TRUMP INDICTMENTS TO CENTER ON PENCE, FAKE ELECTORS - 7.19.23

EPISODE 250: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: We now have more Trump Trials than court schedule time FOR Trump Trials. Well - this is what we wished for! The SECOND federal set of indictments of The Defendant could be handed up as early as Thursday though Friday is likelier still and the likeliest is Trump being notified Thursday or Friday and then announcing it and we will re-enact early June where we all know in advance and there’s enough time for the sledge gangs to put up all the stages and tents and refreshment stands because the circus is coming to town. We DO know what was in the Jack Smith January 6th Target letter – second in a series of who knows how many (collect them all) -- received Sunday by Trump’s lawyers. It was Rolling Stone that broke it: it listed just three CATEGORIES of federal statutes the government claims Trump violated and is likely to be charged under: Conspiracy to commit offense or defraud the United States; deprivation of rights under color of law; and tampering with a witness, victim or an informant. A few hours later ABC NEWSconfirmed those three categories word-for-word and both reports note what is NOT in the letter. As Rolling Stone puts it quote “the letter does not mention statutes on sedition or insurrection” (and I’ll add there is no category mentioned that could even obliquely house charges of wire fraud for scamming people into donating into this bottomless slush fund ostensibly designed to fund Trump’s effort to overturn a stolen election Jack Smith has clearly been trying to prove Trump knew WASN’T stolen). Perhaps the most important fact about the Target Letter is that it does NOT have to be inclusive and it does not have to spell out charges and that there were counts in the Classified Documents case indictments that were not even obliquely referenced in THAT letter, either.“Trump is the only person named in the letter,” says Rolling Stone’s source. Quoting ABC: “Multiple sources tell ABC News that allies, aides and attorneys for the former president have been working to determine if anyone else received a target letter: “we can’t find anyone” unquote, a source said Tuesday afternoon.” Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer confirms HE did not get a target letter; same from John Eastman’s; no firm answers from Jeffrey Clark, Michael Roman, Boris Epshteyn, or (cough) Mark Meadows, or any other Trump lawyer involved in the fake electors end of the coup attempt. Conventional wisdom had developed that Jack Smith was going to reel in not only Trump but a lot of his legal co-conspirators and that’s one of the problems with Conventional Wisdom. OTOH here's the conventional wisdom: this case centers on faking government documents (the electoral results) and using them to falsely claim it's the law that Pence had to invalidate Biden's certification. B-BLOCK (21:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Well it's just past my first dog Stevie's 11th birthday and given I've done three of these in 24 hours I'm going to devote the rest of this podcast to the extraordinary hour in which I went from a man who had never had a dog and knew he never would, to one who has now had five full timers including three rescues and three others who were here briefly. Hell - I have a lot of wasted time to make up! C-BLOCK (35:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL, PART 2: How Rudy Giuliani fits in the story. And my interview with Stevie. Sorta :-) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.