In 2020, following a years-long effort to sabotage and subvert Donald Trump's presidency using a fraudulent Russiagate conspiracy and frivolous impeachment effort, America's ruling class conspired to rig the election against him.
It used COVID-19 to impose a uniquely lax, arguably unconstitutional, mass mail-in election system that it exploited to maximum effect, and censored political opponents—Trump included—on matters ranging from the integrity of that election to damaging stories about Joe Biden.
When, on January 6, 2021, a protest over the election boiled over into the Capitol Riot, the ruling class responded by casting millions of election skeptics as potential domestic terrorists. It proceeded to target them and other dissenters from ruling class orthodoxy in a Biden-led War on Wrongthink, accelerating with the legal persecution of candidate Trump.
The latest lawfare missile lobbed at the Republican presidential frontrunner by his successor and chief opponent, via Special Counsel Jack Smith's latest indictment, should be seen as an escalatory strike on the American people in the ongoing war on our most sacred rights.
Having previously colluded with social media companies to censor disfavored opinions about the 2020 election, our ruling class, led by the Justice Department, now wants to criminalize such Wrongthink and deter those who would defend the Wrongthinkers.
Special Counsel Smith does so by reading President Trump's mind, claiming that despite what he has always maintained, Trump didn't really believe the election was stolen from him; that his election challenges were therefore fraudulent; and that thus he must be charged under whatever statutes can be twisted to fit the thought crimes.
This is how Trump faces one count for conspiracy to violate "the right to vote and to have one's vote counted" under a statute targeting law enforcement misconduct and hate crime prosecutions originally aimed at combating the KKK.
This is how Trump faces another count for an "obstruction of an official proceeding" offense never applied before to prosecute political protesters until the Biden Justice Department shoehorned the law to target other January 6 defendants.
And this is how Trump faces the key charge in the "case:" that in exhausting every possible means to contest the results of an unprecedented election that Smith believes Trump believed he lost—pressing states to pursue alleged fraud and decertify election results, preparing alternate slates of electors, and pursuing sometimes untested but by no means baseless constitutional remedies—the former president committed a "conspiracy to defraud the United States."
That is, the case rests on the premise that Trump knew he lost, so everything he did to try and win was criminal.
Never mind that prosecutors never charged Democrats for their past baseless claims of fraud or illegitimacy in the 2000, 2004, or 2016 elections, and objections to the certification of electors; nor in 2016 for scheming to get electors to go rogue; nor in 1960 for creating an alternate slate of electors.
Never mind that prosecutors have never pursued conspiracies to "defraud the United States" even in notable cases that might scream for it, most notably concerning those who perpetuated the known fraud that was Russiagate on the country.
Special Counsel Smith, incidentally, links Trump's efforts to January 6 without charging him with incitement of an insurrection while omitting the mass of exculpatory evidence that would challenge such a charge.
Smith pads his indictment with instances of assorted officials and Trump haters telling the president he was wrong, as if that constitutes evidence he knew the truth and was lying.
And, as has become remarkably routine, Smith also just happened to drop this indictment within days of the latest revelations of conduct pointing towards a Biden impeachment inquiry.
All of this does little to dispel the blatantly political nature of the indictment, and the special counsel itself.
The politics is the point. So too is the brazenness.
The Biden Justice Department is not only interfering in the 2024 presidential election based on what happened in 2020, but threatening all political actors who might challenge the ruling class going forward.
By bringing this case, Special Counsel Smith has cast a deep chill over candidates and activists who would dare exercise their rights under the First Amendment he pays lip service to, then summarily ignores in the indictment, to "petition the Government for a redress of grievances" in close campaigns.
And he has cast a deep chill over lawyers who would ever represent such individuals.
The Justice Department's targeting of the First Amendment rights of its political opponents has been a Biden administration hallmark.
The department's willingness to target lawyers augments the efforts of the anti-Trump "65 Project," which has aimed to ruin the careers and wreck the lives of those who defended the former president in election challenges in 2020.
The purpose is to dry up the pool of Republican election litigators in 2024 and dissuade others from defending Republicans in the future. The obvious beneficiary of course is the Democrats.
The damage the Biden Justice Department has done to our system in bringing forth this indictment is already immense.
If the case proceeds at the D.C. District Court, it will likely get worse.
United States v. Donald Trump would come before perhaps the most hostile judge and jury that the former president could face.
Presiding Judge Tanya Chutkan, a Barack Obama appointee, has ruled against Trump previously in litigation with the January 6 Committee. She has called the Capitol Riot an effort to "violently overthrow the government," and has frequently handed down more severe sentences than even those recommended by the Biden Justice Department in January 6 cases—including throwing defendants behind bars for petty offenses for which prosecutors were not even seeking jail time.
"Every day we're hearing about reports of anti-democratic factions of people plotting violence, the potential threat of violence, in 2024," Chutkan said.
You can imagine how she would treat President Trump.
Washington D.C.'s nearly unanimously Democrat jury pool would be no more hospitable.
Thus, despite its myriad deficiencies on the merits, this case could end up at the Supreme Court.
This in part explains why there has been a concerted—one could say fraudulent—campaign to delegitimize that institution, undermine it with leaks, and threaten Justices with mobs outside their homes.
Democrats must break down the only institution that stands in the way of total political power.
Expect the pressure campaign against the Court to ramp up if any case that holds the prospect of locking up Donald Trump comes before it.
It is not clear that what remains of our republican system can long hold under these circumstances.
Ironically, we find ourselves in this perilous position in no small part because of the fraudulence of a law enforcement apparatus that claims to be defending democracy while interfering in our elections and claims to be pursuing justice while eviscerating our fundamental First Amendment rights.
Ben Weingarten is editor at large for RealClearInvestigations. He also contributes to The Federalist, the New York Post, The Epoch Times, and other publications. Subscribe to his newsletter at weingarten.substack.com, and follow him on Twitter: @bhweingarten.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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