Correcting what “everybody knows” about President Trump

By Robert G. Marshall ( bio - articles - email ) | Nov 08, 2024

Editor’s Note: This extensively-researched article by Bob Marshall demonstrates that a great many of the anti-Trump political claims in the media over the past several years have been based on either half-truths or outright lies. Especially in light of Phil Lawler’s post-election commentary just two days ago (Saving the world from democracy), Bob Marshall’s analysis of the questions surrounding President Trump’s allegations of fraud in the 2020 presidential election (and other related topics, such as the disturbances at the Capitol) provides needed data to clarify the record. It should remind everyone how important it is—and particularly so for Christians—to draw conclusions based on solid evidence, and to be continuously aware of how little of the truth is told in the media controlled by our dominant culture today. This analysis offers a very valuable lesson about public discourse in a society in flight from truth (which, after all, is simply the mind’s grasp of reality).—Jeff Mirus

Voters in the 2024 elections told NBC News’ Exit Poll that among five issues, 34% “said democracy mattered most” over other concerns, while 31% picked the economy, 14% abortion, 11% immigration, and just 4% foreign policy. But if voters nationwide picked Democrat candidates to remedy the supposed ills of democracy as identified by VP Kamala Harris and members of the Congressional Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 Capitol civil disturbance, they chose exactly the wrong group of candidates to remedy the situation.

Here’s why:

The rationale of the Democrat Party’s claim as the self-appointed protector of American “democracy” is that Donald Trump intended to somehow undermine “democracy” through allegedly fomenting insurrection and sedition on January 6, 2021 at the nations’ Capitol by sending masses of rebels to disrupt the Electoral College count of presidential electors. The Democrats followed this in a fit of outrage with a second Impeachment of Donald Trump.

The background for this pretense can be found by examining the imaginative legal “reasoning” in H. Res 24 (the Articles of Impeachment) and the conclusions of the J6 Committee report against Donald Trump.

The second 14th Amendment Impeachment ploy, which some still thought they could revive should Donald Trump be declared the winner of the November 5 election, was the culmination of a Democrat led effort to use the state and federal judicial systems to keep Trump off the 2024 presidential ballot (see The Case Against Trump: A Guide). These efforts included:

• A 2022 New York civil case for allegedly inflating the value of property used as loan collateral;
• A sexual assault and defamation case revived in 2023 from the 1990’s;
• 2023 Manhattan D.A. felony charges for supposedly paying sex-scandal hush money;
• A Department of Justice (DOJ) 2023-24 case charging Trump with 37 felonies for removing documents from the White House when he left office, which resembles what Hillary Clinton did, but she was never charged;
• Futon County Georgia, 2023 election subversion;
• DOJ August, 2024 Election subversion felonies.

To the complete surprise and great annoyance of Democrats, none of these concocted court efforts derailed Trump’s eventual nomination.

The political nuclear option of Democrats imaginatively charging Trump with fomenting insurrection as the basis of an impeachment of Trump after he left office was based on a provision of the Civil War era’s 14th Amendment woven into a plot line that Hollywood script writers would laugh at. The Constitution provides that the normal penalty for impeachment is “removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of Honor, Trust or Profit under the United States.” But since Donald Trump was not the President when Congress impeached him a second time he could not be removed from office, so the real purpose was to make him ineligible to run for president in 2024.

The Senate, which tries Impeachments, voted on 2/13/2021 with 57 Senators voting guilty, and 43 voting not guilty, which fell short of the two thirds requirement. Foiled again! So let’s look at the actual public record behind the Impeachment, not the one manufactured by anti-Trumpers.

First, H. Res 24 (the Articles of Impeachment) provide, “INCITEMENT OF INSURRECTION … section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits any person who has ‘engaged in insurrection or rebellion against’ the United States from ‘hold[ing] any office’…under the United States.”

But, first of all, the language of the 14th Amendment does not include the President or the Vice-President in its enumeration of officials who may be disqualified from holding office due to the insurrection clause.

Second, Supreme Court Justice Miller, who ruled for the U.S. Supreme Court in 1888, addressed the question of whether the 14th Amendment’s Insurrection clause includes the President. Justice Miller, by exclusion, concluded it did not include the President, stating, “Unless a person in the service of the Government…holds his place by virtue of an appointment by the President, or of one of the courts of justice or heads of Departments authorized by law to make such an appointment, he is not, strictly speaking, an officer of the United States.”

Third, The Supreme Court in Trump vs. Anderson (No. 23–719, 3/4/2024) unanimously “reversed the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court that had held former President Donald J. Trump to be ineligible for the office of President under Section 3 on the grounds that he had engaged in insurrection and, therefore, could not be listed on the Colorado presidential primary ballot” (see this overview).

Last, as a general legal principle for understanding statutes, a Wyoming court concluded in 1976 that, “There are other rules of construction which eventually force us into a corner from which we have little hope of escape. The omission of words from a statute must be considered intentional on the part of the legislature.… Words may not be supplied in a statute where the statute is intelligible without the addition of the alleged omission.… Words may not be inserted in a statutory provision under the guise of interpretation.”

Whatever motives drive anti-Trumpers, their enthusiasm cannot validly manufacture words and meanings for the Fourteenth Amendment which the Civil War era drafters refused to include.

Exculpatory evidence omitted / False evidence presented

H. Res 24, the 2nd Impeachment resolution stated, “Donald John Trump engaged in…inciting violence against the…United States…. He also willfully made statements that, in context, encouraged—and foreseeably resulted in—lawless action at the Capitol, such as: ‘If you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.’”

The House Impeachment managers for H. Res. 24 omitted material facts such as another statement in the same speech by President Trump that the Impeachment Resolution cited against him, which is: “We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated.… I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

The J6 Committee then falsely claimed that Donald Trump did not request National Guard help for January 6: “President Trump had authority and responsibility to direct deployment of the National Guard in the District of Columbia, but never gave any order to deploy the National Guard on January 6th or on any other day” [emphasis added].

President Trump did not contact a single top national security official during the day. Not at the Pentagon, nor at the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the F.B.I., the Capitol Police Department, or the D.C. Mayor’s office.… His Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff…had this reaction: …“General Milley: You know, you’re the Commander in Chief. You’ve got an assault going on the Capitol of the United States of America. And there’s nothing? No call? Nothing? Zero?” [J6 report, pp 94,-95]

On the contrary, The House Administration Committee (HAC) stated that, “Previously concealed by the Biden-Harris Administration’s Department of Defense …These new transcripts indicate that senior Pentagon officials unnecessarily delayed the DC National Guard response to the Capitol on January 6 due to “optics” concerns.…”

The HAC cites General Mark Milley as stating, contrary to other Milley reports: “[January 3, 2021] The President just says, ‘Hey, look at this. There’s going to be a large amount of protesters here on the 6th, make sure that you have sufficient National Guard or Soldiers to make sure it’s a safe event.’” “[POTUS said] ‘Hey, I don’t care if you use Guard, or Soldiers, active-duty Soldiers, do whatever you have to do. Just make sure it’s safe.’”

Acting Defense Secretary, Christopher Miller stated, “The President commented that they were going to need 10,000 troops the following day.... I interpreted it as a bit of presidential banter or President Trump banter…and in no way, shape, or form did I interpret that as an order or direction….”

House Administration Committee Chair, Barry Loudermilk, pointed out that then Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) acknowledged as she left the Capitol on January 6 that she, not Donald Trump, was responsible “for the security failures, and for not having the National Guard at the Capitol”.

Loudermilk also stated that, Nancy Pelosi would later spend:

20 million taxpayer dollars for her January 6 Select Committee to create a narrative that shifted the blame on President Trump. The Democrats’ partisan select committee went to great lengths to suppress and hide evidence that didn’t support their predetermined narrative about that day, including this video of Speaker Pelosi admitting that she was responsible for the security failures at the Capitol….

Never Trumpers withhold exculpatory evidence

H. Res. 24, the Trump Impeachment measure, both withheld material information and presented false information which is a violation of a defendant’s due process rights as affirmed in a US Supreme Court decision which held that, “the suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution.”

Fraud in the 2020 election

H. Res. 24, the Impeachment Resolution, stated that President Trump claimed, “the Presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by State or Federal officials. …[W]e won this election, and we won it by a landslide”.

But claiming that presidential elections may have been stolen or resulted from voter suppression, fraud or other irregularities goes way beyond Donald Trump and has been asserted by many Democrats. Presidents Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden, VP Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Sen. Al Gore, Congressman Jamie Raskin (J6 Committee) have all claimed that some presidential elections were won as a result of legal wrongdoings.

Secondly, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote (8/26/2024) the House Judiciary Committee (8/26/2024) regarding pressure from the FBI on Facebook which “warned us about…potential Russian disinformation…about the Biden family…. [W]e temporarily demoted it…. It’s since been made clear…the reporting was not Russian disinformation…we shouldn’t have demoted it.” Zuckerberg is referring to the controversy surrounding a misleading letter ostensibly from 51 former Intelligence officials, and the resulting media blackout of Hunter Biden’s problems just before the 2020 election.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives Judiciary Committee conducted an oversight hearing regarding the Intelligence officers’ letter, taking testimony from former CIA Director, Michael Morrell who signed the letter. A Judiciary Committee press release (4/21/2023) noted:

[T]hen-Biden campaign senior adviser, now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken “played a role in the inception” of the public statement signed by current and past intelligence officials that claimed the Hunter Biden laptop was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

Michael Morrell…revealed that Blinken was “the impetus” of the public statement signed in October 2020 that implied the laptop belonging to Hunter Biden was disinformation….

We are examining that public statement signed by 51 former intelligence officials that falsely discredited a New York Post story regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop as supposed Russian disinformation…we have learned that you [Blinken] played a role in the inception of this statement while serving as a Biden campaign advisor….

[I]t is apparent that the Biden campaign played an active role in the origins of the public statement, which had the effect of helping to suppress the Hunter Biden story and preventing American citizens from making a fully informed decision during the 2020 presidential election….

This concerted effort to minimize and suppress public dissemination of the serious allegations about the Biden family was a grave disservice to all American citizens’ informed participation in our democracy.

The disservice of the Biden Campaign’s Russian disinformation ploy to American citizens evidentially included altering the outcome of the 2020 presidential election according to a poll taken shortly after the November, 2020 election commissioned by the Media Research Center (MRC).

The MRC asked The Polling Company to survey 1,750 Biden voters in seven swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), six of which were called for Biden. The MRC poll found out that “full awareness of the Hunter Biden scandal would have led 9.4% of Biden voters to abandon the Democratic candidate, flipping all six of the swing states he won to Trump, giving the President 311 electoral votes.”

Politically inspired censorship evidentially works. It can elect presidents!

Yet, Trump ended up being the one impeached, not Nancy Pelosi who said she erred by not bringing the National Guard to the Capitol on January 6.

FBI fakes January 6 investigation

A separate question which has not been answered by federal authorities is how many FBI confidential human sources (i.e., crowd provocateurs) were in the January 6 crowd both outside and inside the Capitol. This issue was taken up by a House Judiciary Sub-Committee which asked questions of FBI Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) noted at the hearing that the FBI spied on President Trump’s campaign, lied to the FISA Court, investigated terrorism at schoolboard meetings, and acted on the basis that if you are a pro-life Catholic you are an extremist.

Congressman Massey (R-KY) told the Inspector General for the Justice Department Michael Horowitz that both FBI Director Wray and Attorney General Garland had stonewalled him for three years. Congressman Massey asked the Justice Department IG: How many Confidential Human Sources were at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, were any reimbursed, did any break the law or did they follow FBI and other protocols, would the investigation which started in 2021 be finished by the 2025 Inauguration? He received no answers most likely because the Biden-Harris Administration did not want to find out how many federal instigators aided in provoking disorder at the Capitol.

Progressive “Democrats” wage siege warfare on Trump lawyers

Trump’s Democrat opponents are not content with just going after Donald Trump. The “65 Project” intends to make the legal talent Trump relies on impossible to obtain or unemployable through advertisements, threats of disbarment, etc.

Devised mostly by Democrats, the 65 Project is backed by David Brock, the founder of Media Matters for America and American Bridge, and close associate of Hillary Clinton, former Democrat majority leader U.S. Senator Tom Daschel and a Republican anti-Trumper, Paul Rozenzweig with the Federalist Society and senior counsel for Ken Starr’s Whitewater investigation into the Clintons.

The group wants to disbar 111 lawyers from 26 states. They intend to spend $2.5 million in their first year in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The 65 Project will also lobby the American Bar Association to codify rules banning what Leftists would designate as frivolous attempts to challenge elections (see this report).

Remember that Democrats charged Donald Trump three times with “high crimes and misdemeanors.” in their H. Res. 24 Impeachment measure. So, how does the Democrat version of the Spirit of Democracy, which seeks to make it impossible for Donald Trump to secure competent counsel, comport with the following:

• The Sixth Amendment: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall…have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.”
• Landmark Supreme Court decisions: “The right of one charged with crime to counsel may not be deemed fundamental and essential to fair trials in some countries, but it is in ours.” Gideon v. Wainright (1963)
• “The right to the effective assistance of counsel is thus the right of the accused to require the prosecutor’s case to survive the crucible of meaningful adversarial testing.” US v. Cronic (1984)

I’ll let “65 Project” representatives answer that question, because I can’t.

Progressive Democrats restricting ballot access

The Democrat National Committee, while claiming to support the democratic process, sued “Independent” presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. to keep him off the ballot in several states. In late June, Kennedy had qualified for the ballot in Utah, Michigan, Delaware, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Kennedy has faced legal challenges for ballot access in Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Delaware and New Jersey.

Kennedy had also secured ballot access through state level independent political parties such as the American Independent Party (California), Independent Party (Delaware), Natural Law Party (Michigan), Reform Party (Florida), the Alliance Party (South Carolina), and his own “We the People Party” in North Carolina and Hawaii.

But once Kennedy dropped out of his presidential effort and endorsed Donald Trump, we learned that Democrats began fighting to keep Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on ballots in key battleground states after previously attempting to keep him off (see also this story)—clearly to draw voters away from Trump.

The Electoral College and Donald Trump

The Constitutional authority for the operation of the Electoral College (the US House of Representatives and the Senate) on January 6, 2021 derives from the 12th Amendment and the Electoral Count Act of 1887. Donald Trump and his advisors relied on this to assert that the Vice President of the United States, who by law presides at the count of Electoral votes, had the legal discretion to reject certain state electoral count certifications for good cause.

That 1887 Electoral Count Act authorized Congress to choose among rival slates of State-chosen electors. It also allowed a single Congressman and a single Senator to start a debate on accepting or rejecting a slate of electors, while a majority of each House was required to reject electors. The President of the Senate, i.e., the Vice President, was designated the presiding officer of the Electoral College meeting and he/she was to “preserve order” and call for “objections” during the vote count. If states “failed to make a choice” on Election Day, state legislatures could decide how to appoint electors.

The Trump campaign alleged voter irregularities in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan and New Mexico because: Judges or appointed official (rather than state legislatures as required by the US Constitution) altered the process of absentee vote verification, engaged in the partisan placement of Drop Boxes, failed to assign a hearing judge, imposed significant limits on vote monitoring, changed ballot challenge rules, misinformed voters on ID requirements, permitted election officials to “cure” ballots, counted ineligible ballots, eliminated human inspection of ballots, etc.

The Trump Campaign accordingly convened Presidential and Vice-Presidential Electors in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan and New Mexico and prepared unofficial Certificates of Vote for slates of Trump Electors which were sent to the Office of the Federal Register which is a branch of the National Archives. On January 5, 2021 Vice President Pence wrote to Members of Congress telling them he only had ministerial duties, and no discretionary authority over accepting or rejecting state electoral counts. Pence was wrong. While exercising discretionary authority over the vote-count, as Trump suggested, may have been novel, it was NOT illegal or unconstitutional as the reader will shortly see.

Also, on January 5, Senator Cruz was quoted in the Washington Post:

My view is Congress should…consider serious claims of voter fraud…. I assembled a coalition of 11 senators [and] we are going to vote…to press for the appointment of an electoral commission that can hear the claims of voter fraud, hear the evidence and make a determination as to what the facts are and the extent to which the law was complied with.

On January 6, 2021 based on the 1887 Electoral Count Law, objections to accepting Arizona’s Electoral Vote were raised by Senator Cruz and Congressman Paul Gozar (R-AZ) for himself and 60 of his colleagues who objected to accepting the Electors from Arizona, and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) objected for himself and 7 of his colleagues to the certification of Arizona’s slate of Electors.

This satisfied the requirements of the Election Count Act of 1887. Debate proceeded in the House on whether the Electors from Arizona should be disqualified if the objection were sustained. On the vote to accept the objection 121 Congressmen agreed to reject the Biden Electors, 303 disagreed, and 7 did not vote. The vote in the Senate on agreeing to accepting the motion to reject the Arizona results: 7 senators voted yes, and 93 voted no.

Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Congressman Scott Perry (R-PA) made similar objections to accepting the Electors from Pennsylvania. On the vote to reject the Electors from Pennsylvania, 138 Congressmen agreed, 282 disagreed and 11 did not vote. In the Senate, 7 voted to agree with the motion to reject the Pennsylvania Biden Electors and 92 Senators voted no.

The civil disturbance both inside and outside the Capitol building certainly had the effect of reducing the number of objections that would be made by Congressmen and Senators. And Ted Cruz never got the opportunity to make his case that a bi-partisan commission should be established, similar to what Congress did in 1876 when it established the Hayes-Tilden Presidential Commission to resolve the disputed 1876 presidential election.

Amending 1887 Electoral Count Act proves Trump right

The contention that Donald Trump committed sedition and insurrection by supporting alternate Electors (in states where irregular actions were undertaken by judges and appointed administrators to change the electoral process which the Constitution reserves exclusively to the state legislators) actually proves that Trump was correct about what Pence could have done.

When Congress was passing the Electoral Count Act of 2022, sponsored by Senators Joe Manchin and Susan Collins, they acknowledged that Vice President Mike Pence had discretionary authority and could have made decisions affecting substantive changes in the Electors sent to Congress. If VP Pence had no such powers in January 2021, why make it law in late 2022 to state that:

[T]he role of the President of the Senate while presiding over the joint meeting shall be limited to performing solely ministerial duties. The President of the Senate shall have no power to solely determine, accept, reject, or otherwise adjudicate or resolve disputes over the proper list of electors, the validity of electors, or the votes of electors.

The new law also makes it harder to object during the Electoral College count. The law now requires objections to be supported, “by at least one-fifth of the Senators duly chosen and sworn and one-fifth of the Members of the House of Representatives duly chosen and sworn.”

Assassination and protecting democracy

Political assassination has been around for a long time. William’s Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar dramatizes the plot by Roman Senators to kill the emperor in 44 BC for his ambition. We have no polls of what Rome’s citizens thought of that. But Napolitan News Service did ask such questions of 1,000 Registered Voters (September 16-17), conducted online by Scott Rasmussen, about what Americans thought of attempts to assassinate presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Seventeen percent (17%) of voters believe America would be better off if former President Trump had been killed in recent assassination attempts. Of that group, 28% of Democrats think America would be better off if Trump were assassinated, with 24% of Democrats not sure. Ultimately, just 48% of Democrats think America would not be better off if former President Trump is assassinated.

While the Democrat Party claims to be 100% pro-Democracy, 52% either agree or are not sure America would be better off if Donald Trump were assassinated. It is only fair to mention that even 7% of Republicans in the Rasmussen Poll thought the effect of assassination was acceptable. But one can at least wonder, with so much disinformation fed to us daily through the media, whether it is possible in our day to ever reach such a decision morally!