Donald Trump was joking. But only half-joking. What, he was asked after the third arraignment against him was announced, would it now take to secure his second presidency? “I need,” he said, “one more indictment to ensure my election!”. And that indictment duly arrived on Monday, courtesy of the state of Georgia.
It may, indeed, have secured him the Republican nomination as every successive indictment has extended his lead over party rivals. The Republican narrative is to criticise the “persecution” and “witch-hunt” against him. His campaign has majored on the mantra that he alone stands between voters and a deep state out to get not just him, but them. The latest polling suggests that more than half of Republicans believe the investigations are an attack on people like them.
The broader American public is not yet convinced, with polls showing a Biden-Trump presidential election remains a close call.
The 98-page Georgia indictment, reprising many of the charges in the federal indictment, accuses him of corruptly trying to reverse the 2020 election results, not only in Georgia but other states and at national level. But he is also charged with violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or Rico, as well as solicitation of violation of oath by public officers and conspiracy to commit false statements and writings. Because it is a state and not a federal prosecution, moreover, Trump – as president – would not be able to pardon himself.
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The indictment charges 18 others with joining the criminal enterprise, including his lawyers, Rudi Giuliani, John Eastman, and Sidney Powell, former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, senior justice department official Jeffrey Clark, all previously unnamed and unindicted.
The indictment makes clear that Trump was not just at the head of a conspiracy in which others did his dirty work, but an enthusiastic participant. Again and again Trump’s personal engagement is outlined in the charges: in perpetuating lies, not just claims he had won, but detailed specifics of alleged, fictitious criminal fraud by others; in arm-twisting election officials and party colleagues, both local and national, to manufacture votes or create fraudulent panels of substitute electors; in browbeating then vice-president Mike Pence to use his position in the Senate to send “disputed” votes back to the states.
Four indictments in, and yet, most extraordinarily, one of the two major US parties has not ruled out for its presidential nomination the current front-runner, a man charged with conspiring to subvert democracy, endangering national security, obstructing justice and falsifying records of hush money to a pornographic film star. That reality, sadly, says everything about that party’s capture and its profound transformation.