Much of the response from Donald Trump and the MAGA right to the many charges of criminal acts, is to try to justify statements as protected free speech. To them, Trump is not guilty of any crime because he has First Amendment rights that are inviolable. This statement might be true, but only if you can imagine a world in which he would be unaware that a far-right element of his supporters had a potential for violence and would be looking for any excuse to act out against anyone that threatened their world vision. It might be true if we did not have the means to check, investigate, and legally question the voting integrity of our election process. It might be true if those checks, investigations, and legal challenges had not already been done and the votes had not been certified as true.
All of this is not unlike the musings of an organized crime syndicate leader who suggests that some enemy needs to “sleep with the fishes.” Even the most jaded among us would realize that such an utterance would not indicate that the subject of the conversation should take his nightly repose on a cot in an aquarium store. We would further not be surprised to find that his/her body was recovered from a watery grave. Marlon Brando in The Godfather, explained the meaning of the "fishes" comment. The context is clear.
While speaking words, even lies, can be speech protected under the First Amendment umbrella. However, we cannot evaluate such speech in a vacuum. We need to understand the motivation of the speaker, the assumed response of the recipients of that speech, the circumstances surrounding the need for the speech, and the events that led to the statement. We need to evaluate the context of the speech to determine what it was designed to accomplish.
Within the latest criminal indictment (Georgia) of Donald John Trump, there is a section identified as “ACTS OF RACKETEERING ACTIVITY AND OVERT ACTS IN FURTHERANCE OF THE CONSPIRACY.” Donald Trump, his lawyers, advisors, associates, and others, used speech in the form of pronouncements, phone calls, tweets, text messages, emails, and other forms of communication toward a common goal. In the indictment, there is a chronological listing of “Acts” that, in the terminology of the indictment are identified with the phrase, “This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.” It is here that they paint a picture of that conspiracy.
Words and speech are not crimes unless they are used to commit a criminal act. At that point, they are no longer protected speech. Donald Trump called Georgia’s Secretary of State Raffensperger and said, "What I want to do is this. I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes, which is one more than [the 11,779 vote margin of defeat] we have because we won the state." Those words taken out of context might be innocent even considering they contained the lie that he “won the state.” However, taken in the context of Trump’s desire to disenfranchise the legitimate voters in Georgia and to find (create) at least 11,780 votes that did not exist, that act is in furtherance of the criminal conspiracy.
In the law, there is something known as the "reasonable man theory." The “reasonable person” is a hypothetical individual who approaches any situation with the appropriate amount of caution and then sensibly takes action. It is a standard created to provide courts and juries with an objective test that can be used in deciding whether a person's actions constitute negligence. The question for one or more of these juries will be to determine if Donald Trump acted in a reasonable fashion. This will be a simple task for those of us living on planet Earth.
The MAGA fringe wants to look at phrases and statements in isolation where they may appear innocent or have innocent interpretations. They do not want to face the totality of the conspiracy. This same fringe element of the MAGA crowd is also willing to read between the lines. Some of them are adept at finding kernels of whatever they want within the Q-drops or “crumbs” of QAnon conspiracy postings.
These are the “true believers.” Some still await the reincarnation of JFK Jr. at Dealey Plaza in Texas as he was to pronounce Donald Trump the 2020 election winner. Some await the promised mass arrests of the villains of the Deep State. Rod Serling of Twilight Zone fame could not have imagined a more bizarre future for America.
No comments:
Post a Comment