Trump can expect GOP testimony
It will be the greatest of ironies if Donald John Trump is convicted of crimes against the Constitution he swore to uphold.
How so?
The first irony is obvious. Presidents are tasked with seeing that the laws are faithfully executed. Trump is the first and only president to be charged with violating his oath of office in a criminal setting.
The second is that Trump, if convicted, will have been done so on the strength of Republicans testifying against him – many of whom Trump appointed to serve in the White House with him or in other capacities in his administration; Republicans serving in various state governments should also be expected to testify.
Enhancing all of this is the fact that the former president, the darling of the Republican base, is the leading contender for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024. This aspect of the irony is the tragedy of current American politics.
The irony turns to spoof when it comes to Trump himself: The government’s case is partially based on Trump’s own words and actions. Now, this frequently is the case in criminal proceedings. The irony arises when you imagine that Trump thought maybe he was too smart by half to be caught in a trap he himself set.
That Republicans, including former Vice President Mike Pence, will play key roles in Trump’s Washington, D.C., trial is clear from the multiple-count indictment brought against him by special Department of Justice counsel Jack Smith. The indictment filed Aug. 1 alleges Trump attempted to defraud, impede, and imperil the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s 2020 election to the presidency.
(A reminder: In November 2020, Biden defeated Trump by some seven million votes nationwide and by a 306-232 margin in the Electoral College.)
Here is a handful of instances drawn from the government charging document to which Republican office holders might be expected to testify in a trial against the former president:
? After Trump “insinuated,” Smith writes, that more than 10,000 dead people had voted in the presidential election in Georgia, the state’s Republican secretary of state “explained to the Defendant that this was false.”
? While Trump was ballyhooing that 205,000 more votes than voters were cast in Pennsylvania, his own acting attorney general and deputy acting attorney general were telling him behind the scenes that this was false.
? Trump declared publicly that suspicious vote-dumping occurred in Detroit. Not only had the attorney general of the United States told the president this was not true, he heard the same thing from “political allies in Michigan.”
? Trump posited that more than 30,000 non-citizens voted in Arizona. Both Trump’s own campaign manager and the Arizona secretary of state explained to him beforehand that such claims were false.
Former Vice President Pence could play an outsize role in the criminal trial against Trump. A candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, Pence no doubt dreads the prospect of testifying against his ex-chief. Despite everything, Pence will have no choice in the matter. As he told CBS News, “We’ll respond to the call of the law, if it comes, and we’ll just tell the truth.”
Smith might well summon Pence to testify about his Oval Office meeting with Trump two days prior to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the scheduled certification by Congress of Biden’s election.
The government’s indictment against Trump states, “During the (Jan. 4) meeting, as reflected in the Vice President’s contemporaneous notes, the Defendant made knowingly false claims of election fraud … and asked, regarding a claim his senior Justice Department officials told him were false, as recently as the previous night, ‘What about 205,000 more votes in Pa. than voters?’
“The Defendant (Trump) and co-conspirator 2 (private attorney John Eastman) then asked the Vice President to either unilaterally reject the legitimate electors from the seven targeted states, or send the question of which slate was legitimate back to the states’ legislatures.”
In addition to Pence and other Republicans, jurors could very well hear from Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, a former GOP congressman whose public silence regarding Trump strongly suggests he is cooperating with Special Counsel Smith.
Richard Robbins lives Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.