Former President Donald Trump’s legal challenges could be mounting as federal charges linked to the events of January 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol appear imminent.
The target letter Trump received from Special Counsel Jack Smith referred to three statutes that may comprise the basis for an indictment, The New York Times reported.
One of these is a Reconstruction-era law that was devised to suppress the Ku Klux Klan from intimidating black voters.
Under this law, it is a crime for two or more people to “injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate any person … with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege” granted by the U.S. Constitution.
The Supreme Court previously upheld the statute’s use in matters involving election-related crimes as recently as 1974, when fake ballots were cast in West Virginia, reported Forbes. The Justice Department’s manual on election offenses notes that the law “has been an important statutory tool in election crime prosecutions.”
It has been used sparingly by federal authorities. However, a social media influencer named Douglass Mackey was recently convicted under the statute for sharing memes suggesting that voters could cast their ballots by text message or social media posts during the 2016 election.
Trump could be charged with having “prevent[ed] or hinder[ed]” the free exercise of the rights of voters who expected their votes to be certified due to his alleged attempts to encourage alternate electors in states he lost in November 2020, according to legal experts with Just Security.
As suggested by Smith’s target letter, however, the Justice Department may choose more conventional charges. The allegations in the letter indicate the former president could be charged with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and obstruction of an official proceeding, reported Forbes.
If Trump is indicted, Smith could elect to follow the rhetorical strategy he deployed in the classified documents case. The indictment in that case was written in the style of an in-depth expose of Trump’s alleged misdeeds.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Trump called Smith “deranged” and the effort to indict him a form of election interference.
Another issue at hand is the setting of a trial date, which could fall very close to the November 2024 presidential election, as The Hill reported. Trump already has a trial set to start on May 20, 2024, for the classified documents case. Any additional trial would have to be scheduled after that.
As the current leading candidate for the Republican nomination, Trump could find be placed on trial while campaigning in the general election.
It is possible that Trump could be convicted of a crime and still assume the office of the presidency, though this would be uncharted legal territory, reported The Wall Street Journal.
