A legal analysis of the deceit and lies about the latest indictment

As we all know, America's authoritarian radical right, a/k/a/ the radicalized, morally rotted Republican Party, shamelessly lies, slanders and crackpot conspiracies on us all the time nowadays. The tidal wave of lies and deceit about the recent indictment of DJT has begun. The Popehat Report published a nice legal analysis of some lies and deceit that tyrant wannabes are spewing on us. TPR writes: 

People Are Lying To You About The Trump Indictment

National Review Is Lying, For Instance. There Will Be More. Keep An Eye Out.

This Is Complicated, Which Is Not the Same As Unprecedented

Count One, conspiracy to defraud the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. section 371. Section 371 has two parts. It’s most commonly used to charge a conspiracy to violate some specified federal crime: for instance, conspiracy to violate money laundering statutes. But it has another clause for conspiracies “to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose.”

Nobody’s ever been charged with this set of facts because nobody’s ever attempted to overthrow the government by fraud like this before. In that sense, this is “unprecedented.” But in other senses, that term is misleading. Each of these federal criminal laws — which are broad and flexible by design — has been used to charge a wide variety of fraud and misconduct.

Federal courts have upheld convictions under Section 371 for a very broad range of conduct designed to interfere with or obstruct government functions. More than a hundred years ago the Supreme Court said:

The statute is broad enough in its terms to include any conspiracy for the purpose of impairing, obstructing, or defeating the lawful function of any department of government. Assuming, as we have, for it has not been challenged, that this statistical side of the Department of Agriculture is the exercise of a function within the purview of the Constitution, it must follow that any conspiracy which is calculated to obstruct or impair its efficiency and destroy the value of its operations and reports as fair, impartial, and reasonably accurate would be to defraud the United States by depriving it of its lawful right and duty of promulgating or diffusing the information so officially acquired in the way and at the time required by law or departmental regulation.

Passionate Partisans Are Lying To You And Will Keep Lying To You

Let’s take the editors of National Review. I’m singling them out from many people lying about the law, because they are prominent, we can expect better, and they deserve it.

First, the misleading. They say:

Finally, Smith is charging Trump with a civil-rights violation, on the theory that he sought to counteract the votes of Americans in contested states and based on a post–Civil War statute designed to punish violent intimidation and forcible attacks against blacks attempting to exercise their right to vote. What Trump did, though reprehensible, bears no relation to what the statute covers.

[That] statement is materially and intentionally misleading because it does not reveal to the National Review’s readers that the United States Department of Justice has prosecuted election fraud as a violation of Section 241 for generations and has been repeatedly upheld by the courts in doing so. The National Review describes the charge as “remarkable.” Without adding that the charge is based on a widely accepted interpretation of Section 241 [conspiracy to interfere with the exercise of constitutional or statutory rights] upheld by the courts, this argument is deceitful.

The National Review also flat-out lies. It says:

Here, it is not even clear that Smith has alleged anything that the law forbids. The indictment relates in detail Trump’s deceptions, but that doesn’t mean they constitute criminal fraud. As the Supreme Court reaffirmed just a few weeks ago, fraud in federal criminal law is a scheme to swindle victims out of money or tangible property. Mendacious rhetoric in seeking to retain political office is damnable — and, again, impeachable — but it’s not criminal fraud, although that is what Smith has charged.

But National Review is lying to you about the Supreme Court and about what’s charged here. The Special Counsel charged Trump with defrauding the United States under Section 371. The Supreme Court and lower courts have repeatedly and specifically ruled that Section 371 doesn’t require a scheme to take money or property. National Review is referring to the latest in a line of cases interpreting a completely different statute, the wire fraud statute, that includes a “money or property” requirement in its text ....

The PHR article is long and it lays out some analysis for the other other laws that DJT is accused of violating, (i) conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding in violation of 18 U.S.C. section 1512(k), and (ii) obstructing an official proceeding under 18 U.S.C. section 1512(c) — which applies to someone who “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so”.  

Qs: At this point in time, can "passionate partisans" (as TPR puts it) who knowingly deceive and lie about the indictment and/or the law be fairly called tyrant wannabes? If they are merely ignorant but wrong, does that make any difference, i.e., does the culpability and implications of dark free speech vary depending on the source and its motives?

A popehat