Dick Morris – The conclusion that seems to be emerging from the hearings of the phony January 6 committee is that somehow Donald Trump was directly responsible for the riot. This conclusion is despite his plea to the demonstrators to go home peacefully and patriotically. If this was inciting to riot it’s hard to believe what would not be.
The charge, as echoed in The Wall Street Journal, is that Trump inciting his base by lying about the election and trying to “con them” into believing that he won the election.
It’s hard to sort out fact from charges but let me try.
In my view, the facts are these:
If all votes legitimately cast by eligible voters were accurately and fairly counted, Joe Biden would have received more votes than Donald Trump. However clear election irregularities in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin must be taken it into account.
But they never were.
Democratic Secretaries of State in Pennsylvania Michigan Arizona and Wisconsin stopped any investigation into the irregularities. Despite numerous accurate reports of forgeries, mail-in voting without eligible addresses, ineligible voters, double voting, postdated ballots, and many other types of shenanigans, the administrative officials in charge of the election refused to investigate it, which was their duty.
The various state legislatures also neglected their duty to assure that the voting was honest. Despite Republican majorities in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin there was no legislative audit of the voting until after the election results that were in, and Biden declared the winner.
The state courts too, with Democratic judges, also abdicated their responsibility. As the triers of fact, they should have appointed special masters and given them subpoena power and enough staff to investigate the allegations of fraud. Instead, they delayed and dithered while the secretaries of state and the Democratic governors declared that Biden had carried that state.
When Trump’s people sought to appeal to the federal courts, the jurists cited the fact that the state courts had to be the triers of fact and that the federal courts could only adjudicate legal issues on the appeal. On appeal to the Supreme Court Democrats used objections to stand to block adjudication of the lawsuit brought by Texas and other states.
So those who saw the election as fraudulent had no alternative but to demonstrate. The state legislatures, the federal courts, and the state courts all refused to investigate the facts and render a fair and impartial verdict. So their only option was to protest the final certification of the electoral count in the US Congress. A score of Republican senators pled with the vice president to do so but he refused. Once again there would be no investigation.
After election Day, state audits in Georgia and Arizona revealed major irregularities sufficient to invalidate the election margin in at least those states. Don’t confuse the Arizona audit with the Arizona recount. The recount showed no mathematical error in the tabulation, but the audit showed that these counts were based on tens of thousands of fraudulent votes. But no audit could offer a final verdict because of the secret ballot.
No one could determine if the fraudulent votes were for Biden or for Trump making a final adjudication impossible. The Democrats had conceived of a plan to get away with these irregularities in sufficient number to deliver these states to Biden.
These facts make clear that Trump was not attempting to con anybody by saying that he won the election. He was just stating his opinion based on the evidence. Since then, the various audits have only confirmed that opinion.
To say that Trump was repeating a big lie is, itself to articulate a big lie.
That the demonstrations turned violent despite Trump’s please to go home (excluded from the video of his remarks played at the Jan 6 Committee hearing) is hardly his fault.
SF Source Dick Morris Jun 2022