If this is accurate, Jack Smith's even better at his job than we thought! Via Salon:
Special counsel Jack Smith's target letter to former President Donald Trump indicated that he may be charged with violating a civil rights statute from the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, three sources told The New York Times.The letter mentioned three criminal statutes in the grand jury investigation regarding Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, two people familiar with the matter told The Times.
Two of these statutes included conspiracy to defraud the government and obstruction of an official proceeding. But a third "surprise" statute cited in the letter included Section 241 of Title 18 of the United States Code, which makes it a crime 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."
"The benefits for using Section 241 are three-fold," Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State University law professor, told Salon. "First, the statute isn't novel in terms of applying it to election fraud. Second, is that the DOJ can go after the election fraud scheme and tie it to the insurrection for enhanced penalties. Third, the combination of the first two benefits allows Trump to be tried for January 6th without litigating whether his speech before the riots at the Capitol, which would be the basis of a free-standing incitement charge, is protected by the First Amendment."
