{"id":223943,"date":"2023-08-07T09:18:32","date_gmt":"2023-08-07T14:18:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/?p=223943"},"modified":"2023-08-08T08:32:07","modified_gmt":"2023-08-08T13:32:07","slug":"conspiracy-to-defraud-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/blog\/conspiracy-to-defraud-america\/","title":{"rendered":"A Conspiracy to Defraud America"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How fitting that the first of four charges included in the January 6 indictment against Donald Trump be \u201cConspiracy to Defraud the United States Government.\u201d The man has been defrauding the entire world for most of his life\u2014business associates, contractors, lawyers, you name it.\u00a0 He\u2019s the ultimate con-artist and grifter<\/a>; his entire presidency and political career has been one big grift.\u00a0 Indeed, the indictment repeatedly mentions \u201cThe Defendant\u2019s Use of Dishonesty, Fraud, and Deceit,\u201d as if words like that described anything more than a normal day in the life of Donald Trump.\u00a0 And when Mike Pence told the president he had no constitutional authority to reject or return votes to the states at the January 6 certification proceeding, Trump said, \u201cYou\u2019re too honest.\u201d Well, come on, Donald, everyone is honest compared to the likes of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jack Smith\u2019s indictment is an extremely well-crafted document that portrays Trump\u2019s actions, as well as those of his six Co-Conspirators, as on par with perpetrators of a bad script conference.  Trump\u2019s motley band of attorneys\u2014Rudy Giuliani (once \u201cAmerica\u2019s mayor\u201d reduced to marketing cheap hair dye), John Eastman (in no way a leading Constitutional scholar, by the way), and Sidney Powell (voting machines courtesy of Hugo Chavez)\u2014have been called the \u201cclown car,\u201d and this indictment proves the description is deserved.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s hard to keep track of all the ridiculous failed \u201cplans\u201d this group hatched during those two months between the election and January 6.\u00a0 Quotes like \u201cHere\u2019s the thing, the way this has morphed it\u2019s a crazy play so I don\u2019t know who wants to put their name on it,\u201d pretty much say it all.\u00a0 Riding along in the clown car bound for disaster we also have the ever-charming Jeffrey Clark, Trump\u2019s (briefly) Acting Attorney General, who suggested using the Insurrection Act to call up the military and squelch potential riots should Trump succeed in overturning the election. This all despite Trump\u2019s Deputy White House Counsel having told the president in December that \u201cthere is no world, there is no option in which you don\u2019t leave the White House on January 20th<\/sup>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When All Else Failed, Trump\u2019s \u201cDishonesty, Fraud, and Deceit\u201d Ended in \u201cOperation PENCE CARD\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n

Although I understand why this indictment didn\u2019t include charging Trump with sedition, I\u2019m grateful and relieved the fourth count is \u201cConspiracy Against Rights\u201d: \u201cThe defendant also pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting election results,\u201d including \u201ca conspiracy against the right to vote and have one\u2019s vote counted.\u201d<\/strong> Nothing has irked this humble spirit more than the MAGA presumption that the rights of Biden voters didn\u2019t matter.  We know Trump is a demented, power-hungry narcissist, but didn\u2019t those people who attacked the Capitol, as well as those who subsequently supported their actions, realize that attempting to disenfranchise over 81 million of their fellow citizens was, at the very least, awfully rude, and likely to spark a good deal of anger in response?  As Count Four of the Indictment states, \u201cTrump and his Co-Conspirators attempted to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States\u2014that is, the right to vote and have one\u2019s vote counted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Based on what\u2019s contained in the indictment, I\u2019ll go out on a limb and say that members of the clown car and Clark are as good as toast.  As for Trump himself, his behavior is once again beyond the pale\u2014unbelievable, indefensible, just get out your thesaurus and have at it.  Yale history professor Timothy Snyder put it this way: \u201cThat Trump will be tried for his coup attempt is not a violation of his rights. It is a fulfillment of his rights. It is the grace of the American republic. In other systems, when your coup attempt fails, what follows is not a trial.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How fitting that the first of four charges included in the January 6 indictment against Donald Trump be \u201cConspiracy to Defraud the United States Government.\u201d The man has been defrauding the entire world for most of his life\u2014business associates, contractors, lawyers, you name it.\u00a0 He\u2019s the ultimate con-artist and grifter; his entire presidency and political […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":223947,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-posts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223943"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224084,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223943\/revisions\/224084"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}