Donald Trump has been indicted for exercising his free speech rights regarding the 2020 election. The former president believes there was electoral funny business in 2020, which cheated him out of the race. Millions believe it; it doesn’t matter if it’s true. You have the right to have differing or incorrect opinions in this country. Scores of Democrats have also challenged election results—Barack Obama did it. Most of the indictments over January 6 filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith will be viewed as overreaching.
Law professor Jonathan Turley has already gutted the indictment, zeroing in on most of the severe charges protected under free speech. He also added that Smith has a history of going off the reservation in his prosecutions, citing the corruption case of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, whose conviction was unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court.
Yet, The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman's take on the third indictment is sketchy. Haberman’s coverage of Trump and his presidency has earned her the ire of the Left and the Right for various reasons. She claimed that Trump was “rattled” by the news (via Newsweek):
Donald Trump is "much more rattled than he's projecting being" over the latest criminal indictment against him, but he "wants to give off the appearance that everything is fine," according to his biographer, Maggie Haberman.
The New York Times correspondent, who grew familiar with the former president before his time in office and went on to cover his White House period, told CNN that following the emergence of fresh charges on Tuesday, his team "are very upset" but also "relieved" that further details didn't come out.
The former president was charged by the Department of Justice (DOJ) over his role in the events leading up to the January 6, 2021, uprising on the U.S. Capitol, which saw a gathering of his supporters attempt to frustrate the certifying of the 2020 election results. Newsweek approached the Trump campaign for comment via email on Wednesday.
[…]
Haberman said that there was "an effort by Jack Smith in the indictment to say that what Trump did goes beyond free speech and goes beyond free political expression, and was using the government to try to carry out these conspiracies."
I can see Trump being infuriated, though not surprised. He’s already been indicted twice; why should a third time be a surprising development, especially when the first one filed by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who charged Trump over his hush money arrangement with Stormy Daniels, was a blatant political hit job? We all knew that, but the statute of limitations was ignored, with Bragg’s office claiming that the COVID pandemic halted the clock. If the anti-Trump legal world could indict the man over money to an ex-porn star, anything could go down. It shouldn’t shock us if Trump is indicted a fourth time in the 2020 election probe in Georgia, which has morphed into a RICO case. The prosecutor there said the case was ready to go.
Given the abuse Trump has endured for years by the liberal press, the intelligence community, elected Democrats, and corrupt officials at the FBI/DOJ, I doubt he’s “rattled” by this indictment. Furious, I’m sure but not “rattled.”
