This is a summary with quotes of the judge’s decision where he concluded Trump committed 3 felonies in his effort to overturn his loss.
Carter concluded that Eastman and Trump “likely committed” three crimes:
(1) President Trump and his lawyer likely attempted to obstruct Congress’s proceeding to count the electoral votes on January 6, in violation of
18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2). (Recall that this is the charge Rep. Liz Cheney
flagged from the House floor.)
(2) President Trump and his lawyer likely engaged in a
conspiracy to defraud the United States by disrupting the electoral count, in violation of
18 U.S.C. § 371.
(3) President Trump likely engaged in common law fraud.
All three of these crimes require a showing of criminal intent, which can be hard to muster. (For example, in Robert Mueller’s report of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, intent is what distinguished
collusion from
conspiracy, the latter of which Mueller apparently couldn’t establish.) Carter was undeterred.
He found that “President Trump facilitated two meetings in the days before January 6 that were explicitly tied to persuading Vice President Pence to disrupt the Joint Session of Congress.” The first was on January 4, and included Pence, his counsel Greg Jacob, and his chief of staff Marc Short. Eastman presented a plan to reject electors or delay the count, and “Vice President Pence’s counsel interpreted Dr. Eastman’s presentation as being on behalf of the President.” Two days later, on the morning of January 6, “President Trump made several last-minute ‘revised appeal
to the Vice President’ to pressure him into carrying out the plan.” They included tweets, a call from Trump to Pence, and the infamous speech on the Ellipse warning, “Mike Pence, I hope you’re going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you’re not, I’m going to be very disappointed in you.”
Most critically for purposes of making a criminal case against Trump, Carter wrote: “President Trump likely knew the justification [of election fraud] was baseless, and therefore that the entire plan was unlawful,” as the House Jan. 6th Committee “points to numerous executive branch officials who . . . privately stressed to President Trump” as much. Moreover, “more than sixty courts dismissed cases” brought by Trump and his allies, because “there is no evidence to support accusations of voter fraud.”
In short, Judge Carter concluded, “this plan was a last-ditch attempt to secure the Presidency by any means.” It violated the Constitution and, per Eastman’s own admission, “several provisions of statutory law.” Eastman knew it. Trump knew it. And to this day, the world knows it.Click to expand...