Trump is headed for indictment and trial in Georgia

His own conspiracies put to shame the fake ones he spread on Twitter

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The New York Times is out tonight with a story that while still president, Donald Trump conspired with Jeffrey Clark, an official in the Department of Justice, to fix the election results in the state of Georgia.  The plot was stopped only when Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen refused to go along with it, and numerous lawyers in the department threatened to resign if Trump fired Rosen and replaced him with Clark.

Despite the fact that Clark was at the time acting head of the Civil Division in the Justice Department and was not involved in any way in investigating or prosecuting criminal activity, he had begun conspiring with Trump in the days after William Barr announced his plan to resign as Attorney General on December 14.  The next day, December 15, Trump summoned Rosen to the White House and urged him to file justice department briefs supporting his allies’ lawsuits  challenging Biden’s wins in battleground states.  He also demanded that Rosen appoint special counsels to investigate the unfounded conspiracy theories about voter fraud then flying around right-wing sites on the internet, and to investigate Dominion Voting Systems, the firm alleged to have been involved in fraudulent tabulation of election results in Georgia.

Rosen refused, telling Trump that the department of justice had investigated allegations of voter fraud and had found none.  He said he would make decisions as acting attorney general based on facts and the law.  In the coming days, Trump continued to pester Rosen to go along with his plot, both on the phone and in person, but Rosen and his deputy, Richard P. Donoghue, resisted Trump’s entreaties. 

Clark, however, was already in touch with Trump and had told the president he had been reading about evidence of voter fraud on the internet and supported his efforts to enlist the justice department in his struggle to overturn the election.  Clark drafted a letter to Georgia legislators that falsely said the department of justice was actively investigating voter fraud in their state.  The letter was to be signed by both Rosen and Donoghue.  Both men refused to sign the letter and told him allegations of fraud were false.

Rosen, who by then had been appointed acting attorney general, and Donoghue met a second time with Clark on New Years Eve.  They tried unsuccessfully to convince Clark he was wrong.  He responded by telling them he was going to take his case to the president during the following week.

Instead, Clark met with Trump the next day and quickly informed Rosen that Trump planned on firing Rosen and replacing him with Clark.  Incredibly, Clark told Rosen, who had been his mentor as a lawyer when they were in private practice, that he could stay on as his (Clark’s) deputy if he wanted, after he was fired.

Rosen responded by calling the White House Counsel, Pat Cipollone, and asking him to set up a meeting with Trump.  On the Sunday night following New Years, Rosen, Donoghue and Clark met with Trump in the Oval Office, along with Cipollone and Stephen Engle, the head of the justice department’s office of legal counsel.  Rosen told Trump he would refuse to order the investigations of Georgia voting he wanted.  Engle told the president that if he fired Rosen, he and numerous other top justice department lawyers would resign en masse, setting off a “Sunday Night Massacre” similar to the “Saturday Night Massacre” that took place during Watergate.

After three hours of discussions and threats, Trump backed down from his plan to fire Rosen and install Clark, and Trump’s plan to interfere in Georgia’s election was over.  Three days later, Rosen and Donoghue looked on in horror as Trump incited a mob to attack the Capitol in a naked attempt to stop the certification of Electoral College ballots, including those of Georgia.  After five were killed, including a Capitol policeman, and extensive damage was done to the Capitol by looters and thieves, that plan failed, too.

Experts interviewed on MSNBC’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” tonight pointed out that Trump had committed numerous violations of both federal and Georgia election law, including attempting to influence the tabulation of election results and interfering in government processes.  Andrew Weissman, one of Robert Mueller’s chief deputies in the investigation of Russia’s influence on the election of 2016, said that as a private citizen, Trump faces indictment and trial in both federal and state courts in Georgia.  Evidence of Trump’s attempt to overturn Georgia’s election will no doubt be used in the Senate impeachment trial as well.

Now that Trump is no longer president, people are starting to tell what they know about Trump’s manic attempts to overturn the election and remain in office.  More stories will doubtlessly be revealed before Trump’s trial begins on February 8. Trump’s own conspiracies are kicking back and ensnaring him in a web more incredible than anything he shrieked about on Twitter, and certainly more dangerous to him.

Donald Trump is going to be very, very busy in the coming months.  He will be spending a lot more time with lawyers than he will with golf caddies, that’s for sure.