Smith Indicts Trump For Doubting The Deep State

Wrongthink Is Now A Crime

In Jack Smith’s America, civil liberties do not exist. The Constitution does not exist. The Bill of Rights does not exist.

In Jack Smith’s America, there is the State. There is the State. All that matters is the State. Everything must be done in service to the State.

In Jack Smith’s America, Donald Trump is the most heinous criminal imaginable, for he has dared to question the State. The State said Trump lost the rigged fraudulent 2020 election, and Trump has dared to say otherwise. Therefore he is a criminal, and must be treated accordingly—thus Trump has now been indicted on four counts tangentially connected to the now-infamous “J6” riot at the nation’s Capitol.

According to the indictment handed up Tuesday by a federal grand jury, Trump faces four charges: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.

The indictment says of Trump that despite having lost, he "was determined to remain in power." So, for over two months after the election, Trump "spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won," the indictment states, and adds, "These claims were false, and the defendant knew they were false," but "repeated and widely disseminated them anyway,"

In other words, because Donald Trump believed the election had been stolen by the Democrats, he must be adjudged a criminal.

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s newest indictment of Donald Trump is actually more appalling than what CBS News described. Smith goes so far as to concede that Donald Trump has every right to say he won the election, regardless of whether that statement is true or false, and then indicted him for saying that anyway.

If Donald Trump has the right to claim, even falsely, that there had been fraud in the 2020 election and that he had actually won, how can the exerscise of that right be a crime under the Constitution?

Further, Jack Smith concedes that Donald Trump did in fact pursue challenges “through lawful and appropriate means.” In other words, Smith is admitting that Trump did not believe he had lost the election—yet he is charging Trump on the premise that Donald Trump did believe he had lost the election.

There is no doubt upon this point, for Smith specifically says Trump knew the claims of election fraud were false.

This is the crux of the legal matters presented in the indictment: Smith claims he knows Donald Trump’s state of mind in late 2020 and early 2021. Smith claims he can prove what Trump not only “knew” (as in he had been told as much) he had lost the election but that he believed what he had been told was true—despite having mounted numerous challenges to the integrity of the voting in several states.

Jack Smith has an additional problem with his theory of the case against Donald Trump: despite the assertions throughout the corporate media that there was no election fraud in 2020, there have been numerous reviews and audits which at a minimum raise serious questions about the integrity of the election in several states:

• The voting processes in Maricopa County, Arizona, had “serious vulnerabilities”, according to the Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich.

  A blockbuster review of Maricopa County’s mismanaged 2020 election by Arizona’s attorney general is raising new questions about the final vote in a state former President Donald Trump was expected to win but lost to Joe Biden by 10,457 ballots.

  “We have reached the conclusion that the 2020 election in Maricopa County revealed serious vulnerabilities that must be addressed and raises questions about the 2020 election in Arizona,” said an “interim report” issued today by Attorney General Mark Brnovich.

  The 12-page report, reviewed by Secrets, did not condemn the county’s handling of the election outright but raised enough questions about voter identification, ballot handling, and counting to prompt Brnovich to call for a vast tightening of the rules.

• In November, 2020, Dominion Voting Systems abruptly backed out of an election oversight hearing by the Pennsylvania Legislature’s State Government Committee.

  Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania are expressing frustration after an electronic voting company at the center of President Trump’s voter fraud allegations backed out of a scheduled hearing.

  “Last evening, Dominion Voting Systems lawyered up and backed out of their commitment to the people of Pennsylvania to provide input in a public format in which 1.3 [million] Pennsylvanian's entrusted,” Pennsylvania State Rep. Seth Grove said Friday after the news that Dominion Voting Systems representatives canceled a scheduled appearance before the State Government Committee.

• GOP poll observers alleged “ballot counting misconduct” in the 2020 election in Detroit, Michigan.

  A lawyer who worked Tuesday's election as a Republican poll challenger is alleging ballot counting misconduct in Detroit, based on an interaction she said she had with an election worker at TCF Center, the location in the city where absentee ballots were counted. 

• On June 17, 2021, at a protest rally at the Michigan Capitol, some 7,000 affadavits alleging fraud in the 2020 election were delivered to the state legislature.

  Hundreds of people concerned about the integrity of the Nov. 2020 election gathered outside the Michigan Capitol Thursday to protest and deliver roughly 7,000 affidavits claiming fraud and demanding a forensic audit.

  Michigan Conservation Coalition spokesperson Matt Seely said thousands of Michigan voters have questioned the integrity of the 2020 election.

  “If we do a deep-dive forensic audit similar to Arizona, it will do either one of two things. It will prove that all of the politicians who say there’s nothing to see there, that they were right. Or it will prove that there’s a big problem with the integrity of our elections and that we need to address it in a major way,” he told The Center Square in a phone interview.

• Although an election integrity report by the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee found “glaring issues” in the state’s election procedures.

  While the report cautions that there are "glaring issues that must be addressed" in state election law, it adds there is "no evidence presented at this time" to prove "significant acts of fraud" occurred to subvert the will of voters.

If Jack Smith’s theory of the case against Donald Trump relies on there being provably no fraud in the 2020 presidential election, the reality of the numerous election integrity reports which found significant deficiencies in multiple states arguably means Smith’s case has imploded before it even got close to trial. While the integrity reports have not been found to prove by any measure the existence of voter and election fraud in the 2020 election, reports of multiple problems in multiple states make it impossible to assert that such fraud has been disproven. That assertion, both in the Trump indictment and in the corporate media, is more hope than fact.

Smith has another problem: Proving that the actions taken by Trump and his associate constitute a willful fraud or deception perpetrated upon the United States or its citizens.

The core of the alleged fraud (actually, conspiracy, as Trump has not actually been charged with fraud, only conspiracy to commit fraud), is that in several states, alternate slates of Presidential electors were assembled, which met and cast presumptively Electoral College votes for Trump to be President.

This action, Smith asserts, was a fraud and therefore a crime.

Yet let us briefly consider the counterfactual: If Trump did in fact win in those disputed states, assembling a slate of electors and having them cast Electoral College votes would have been exactly what should happen. They would have been required to meet on the appointed date—which Smith says they did—and they would have been asked to certify their votes—which Smith says they did. Those Electoral College votes would have been transmitted to the Congress—which Smith says they were.

In other words, Trump and his associates performed all of the tasks and duties that would have been mandated by law.

Officially, Donald Trump did not win in the seven disputed states—but the key word here is “disputed”. Given the documented reality of election issues and integrity shortcomings in those states, the certification of those states’ elections cannot simply be taken as objective fact, and Trump had quite clearly not taken them as objective fact.

If the officials (usually the Secretary of State in each state) responsible for certification had opted to give credence to the allegations of fraud, they could not have lawfully certified the election results. Arguably, one of two things would have happened then: either those states would have submitted Electoral College votes for both Trump and Biden, or they would not have submitted Electoral College votes at all.

This is not without historical precedent: a very similar situation occurred during the election of 1876¹: The outcome was disputed in three states (Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina), with both candidates (Rutherford B. Hayes, the eventual winner, and Samuel Tilden), submitting electoral college votes from those states.

In that election, Congress set up a special Electoral Commission² to resolve the disputed Electoral College votes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Commission resolved the disputed votes entirely along party lines, and Hayes was declared the winner of the election by a margin of one Electoral College vote (185-184).

We should also note that there were allegations of election fraud and other irregularities in the disputed elections, particularly in Florida and Louisiana.

While we can debate the degree to which Trump’s claims of what Smith calls “outcome-determinative fraud” have merit, there is no debate that Trump did claim—and still claims—that outcome-determanitive fraud took place. With such claims in place, Trump’s actions largely mirror those of Rutherford B. Hayes and his campaign team in 1876 and 1877. Neither Hayes nor his campaign team were criminally charged with any sort of fraud or conspiracy (although Democrats for years afterward complained bitterly about the politics, referring to Hayes as “His Fraudulency” throughout his term of office)—so how are such actions fraudulent when performed by Donald Trump?

Should Mike Pence, as Vice President officiating over the counting of the Electoral College vote, have acknowledged the disputes and called for a special commission vis-a-vis 1876?

Should Congress have instead refused to accept the votes from the disputed states, thus denying both Trump and Biden the necessary Electoral College majority, and sending the election into the House of Representatives as mandated by the 12th Amendment?

The answers to these questions are, of course, political answers. Trump supporters would naturally answer them in the affirmative and Biden supporters would naturally answer them in the negative.

Regardless of what should have been done, what was done is that Trump’s disputes were rejected, rightly or wrongly, his alternate electors were rejected, rightly or wrongly, and the Electoral College vote went to Biden, rightly or wrongly. The Constitutional system functioned, regardless of whether it achieved the objectively correct result or not.

Which again leaves us with the question: How were Trump’s actions “fraudulent”?

We must bear in mind that the essence of fraud is deception. To defraud is to deceive³. How were any of Trump’s actions deceptive or deceitful?

The disputes were a matter of public record even then, having been amply reported by the media. The lengthy efforts made in Maricopa County and elsewhere to audit the votes alone establish that the declared outcomes of the disputes were not universally accepted—the disputes remained even after Biden was elected and remain to this day. No matter how one views the merits and demerits of those disputes, the relevant fact is that the disputes remain.

Moreover, Trump did not—nor does Smith claim—that Trump attempted to surreptitiously insert the Electoral College votes from his chosen slates of electors in lieu of those submitted by the several states themselves. In fact, Smith asserts the exact opposite: That Trump openly presented disputed votes and asked Mike Pence to have those votes used instead, or to have the votes sent back to the respective state legislatures for review.

Other than Smith describing these actions as “fraudulent”, what establishes any of these actions as deceptive? Which of these actions by Trump constitute trickery—an essential factual element for any claim of fraud?

Smith’s basis for fraud rests entirely upon whether or not Trump knew that there had been no outcome-determinative fraud during the election. However, the proof of what Trump did or did not know about the election proffered in the indictment is nothing more than a laundry list of government officials telling Trump that there was no outcome-determinative fraud during the election. That the disputes remain in the minds of a not-insignificant portion of the electorate means that more people besides Trump have chosen not to believe the statements of these officials. It hardly can be held to be unreasonable, therefore, for Trump himself to not believe these officials.

Again, consider the counterfactual: If Trump won the disputed states his actions were very much in line with what the Constitution allows. US history establishes precedent that Trump’s actions are at the very least not criminal.

Only if Trump believed that there had been no election fraud can any case for fraud or deception be made. Yet even if such belief can be proven, Smith within his own indictment of Trump concedes that Trump had and has every right to make his claims, irrespective of facts, evidence, and objective reality.

To accept Smith’s view of Trump’s actions as criminal one has to presume that declarations by the State are the definition of objective reality. To give credence to Smith’s indictment of Trump one has to presume that the State is the arbiter of what people may know, and what they do know. To accept Smith’s understanding of American civil liberties one has to presume that the State decides when, where, and how such liberties may be exercised.

There has never been a time in American history when the federal government was granted such omnipotence as to be competent to define reality. The power Jack Smith imputes to the federal government does not exist, and has never existed. Smith’s assertions to the contrary are themselves a Constitutional obscenity, deserving only of contempt, derision, and dismissal.

Jack Smith, to his eternal shame and damnation, has disregarded such inconvenient details. To his eternal shame and damnation, he has disregarded both the law and the Constitution.

Jack Smith, with his indictment of Trump, seeks to make “wrongthink” an actual crime. God help us all if he succeeds.

1. Levy, M. “United States Presidential Election of 1876: The Disputed Election.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Online Edition, 2011, https://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-presidential-election-of-1876/The-disputed-election.

2. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Electoral Commission.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Online Edition, 2023, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Electoral-Commission.

3. Wex Definitions Team, Legal Information Institute. Wex: Defraud. Oct. 2022, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defraud.