Potential Trump Charges Include Civil Rights Law Used in Voting Fraud Cases

  • 📰 YahooNews
  • ⏱ Reading Time:
  • 66 sec. here
  • 3 min. at publisher
  • 📊 Quality Score:
  • News: 30%
  • Publisher: 59%

Law Law Headlines News

Law Law Latest News,Law Law Headlines

Federal prosecutors have introduced a new twist into the Jan. 6 investigation by suggesting in a target letter that they could charge Donald Trump with violating a civil rights statute. Trump target letter cited 3 statutes that could become charges:

Former President Donald Trump takes the stage to address a Republican women’s luncheon in Concord, N.H. on Tuesday, June 27, 2023.

But the third criminal law cited in the letter was a surprise: Section 241 of Title 18 of the United States Code, which makes it a crime for people to “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person” in the “free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.

In a 1974 Supreme Court opinion upholding the use of Section 241 to charge West Virginians who cast fake votes on a voting machine, Justice Thurgood Marshall cited Simons and added that every voter “has a right under the Constitution to have his vote fairly counted, without its being distorted by fraudulently cast votes.”

The prospect of charging Trump under the other two statutes cited in the target letter is less novel, if not without hurdles. Among other things, in its final report last year, the House committee that investigated the events that culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol had recommended that the Justice Department charge the former president under both of them.

Some of those who worked most closely with Trump in promoting the lie that Trump had been robbed of a victory by widespread fraud, including lawyers like Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, had not received target letters, their own lawyers said on Tuesday.

 

Thank you for your comment. Your comment will be published after being reviewed.
Please try again later.
We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more:

 /  🏆 380. in LAW

Law Law Latest News, Law Law Headlines

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

'Justice May Finally Be Coming': Trump Says He's a Target in Jan. 6 Probe'Donald Trump tried to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power and keep control of the government despite losing an election,' said one ethics expert. 'There may be no more serious offense in a republic.'
Source: commondreams - 🏆 530. / 51 Read more »

DeSantis defends Trump from possible Jan. 6 indictment'I think that we want to be in a situation where, you know, you don't have one side just constantly trying to put the other side in jail,' DeSantis said of current and potentially forthcoming indictments of Donald Trump.
Source: Newsweek - 🏆 468. / 52 Read more »