The 45-page federal indictment document, related to our former President’s actions leading up to the Jan. 6 events at the U.S. Capitol, has now been posted on the internet. By people who, I assume, don’t love our former President.
A lot of people do, in fact, love our former President, and I doubt any of them would willingly post a 45-page federal indictment in the internet. We Americans do not post federal indictment documents of people we love. We only post indictment documents of people we don’t love.
Our Daily Post editor could easily include a link— in this column — to the 45-page document, if he wanted to. But that would sort of take the wind out of my sails, since I am planning to discuss it more personally. Express my personal feelings about it.
I’m sort of surprised that so few U.S. Presidents have been indicted by the federal government. I mean, how many of us have wanted to put our boss in jail? Most of us, probably. (But not me. I love my editor.)
I was only ten years old when a previous President, Richard Nixon, got caught up in a federal investigation. He had allegedly been involved in a criminal cover-up of the Watergate scandal. Presidents aren’t allowed to cover up crimes, unless it’s the whole government doing the crime, in which case it’s standard policy. Nixon got a blanket pardon for any crimes he might have committed, from his successor, former Vice President Gerald Ford, a man who never thought he would be President and who was unable to get re-elected.
When you’re President, you can pardon pretty much anybody, for pretty much anything.
Joe Biden, for example, could pardon Donald Trump, and he’d earn a lot of Brownie Points for doing it.
Just saying.
Although Nixon never got indicted, forty federal officials were indicted or jailed in the Watergate case, including Nixon’s chief of staff, his White House attorney, his chief domestic adviser, and his attorney general. I don’t recall if Gerald Ford pardoned all those other people. But it was a big legal mess.
Now we have another big legal mess, that’s earning Donald Trump a lot of publicity. I bet he feels like he’s acting in a hugely popular reality TV show.
I haven’t read the 45-page indictment document. Usually, when I have a 45-page legal document to read, I just skim the pages, looking for words like “robbed” or “kidnapped” or “murdered”. Those are usually the juicy parts. I didn’t see any of those words when I skimmed Trump’s indictment.
Nor was I expecting to find those kinds of words. This case doesn’t seem to be nearly as serious as a murder case, or a kidnapping. It’s just about lies, and conspiracies, and trying to overturn an election.
In general, the interesting parts are no more juicy than:
The Defendant widely disseminated his false claims of election fraud for months, despite the fact that he knew, and in many cases had been informed directly, that they were not true.
Apparently, some people believe that a President, saying things that he knows are not true, is some kind of a crime.
If that were the case, every one of our Presidents would be behind bars.