Donald is mad.
Predictably, the former president-turned-obsessive user of social media, who recently confirmed his 2024 campaign for the White House but hasn’t actually done much to further that campaign, took angrily to his alternative social media platform Truth Social after the decision by the House committee investigating January 6 to recommend him to the Justice Department for prosecution on several charges. The charges that committee investigators recommended cover Trump’s attempts to stay in power after the 2020 presidential election despite his loss. The referrals don’t force prosecutors to act, although the committee has assembled substantial evidence and a lengthy argument in favor of their conclusions. (A document stretching over 100 pages is already available from the riot committee.)
“The Fake charges made by the highly partisan Unselect Committee of January 6th have already been submitted, prosecuted, and tried in the form of Impeachment Hoax #2. I WON convincingly. Double Jeopardy anyone!” Trump posted Monday. That’s not how it works. There are protections available against double jeopardy for defendants when facing accusations of criminal acts, but impeachment isn’t a criminal case, and the impeachment he faced early last year after the Capitol riot covered incitement of insurrection — not obstruction of an official proceeding or conspiracy to defraud the United States, other offenses for which the panel recommended Trump be prosecuted. In addition, the committee didn’t even “make” charges against him — they just (strongly and formally) recommended Justice Department action. Technically, that could be the end of it. Further action is up to prosecutors, no doubt including Special Counsel Jack Smith.
Trump shortly thereafter posted further comments, again seeming to misstate the basic facts of what is going on. “The people understand… that this whole business of prosecuting me is just like impeachment was — a partisan attempt to sideline me and the Republican Party,” he claimed. He’s not currently being prosecuted for his election subversion efforts. Trump kept it up Tuesday, including in a post in which he conspicuously referred to what happened on January 6 as a “protest” — a so-called “protest” in connection to which multiple people died and during which scores of police officers were brutally beaten.
“The so-called Deep State, often referred to by many other names, including “Cheaters, “Insurrectionists,” “Communists,” and yes, even our good old “RINOS,” have been working on sinister and evil “plots” for a long time, even well before I came to office,” Donald said early on Tuesday. “They are long seated Swamp Creatures, and are bad news for the USA. Remember very early on when Obama, Biden, Holder, and Comey were SPYING ON MY CAMPAIGN? I wonder if their handpicked Special “Prosecutor,” Jack Smith, knew what was going on?” In any reasonable sense, there remains no apparent evidence legitimating the spying claims. Trump also remains apparently convinced that allowing the further spread of negative reporting on Hunter Biden prior to the election would have meant Joe Biden (Hunter’s father) lost — a simply nonsensical notion. The reporting was widely circulated prior to the election, no matter any temporary limits on major social media sites. Anyone on such a site could have just closed the app and Googled it and — voila!
