A sweeping pre-election conspiracy

Created
Thu, 20/07/2023 - 23:00
Updated
Thu, 20/07/2023 - 23:00
Efforts to target minority voters as early as June 2020 “Jack Smith is going to accuse Donald Trump of voting fraud,” Marcy Wheeler wrote Wednesday. The Department of Justice investigation into Donald Trump’s election-related crimes churns slowly. But it does churn. Trump has been named as a target of the investigation into election interference in 2020. Not by Russians as in 2016, but by Americans. Lots of them (Washington Post): Trump disclosed on Tuesday he had been named as a target in special counsel Jack Smith’s probe of election interference. Hours later, the attorney general of Michigan announced she had issued forgery charges against 16 Trump supporters who had posed as the state’s presidential electors. A county prosecutor in Georgia is preparing to present a sweeping case to a grand jury, with indictments possible within weeks. And the attorney general of Arizona in recent months has ramped up a probe into attempts to undermine the 2020 results in that state. The proliferation of charges and expected charges marks the most extensive effort yet to hold accountable those who attempted to help Trump remain in office after he lost the election. And because they come as the former president makes vindication a central pillar of his 2024 campaign, experts say they will mark an extraordinary test of the nation’s criminal justice system and political institutions. One aspect of the investigation that even Wheeler missed earlier, she admits, was mentioned in Trump’s target letter: 18 USC 241, Conspiracy against Rights. Penalties for conspiring deprive Americans of their Constitutional rights…