'A uniquely serious threat': Legal expert claims Trump's 'fake elector scheme' will lead him to jail
In a column for the conservative Bulwark, longtime attorney Philip Rotner explained that, based upon recent events, the most likely reason Donald Trump might serve time in jail will be due to his "fake elector scheme."
Noting a recent flurry of subpoenas that were issued in the past week to officials in multiple states who were part of the scheme to replace their states' actual electoral votes with their own based on fraudulent election claims, the attorney said the Department of Justice is following the correct trail if they want to indict the former president.
As Rotner wrote, it seems like Trump has continually avoided paying for his crimes, but, if he had to put money on it, that streak will end with charges over the election theft gambit.
"The phony elector scheme is now looking more each day like—wait for it—Trump’s Watergate. Yes, Nixon was an incumbent while Trump is out of office, but consider the parallels: Federal investigators are aggressively on the case, once again assisted by a relentless press, and public congressional hearings are again generating one stunning revelation after another," he wrote. "Over a two-day period last week, at least nine people in four different states reportedly received federal grand jury subpoenas in connection with the fake elector investigation. The recipients included not only some of the phony electors themselves but also 'aides to Mr. Trump’s campaign.' Federal agents also executed search warrants directed at the chairman of the Nevada Republican party and the party’s secretary."
The attorney added that these developments, combined with the focus on Trump attorney John Eastman, who was recently on the receiving end of a pre-dawn raid by the FBI, are extremely bad news for the former president.
As he notes, recent testimony from GOP officials undercuts the ability of Trump to say he had no knowledge of the scheme.
"First, he can’t convincingly argue that he didn’t know about the scheme or that he didn’t participate in it. Ronna McDaniel’s testimony has foreclosed that potential defense. Second, assuming that future evidence corroborates Trump’s knowledge of and participation in the scheme, none of his standard defenses will work here," he wrote before adding, "Perhaps Trump will try, as Rolling Stone reported last week that he is considering whether to throw John Eastman under the bus. But the facts, at least as they have come to light so far, suggest that Trump was himself aware of and involved in the scheme. And he can’t seriously argue that he relied on legal advice from Eastman or others that forging election certificates and passing them off as official documents wasn’t illegal. That’s absurd on its face."
"Trump’s all-purpose master defense — 'But I truly believed the election was stolen' — won’t work here either. Belief that an election was tainted by fraud, no matter how deeply held, wouldn’t excuse the crime of forging election certificates and attempting to pawn them off as official government documents. To the contrary, it would only establish that Trump had a strong, if tortured, motive to commit the crime," he added before concluding, "Nobody has ever made any money betting that the long arm of the criminal law will finally reach out and grab Donald Trump. But if Trump is eventually indicted for any crime in connection with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, odds are this will be the one."
You can read his entire analysis here.
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