Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo
Special Counsel Jack Smith speaks to reporters, June 9, 2023, in Washington.
It is, to state this gently, goddam motherf’in’ about time.
Former President Trump revealed today that he’s received a letter from Special Counsel Jack Smith notifying him that he’s a target in Smith’s investigation of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Hundreds of participants in that insurrection have long since been indicted; many have been convicted, many are currently in prison. As the instigator of that insurrection and of phony elector slates and of groundless court actions all devised to give him another term in the White House despite his having lost the election, Trump had already ensured his place in America’s ninth circle of hell. Now, at long last, he may be held legally accountable as well.
Ever since the Manhattan DA indicted Trump on financial chicanery, the most incriminating details to be provided in due time, not to mention Trump’s subsequent indictment for clinging to classified documents that weren’t his to cling to, a what’s-wrong-with-this-picture sense has afflicted a large number of inquiring minds (mine included). Where, we wondered, was the indictment for trying to overthrow the legitimate government through fraud and force? The interminable delay in indicting him for trying to get Georgia’s secretary of state to create just enough fictitious votes to swing that state into his column has been a matter of public record for more than two years, but Fulton County’s DA has yet to file charges. So it has fallen to Counsel Smith to do what his letter to Trump portends: indict the Donald for his truly treasonous offense.
If there was ever even the remotest chance that Trump would conduct his current presidential campaign on issues pertaining to policy and the future of the country, his forthcoming indictment dooms any such prospects. He will now campaign solely on the threadbare lie that he won the 2020 election and will exact vengeance on those who say otherwise. Assuming that he wins the Republican nomination, his focus on 2020 election denial won’t help him in the general election: Virtually every 2020-election-denying Republican who sought office in a truly contested election last November went down to defeat.
Moreover, Trump’s pending indictment puts the current crew of Republican office seekers—those running for president most particularly—in a bind. At some level, they know they can’t really defend the January 6th insurrection and what will emerge as Trump’s role in it. That leaves them with the fallback option of attacking Smith and the Justice Department for indicting the GOP presidential front-runner in the midst of the campaign; indeed, they already are doing just that. Earlier today, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told a South Carolina gathering that Trump should have “come out more forcefully” against the insurrection, but he also characterized the pending indictment as “an attempt to criminalize politics and to try to criminalize differences.”
That, of course, characterizes January 6th as “politics” and “differences.” If the Republican field sticks to that line—and fear of the Trumpian base makes that all but certain—and if they keep fighting on that line straight through next year, I don’t think they’ll be doing themselves any electoral favor. A Trump indictment for attempting the overthrow of the constitutional order and the verdict of the electorate guarantees that 2024 will be more of a referendum on Trump than a referendum on Biden. That’s a contest the GOP will lose, oh so deservedly so.
“The mills of the gods grind slow, but they grind exceedingly fine” is an adage commonly attributed to ancient Greek philosopher Sextus Empiricus. It would only be fitting if this Empiricism drags down the party of the Big Lie.
