Dissident Politics: News bits: A ruling against DJT; Another warning; Christian nationalist “history”

The lawsuits against DJT are producing a lot of filings by the parties and court responses. Some of the documents merit a mention. DJT keeps denying the charges and files motions to have the cases against him dismissed. The prosecution has to keep rebutting those filings, and then the court has to decide. In this 48 page document, the federal DC trial court rejects DJT’s most recent motion to dismiss the entire federal insurrection case based on Presidential immunity, (“Immunity Motion”) and on constitutional grounds. At this point, one can now expect DJT to appeal to the DC federal appeals court. DJT faces four 1/6 insurrection-related felony counts in this lawsuit. Some of the decision and my comments follow.

The judge: At the motion to dismiss stage, the court assumes the truth of the Indictment’s allegations.

This points out the fact that it is still early in the case. Here, the court says that the facts and allegations in Jack Smith’s indictments are taken as true. That shifts the burden to DJT to show that the contested facts and allegations are false. Key matters at issue include:

1. DJT organized electors as part of his attempt to convince legislators not to certify the 2020 election. Dang, it’s gonna be real hard to disprove that.

2. Despite having lost the 2020 election, DJT “was determined to remain in power,” (quoting Smith’s indictment) so “for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won.” Whew, that’s gonna be real hard to disprove.

3. DJT “knew that [those claims] were false,” but “repeatedly and widely disseminated them anyway—to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.” Yikes! That's gonna be a stinker to disprove because there’s a buttload of evidence that DJT was told over and over that he lost and also evidence he knew it by saying so.

Anyway, the court drones on and on and on like this. There’s no way in hell that DJT can disprove squat about the allegations that Smith levels at him.

The judge: Because a court’s use of its supervisory power to dismiss an indictment directly encroaches upon the fundamental role of the grand jury, dismissal is granted only in unusual circumstances.

Whatever immunities a sitting President may enjoy, the United States has only one Chief Executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong “get-out-of-jail-free” pass. Former Presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability. Defendant may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction, and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office.

I point this out because collectively it says that what DJT is trying to do isn’t easily done in normal circumstances. This is important because the trial court is where facts are found. Appeals courts do not look at facts the trial court has found. So when DJT appeals, there will have to be legal errors, not fact errors the appeal will be based on. Given the record here, DJT is really screwed on the facts, which are rock solid and mostly in the public domain. That is unusual. He can only pray the trial court judge made a significant legal error. The judge, Tanya Chutkan, doesn’t strike me as sloppy.

For giggles, the tail end of the judge’s legal analysis shows the desperate situation DJT is in:

The judge: Finally, Defendant argues that, for the Indictment to comply with due process, the prosecution bears the burden to “provide examples where similar conduct was found criminal.” Under that theory, novel criminal acts would never be prosecuted.

In other words, DJT actually argues that he cannot be prosecuted for breaking those laws at least sort of like he did because no one before him has broken those laws about the same way he broke them. In other words, if a criminal finds a new way to break a law, they get off Scott-free for being creative! MAGA!! DJT’s attorneys deserve credit for their artistic creativity! 👏. . . . ☹️ . . . . ☠️ . . . .👎

At the moment, it’s pretty clear that DJT is guilty. The open question is whether he will be able to (i) delay the federal trial long enough to get elected and then shut down the DoJ lawsuit against himself if he or some other MAGA Republican is re-elected or elected, or (ii) pardon himself if he or some other MAGA Republican is re-elected or elected.

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A NYT opinion by Frank Bruni, It’s Not the Economy. It’s the Fascism., opines (not paywalled off):

To spend more than a little time toggling between news sites of different bents is to notice a fierce debate over the American economy right now. Which matters more — the easing of inflation or the persistence of prices that many people can’t afford or accept? Low unemployment or high interest rates? Is the intensity of Americans’ bad feelings about the economy a sane response or a senseless funk estranged from their actual financial circumstances?

On such questions may the 2024 election turn, so the litigation of them is no surprise. It’s not just the economy, stupid. It’s the public relations war over it.

But never in my adult lifetime has that battle seemed so agonizingly beside the point, such a distraction from the most important questions before us. In 2024, it’s not the economy. It’s the democracy. It’s the decency. It’s the truth.

I’m not talking about what will influence voters most. I’m talking about what should. And I write that knowing that I’ll be branded an elitist whose good fortune puts him out of touch with the concerns of people living paycheck to paycheck or priced out of housing and medical care. I am lucky — privileged, to use and own the word of the moment — and I’m an imperfect messenger, as blinded by the peculiarities of his experience in the world as others are by theirs.

But I don’t see any clear evidence that a change of presidents would equal an uptick in Americans’ living standards. And 2024, in any case, isn’t shaping up to be a normal election with normal stakes or anything close to that, at least not if Donald Trump winds up with the Republican presidential nomination — the likeliest outcome, to judge by current conditions. Not if he’s beaten by a Republican who had to buy into his fictions or emulate his ugliness to claim the prize. Not if the Republican Party remains hostage to the extremism on display in the House over these past few months.

That assessment isn’t Trump derangement syndrome. It’s straightforward observation, consistent with Liz Cheney’s new memoir, “Oath and Honor,” at which my Times colleague Peter Baker got an advance peek. Cheney describes House Republicans’ enduring surrender to Trump as cowardly and cynical, and she’s cleareyed on what his nomination in 2024 would mean. “We will be voting on whether to preserve our republic,” she writes. “As a nation, we can endure damaging policies for a four-year term. But we cannot survive a president willing to terminate our Constitution.”

I post different warnings from different people because they often see things I do not and they articulate their worries in ways differently and usually better than I can. I don’t mean to be mindlessly repetitive. But giving voice to different ways of seeing and speaking about the grave danger of bigoted, kleptocratic tyranny strikes me as the best I can do to fight off the gathering darkness. Could I do better? If so, how?

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A really long piece by Politico does a deep dive into some influential Christian crackpots who shamelessly lie about history to deceive, manipulate and grift people. They use dark free speech to shamelessly attack and betray secular democracy, and civil liberties, the rule of law and actual history. Even if they have been outed as liars and ignorant fantasists, tens of thousands of adult Americans revere and trust these deeply immoral, grifter-liars:

The Bogus Historians Who Teach Evangelicals
They Live in a Theocracy

A new book on the Christian right reveals how a series of unscrupulous leaders turned politics into a powerful and lucrative gospel

.... they had come out by the hundreds, decked out in patriotic attire this October evening in 2021, to hear from a man who was introduced to them as “America’s greatest living historian.” They had come for David Barton. And so had I.

It would be of little use to tell the folks around me — the people of my conservative hometown — that Barton wasn’t a real historian. They wouldn’t care that his lone academic credential was a bachelor’s degree in religious education from Oral Roberts University. It wouldn’t matter that Barton’s 2012 book on Thomas Jefferson was recalled by Thomas Nelson, the world’s largest Christian publisher, for its countless inaccuracies, or that a panel of 10 conservative Christian academics who reviewed Barton’s body of work in the aftermath ripped the entirety of his scholarship to shreds. It would not bother the congregants of FloodGate Church to learn that they were listening to a man whose work was found by one of America’s foremost conservative theologians to include “embarrassing factual errors, suspiciously selective quotes, and highly misleading claims.”

All this would be irrelevant to the people around me because David Barton was one of them. He believed the separation of church and state was a myth. He believed the time had come for evangelicals to reclaim their rightful place atop the nation’s governmental and cultural institutions. Hence the hero’s welcome Barton received when he rolled into FloodGate with his “American Restoration Tour.”

Throughout his decades of public life — working for the Republican Party, becoming a darling of Fox News, advising politicians such as new House Speaker Mike Johnson, launching a small propaganda empire, carving out a niche as the American right’s chosen peddler of nostalgic alternative facts — Barton had never been shy about his ultimate aims. He is an avowed Christian nationalist who favors theocratic rule; moreover, he is a so-called Dominionist, someone who believes Christians should control not only the government but also the media, the education system, and other cultural institutions. Barton and his ilk are invested less in advancing individual policies than they are in reconceiving our system of self-government in its totality, claiming a historical mandate to rule society with biblical dogma just as the founders supposedly intended.