Also on today’s menu:
Bringing Back Local News Coverage
Sununu: State Must Charge Interest On Overpayments
Alleged Rapist Calls Sheriff ‘Disgrace To Justice’
The big news for today’s discussion is the federal indictment of former president Donald Trump for attempting to prevent voters from determining the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Former vice-president Michael Pence reacted to the news by saying the charges serve as an important reminder that “anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States”.
Former Republican congressman Will Hurd maintains that Trump is running for president to “stay out of prison” and that Trump’s denial of the 2020 election results showed he was “unfit for office”. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said “the disgrace [of the January 6 insurrection] falls most on Donald Trump” and that he brought “shame to his presidency”. Former two-term Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson also said Trump had “disqualified himself from ever being president again”.
Other Republican candidates for president were less willing to uphold the Constitution. Vivek Ramaswamy called the indictment “un-American” and promised to pardon Trump if elected president. Senator Tim Scott claimed that the justice department had been weaponized and used against political opponents.
In fact, it was ordinary citizens serving on the grand jury that heard the allegations and agreed that the facts justified bringing charges against Trump. Trump loyalists will say that the choice of Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, appointed by President Obama in 2014, to hear the case proves political bias; but, in fact, judges are randomly selected. A Trump appointee is hearing the case of stolen government documents through the same random selection process.
The evidence against Trump is built upon testimony from fellow Republicans.
The best way to fully understand the indictment is by reading the entire document. However, being 45 pages long, one would have to set aside a block of time to go through the charges. Former federal attorney Joyce Vance provides a good summary for those who cannot immediately review the whole thing, but she advises, “You’ll understand it better if you read it for yourself. The indictment is written in a manner that makes it clear prosecutors wanted it to be comprehensible to anyone who wanted to read it.”
The prosecution is careful to explain that, while Trump “spread lies” that he knew false, those lies could be legally covered by the First Amendment until they became tainted by fraud. He could legally challenge the election results in court and ask for recounts, but not pursue “unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.” That undermines any claims Trump’s attorneys could bring to allege that prosecutors are going after Trump for his speech, “effectively gut[ting] the First Amendment defense Trump has been floating for the last two years.”
Of the three main categories — defrauding the United States by interfering with the lawful processes that are used to collect, count, and certify the presidential election, obstructing the January 6 congressional proceeding in which the results are counted and certified, and attempting to defeat citizens’ right to vote and have their votes counted — the third category is the most troubling. As historian Heather Cox Richardson observes, a conviction on that count — interfering with “our right to consent to the government under which we live — a right the Founders articulated in the Declaration of Independence — should deter others from trying to do the same.”
Should Trump be convicted, he faces serious penalties: a five-year maximum jail term for interfering with the vote-counting; 20 years for the two charges of obstructing the certification of the election results; and 10 years for violating citizens’ right to vote. Those are maximums, but even lesser sentences would “lock him up” for some time.
Bringing Back Local News Coverage
The Keene Sentinel and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript are launching a pilot program to train citizens to help cover local government events and meetings, part of an effort to boost community participation and government accountability.
Newsrooms that have laid off local reporters amidst consolidations, restructuring, and tight budgets in recent years have left their remaining reporters with too much to cover in a meaningful way. The two newspapers in the southwestern regions of the state plan to call upon community members to attend government meetings and assist local journalists in covering the news.
The new “civic documenters” will record municipal meetings and take detailed notes, which will help the reporters with local news stories. “We think it will help from an accountability standpoint that we will be able to keep tabs on municipal operations that we are not able to now,” said Cecily Weisburgh, co-executive editor of The Sentinel. “It’s always been difficult to try and be everywhere all at once, but it is made more difficult by all of the different demands on the newsroom’s staff time.”
Sununu: State Must Charge Interest On Overpayments
Governor Chris Sununu has vetoed Senate Bill 42, which would have prevented the state from collecting interest on overpayments it made in unemployment compensation. The bill still would allow the state to charge interest to unemployment compensation recipients who intentionally commit fraud.
In his veto message, Sununu said, “Without the accrual of interest, individuals do not have an incentive to pay these funds back. In other words, this bill would allow ineligible beneficiaries to get an interest-free loan on the backs of New Hampshire employers.”
The state made $6 million in overpayments between 2017 and 2022 and, without the new legislation, it will be able to charge interest on the money it mistakenly paid out.
Alleged Rapist Calls Sheriff ‘Disgrace To Justice’
Sheriff Norman McFadyen says that Nicholas Rossi, a 35-year-old American fugitive who allegedly faked his own death and now claims to be Arthur Knight and a victim of mistaken identity, can be extradited from Scotland to his homeland to face rape charges in Utah. A final decision on his extradition rests with Scottish ministers.
Rossi was being treated for COVID-19 at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow when authorities arrested him on December 13, 2021. BBC Scotland established that Rossi was a registered sex offender in the United States and spoke to his ex-wife, Kathryn Heckendorn, who said he had physically and psychologically abused her during their seven-month marriage.
Rossi appeared in the Edinburgh Sheriff Court via videolink from Edinburgh’s Saughton Prison on August 2, slumped in his wheelchair, and as Mungo Bovey KC was asking for his client to be excused, Rossi raised his head and shouted at the sheriff, calling him a “disgrace to justice”.
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