The Verity Courier
Incitement and Fraud
By Ron Estes
18 January 2022
Did Trump incite the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol in a speech he gave on the Ellipse that same day, prior to the assault that dictionaries and legal texts call an insurrection? Some of his speech was dedicated to the political struggle to reverse a fair and certified election that he lost.
For more than an hour, Trump repeated claims that he and his supporters at the rally had been “cheated” and “defrauded” in the “rigged” election by a “criminal enterprise.”
Following comments by Rudy Giuliani to the audience in which he said, “Let’s have a trial by combat,” Trump declared, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
At the rally, according to the Associated Press Fact Check: Trump roused his followers with words such as these:
—“Let the weak ones get out. This is a time for strength.” This was in reference to Republicans in Congress who weren’t going along with his effort to subvert the election.
—“You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.” That was to the marchers specifically.
—“When you catch somebody in a fraud, you are allowed to go by very different rules.”
—“You will have an illegitimate president. That is what you will have, and we can’t let that happen,” he said, referring to Biden.
After the Capitol attack, Trump authored a tweet which said, “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Remember this day forever!”
Was the Capitol assault an insurrection?
According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law, an insurrection is “the act or an instance of revolting especially violently against civil or political authority or against an established government.”
Under the U.S. Code, the crime of insurrection is committed by “Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto.”
Webster’s New World College Dictionary says the January 6, attackers rose up physically and violently against the established authorities — that’s Congress, as it was carrying out its constitutional duties surrounded and protected by U.S. government staff and police. Many in the siege were intent on stopping Congress from affirming Trump’s defeat.
By fanning the flames of the march on the capitol, Trump continued to promote a falsehood, the “big lie,” that he and his supporters have peddled for more than a year: that the 2020 election was rigged against him.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and its partners, said in a November 2020 statement, “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.”
After the 2020 election, the Trump campaign filed at least 63 lawsuits citing voter fraud in multiple states. All the lawsuits were dismissed for lack of evidence. Many of the judges who dismissed the lawsuits were appointed by Trump. In one instance, the Trump campaign and other groups seeking his reelection, collectively lost multiple cases in six states in a single day.
But still, the nation is plagued by a Republican Party torn asunder by baseless charges of voter fraud, along with approximately 32% of the American pubic.
The Brennan Center for Justice at the New York School of Law report on The Truth About Voter Fraud, reviewed elections that had been meticulously studied for voter fraud, and found incident rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent. Given this tiny incident rate for voter impersonation fraud, it is more likely, the report noted, that an American “will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.”
A study published by a Columbia University political scientist tracked incident rates for voter fraud , and found that the rare fraud that was reported generally could be traced to “false claims by the loser of a close race, mischief and administrative or voter error.”
Various studies lead to the evidence that Trump has embraced conspiracy theories about voter fraud for years. In 2016, he set up a presidential commission to investigate the issue, but the panel disbanded without uncovering any evidence to support Trump's claims that millions voted illegally in 2016, costing him the popular vote.
Countless recounts, courts, commissions and private contractors — including Republicans — have all dismissed Trump’s claims that the election was stolen. Yet, the fact that Trump’s undocumented lies about voter fraud is accepted by up to 50 million Americans, implies that as a nation our most serious concern should not be threats to fair elections as the foundation of our democracy, but rather widespread naïveté, questionable judgement and integrity.
Ron Estes served 25 years as an Operations Officer in the CIA Clandestine Service.