TUESDAY, JANUARY 14, 2025
Jack Smith wouldn't quite say yes: Within the past week, we asked a basic question about the events of January 6, 2021:
On January 6, 2021, did President Trump know there was going to be a riot at the Capitol Building?
That was our basic question. Extending our reach a bit, the questions get juicier still:
Prior to January 6, 2021, did President Trump or his agents plan for a riot at the Capitol Building?
Did he or his agents conspire with the groups who came to Washington planning to engage in violence?
We don't know the answer to either one of those questions. Our guess would be that the answer to the first question is no, but we have no way of knowing for sure. We don't even know the answer to this:
Prior to January 6, 2021, did President Trump intend for the (typically ridiculous) speech he gave to trigger a subsequent riot?
We can't even say that we know the answer to that!
To us, the evidence seems to suggest that he didn't know that violence was going to happen. Below, you see the most relevant passage from today's New York Times article on Jack Smith's final report.
Please note—the article never mentions any claim that Trump or his associates colluded with groups like the Proud Boys in planning a violent attack. Apparently, Smith found no evidence that any such collusion occurred.
(That doesn't mean that collusion didn't happen. It just means there's no evidence that it did.)
The closest we come is this passage about any criminal liability which might have ensued from Trump's (ridiculous) speech that day. Did Trump intend for his (ridiculous) speech to trigger violence that day? Here is the passage in question:
Four Takeaways From the Special Counsel’s Report on the Trump Election Case
The Justice Department released a 137-page volume early Tuesday morning laying out the details of the investigation that the former special counsel Jack Smith conducted into President-elect Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.
[...]
Smith blamed Trump for the Capitol riot, but explained why he did not charge him with incitement.
Reflecting the strength of the First Amendment’s protections for free speech, Mr. Smith never explicitly accused Mr. Trump of inciting the riot by his supporters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. His indictment and other court filings put a heavier emphasis on Mr. Trump’s actions in the weeks and months leading up to that attack.
Still, in his report, Mr. Smith laid out his analysis of Mr. Trump’s culpability for the mob violence while explaining why he decided not to add a formal charge of incitement to the indictment.
On a moral level, the prosecutor squarely assigned responsibility for the attack on the Capitol to Mr. Trump. He portrayed the rioters as heeding Mr. Trump’s words in the fiery speech he delivered near the White House shortly before the attack.
That context, Mr. Smith wrote, showed that “the violence was foreseeable to Mr. Trump, that he caused it,” that it benefited his plan to interfere with Congress’s certification of President Biden’s Electoral College victory, and that he made a conscious decision to leverage the riot for more delays rather than stopping it.
Against that backdrop, Mr. Smith wrote, prosecutors concluded that “there were reasonable arguments to be made” that Mr. Trump’s speech incited the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6. The speech, Mr. Smith argued, satisfied the Supreme Court’s standard for incitement to overcome any First Amendment defense—“particularly when the speech is viewed in the context of Mr. Trump’s lengthy and deceitful voter-fraud narrative that came before it.”
But Mr. Smith said there were also arguments that the available evidence fell short of what would be needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt one crucial element of the legal test for incitement: that Mr. Trump intended for the mob violence to unfold as it did.
He wrote that his team did not develop sufficient direct evidence—like an explicit admission or a communication with his co-conspirators—to establish that Mr. Trump had the criminal intent “to cause the full scope of the violence that occurred on Jan. 6.”
Did Trump "intend for the mob violence to unfold as it did?" We have no way of knowing the answer to that question. Also, based on the Times report, we're prepared to guess that Smith doesn't know the answer either.
Is it possible that Smith got out over his skis a bit in some of his assumptions and accusations? Everything is possible, as it generally is.
For the record, there doesn't seem to be a word about Trump actually conspiring with the groups which actively drove the violence. On a lesser level of intention, did he intend for the people who heard his speech to march to the Capitol Building and stage a riot?
Everything is possible! Using a fair amount of slippery language, Smith says it can't be proved.
In our view, Trump behaved like the nutcase he is on the day in question and in the weeks before that. That said:
On January 6, 2021, did he know or hope that violence was going to happen? We can't say it's clear that he did.
If we had to take a guess, this would be our guess:
We'd guess that he didn't intend for a riot to happen, but that he was thrilled when it did.
“I don’t [fucking] care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the [fucking] mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Take the [fucking] mags away.”
ReplyDeleteExcellent read quaker. Our host sees what he wants to see and then decides he can’t decide.
DeleteIt's an impossible question to answer, because only Trump knows if he did or not, and he's a habitual liar, so his response if you ask him is useless.
ReplyDelete“ Is it possible that Smith got out over his skis a bit in some of his assumptions and accusations? ”
ReplyDeleteWhich “assumptions and accusations?” Did you read where Smith decided not to charge Trump with incitement?
The “assumptions and accusations" in the report that is the subject of this post.
Delete"Did you read where Smith decided not to charge Trump with incitement?" Everyone read that, yes.
On January 6, 2021, did President Trump know there was going to be a riot at the Capitol Building?
ReplyDeleteThis is bullshit. orange chickenshit's plot to stage a coup started a lot sooner than Jan 6, actually it was put into motion even before the election.
this is such bullshit, unfortunately now we are left to have these endless pointless arguments because the corrupt Supreme Court denied the voting public a full and public trial of the corrupt treasonous bastard.
Somerby seems to be working very hard to avoid the conclusions of Smith's report. First he says:
ReplyDelete"Jack Smith wouldn't quite say yes: Within the past week, we asked a basic question about the events of January 6, 2021:
On January 6, 2021, did President Trump know there was going to be a riot at the Capitol Building?
That was our basic question."
Then he quotes the Washington Post summary of the report, which says:
"On a moral level, the prosecutor squarely assigned responsibility for the attack on the Capitol to Mr. Trump. He portrayed the rioters as heeding Mr. Trump’s words in the fiery speech he delivered near the White House shortly before the attack.
That context, Mr. Smith wrote, showed that “the violence was foreseeable to Mr. Trump, that he caused it,” that it benefited his plan to interfere with Congress’s certification of President Biden’s Electoral College victory, and that he made a conscious decision to leverage the riot for more delays rather than stopping it."
Somerby's denial of Trump's culpability now rests not on his original question but on Smith's decision not to charge Trump with inciting the riot because he could not prove that Trump knew in advance that his actions would cause the full scale of everything violent that happened during the riot.
That is an extremely narrow decision. Note that Trump was charged with other crimes associated with the riot. It is only this most stringent charge that was not charged due to lack of ironclad evidence.
Somerby goes from "did Trump know there would be a riot" to "did Trump anticipate the full scope of the violence during that riot" which was Smith's concern in deciding not to charge Trump with inciting the riot. Somerby doesn't say that Trump was responsible for the riot, but Smith does, morally responsible but not legally due to evidence concerns. Smith's concern was about legal requirements and concerned "one crucial element of the legal test for incitement: that Mr. Trump intended for the mob violence to unfold as it did." Proving intent is not the same as proving that Trump said and did things that caused the riot. It is about what was in Trump's mind as he did so.
This doesn't let Trump off the hook at all. Somerby and Smith should be on the same page, since Somerby is always hyper concerned about what is in people's minds when they lie, suggesting that if you cannot know someone's thoughts you cannot call them a liar, even when the lying is most blatant and the liar has been told repeatedly what the truth is. It isn't Smith using the slippery language, it is Somerby.
Here is a reminder of the crimes (felonies) that Trump WAS charged with by Smith. He is not innocent of these solely because Smith chose not to charge him with inciting the riot that occurred as the result of Trump's actions.
Deletehttps://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-trump-indicted-on-federal-charges-in-jan-6-case-special-counsel-jack-smith-announces
This comment has been removed by the author.
Delete"We'd guess that he didn't intend for a riot to happen, but that he was thrilled when it did."
ReplyDeleteThe problem is Trump's fight with the secret service who were refusing to allow him to go to the capitol to take charge of the insurrection. Experts on insurrection have said that if he had gone to the capitol steps, there would have been a coup. Trump fought, physically, to take control of the car because he had the intention of leading the insurrection himself, putting himself in charge of the government instead of letting the congress transfer power to Biden.
When Trump could not go, he sat and watched the progress of the insurrection intently, only making statements that would inflame the crowd, never telling them to go home. He also engaged in actions to impede police in dispersing the riot. Smith may not be able to see inside Trump's mind, to prove in court what he intended to happen on that afternoon, but his actions tell us a lot. The problem according to Smith is that Trump may have been able to provide alternative explanations for his response to the riot. That makes the case difficult to prove, but it in no way exonerates Trump.
Somerby may try to pretend that failure to be charged is the same as being innocent. Obviously, it isn't.
It is not good for Trump to have this hanging over his head while he attempts to govern. One big indicator of guilt, to me, is that Trump did not insist on being tried. Instead, he evaded all attempts to bring this to a public trial. That means he didn't want to be shown to be innocent, cleared of charges, the way an innocent man would want. This evasion is an indicator of guilt, in my opinion, supplementing all the other things he was charged with that impeded the peaceful transition of power. This is also bad for Republicans because it keeps the fantasy alive for MAGAs, who might otherwise move on and transition back to living in reality.
ReplyDeleteSomerby demonstrates his incompetence as a political analyst. Here is a better take, from David Frum:
ReplyDelete"Special counsel Jack Smith's report on the plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election only serves to underscore how badly the system failed to hold President-elect Donald Trump accountable, conservative analyst David Frum wrote for The Atlantic on Tuesday.
Trump has spent much of the morning raging against this development — but, Frum noted, all the report really shows is that he won.
"Compared with the present outcome, it would have been better if President Joe Biden had pardoned Trump for the January 6 coup attempt," wrote Frum. "A pardon would at least have upheld the theory that violent election overthrows are wrong and illegal. A pardon would have said: The U.S. government can hold violent actors to account. It just chooses not to do so in this case. Instead, the special counsel’s report delivers a confession of the helplessness of the U.S. government."
Trump and his supporters, wrote Frum, "have transgressed the most fundamental rule of a constitutional regime, the prohibition against political violence — and instead of suffering consequences, they have survived, profited, and returned to power. If anything, the transgression has made them more powerful than they otherwise would have been" — because whereas in Trump's first term he actually had some actors in his government reining him in, this time he made support of the coup a "test of loyalty" for who can join this one.
All of this, he notes, comes after the Supreme Court tried to struggle its way through the question of how much immunity a president enjoys for criminal acts committed in office, coming up with a halfway answer that left many legal experts frustrated.
"Now comes the Smith report with its simpler answer: If a former president wins reelection, he has immunity for even the worst possible crimes committed during his first term in office," Frum concluded. "The incentives contained in this outcome are clear, if perverse. And they are deeply sinister to the future of democracy in the United States." [Rawstory, David Frum via Atlantic]
Did Trump "intend for the mob violence to unfold as it did?"
ReplyDeleteWe'll never know for sure.
No, he obviously didn't intend for things to unfold as they did. He expected the mob to support his coup. It didn't unfold properly because the secret service interfered with his efforts to lead the mob to the capitol building.
DeleteTrump did know that violence was likely AND he took steps to try to prevent the violence, according to General Kellogg.
ReplyDeleteRetired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg said last week that former President Donald Trump did in fact request National Guard troops be deployed in Washington D.C. before the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Kellogg said he was present at the time of Trump’s request, and Congress should release his testimony to the public.
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/08/gen-kellogg-trump-did-request-natl-guard-troops-on-jan-6th-asks-congress-to-release-his-testimony/
I don't see Trump pardoning those charged over January 6th. He already called them "losers" because he blames them for his failed coup.
DeleteWhy would he want the National Guard called for a rally of his own supporters?
DeleteFuck you, David. Why did he sit on his fat ass for over 3 hours with friends and family begging him to do something to stop it? He never lifted a finger. As the commander in chief he was enjoying watching the mayhem.
DeleteOf course the orange chickenshit ran to the laps of the corrupt Supreme Court and begged them to give him immunity so he could dodge the charges. And they sat on their corrupt asses till the very last day to issue his immunity ruling, guaranteeing the case would never see the light of day and the public would be denied the truth before voting.
fuck you straight to hell, David. You got the corrupt Kleptocracy you always wanted. The end of our democratic republic.
**********
CLAIM: Former President Donald Trump signed an order to deploy 20,000 National Guard troops before his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but was stopped by the House sergeant at arms, at the behest of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. While Trump was involved in discussions in the days prior to Jan. 6 about the National Guard response, he issued no such order before or during the rioting. Speaker Pelosi does not control National Guard troops.
Fuck you, David. Why did he sit on his fat ass for over 3 hours with friends and family begging him to do something to stop it? He never lifted a finger. As the commander in chief he was enjoying watching the mayhem.
DeleteOf course the orange chickenshit ran to the laps of the corrupt Supreme Court and begged them to give him immunity so he could dodge the charges. And they sat on their corrupt asses till the very last day to issue his immunity ruling, guaranteeing the case would never see the light of day and the public would be denied the truth before voting.
fuck you straight to hell, David. You got the corrupt Kleptocracy you always wanted. The end of our democratic republic.
**********
CLAIM: Former President Donald Trump signed an order to deploy 20,000 National Guard troops before his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but was stopped by the House sergeant at arms, at the behest of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. While Trump was involved in discussions in the days prior to Jan. 6 about the National Guard response, he issued no such order before or during the rioting. Speaker Pelosi does not control National Guard troops.
I was writing a comment, but now I see Anon@3:46 has done my work for me.
ReplyDeleteExactly the point I wished to make. How could Smith be "over his skis" when he cautiously chose not to level charges of collusion?
You really can't figure that out? No idea? You've thought about it but can't figure it out? Really? I would love to know your thought process that led to this goose egg!
DeleteYou can't be over your skiis if you decide not to do something, asshole (@6:12, who thinks sarcasm is an argument). Even when skiing, you have to be moving in a forward direction to be over your skiis.
DeleteI'll spell it out for you then. They have this thing in the English language called metaphors. Have you ever heard of them? People use them to convey complex ideas. They often take a real life event and use it in a way goes beyond the literal way it is defined so they can convey a broader figurative meaning. This was one of those times. So next time you find yourself all confused like you have here today, the first thing you should ask yourself is if what you are reading has a metaphorical intent. (I apologize for the four syllable word.) That needs to be the first thing you do though when you find yourself confused like today. In this case, you would consider if the "over his skis" comment didn't really mean skiing. Maybe it means something else like making claims that go beyond what the evidence can fully support. Specifically "his assumptions and accusations". Then, if you still find yourself confused you need to look into "his assumptions and accusations". At first, it's all confusing. But "he never leveled any charges of collusion!" screams your horrified and tortured mind. But just relax. Think about it for a minute. Was the sentence referring to charges of collusion? Or something broader? If so, is there any place that Smith could have issued any assumptions or accusations at all? Well, as you know, Smith issued an indictment. And the definition of indictment is pretty much a dossier of assumptions and accusations. So there's that. But it's still so confusing. It's just not clear! You have to keep pressing on. You have to then ask yourself what is the subject of this piece? What is the main topic being described? Come up with a list of what you think it may be and then start narrowing it down. Eventually you will see it's about Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report. Then things will start to make a little more sense. All you have to do at this point is see if in his report he discussed a) his indictment (which is basically all accusations and assumptions, as you know) b) any other accusations or assumptions. Then you will be on the road to not being confused by the terribly dense and confusing ideas and metaphors that are presented here. MKAY?
Delete@Quaker in a Basement 4:30 PM
Delete"How could Smith be "over his skis" when he cautiously chose not to level charges of collusion?"
Like this: Quaker in a Basement is definitely a goat-fucker, but alas we may not be able to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
Somerby, when he referred to Smith’s “assumptions and accusations”, was specifically referring to the question of whether Trump intended for a riot to happen, and that is precisely what Smith declined to charge Trump with. This is the opposite of being “over his skis”. Somerby accuses Smith of using “slippery language” in his decision not to charge incitement.
DeleteEvery charging document in our legal system is based on “assumptions and accusations”, but needs to have supporting evidence. Smith had that for the items he charged Trump with.
Every "charging document", Soros-bot?
DeleteElon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, who are great benefactors of humanity, support President Trump, so I support him too.
ReplyDeleteTrump supporters aren't bigots. They're economically anxious, just like the mainstream media wants them to be.
DeleteIn a cult, you might be asked to have repetitive actions, writing words over and over, putting stones in cups, to drill down your sense of autonomy. The way his speech mystified the story after story of the occult properties of the "ballot" looked a lot to me like an attempt at droning people into a kind of trance.
ReplyDeleteThe invocation at the end of "national security" was an escalation in rhetoric that built on the need for "pride and boldness" to be taught to the "weak ones." This is coded permission to not just protest but to unleash your inner beast.
This is Trump. In his world what he says is real, not some outside objective reality. Trying to figure out what he "knew" or planned is pointless. That train left the station many years ago. But to say that gathering & stoking an angry mob to disrupt the electoral count was anything but a conspiracy to disrupt the electoral count is just silly.
ReplyDeleteExactly. Note that the MAGA trolls are taking a pass on this comment section, except DiC , who hasn’t placed a good faith comment here since well before he claimed that he is an atheist.
DeleteI seem to recall Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell both ascribing blame for the Jan 6 riots squarely on Trump’s shoulders. McConnell then voted against convicting, saying that the proper place to hold Trump to account was in the legal system.
ReplyDeleteIt was just like Lucy with the football.
But hey, Somerby guesses that Trump didn’t intend any riot, poor thing.
What a dill weed Somerby is.