Jack Goldsmith has an op-ed in today’s Times in which he argues that the prosecutions of Donald Trump are likely to have terrible consequences for the country, regardless of the bad acts he may have committed. The gist of his argument is straightforward: Prosecution will only further delegitimize the Department of Justice for a large segment of the population, further criminalize the political process and open the Pandora’s Box of Presidents prosecuting their predecessors. I struggled with this piece a bit because I think Goldsmith is a good faith interlocutor. But while the sentiment is genuine the reasoning is sloppy and derives most of its strength from simply ignoring the most obvious counterarguments. 

This core weakness begins right in the first sentence. 

Like many who write this kind of op-ed, Goldsmith starts by saying that while it might be emotionally “satisfying” to see Trump held to account for his misdeeds, the damage greatly outweighs whatever benefit it brings. This is a dodge that turns out to be more consequential than one vaguely condescending throwaway line. In a highly polarized political culture of course there will be people celebrating. But the reason such indictments are important, really critical, is that a republican government cannot exist if electoral losers routinely use fraud, state power and violence to reject the outcome of free and fair elections. Accepting electoral defeat and orderly transfers of power is the glue that allows a republican government to function. 

I’ve been returning to this John Eastman interview again and again. In a way it doesn’t deserve so much attention. This is a shallow-thinking, casually self-justifying, fundamentally dishonest man. But his central role in America’s profound political crisis — one that is ongoing — makes him and his arguments important. What interests me are the sophisms he uses to justify his own criminality, attacks on the democratic process and more by projecting his own bad acts on to his foes.

The structure is consistently the same. Assert enemies were about to do X in the cause of the Deep State, wokeness and anti-Americanism so Eastman had to do X to preserve America. In a way he takes to the nation-state level the argument of every guy who blows someone’s head off and justifies it by saying he was afraid they were about to hurt him. Beyond these “I had to do it first” claims there’s another theme: a lot of railing against coastal intellectuals from the Eastman crew’s headquarters in Southern California while using layer upon layer of high-falutin’ fancy talk that falls apart when you kick any tire.

I want to return to this revelatory interview with co-conspirator John Eastman, the last portion of which was published Thursday by Tom Klingenstein, the Chairman of the Trumpite Claremont Institute and then highlighted by our Josh Kovensky. There’s a lot of atmospherics in this interview, a lot of bookshelf-lined tweedy gentility mixed with complaints about OSHA regulations and Drag Queen story hours. But the central bit comes just over half way through the interview when Eastman gets into the core justification and purpose for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and overthrow the constitutional order itself. He invokes the Declaration of Independence and says quite clearly that yes, we were trying to overthrow the government and argues that they were justified because of the sheer existential threat America was under because of the election of Joe Biden.

January 6th conspirators have spent more than two years claiming either that nothing really happened at all in the weeks leading up to January 6th or that it was just a peaceful protest that got a bit out of hand or that they were just making a good faith effort to follow the legal process. Eastman cuts through all of this and makes clear they were trying to overthrow (“abolish”) the government; they were justified in doing so; and the warrant for their actions is none other than the Declaration of Independence itself.

There’s a big flutter in GOP primary election news today that Dead Bounce Ron (formerly known as Ron DeSantis) is edging his way up to denouncing the Big Lie. In Iowa today he declared that “all those theories that were put out did not prove to be true” and, even worse, that they were “unsubstantiated.” TPM Reader AB told me it could be a tipping point: “If the other candidates finally call Trump out as a loser, and he has to run on the lame ass claim he actually won within his own party, it could pierce his armor.” While noting that it could just be wishful thinking, he insisted that “once Trump gets branded a loser by members of his own party he could go down fast.”

As you’ll see from the first quote, DBR leveled the accusation in the passive voice, both substantively and grammatically. He didn’t even use the guy’s name! Indeed, as per usual, the purported swipes at Trump tell us not so much about any true slackening of Trump’s domination but rather the vast extent of it.

There’s this strong tendency with some people, that whenever you point to any comment from former Vice President Mike Pence that’s non-terrible, to immediately chime in, “It’s too late!” “He had his chance!” “Pathetic!”

But really all those things are a given and yet it’s still worth noting even his most trivial shifts in the direction of salvaging some frail shadow of dignity. I say this all to preface the observation that Trump’s coup indictment and his own conspicuous role in the indictment narrative and chain of evidence seem finally to have convinced Pence that this is a divide he simply cannot straddle. You’re either on Team Coup or you’re not.

Some quotes from the 48 hours after the indictment was handed down.

I deliberately avoided getting pulled into today’s play-by-play and drama. I kept up on it by dropping in on our team’s live blog. But with the day over, every account and image I’ve seen of today’s events reads like a man, yes, overcome by rage but even more overcome by fear. His Truth Social platform has a bit of an air of The Wizard of Oz, bellowing and menace. But out from behind the curtain he’s a much smaller figure.

The simple fact is that if Donald Trump isn’t elected in November 2024, there’s a good chance he’ll spend a good part or most of the rest of his life in prison. That would terrify anyone. Especially someone who experiences powerlessness, being dominated as a kind of death.

A desperate DeSantis showed up in New Hampshire for a three day trip. On federal employees, he told attendees at a campaign barbecue in Rye: “We are going to start slitting throats on Day One.”

I’m glad David hit this point in The Morning Memo. In addition to the Times article he references, the Times also published a piece by Tom Edsall (the writer who perhaps most consistently drives me crazy) casting the Trump indictment as part of a larger story of “the left’s” turn away from free speech. That premise about free speech is a complicated matter in its own right. But, as David notes, it has nothing to do with this case. The case has nothing to do with platforms or hate speech or misinformation or anything else. This is a case of a group of individuals taking coordinated and affirmative non-speech steps (i.e., a conspiracy) to fraudulently change the results of a lawful election.

Ron Brownstein: “With polls showing that most Republican voters still believe the election was stolen from Trump, that the January 6 riot was legitimate protest, and that Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 results did not violate the law or threaten the constitutional system, the United States faces a stark and unprecedented situation. For the first time in the nation’s modern history, the dominant faction in one of our two major parties has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to accept antidemocratic means to advance its interests.”

You can read the whole piece here at The Atlantic.

I mentioned this in my conversation with Josh Kovensky in our special edition of the podcast this morning. But I want to expand on it here. Jeff Clark comes off as a bit of a dweeb. And yes, I’m talking about his physical appearance. Some of my best friends are dweebs, of course, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In most cases I wouldn’t mention a person’s physical appearance. But I do so in this case because I think it’s shaped people’s reaction to this part of the story. Because he’s a bit nebbishy looking and because the whole plan was so crazy many people have looked on Clark as a kind of ridiculous figure.

Yet this comment about the Insurrection Act is a reminder that there’s nothing funny about the guy. He had a plan and was fairly cavalier about his plan to … let’s be direct about it, murder countless numbers of Americans who weren’t willing to let their Republic be torn away from them.

This was their plan: stop the count, allow Trump to remain President and then when everyone freaks out declare martial law and kill a bunch of people in order to overawe the civilian population and force people to accept it. That’s really the plan. This is a dark, evil, degenerate mindset, all for the purpose of retaining power against Constitution and law.