(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Former President Donald Trump caused a minor stir online last week when he referenced the Insurrection Act on Truth Social, with supporters and detractors alike both expecting him to be charged under that statute soon.
Trump apparently referenced Insurrection Act inadvertently in a post about the Espionage Act and his current classified documents case in Florida. He quickly deleted that post, but observers questioned whether Trump committed a Freudian slip.
“Why does Trump have Insurrection Act on his mind?” asked Ryan Goodman, an editor for the national security publication Just Security. Goodman then linked to an article in his publication that recommends Trump be charged with the same statute.
Why does Trump have Insurrection Act on his mind?
He posted concerns about being charged under it, but apparently meant Espionage Act (he later deleted, replaced the word).
On Thursday, this 'model prosecution memo' recommended Insurrection Act charge: https://t.co/gvrw68rQ2Z pic.twitter.com/QEVgXIUAPm
— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) July 16, 2023
If Trump’s Truth Social post was the lone link between him and the Insurrection Act, perhaps it could be written off as a mistake. But the social media post follows other reports and indiciations that he’s about to be indicted for his alleged attempts to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.
Indeed, the Washington Post published a tell-all story last month about the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill protest and alleged 2020 election interference—strongly suggesting that Trump will be indicted over these matters in the near future.
More recently, NBC News reported last week that Special Counsel Jack Smith is probing Trump’s so-called fake elector scheme—referring to Trump’s plan to use alternate electors to challenge the results of controversial results in Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona.
On the same day as the NBC News story, CBS News’s Robert Costa reported another scoop about the Special Counsel Murphy’s investigation of the 2020 election aftermath. According to Costa, Murphy is also probing Trump for allegedly considering to use federal authority to seize voting machines.
Unlike other commentators, Costa said he’s not sure whether Murphy’s probe will result in election-related charges against Trump.
“The question remains, though, whether [special counsel] will seek indictments or write up a lengthy report… no one I’ve spoken with, with varying levels of connection to the investigation, is quite sure what Smith will do… the constant word is this is ‘serious’ but hard to predict,” the reporter said.
But given the dubious nature of the other two cases against Trump—the campaign finance matter in New York and the classified documents case in Florida—the former president’s supporters are convinced that J6-related charges are looming.
“When he is indicted … which I think the chances have increased tremendously after today, I think he might get ‘pretrial detention’—what they did to every defendant charged with seditious conspiracy,” conservative writer Julie Kelly said in May, in the wake of the Proud Boys J6 convictions in March. “So now they have a precedent for courts to sign off on.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
