Heather Cox Richardson is a history professor at Boston College whose “Letters from an American” daily Substack newsletter place contemporary events within a historical context. USA Today named her one of its Women of the Year honorees last year.
Joyce Vance is a former United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama and now a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer in Law (criminal justice reform, criminal procedure, and civil rights are her specialties) at the University of Alabama School of Law.
We are borrowing from a couple of things they wrote when our immediately former president was arraigned on criminal charges on August 3.
Donald Trump is charged with crimes linked to the January 6, 2021 events at the United States Capitol. Richardson cites the federal prosecutor for Washington D. C. is observing that Trump is the 1,078th person charged with federal crimes connected to those events. And he was arraigned in the same courtroom where many of those 1,077 others have appeared, or will appear.
She also cites Yale history professor Timothy Snyder, responding to defense claims that the charges infringe on Trump’s constitutionally-protected right to free speech even if his remarks were repeated lies. The charges, however, appear not to attack his free speech remarks but instead focus on the greater issue of his illegal efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 election.
Snyder thinks we should not be distracted from the real point of the charges: “That Trump will be tried for his coup attempt is not a violation of his rights. It is the fulfillment of his rights. It is the grace of the American republic. In other systems, when your coup attempt fails, what follows is not a trial.”
We would add that in most failed coup attempts we have read about in our long life, what follows is a quick assumption of guilt and often a quick dispatching of what is called justice.
Richardson also notes in that day’s “letter,” that the arraignment took place on the same days that Republicans on the House Oversight Committee released a transcript of their interview with a Hunter Biden business associate that GOP committee members claim proves then Vice-President Biden was personally involved in some shady business deals involving Hunter. She says the interview transcript undermines the Republicans’ claims although they’re overlooking that issue.
(If you want to read Richardsons full “letter,” you can find it at:
August 3, 2023 – by Heather Cox Richardson (substack.com)
Joyce Vance’s column, “Civil Discourse” says that, “Many people…have become inured to Trump’s behavior…A real problem with Trump is that there is just so much of it that he is exhausting. For some people it is easier to tune it out than it is to try to keep all of it in focus.” But she says the people need to re-connect and follow the process by which these charges are dealt with “so they can assess the evidence and the proceedings for themselves…It is every American’s obligation to follow this process.”
One subtle thing she mentions is that in court, the former president is just “Mr. Trump,” a designation that applies generally to (male) trial participants. No matter what your station is life is, or has been, you are equal in the eyes of the law to every other person who has gone through this process…Donald Trump was treated like anyone else in his position would be. Investigation having found that there is sufficient evidence of significant crimes, he has been charged by a grand jury. He now has the same opportunity to defend himself that anyone would have.”
She explains that, “Arraignment is usually a perfunctory matter, as it was for Trump… It is governed by Rule 10 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which requires that a defendant be advised of the charges against him and enter a plea to them. The traditional plea at the time of arraignment is one of not guilty. The defendant has not yet seen the government’s evidence against him—there is no informed basis for knowing whether the government can prove what it has charged. So it is no surprise that the plea Donald Trump entered…was one of not guilty.”
But this arraignment has an unusual twist, she says. While judges normally tell the defendants not to commit any new crimes while they are free on the streets, this instruction was different. The judge warned Trump not to try to influence a juror or witnesses. If he violates that admonition, he could find himself sleeping on government-issues sheets at night and wearing government-issued clothes.
Was Trump listening to the Judge’s admonition? Vance thinks he wasn’t. A day after he was released on pre-trial bond, Trump went on Truth Social and said, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”
Vance says on X (the former Twitter) that Trump crossed the line. “Free speech is one thing, but this is over the line. As a prosecutor, I’d be sorely tempted tomake a motion to removke Trump’s pre-trial bond and put him in custody. Let him explain it to the judge.”
Newsweek reports that Trump spokesperson has belittled Vance as “a moron (who) loses sleep because she has Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
So, apparently, does former prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, the former lead prosecutor against former Trump aides Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, who says—in what until recently would be called a tweet—“Not addressing this will only cause it to metastasize with undue deadly risks.”
A Trump spokesman, not surprisingly, defended the threat as “the definition of political speech,” and then went into full Trump irrational rant, saying it “was in response to the RINO, China-loving, dishonest special interest groups and super PACs, like the ones funded by the Koch brothers and the Club for Growth.”
Forget getting out the hip boots, folks. It’s so deep that you’ll need a full body suit.
Friday night, assistants to federal prosecutor Jack Smith filed a notice with U. S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan expressing concerns Trump might improperly share evidence in the case on Truth Social. They urged the judge to order Trump to keep any evidence given to his lawyers by the prosecutors away from public view.
The judge ordered Trump’s lawyers to respond by 5 p.m. today. When they asked for a three-day extension, she refused to let them have it—which set off another Trump tantrum aimed directly at the judge—not a wise thing even from a self-proclaimed stable genius: “There is no way I can get a fair trial with the judge ‘assigned’ to the ridiculous Freedom of Speech/Fair Elections case. Everybody knows this, and so does she!” It was all in capital letters, followed by more capitals announcing plans to seek a new judge and a new location for the trial.
We will be watching to see if the old saying manifests itself—Don’t poke a tiger with a twig.
The prosecution says it wants a speedy trial. Normally it’s the defendant that wants a speedy trial. But in this case, it’s to Mr. Trump’s political advantage to stretch the process as far as possible.
Both Richardson and Vance believe the most important charge against Trump is the final one—the one Vance says “tears at my heart….the conspiracy by an American president to take awy our right to vote…and to have one’s vote counted.”
Vance concludes that a dozen people in the courtroom will decide Trump’s fate but all of us are a “jury in the court of public opinion.”
“The outcome of the 2024 election really is every inch the most important election of our lives. The indictment itself is not evidence, but it lays out the narrative of the facts we saw unfold before our eyes and helps us make sense of the crimes that Trump is charged with committing. It is an important document for every American to read. Not everyone will, but that’s where we can come in, sharing details, and helping people around us, understand the procedures that begin today. It’s the real work of saving the republic.”
You can read her full Civil Discourse insights at Arraignment – Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance (substack.com)
Federal court rules do not allow live broadcast coverage of trials. But the standard is a rule, not a law and the exigent circumstances of this case, which will be a transcendant event in American history and will involve questions basic to the survival of our republic, should create an exception to the rule so that all of us canbe witnesses to these evens. It is of such overwhelming importance that our grandchildren’s grandchildren should be able to see and hear how our generation responded to this crisis.
We agree that the 2024 election will be “the most important election of our lives.” It is far more important to all of us and to our nation as a whole that all of us pay close attention to the truth that emerges in the trial of 1708 than it is to give heed to anything the interpreters of that testimony on the left and the right want us to think.