We now enter the final phase of the Administrative State’s war on former President Donald J. Trump. The former president’s foes enmeshed in the permanent bureaucracy have giddily piled on Trump’s problems by taking his apparent missteps and character flaws, weaponizing them against him, all to undermine his controversial reelection campaign.
Now, it seems the Faceless Men (and women) of the so-called “Deep State” have saved the “best” for last.
I’m referring to the grand jury investigation that has been underway in Atlanta, Georgia, since 2021 looking into whether Trump led a coordinated campaign to unduly influence the 2020 Presidential Election in his favor.
Was Donald Trump Trying to Steal the 2020 Election?
This is based, partly, on the fact that the former president made a frantic phone call to election officials in Georgia during their counting of ballots in the 2020 Presidential Election where Trump was recorded as demanding, “I just want [you] to find 11,780 votes!”
The implication was that the Republican election officials in Georgia needed to throw their state’s election in favor of Trump, who was waging a desperate campaign to stay in power. The Georgia state officials, despite being fellow Republicans, refused to bend to Trump’s demands.
The legal problem for Trump arises in the fact that he was president and was recorded as sounding as though he were attempting to pressure Georgia election officials to “find” additional votes that didn’t exist.
It is the basis for the Atlanta-based federal grand jury inquiry into Donald Trump. An inquiry that has ended and in which the lead Department of Justice prosecutor, Fani Willis, plans on announcing her decision on whether to indict Trump for alleged election interference by September 1.
I am personally unconvinced that Donald Trump was the mastermind of some grand conspiracy to upend the results of the 2020 Election, simply because, as president, Trump proved himself to be chronically unable or unwilling to plan for much of anything.
Although, when taken into a broader context of Trump’s visceral reaction to the 2020 Election—ultimately culminating into the January 6 riots at Capitol Hill—the Democrats and the Department of Justice investigators have a possible fact pattern that indicates a wider conspiracy may have been afoot. It’s all they really need to make Trump’s life a legal living Hell.
And they are.
Trump Lost Almost All Legal Challenges to the 2020 Election Outcome
Trump’s legal team brought upwards of 62 lawsuits on the state and federal level challenging the outcome of the 2020 Election.
All but one of them failed (and the one where they won was ancillary to their main argument that the Biden Campaign and Democratic Party engaged in vote rigging). Despite this, Trump continued pressing his “stolen election” claim in public.
And we know that a cadre of top Trump advisers forged a “war room” at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. and coordinated the initial protest against the election certification process at Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021.
Several witnesses who served in Trump’s inner circle while he was president, including Cassidy Hutchinson, testified under oath that no one around the president—or Trump himself—believed that the election had been stolen. In fact, according to Hutchinson’s testimony, immediately following the announcement that Biden had won the White House, Trump had admitted he thought he had lost to Joe Biden.
Trump’s Chances
More to the point, there is circumstantial evidence indicating that Trump attempted to replicate his pressure campaign on Georgia’s election officials on the then-governor of Arizona, which had also become a hotly contested state in the 2020 Election (like Georgia, Arizona was not expected to become a battleground state).
At the very least, Trump’s actions have left himself open to the legal probes that he is currently being subjected to.
Thanks to this potential fact pattern on display, Donald Trump is in grave legal jeopardy—at precisely the moment that he needs to be focused like a laser on winning his reelection. Sure, his enemies are piling on because they want to damage him at all costs. They, too, are painfully corrupt.
But Trump’s own sloppy language and undisciplined behavior over the years have given his enemies all the ammunition they need to hit him with. Expect more legal headaches going forward.
The only real question is whether voters will be impacted by these legal crises afflicting Trump?
Certainly, Trump seems to be empowered in the ongoing GOP Primary each time he is indicted. But should he be made the GOP candidate in 2024, he will need to win independent voters in key swing states.
Will those independents be sanguine about voting for a man who is in such dire legal straits, or who acts with a degree of impunity about very serious legal matters that few other Americans would be able to downplay or ignore?
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
From 19FortyFive
The Second American Civil War Has Begun
