Just more than 2 half years after the Jan. 6 insurrection triggered by Donald Trump, special counsel Jack Smith has indicted the former president on four charges in connection with his actions leading to and on that day. Based on the indictment itself and the mountain of other publicly available evidence, the case appears compelling. As Smith said at his post-indictment press conference, a speedy trial is imperative for the health of our democracy. To that end, he and his team have produced an indictment defined by clarity and relative simplicity.

For all the chaos Trump wrought from November 2020 to Jan. 6, 2021, Smith lays out a straightforward factual narrative of his actions. As one of us outlined in a comprehensive model prosecution memo for Just Security, Trump undertook a three-step plan to overturn the election.

Beyond the uncomplicated factual narrative, Smith has also kept the indictment as legally straightforward as possible.

First, after losing the election, Trump and his allies allegedly concocted a variety of schemes to overturn the results. Smith documents these conspiracies, which include: pressuring states to overturn the election on the basis of false claims of election fraud; utilizing the power of the Justice Department to achieve these same aims by, in part, having the department “conduct sham election crime investigations” and using its authority to “falsely” buttress the legitimacy of Trump’s schemes; and soliciting false electoral slates. These were...

Read Full Story: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiZ2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lm1zbmJjLmNvbS9vcGlu...