The unsealing last week of the government’s case against Donald Trump for trying to overturn his 2020 election loss was a gift to 2024 voters, reviving attention to perhaps the single biggest reason he shouldn’t be restored to office. New and sordid details, in particular from former Vice President Mike Pence, freshen what is mostly a familiar account of Trump’s post-election plotting to stay in power. It’s damning, if not so completely as a trial would have been (and, I’d wager, a conviction), had Trump not succeeded in his delaying tactics all the way to the oh-so-friendly Supreme Court.
But the filing made public Tuesday in Washington’s federal court is valuable, too, as a reminder of what Trump was doing in the months before the 2020 election. Chillingly, his activities back then — falsely alleging myriad ways Democrats would cheat, suggesting he’d challenge the result if he lost to Joe Biden — parallel to what he is doing now as he campaigns against Kamala Harris.
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Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
Here’s how special counsel Jack Smith opens the narrative against Trump: “Although his multiple conspiracies began after election day in 2020, the defendant laid the groundwork for his crimes well before then.” Smith goes on: “He refused to say whether he would accept the election results, insisted that he could lose the election only because of fraud, falsely claimed that mail-in ballots were inherently fraudulent, and asserted that only votes counted by election day were valid.”
Voters, be forewarned. We’re watching a sequel. And they’re usually worse than the original.
The government provides examples of Trump’s 2020 campaign antics that are all too familiar now. There was his response in a July 2020 interview, when Fox News’ Chris Wallace (now at CNN) repeatedly asked if he would accept the results of the election. He’d “have to see,” the then-president said. “It depends.”
Just last Tuesday, a reporter in battleground Wisconsin asked the election-denying candidate, “Do you trust the process this time around?” Trump: “I’ll let you know in about 33 days.” In his debate against Biden, Trump said, after the moderator’s third attempt at asking the question, that he’d accept the outcome if it were a “fair and legal and good election.”
Just as in 2020 and 2016, Trump always has an “if.” Translation: “If I win.”
Let’s pause to remember American Politics B.T. (Before Trump): We campaign reporters never thought to ask a presidential candidate, or a contender for any office, if they’d accept the election result. And if we had, I daresay no serious politician would have suggested they wouldn’t.
Back to the parallels between pre-election 2020 and 2024. Smith’s filing against Trump recalled that throughout his 2020 campaign, he told the MAGA faithful just what he told a national TV audience at the Republican National Convention that year: “The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election.”
Four years later, at a rally in Erie, Pa., last Sunday, Trump ranted that Democrats were like criminals in “the way they cheat at elections.” In a recent, and typical, fundraising email, he told backers, “Kamala ordered her Silicon Valley henchmen to censor free speech & rig the election.” And his response to the release of the government filing? “They rigged the election.”
Then there’s Trump’s lies about mail-in ballots. In July 2020, the Smith filing notes, “despite having voted by mail himself earlier that year,” he tweeted that because of mail-in votes, “2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history.”
Trump now echoes that lie at nearly every rally and in frequent social media posts, even as his party desperately tries to get its members to vote early by mail — including at rallies where Trump assails the practice. He recently told reporters that mail-in ballots are “a whole big scam,” and the same day posted that Democrats were (legally) getting Americans living overseas to vote by mail, adding, “Actually, they are getting ready to CHEAT!”
Trump repeatedly condemns Democrats for “election interference.” He lies that they’re getting noncitizen migrants to vote, a vanishingly rare occurrence that is against federal law. NBC News on Thursday reported more than a dozen examples of Trump’s evidence-free allegations of fraud before a single vote was cast.
Déjà vu all over again.
Thanks should go to Smith and to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who unsealed most of his filing. The revival of the story of Trump’s 2020 election subversion and incitement of a bloody insurrection underscores America’s predicament: Unless Trump is defeated in the 2024 election, not only will he likely never be held criminally accountable for his alleged crimes, but, restored to the presidency, he’d be more emboldened to ignore all guardrails of democracy and the rule of law.
On Thursday, Never Trump stalwart and exiled Republican royalty Rep. Liz Cheney appeared onstage with Harris in Ripon, Wis., the pre-Civil War birthplace of the antislavery Republican Party in 1854.
“In this election, putting patriotism ahead of partisanship is not an aspiration. It is our duty,” Cheney said. “I ask all of you here and everyone listening across this great country to join us. I ask you to meet this moment. I ask you to stand in truth, to reject the depraved cruelty of Donald Trump.”
I’m not so naive as to think any words will move Trump’s devoted followers. And yet we can hope that such sentiments as Cheney’s can influence others. Because Trump must not only be defeated, but beaten so decisively that he cannot plausibly contest the election’s outcome.