Dick Morris: With Third Trump Indictment Looming, Republicans Must Play to Win
The Democrats are playing dirty, but we can’t let them win. We have to play to win… just like them.
By indicting Donald Trump again, the Democrats have upped their game. This coming indictment is not like the Alvin Bragg arrest or the classified document charges. Those are trivial by comparison.
It looks like the new indictment will be devised to trigger the 14th Amendment’s prohibition on holding federal office after participating in an insurgency against the United States.
The 14th Amendment, passed as the Civil War drew to a close, prevents anyone from holding federal office if they have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against [the U.S. government], or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
Prosecutor Jack Smith may be attempting to portray Trump’s objections to the 2020 election and his demand for recounts and audits as just such an “insurrection or rebellion,” disqualifying him from becoming president again.
Smith may hope that, if Trump is convicted by a Washington, D.C., all-Democrat jury, secretaries of state and governors in blue states will refuse to put him on the ballot.
We who still value free elections can hope that the courts — particularly the Supreme Court — will thwart such a move. But do we dare wait until then? Especially as Democratic efforts to remove Clarence Thomas from the high court gain steam?
Just this week, the Michigan attorney general, Democrat Dana Nessel, charged 16 Republicans with forgery and other felonies for seeking to be designated as pro-Trump electors in 2020.
The Democrats now realize that they cannot stop Trump from becoming the Republican nominee for president again, and they worry that Joe Biden is not strong enough to defeat him in November 2024.
So they are determined to throw away the democratic procedures to which we have become accustomed and to pervert the justice system to bring him down. Their efforts to stack the deck against Trump are akin to a coup d’etat.
It is not enough to fight them at the ballot box. They may not let it get that far.
Trump, the House Republican majority and the Senate Republican minority do not realize the power they have, and they better start using it to save our democracy.
Controlling the power of the purse, the House can refuse to pass any appropriation bills until the Justice Department drops its political prosecutions and its blatant interference in the 2024 election.
Congressional Republicans should make one simple demand: Stop the prosecution of any presidential candidate until the election has been held.
Even if the Senate objects, the House has the power to bring the government to a halt by itself. And a handful of Republicans in the Senate can use their filibuster and committee privileges to bring Biden’s initiatives and nominees to a standstill.
Closing federal agencies until this unlawful affront to democracy and threat to our liberty is thwarted is a small price to pay to keep our free elections in place and to use them to designate the next president.
Just as it is illegal for a prosecutor to reach into the Oval Office to pluck out a president and put him in jail, so it should be illegal to indict and remove from the voters’ consideration a candidate for the highest office, especially the frontrunner for the nomination.
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