People Are Lying To You About The Trump Indictment

In peace there's nothing so becomes an opinion writer as charity and humility. But this isn’t peacetime. It’s a time of political, cultural, and legal war. Candor is all. So, in that spirit: the editors of National Review are absolutely lying to you about the most recent indictment of former President Donald Trump, and they are merely the vanguard of a host of lies. Brace yourself.

The Indictment

Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted Donald Trump yesterday. The indictment is here and all over the internet. Josh Barro and I, and our exceptional producer Sara Fay, put out an emergent episode of Serious Trouble last night discussing it. I’m proud of the episode and I submit it’s worth a listen.

Serious Trouble

Trump Is Indicted for Trying to Steal the Election

Listen now (52 min) | Dear listeners, Donald Trump got indicted again. And this time, we hadn’t started recording the week’s episode. So we set about doing so, on an urgent but non-emergency basis. This new federal indictment, issued in Washington DC, is for trying to steal the 2020 election. The set of facts underlying the charges, while outrageous, are mostly already known t…

Listen now

2 years ago · 55 likes · 18 comments · Josh Barro and Ken White

The world is awash with analysis of the indictment. In brief, the indictment charges Trump as follows:

• Count One, conspiracy to defraud the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. section 371. Section 371 has two parts. It’s most commonly used to charge a conspiracy to violate some specified federal crime: for instance, conspiracy to violate money laundering statutes. But it has another clause for conspiracies “to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose.”

• Count Two, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding in violation of 18 U.S.C. section 1512(k).

• Count Three, obstructing an official proceeding under 18 U.S.C. section 1512(c) — which applies to someone who “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.” That’s the substantive offense underlying Count Two. In other words, Count Three is the crime itself, Count Two is the conspiracy to commit the crime, which are separate offenses and very commonly charged separately in federal law.

• Count Four is a conspiracy to interfere with the exercise of constitutional or statutory rights under 18 USC section 241.

The Special Counsel’s ...