President Joseph Biden implausibly likened himself to George Washington Jan. 5, at the same time he pressed further attacks on constitutional freedoms won during the Revolutionary War and the class battles that followed it.
Biden and his Democratic Party have made clear he wanted Donald Trump prosecuted and imprisoned. He’s been running a reelection campaign centered on the need to jail his main rival. Biden’s speech in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, a key base used by Washington’s Continental Army, was no different. In a 35-minute address, Biden used the words “insurrection” 11 times and “Trump” 40 times.
Biden railed against the tens of millions who voted for the former president. “MAGA supporters,” he claimed, “not only embrace political violence, but they laugh about it.”
Biden crowed about the more than 1,200 people his Justice Department has charged so far for their participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, break-in at the Capitol. “Nearly 900 of them have been convicted or pled guilty,” he boasted. “Collectively, to date, they have been sentenced to more than 840 years in prison.”
Those people include Russell Dean Alford, the owner of a body shop in Etowah County, Alabama. Alford remained inside the Capitol for just 15 minutes. The trial evidence showed he was neither violent nor destructive. Mostly he filmed protesters chanting, “Stop the steal.” The videos he posted on Facebook led the FBI to his door.
Alford was convicted and sentenced to one year in prison last January by U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who will preside in the Justice Department case brought against Trump stemming from the $12 million-to-date investigation by special counsel Jack Smith. Chutkan has sentenced a large number of Jan. 6 protesters more harshly than prosecutors called for.
A three-judge panel for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said that while Alford didn’t do anything, his case had to be judged “in context.” They even held that there should be no reduction in his sentence because he had the nerve to contest the case in a trial rather than accept a plea bargain!
More prosecutions to come
Every week a few more people are sentenced to jail time of up to 20 years after Jan. 6-related convictions. Judges have ordered prison time for about half of those convicted of misdemeanors, far above the 16% national average.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Dec. 13 to hear a challenge to far-fetched charges brought against more than 300 of the Jan. 6 defendants, and Trump. All are accused of “obstructing an official proceeding.”
The indictments were brought under a 2002 anti-business corruption law, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. It was passed to penalize company officials, like those at Enron, who destroyed potentially incriminating documents. But such activity has nothing to do with the “crimes” the Jan. 6 defendants are accused of.
The reason the Justice Department used this law is that it has far harsher penalties than all the other charges brought in Jan. 6 cases, except for seditious conspiracy. Multiple charges and the threat of more jail time are used by prosecutors to force plea bargains.
Two of the four felony charges brought by Smith against Trump are based on the Sarbanes-Oxley statute. Applying this law to his speech at a Jan. 6 rally opens the door to attacks on free speech protections needed by the working class.
Many of Biden’s earlier campaign pitches fell flat, as he claimed “Bidenomics” engineered a “robust economy,” despite the reality of falling real wages and worsening conditions confronting the working class. Just before year’s end, Biden’s approval ratings fell to 38%, tying his record low. His Valley Forge speech made clear that the Democratic Party-led attack on democratic rights will continue, including its effort to deny Trump the right to appear on state ballots.
Democrats are using Section 3 of the 14th Amendment as a justification to remove Trump from the primary ballot in Colorado and Maine. Yet that amendment was ratified in 1868 when there were no ballots printed by the government. Every vote was write-in and any voter could vote for anyone they chose.
After government-printed ballots were established at the end of the 19th century, state courts almost unanimously held that it was unconstitutional to prohibit a voter from voting for anyone. Even the Colorado Supreme Court dismissed in 1912 a state law that forbade write-in votes. “Every qualified elector shall have an equal right to cast a ballot for the person of his own selection, and that no act shall be done by any power, civil or military, to prevent it,” the court said.
In 1972 Colorado officials printed the name of Linda Jenness, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for president, on its ballot, even though she was 31 years old, four years below the requirement.
The Supreme Court agreed Jan. 5 to review the decision by Colorado’s top court to knock Trump off the ballot. Defending constitutional freedoms will continue to be at the center of the 2024 campaign.