Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: For the history books
We begin today with David Firestone of The New York Times writing that Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis's indictment of former president Donald Trump and 19 conspirators for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia is truly an effort for the history books.
History needs a story line to be fully understood. Jack Smith, the federal special counsel, told only a few pieces of the story in an indictment limited to Mr. Trump, focusing mainly on the groups of fake state electors that Mr. Trump and his circle tried to pass off as real, and the pressure campaign on Vice President Mike Pence to certify them. But in Georgia, Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, was unencumbered by the narrower confines of federal law and was able to use the more expansive state RICO statute to draw the clearest, most detailed picture yet of Mr. Trump’s plot.
As a result, her story is a much broader and more detailed arc of treachery and deceit, naming 19 conspirators and told in 161 increments, each one an “overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy,” forming the predicate necessary to prove a violation of the RICO act. (Neither of the indictments, unfortunately, hold Mr. Trump directly responsible for the Jan. 6 riot, a tale best told in the archives of the House Jan. 6 committee.)
Not each of the acts is a crime, but together they add up to the most daring and high-ranking criminal plot in U.S. history to overturn an election and steal the presidency — and a plot that appears to have violated Georgia law, leaving no question about the importance of prosecuting Mr. Trump and his co-conspirators. Ms. Willis has risen to the occasion by documenting a lucid timeline, starting with Mr. Trump’s brazenly false declaration of victory on Nov. 4, 2020, and continuing with scores of conversations between the president and his lawyers and aides as they try to persuade a number of states to decertify the vote.