Ross: Trump’s Jan. 6 indictment gives Americans the ultimate choice

The indictment is here. It’s 45 pages, takes about 90 minutes to read, and it’ll save you having to buy all the books about the end of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Bottom line: January 6th wasn’t a fluke. It was the organized climax of a plan led from the Oval Office by Donald Trump to illegally hot-wire a victory, even though he knew, on election night, that he’d lost.

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And not only did he know he lost, he knew why he lost because his own staff told him that his support had ebbed away in the swing states.

Didn’t matter, he and his six co-conspirators, including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark, and John Eastman, hatched a plan not just to spread lies in public about the election, but executed a plan that actually caused fake documents from 84 false electors to be sent to the Capitol in hopes the Vice President would accept them.

It’s a familiar story, except this time, it’s not written by journalists with a book to sell, but by sworn staff lawyers at the Justice Department, based on sworn evidence presented under oath to a sworn jury.

A jury who confirmed what even Trump’s most loyal supporters should know by now, the 2020 election was fair, that Trump knew it was fair, that he had ample time and resources to prove it was not fair, but never presented the evidence, because that evidence doesn’t exist.

It didn’t exist then, and it doesn’t exist now.

But there is plenty of evidence that the story of the stolen election was part of an organized plan over several weeks to pressure Mike Pence into throwing out the legitimate results and that when Pence told Trump over the phone that he would not do that, Trump organized, incited, and then unleashed a crowd to attack the Capitol and the Vice President.

So, the evidence is there. And the grace period for us as Americans is over. It’s time to choose which system we want.

When Trump supporters ask, what about the rioters in the cities in 2020? What about that assault on democracy? It’s a good point; I see this as a chance to set an example.

You don’t just go after the pirates who looted the store and set it on fire, you also go after the people who organized, incited, and unleashed them.

And since Trump is clearly going to be the Republican nominee, it makes the 2024 election a referendum on constitutional law and order.

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A vote for Trump is a vote to empower him and his successors to invalidate any election result they don’t like.

When you think about it, it’s really the ultimate choice in a free society.

In November of 2024, we will be free to vote against freedom!

Or, more likely, since voter turnout is so pathetic, we will be free to sit and watch as others make that decision for us.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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