Smith targets Trump over bid to overturn election results

The news that Donald Trump appears to be on the cusp of his second federal criminal indictment signals a new reassurance that the U.S. Justice Department’s multifaceted probe of the former president and current 2024 candidate is a serious and substantive effort.

After all, a straight reading of public facts tells us Trump handled the job with little respect for legal limits. But now, the investigation by Special Counsel Jack Smith is reviewing Trump’s efforts to remain in power despite having lost the 2020 election.  His reckless behavior must be tested by the law for wherever it may lead.

Trump is already awaiting trial on a federal indictment for the unauthorized removal of highly classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago home, his refusal to return them to the National Archives, and his efforts to obfuscate.

Now another looms. Trump acknowledged Tuesday that he’s the target of a grand jury probe of efforts to overturn election results in several states culminating in his supporters’ January 2021 attack on lawmakers at the Capitol as they were preparing to certify that Joe Biden had won. 

Despite Trump's trademark deceptions and deflections, there’s clear evidence, cited in last year’s congressional Jan. 6 investigation, that the Trump crew ginned up violent demonstrators who marched to the Capitol, tried to intimidate Vice President Mike Pence into rejecting certification of the 2020 results, and planned to install impostors in the Electoral College. Trump even called up state officials in a bid to alter ballot counts. Is it only a coincidence that also on Tuesday 16 Republicans were criminally charged by  Michigan's attorney general for falsely claiming they were electors as part of Trump's flailing effort to stay in the White House? 

These developments make it most distressing that the Republican Party remains under Trump’s thumb and his primacy is questioned so little from within. Keeping those wagons circled points to a continuing lack of courage that works against the GOP’s long-term interests.

Can't another candidate — one who does not augur deeper chaos and division — carry a conservative banner?

And yet House Speaker Kevin McCarthy offers us this: “President Trump just increased his lead in the polls. So what does the Biden Administration do next? Weaponize government to go after President Biden’s number one opponent. This is not equal justice. It’s wrong, and the American public is tired of it.”

McCarthy and colleagues ought to know this isn’t a Biden plot. For most of us, what’s most alarming is this vendetta talk — and propping up of an unqualified presidential candidate to protect him from prosecution.

If Trump is indicted, the specific charges and the evidence should be closely reviewed for their legitimacy. 

An honest accounting in federal court seems to be coming.