,” Mr. Sauer maintained.
“Michigan AG executes search warrants on Google and X in ongoing 2020 fake electors probe”
Marshall Cohen for CNN:
Google and X, formerly Twitter, recently provided hundreds of files to Michigan prosecutors for their 2020 election subversion probe, complying with search warrants that investigators obtained after CNN revealed secret social media accounts belonging to pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, who played a major role in the fake electors plot.
The previously unreported warrants gave prosecutors access to new Chesebro emails and his private direct messages on Twitter. The warrants make clear that Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is still gathering new information in her probe, nine months after she charged the state’s fake electors with forgery and other crimes for signing certificates falsely claiming Donald Trump won the state in 2020.
A top member of her team testified last week that the investigation is ongoing and that Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator in the case, which is not expected to go to trial before the November election.
Michigan is among a number of states to investigate fake electors schemes. Just last week, Arizona prosecutors filed criminal charges against the pro-Trump electors there and allies of the former president who were involved in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
According to the new documents provided to Michigan prosecutors, which were obtained by CNN, Chesebro fruitlessly tried to bring several controversial pro-Trump figures to Washington, DC, to watch his “fake electors” strategy unfold on January 6, 2021.
He offered to pay for airfare and lodging at Trump’s upscale DC hotel for former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, as well as for the founder of the Gateway Pundit conspiracy website, among others. It doesn’t appear that anyone accepted his offers.
These messages also show how Chesebro aggressively reached out to conservative pundits and right-wing figures after Trump lost the 2020 election, prodding them to publicly promote his long-shot theories for how to subvert the Electoral College process….
Rick Hasen on CNN’s The Lead With Jake Tapper Discussing Fake Electors and Trump Immunity Claim (Video)
Rick Hasen’s Live Blog of the Supreme Court’s Oral Argument Over Trump’s Claim of Immunity in the Federal Election Subversion Case (Updates completed)
[This post has been updated.]
After a couple of hours of oral argument, it appears that the Supreme Court is unlikely to embrace either Donald Trump’s extreme position—that would seem to give immunity for a president who ordered an assassination of a rival or staged a coup—or the government’s position that a former president is not absolutely immune even for his or her official acts. Conservatives on the Court are going to make it hard to prosecute a former president for most crimes. But they are likely to reject some of the most extreme, insane, authoritarian arguments that were made by Trump’s lawyer.
The final opinion will likely come closer to the government’s position, but it will almost certainly result in a divided set of opinions (which take more time to draft) and a lot of work on remand to rework the results of the case. The bottom line is that Trump is likely to get what he wants—a further delay of this election subversion case, maybe pushing it to after the election. If that happens, the public won’t get the benefit of having a jury determine before the election if Trump tried to steal the 2020 election. Further, if Trump is elected in 2024, he can end this and the other federal prosecution against him. He also is likely to try to pardon himself. And the Supreme Court will be complicit in much of this.
From earlier:
I have called the federal case against Donald Trump for attempting to subvert the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election perhaps the most important case in U.S. history, at least when it comes to our democracy. That case should have gone to trial last month, but the case got put on hold when Donald Trump filed an interlocutory appeal (that is, an appeal in the middle of trial proceedings) arguing that he is absolutely immune from any criminal prosecution for any acts he undertook as President. Trump lost that argument in the trial court and in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, on a somewhat expedited basis, but not on the basis that Jack Smith, the special counsel, had asked for (he originally wanted the Court to leapfrog over the D.C. Circuit but the Court said no). Trump already may have effectively won by running out the clock so a trial could not happen before the election. This is the last argument day of the term, and I would not expect an opinion until the very end of the Supreme Court’s term in late June or early July, unless there’s movement to expedite following oral argument.
What I was listening for: how much is there a focus on Trump’s actions in trying to subvert the election? Is there a path to saying that at least such interference is not immune, leaving other immunity issues to another day? Is the Court going to be worried about a slippery slope of potential criminal prosecutions of former presidents after they leave office?
Below the fold you will find my notes that I took as argument went forward:
Continue reading Rick Hasen’s Live Blog of the Supreme Court’s Oral Argument Over Trump’s Claim of Immunity in the Federal Election Subversion Case (Updates completed)“Trump is a co-conspirator in Michigan’s 2020 false electors plot, state investigator says”
Michigan prosecutors consider former President Donald Trump and some of his top aides co-conspirators in the plot to submit a certificate falsely claiming he won Michigan’s 2020 election, an investigator for Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office testified Wednesday in court.
Howard Shock, a special agent for Nessel, said Trump; Mark Meadows, who was Trump’s chief of staff; and Rudy Giuliani, who was his personal lawyer, are “unindicted co-conspirators” in Michigan’s false elector case. That means prosecutors believe they participated, to some extent, in an alleged scheme to commit forgery by creating a false document asserting Trump had won Michigan’s 16 electoral votes when Democrat Joe Biden had won them.
Shock’s testimony came on the sixth day of preliminary examinations in Ingham County District Court as Nessel’s office pursues felony charges against a group of Republican activists who signed the certificate of votes claiming Trump won….
“Inside Donald Trump’s Embrace of the Jan. 6 Rioters; The former president initially disavowed the attack on the Capitol, but he is now making it a centerpiece of his general election campaign.”
“Jan. 6 Obstruction Case at Supreme Court Could Help Trump and Many Others”
Adam Liptak for the NYT.
The Supreme Court Can No Longer Sidestep Considering January 6 and the Attempts to Subvert the 2020 Election
The Supreme Court was miraculously able to sidestep any grappling with attempts to subvert the 2020 presidential election in Trump v. Anderson, the case over whether Donald Trump was barred from serving as President again for encouraging an insurrection. The Court did not need to reach the issue of whether Trump’s actions qualified because they decided on technical grounds that states did not have the power of disqualification through removal from the ballot.
But the Court cannot sidestep the issues any longer, as they are coming to the Court’s April sitting. In the Fisher case, being heard on April 16, the Court will confront the question whether January 6 rioters could be charged with obstructing an official proceeding under a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley act. The case turns on a technical issue of statutory interpretation—the meaning of the word “otherwise” in the statute—but in resolving the question it will be necessary to look at Fisher’s conduct as he invaded the Capitol, and how the Court discusses and characterizes the actions will be key.
Then, in the Trump immunity case being heard on April 25, the issues of Trump’s attempts to subvert the 2020 election will be front and center. Trump has been charged with a number of crimes related to his attempt to turn himself from an election loser into an election winner, and he’s arguing that he as a former president has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for any official acts as President, even those that would be illegal for every other person in the country. One of the arguments that special counsel Jack Smith is making in response is that especially crimes related to trying to overturn the results of an election and interfere with the peaceful transition of power cannot be subject to immunity—with immunity, the Supreme Court simply gives a sitting president the power to use violence, intimidation, trickery, and any other crime to turn himself from an election loser into an election winner. That would be the end of democracy.
The Court has managed to stay out of this mess for the last 3+ years. Its free ride is over.
Watch Archived Video of Safeguarding Democracy Project Webinar, “Race and the Risk of Election Subversion”
You can watch this important conversation with Sophia Lin Lakin (ACLU), Spencer Overton (George Washington University Law School), and Sonni Waknin (UCLA Voting Rights Project), moderated by me, at this link.
See also Spencer Overton’s comments on the panel.
A Number Four-Star Admirals and Other Retired Military Leaders File Supreme Court Amicus Brief Raising Risk to Rule of Law and Peaceful Transitions of Power If Trump’s Absolute Immunity Argument is Accepted
You can read the brief at this link.
Danforth, Luttig Amicus Brief in SCOTUS Trump Immunity Case Warns of Dangers to Democracy If President Has Immunity to Steal the Next Election
Presidential immunity, under any label, should never be so broad as to embolden an outgoing President’s violations of federal criminal statutes as part of efforts that would prevent what Article II mandates—the vesting of the authority and functions of the Presidency in the next, lawfully-elected President. This basis to affirm rests on a compelling legal principle: Any presidential immunity has to flow from protecting Article II and the Presidency it designs.
But there can be no Article II rationale for extending criminal immunity to a former President’s alleged federal crimes undertaken in efforts that would violate Article II’s provisions that limit a presidential term to four years and vest the executive power in the duly-elected successor.
One dispositive basis that fully sustains the judgment of the D.C. Circuit is that a President does not have immunity to engage in unofficial or official acts that constitute federal statutory crimes that would overturn presidential election results. J.A. 33, 40-44. A core allegation of the Indictment is that Mr. Trump knew that it was false to say there had been “outcome-determinative voting fraud in the [2020] election,” but nonetheless engaged in criminal lies and
conspiracies “to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election.”2 Under these allegations, former President Trump’s violations of federal criminal statutes, if successful, would have usurped the authority and functions of the Presidency for the current term to which President Biden was legitimately elected. That constitutes an alleged effort that, if successful, would have violated Article II, Section 1, Clause 1, also called the Executive Vesting Clause, and the Twentieth Amendment.