Trump Indictment Serves Dual Purpose for Democrats

United States v. Trump is part of Democrat scheme to establish
and enforce authoritative State voice on public affairs; and
criminalize wrongthink, thought deemed incorrect.

In modern American history no political Party has targeted free speech as systemically as Joe Biden and the Democrats.

Richard Nixon; 1960s Milwaukee police attempted banning wrong kind of newspaper; 1960s-70s wannabe state totalitarians are trivial next to today's Democrats' intricate censorship-industrial complex.

It is through this lens of audacious thought-control that we should consider the indictment, United States v.Donald J. Trump, (August 1, 2023).

The politcal compound of thought-control and political hatred is explosive in a democracy, with shattered civil liberties as primary objective, not remnant waste.

Anticipating the Aug. 1 indictment, American civil libertarians mused that powerful First Amendment free speech protections from the 1960-70s would likely doom Justice Dept attempts to join Trump's Jan 6 speech and the Capitol violence.
 
Noted Glenn Greenwald:

Any prosecution of Trump on the ground his Jan 6 speech "inspired" violence at the Capitol - even though he told them to act "peacefully" - would be a grave assault on seminal 1st Am protections of Brandenburg and Claiborne.

But, to them, anything is justified to stop Trump.

See also, The Insidious and Unreported Legal Assault on Landmark Free Speech Rulings, From BLM Leaders to Donald Trump; Greenwald.

Greenwald was right. The DoJ backed down, and instead contrived a bizarre indictment where speech and politcal activity are recognize in one paragraph and criminalized in the next.

The indictment accuses Donald Trump of falsity in his expressed beliefs and statements made prior to Jan. 6, 2021; but backed down from criminalizing Trump's rally and address on the Ellipses on Jan 6, 2021.

Writes Jonathan Turley:

[Special Counsel Jack] Smith and his team have made history in the worst way by attempting to fully criminalize disinformation by seeking the incarceration for a politician on false claims made during and after an election.

The hatred for Trump is so all-encompassing that legal experts on the political left have ignored the chilling implications of this indictment. This complaint is based largely on statements that are protected under the First Amendment. It would eviscerate free speech and could allow the government to arrest those who are accused of spreading disinformation in elections.

Whatever Democrats may believe, the indictment critically relies on criminalizing protected speech, and the U.S. government's determination that speech is "false" or true, to chronicle Trump's alleged criminal scheme.

If a guilty verdict is reached at trial, no way U.S. Supreme Court lets this indictment prevail against Trump and American citizens who are the beneficiaries, call them Americans, of value we place on political speech.

The ACLU refused a comment on the merits of the indictment. ACLU is a shell of its former self.

But free speech, one can predict, lives on.

As Justice William Brennan writes in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964):

The First Amendment, said Judge Learned Hand,

presupposes that right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues than through any kind of authoritative selection. To many, this is, and always will be, folly, but we have staked upon it our all. United States v. Associated Press, 52 F.Supp. 362, 372 (D.C.S.D.N.Y. 1943).

Mr. Justice Brandeis, in his concurring opinion in Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 375-376, gave the principle its classic formulation:

Those who won our independence believed . . . that public discussion is a political duty, and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government. ... Believing in the power of reason as applied through public discussion, they eschewed silence coerced by law -- the argument of force in its worst form. Recognizing the occasional tyrannies of governing majorities, they amended the Constitution so that free speech and assembly should be guaranteed.

Thus, we consider this case [New York Times v. Sullivan] against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials. (New York Times v. Sullivan).

Trump is wrong-headed in most of his statements he made after the 2020 Nov presidential elections.

Speech and analyses are called for, not a criminal indictment.