CROSSING LINES, Time for Trump to face justice has come

Some on the political left have called for President Trump to face criminal charges since early in his Presidency. Since the general election on November 3rd the voices calling for criminal prosecution have grown from a trickle to a torrent. However, I have consistently warned about the dangers of such action. There are the political ramifications over a current President going after their predecessor. The trial will almost certainly be a 3 ring media circus that will distract from President Biden’s agenda and the multitudes of challenges the country faces. There’s a real chance he’ll be acquitted which will lend credence to his claim of being an innocent victim of a witch hunt.

It’s not that I think he’s innocent, clearly Trump has committed crimes. I’ve called for his impeachment since he fired the FBI director James Comey in an attempt to kill the investigation into his actions months after taking office. However, the risk of Federal criminal prosecution was just too high. That is especially true given he’s likely to face NY state charges, the results of the IRS audits and the likelihood of multiple lawsuits. However, the revelation of the phone call he made to the Georgia Secretary of State has forced me to change my mind on this. This phone call was so blatantly illegal it was reminiscent of his famous statement that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. This attempted election interference is just a step too far to simply be satisfied by him leaving office. This act strikes at the core of our democracy.

I’ve read the transcript of the now infamous hour-long phone call President Trump made to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia Secretary of State. The call is both worse and even more pathetic than many media outlets portrayed. In the following paragraphs I breakdown all the unethical and criminal acts perpetrated in this phone call.

The thing you have to realize about this call is it wasn’t simply the Trump campaign raising some concerns about the election process. It was the President of the United States making an official phone call to another government official with his Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and legal counsel on the line with him. None of the top officials from his campaign were on the call. He’s acting in his official capacity as President in making this call, not simply as a candidate.

In this call Trump is surprisingly specific about the fraud he’s alleging despite the lack of evidence. If you’ve ever attempted to read the transcripts of a Trump conversation you know how scatterbrained and incoherent he can be. Throughout the call he’s running down every conspiracy theory they could find on social media, often with non sequitur statements thrown in at random intervals. Here’s my attempt to cobble together a list of the allegations of fraud he made in the phone call:

1. “Anywhere from 250 to 300,000 ballots were dropped mysteriously into the rolls.” It’s not clear what exactly he means by this, but it appears to be in addition to his other claims of fraud since he also claimed he won the election in Georgia by half a million votes.
2. “in Fulton County you’ll find at least a couple of hundred thousand of forged signatures.”
3. Between 50 and 60,000 “people that went to vote and they were told they can’t vote because they’ve already [voted]”
4. “I believe it’s about 4,502 voters who voted but who weren’t on the voter registration list.”
5. “You had 18,325 vacant address voters . . . they’re not allowed to be counted.”
6. “you had 904 who only . . . had a post office box number, and that’s not allowed.”
7. “18,000 voters having to do with . . . a vote scammer, a professional vote scammer and hustler.” The woman Trump is referring to here is just a normal poll worker who has been subject to harassment because of people like Trump who are spreading unfounded conspiracy theories about her.
8. This one is so incoherent that I’m just going to put in an extended quote and you can make of it what you will. “Early in the morning, they went to the table with the black robe and the black shield, and they pulled out the votes. Those votes were put there a number of hours before the table was put there . . . it was probably eight hours or seven hours before, and then it was stuffed with votes. They weren’t in an official voter box; they were in what looked to be suitcases or trunks, suitcases, but they weren’t in voter boxes. The minimum number it could be because we watched it, and they watched it certified in slow motion instant replay if you can believe it, but slow motion, and it was magnified many times over, and the minimum it was 18,000 ballots, all for Biden.”
9. “You had out-of-state voters. They voted in Georgia, but they were from out of state, of 4,925.” This was corrected by one of the Georgia officials on the call who investigated this claim. These were people who had moved out of the state, but later moved back into the state. Trump refused to believe this.
10. “Absentee ballots sent to vacant addresses. They had nothing on them about addresses, that’s 2,326.”
11. “You have dropboxes where the box was picked up but not delivered for three days.”
12. “So dead people voted, and I think the number is close to 5,000 people.” A Georgia official stated they investigated that claim and only found two deceased voters. Both Trump and Mark Meadows rejected that answer.
13. “this just came up this morning, that they are burning their ballots.”
14. “They supposedly shredded . . . 3,000 pounds of ballots.” Later he dropped the “supposedly” and stated emphatically multiple times that they are shredding ballots. A Georgia official explained that the only shredding of ballots that has occurred were old ballots from previous elections that were being destroyed in accordance with the law. Trump refused to believe that, claiming they were unsigned ballots from this election but offered no evidence of this.
15. “For some reason, they put it in three times, each ballot, and I don’t know why. I don’t know why three times. Why not five times, right?” Apparently, Trump is claiming they were counting Biden votes multiple times. Raffensperger jumped in to say, “they sliced and diced that video and took it out of context.” He went on to say they had already explained that those votes were not being counted multiple times. Trump continued to reference this as voter fraud despite this.
16. He made an incoherent allegation that someone faked a water main break to clear the area so they could tamper with the ballots.
17. “They’re changing the equipment on the Dominion machines and, you know, that’s not legal.” Georgia officials clarified that no one removed any machines, and that Dominion has not changed out any parts of any machines. Trump refused to accept that explanation.
18. “And what about that batch of military ballots that came in. And even though I won the military by a lot, it was 100 percent Trump. I mean 100 percent Biden.” The Georgia official said that he didn’t know about that specific incident, but that the overseas ballots include all Americans living overseas and the non-military overseas ballots tend to go heavily for the Democrats. Trump is assuming he won the military vote. A Military Times poll be for the election showed he was trailing with military voters.

This is a bizarre list of allegations. The Georgia election has been one of the most scrutinized elections in history. They conducted a hand recount which was followed by an additional recount. This is a Republican controlled state that has every motivation to count every Trump vote. Many of these allegations are so vague they’re impossible to definitively answer. Some of Trump’s allegations don’t actually show any fraud, and investigators looked into other allegations and found them to be untrue. Click this link to read a Slate article explaining the origin of many of these voter fraud conspiracies. To support Trump’s position, you have to accept that there are at least a dozen distinct types of fraud going on in this election that went completely undetected from the Republican officials charged with conducting this election and through the two recounts.

It’s clear from this call that Trump has no interest in getting to the truth, he only wants 11,780 votes. Trump repeatedly throws around big numbers of hundreds of thousands of votes and that he won the election by half a million votes. But then he tries to make his request sound reasonable because he’s only asking him to find 11,780 votes. If he was serious about all these claims, he should be demanding all his rightful votes, but of course he knows his claims are hollow. When the Georgia officials tell Trump’s team that they investigated an allegation and either it didn’t happen or has a legitimate explanation, it’s clear Trump doesn’t want to hear that. Trump is only interested in hearing yes Sir, we’ll find your votes.

The thing that really jumped out at me when reading this is that he’s not used to being told no. He has surrounded himself with people that will agree with any crazy thing he says. Anyone who was willing to say “sorry Mr. President, you can’t do that” has been purged from his administration. He’s used to being able to say, “I won Georgia” and have his advisors all go, yes, of course you won, it’s impossible that Biden won. From then on in Trump’s mind that serves as proof that he was right. In fact, Trump repeatedly uses the fact that other people said he won as evidence that it must be true.

“A lot of the political people said there was no way they beat me.”

“Politicians are giving affidavits . . . that there is no way they beat me in the election.”

“The governors of major states and the surrounding states said, there is no way you lost Georgia.”

The only thing this is evidence of is that people have learned to tell Trump what he wants to hear.

In many ways the conversation is a fascinating case study in psychological manipulation. Trump has spent the last 40+ years getting banks, county planning boards, and investors to do what he wants them to do. He’s a natural at it and he’s throwing everything in the book at Brad Raffensperger. The most persistent technique Trump uses in this call is to continually repeat the lie until it starts to sound like the truth. He states 28 times that he won the election. Again, he’s not asking the Sec. of State to get to the truth, he’s stating as a matter of fact that he won. Also interesting is that 20 of the 28 times he makes this claim he uses the phrase “we won.” It’s not about me, it was our victory Brad, you and me. This is a pretty obvious attempt to get Raffensperger on his side.

He also attempts to bully Raffensperger at many points in the call. He repeatedly refuses to accept his explanations and tells him the call will end with “ultimately, I win, okay?” When bullying didn’t work, he tried shaming. At one point Trump stated, “Stacy Abrams is laughing about you. She’s going around saying these guys are dumber than a rock.” When shaming didn’t work, he tried to appeal to his party loyalty. Trumps said, “you have a big election coming up on Tuesday . . . it’s going to have a big impact if you guys don’t get this thing straightened out fast.”

Another theme that he wove throughout the conversation was how reasonable his request was. He repeatedly bounced back and forth between stating there was hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes to he was only asking him to find 11,780 votes. I mean it’s practically nothing right. He mentioned the specific number of votes “we need” 21 times. Trump and his associates used the word “find” 26 times. I’m just telling you to keep looking until you find what we need you to find.

Trump even tried to reason that “sure, we can play this game with the courts, but why” implying it would just be a lot easier if you do what we want. After all “there’s nothing wrong with saying . . . that you’ve recalculated” the results. Trump even tried to reassure Raffensperger that “I’m not looking to blame anybody.” Trump is “just saying, you know, under new counts, and under new views of the election results, we won the election, you know.”

Trump just seems to assume it’s the Republican Secretary of State’s job to find the votes needed to ensure his victory. Not to run a fair and impartial election. I didn’t have any opinion of Raffensperger before this, but I’m impressed he was able to withstand this unrelenting pressure to do something he knew was wrong.

Finally, and most disturbingly are the threats. If there was any question about the legality of the call, this should put that to bed. When making an unsupported claim about corrupt ballots Trump said, “it is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen, That’s a big risk to you.” Keep in mind that Trump carries the weight of the Justice Department behind him, and he just told the Georgia Secretary of State that he was committing a criminal offense by not finding him 11,780 votes. Just let the magnitude of that sink in.

That wasn’t the only time he mentioned the danger to Raffensperger if he doesn’t play ball. A few minutes later he says:

“I watched you this morning, and you said, well, there was no criminality. But I mean all of this stuff is very dangerous stuff. When you talk about no criminality, I think it’s very dangerous for you to say that . . . so what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.”

Again, it’s very dangerous for Raffensperger if he doesn’t find the votes Trump needs to change the outcome of the election. Nothing at all ominous about the President of the United States saying you’re in danger if you don’t do what I say.

This call is pretty hard to defend, although some in Congress are trying, but was it a crime? 18 U.S. Code § 595 states it’s a crime for employees of the United States who “uses his official authority for the purpose of interfering with, or affecting, the nomination or the election of any candidate for the office of President, Vice President.” The President is a federal employee, and he was clearly using his official authority to interfere with the election. However, it’s not entirely clear if this law applies to the President.

Perhaps even more definitive is the Justice Department’s guidelines on Federal prosecution of election offenses. It states election officials acting “under color of law” by performing such acts as diluting valid ballots with invalid ones and rendering false tabulations of votes constitutes Federal election fraud. Although this only applies to election officials, Trump’s conduct is inciting others to commit a crime which is its own criminal offense. By repeatedly telling Raffensperger to find votes he’s asking him to dilute the valid ballots. By asking him to “recalculate” the results he’s inciting him to falsify the tabulation of votes. This is a clear-cut Federal crime. It also appears this call violated Georgia law as well which is similar to the Federal statutes.

The Justice Department must launch a criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s conduct. Not only because it’s such an egregious criminal act but because it’s highly unlikely an isolated event. We already know that the President invited two Michigan lawmakers to the White House days before the scheduled certification of the state’s election results. Later he attempted to call the Republican governor of Arizona right as he was about to certify the election results. In that case, reportedly the governor refused to take the call.

Seems kind of hard to believe he hasn’t made calls to other Republican governors and legislators in an attempt to find a way to prevent the certification of the election or otherwise overturn state election results. Not only that, but after Biden won the Electoral College vote Congressional Republicans initially resisted calls to challenge the results in January. Then all of a sudden, within days of each other, over a hundred members of the House and a dozen Senators had a change of heart and announced they would challenge the Electoral College results. This is speculative on my part, but it’s not hard to imagine a flurry of frantic calls coming from the White House to lean on these members of Congress.

There are risks involved in launching a criminal investigation into a former President, but in this case the risk of not pursuing charges has grown even larger. The Mueller investigation uncovered clear evidence of obstruction of justice, bribery and campaign finance violations. Those are serious crimes on their own. It’s now clear that Trump has added election interference to his resume. Whether this latest crime was a single occurrence or part of a larger campaign to illegally pressure election officials into stealing the election needs investigating to determine the truth. What is certain is President Donald Trump has acted with consistent disregard for the law throughout his Presidency. We owe it to history to document the full extent of his crimes and to send a message to future Presidents that we will not tolerate this in the United States of America.