The quote in the headline for today’s BradCast comes, according to one of our guests today, from former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who knows quite a bit about both Constitutional crimes and American history. Finally, Donald J. Trump is facing accountability for his worst (known) crime of all: Attempting to overthrow American democracy itself by stealing a Presidential election from the American people before our very eyes. Luckily, he was as bad at that as he is at everything else. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]
“This is a momentous legal event. It’s the most significant legal event of our lifetimes, one of the most significant legal events ever in the history of this country. It is up there with Marbury vs Madison, Brown vs Board of Education, Dred Scott as a defining case for the times,” Katyal told MSNBC after the new indictment against the the disgraced former President was handed up in D.C. yesterday. “This indictment lays out a case that a guy who was President of the United States — while he was President of the US — leveraged his office, used his power to thwart the will of the people in the most solemn thing they do in our country, vote. This is the biggest constitutional crime in our history.”
We’re joined today discuss that crime and Trump’s latest indictment (his third in four months, and his second at the federal level) for it by two favorite BradCast special coverage guests. HEATHER DIGBY PARTON is the award-winning columnist at Salon and founder of Digby’s Hullabaloo blog; and our old friend “DRIFTGLASS” is otherwise known as both @Mr_Electrico on Twitter and simply “Bill” at home in “Flyover Country, Illinois” where he has long and proudly produced The Professional Left Podcast.
Following the release of Special Counsel Jack Smith‘s new, very readable 45-page indictment [PDF] against Trump just minutes before airtime on Tuesday — including four felony fraud, obstruction and conspiracy charges related to his attempt to steal the 2020 election before, during, and after the January 6, 2021 insurrection he incited at the U.S. Capitol — we’ve had a bit of time to finally read the charges and evidence presented with them in full.
Also, we’ve had some time to learn about the judge assigned to the case, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan. And, boy howdy, is Trump not gonna like her. She was appointed by President Obama, has been particularly tough on January 6 insurrectionists, and famously (and correctly) wrote, in a 2021 ruling allowing the bipartisan House Jan. 6 Select Committee access to documents from the Trump White House that “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.”
As noted, he’s not gonna like her one bit. Oh, well. Perhaps it balances out the Trump-appointed federal judge/stooge overseeing his federal indictment on 40 felony charges related to his theft and retention of national security documents and his attempts to obstruct the government’s investigation and attempts to retrieve them down in Florida.
Among the topics discussed with “Digby” and “Driftglass” on today’s special coverage…
- Why it took so long to bring this case, particularly as so much of it had already been revealed by the House Jan. 6 Committee last year.
- What either struck or surprised them about the new indictment.
- Who the still-unidentified “Co-Conspirator 6” might be.
- Will history better remember Mike Pence’s moment of courage on January 6 or his pathetic turnabout ever since?
- Why this case feels so much different than the other two indictments filed against Trump.
- Why it seems that nobody in the media is able to describe what Trump did as an attempt to STEAL a Presidential election. (Though MSNBC’s Joy Reid and Parton — both of whom have long followed me on Twitter — get well-deserved kudos for doing so today!)
- Whether, as folks on the Right like to claim, Tuesday’s new indictment (and the others) actually help him in the 2024 election.
- And, would they support or oppose a plea agreement in which the disgraced former President was allowed to plead guilty, get some home confinement, pay a huge fine and, most importantly, drop out of the 2024 race and vow to never run for public office again in exchange for escaping prison time (akin to Nixon VP Spiro Agnew’s deal with federal prosecutors)?
Answers to all of those questions and many others on today’s BradCast Special Coverage! Enjoy!…
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