Donald Trump has been indicted three times this year, twice at the federal level. In April, he was arraigned in New York and pleaded not guilty to state charges after receiving an indictment from Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg. In May, he was charged with mishandling classified government documents and overturning the 2020 election result. In both cases, Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges. In August, he was accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States, tampering with a witness, and conspiracy against citizens’ rights. Trump could face a fourth indictment from Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney Fani Willis over his attempts to influence the 2020 vote count in Georgia.
Senior editor at large at Breitbart News, attorney Joel B. Pollak, speculated that Trump might be elected president from prison, take the oath of office, pardon himself, and then leave the prison.
Pollak said that in his press release, Special Counsel Jack Smith had stated that the violence on January 6 at the Capitol was caused by Trump’s alleged falsehoods about the election but that the Special Counsel had refused to prosecute the former president with incitement. He laughed at Smith’s assertion that Trump was responsible for sowing “mistrust” in the election, pointing out that the left and the media had previously done so via violence, censorship, and changes to the voting process.
Pollak also suggested that the Department of Justice should have prosecuted Hillary Clinton and the others who helped peddle the “Russia collusion” deception to claim that Trump had stolen the 2016 election if making false accusations of election theft were federal crimes.
Since Trump was previously prosecuted for identical charges during his second impeachment trial in the Senate in early 2021 and acquitted, Pollak suggested that the indictment could be unlawful under the Double Jeopardy Clause.
