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Originally Posted by Pierre
Election interference aside, as I’m not 100% up to speed with that and what he wanted Pence to do….but whatever it was Pence didn’t do it anyway.
But looking directly at the events of Jan 6th. Any reasonable person would conclude that it was not an insurrection, it was at best a disturbance, at worst a riot……..but nothing on the scale of BLM.
It wasn’t a coup, there was no organisation or direction or planned outcome.
If you want to prosecute Trump I am 100% sure with a good constitutional lawyer you could argue that it meets the legal meaning of terms in the US constitution but that doesn’t mean it was, and just highlights what your end game is.
You don’t want Trump on the ballot, that’s fine. It’s not up to us.
But a very large % of Americans do, and as far as I can tell there’s no reason why shouldn’t be.
True Democracy is electing whoever you choose, and if electing Trump is so abhorrent that you must override democracy to ensure it doesn’t happen, you have to ask yourself how much you’re really invested in democracy.
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The election interference and he wanted Pence to do is at the heart of the charges against him - he tried to get Pence not to count the legal Electoral College votes, and to substitute an alternate slate of illegal votes.
The fact that Pence refused to do this doesn’t lessen the crime - if a bunch of people plan to rob a bank, but don’t do so by because they are stopped by the police before they complete the bank robbery, it’s still a crime (conspiracy to commit).
Here’s the timeline on his attempts to pressure Pence to illegally overturn the Electoral College votes.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/latest-fed...y?id=101918701
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The indictment specifies repeated instances by Trump and the co-conspirators to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to use "his ceremonial role at the certification to fraudulently alter the election results."
Between Christmas and Jan. 3, 2021, the former president allegedly talked to Pence and repeated his false claims about the vice president's role at the certification, according to the indictment. Pence pushed back against those claims, prosecutors allege.
In a Jan. 1, 2021, conversation, Trump allegedly berated Pence for refusing to go along with his proposal, the indictment said.
"In response, the Defendant told the Vice President, 'You're too honest.'" Within hours of the conversation, the Defendant reminded his supporters to meet in Washington before the certification proceeding, tweeting, "The BIG Protest Rally in Washington, D.C., will take place at 11.00 A.M. on January 6th. Locational details to follow. StopTheSteal!"
On Jan. 4, 2021, Trump met with Pence, one of the co-conspirators, the vice president's Chief of Staff and the vice president's counsel to convince Pence that he should reject Joe Biden's electoral votes or resend them back to the states.
"During the meeting, as reflected in the Vice President's contemporaneous notes, the Defendant made knowingly false claims of election fraud, including, 'Bottom line-won every state by 100,000s of votes' and 'We won every state,'" the indictment said.
Trump met with Pence again on Jan. 5, 2021, to convince him to overturn the election, but the vice president refused, the indictment said. Trump allegedly "grew frustrated and told the Vice President that the Defendant would have to publicly criticize him," according to prosecutors.
"Upon learning of this, the Vice President's Chief of Staff was concerned for the Vice President's safety and alerted the head of the Vice President's Secret Service detail," the indictment said.
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Here’s what Trump has been charged with in connection to January 6th.
- one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States applies to Trump's repeated and widespread efforts to spread false claims about the November 2020 election while knowing they were not true and for allegedly attempting to illegally discount legitimate votes all with the goal of overturning the 2020 election, prosecutors claim in the indictment.
- one count of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding was brought due to the alleged organized planning by Trump and his allies to disrupt the electoral vote's certification in January 2021.
- one count of obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding is tied to Trump and his co-conspirators' alleged efforts after the November 2020 election until Jan. 7, 2021, to block the official certification proceeding in Congress.
- one count of conspiracy against rights refers to Trump and his co-conspirators alleged attempts to "oppress, threaten and intimidate" people in their right to vote in an election.
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/01/11914...ictment-counts
In summary, Trump and his advisers spread false information about voter fraud, urged Republican state officials to undermine the results in states that Biden won, assembled false slates of electors and pressured Mike Pence, the vice president, to unilaterally toss out the legitimate results.