Former President Donald Trump was still in office in December 2020 when — as President-elect Joe Biden prepared his transition — Trump and his team were aggressively and futilely challenging the election results in courts across the country.
At the time, there was rampant speculation that Trump was also taking extralegal measures — applying strong-arm pressure — to change the results through other avenues, including allegedly encouraging fake electors and asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the specific number of popular votes Trump needed to win the state’s electoral college votes.
Based on the target letter Trump received this week from Special Counsel Jack Smith‘s office — and the potential charges it augurs — much of that 2020 speculation about Trump’s activities turns out to be prescient.
Today Rachel Maddow amplified an interview she did on December 7, 2020 with attorney Andrew Weissmann, in which Weissmann gets highly detailed about the charges Trump could face if called to account for his alleged actions.
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) July 21, 2023
“One is very specific and it relates to election interference, 18 USC 241,” Weissman says, accurately predicting what experts say the next Trump indictment will entail.
The Justice Department Civil Rights Division says Section 241, which was created in part to protect the sanctity of the votes of disenfranchised minorities, “makes it unlawful for two or more persons to agree to injure, threaten, or intimidate a person in the United States in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured by the Constitution or laws of the Unites States or because of his or her having exercised such a right.
DOJ also explains that “Unlike most conspiracy statutes, 241 does not require, as an element, the commission of an overt act.” The offense is “always a felony, even if the underlying conduct would not, on its own, establish a felony violation of another criminal civil rights statute. It is punishable by up to ten years imprisonment.”
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