‘Trump Should Have Resigned in Disgrace’: WSJ Editorial Board Pulls No Punches In Slamming Trump Over Jan. 6th
The Wall Street Journal editorial board pulled no punches when describing Trump’s actions surrounding Jan. 6th in the wake of the latest indictment against the former president. The editorial board published a reaction to the 4-count indictment against Donald Trump regarding his effort to overturn the 2020 election on Tuesday night and questioned the legal basis for Special Counsel Jack Smith’s charges.
The editorial begins with the mixed message it carries throughout the piece, arguing Trump’s “behavior in 2020 was deceitful and destructive, and his malfeasance on Jan. 6, 2021, was disgraceful” but then asks, “Was it criminal?”
The board never takes a firm stance on whether or not Trump’s actions were outright criminal or not but raises a caution flag that Smith’s indictment may have a chilling effect on other officials who may see a reason to contest an election. The board writes:
The indictment concedes that Mr. Trump “had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won.”
In other words, Mr. Trump can lie about the election all he wants. But the indictment says Mr. Trump broke the law when he acted on those lies.
“Mr. Smith’s theory seems to be that if a President and his “co-conspirators” are lying, and then take action on that lie, they are defrauding the U.S.,” the board concludes, adding:
This potentially criminalizes many kinds of actions and statements by a President that a prosecutor deems to be false. You don’t have to be a defender of Donald Trump to worry about where this will lead. It makes any future election challenges, however valid, legally vulnerable to a partisan prosecutor. And it might have criminalized the actions by Al Gore and George W. Bush to contest the Florida election result in 2000.
The board then argues that Smith will likely struggle to prove Trump knew his allegations of voter fraud were false. Despite the evidence that key officials repeatedly told Trump the election was legitimate, the board notes that Trump found others who were quick to agree with his allegations and added that Trump “typically resides in a performance artist, fact-free world of his own imagining.”
The board then quickly flips back to blasting Trump, noting, “None of this is an apology for Mr. Trump’s post-election behavior. These columns have been clear from Election Day that we have seen no evidence that the election was stolen, and that Mr. Trump should have resigned in disgrace after the events of Jan. 6.”
In conclusion, the board laments Smith’s indictment for keeping Trump both in the news and atop the 2024 GOP primary polls and argues that the U.S. has many “more difficult and dangerous months ahead.”
Read the full editorial here.
