Not "free speech." Crimes.

"Whatabout Barbara Boxer after the 1994 presidential vote in Ohio!"
"Whatabout Al Gore after the 2000 presidential vote in Florida!"
"Whatabout Stacy Abrams after the 2018 Georgia governor's election!"

We are going to hear a lot about those in the months ahead.

They are not equivalent to what Trump did. 

Over the years some prominent Democrats have questioned the vote on elections. In making the case that Trump's prosecution is a "witch hunt," Republicans and their friendly media are asserting that what Trump did in the 2020 election was similar to what Democrats have done. Republicans criticized Democrats, but did not prosecute them. It is unfair! Trump is singled out!

Americans have a free speech right to protest the fairness of an election process and the accuracy of the vote count. There is a legal way to do this.

Barbara Boxer in the U.S. Senate and Tubbs Jones in the U.S. House challenged the electoral vote count in Ohio. Boxer said in a press conference:

This is my opening shot to be able to focus the light of truth on these terrible problems in the electoral system. While we have men and women dying to bring democracy abroad, we've got to make it the best it can be here at home, and that's why I'm doing this.

It was an hour of political theater. Presidential candidate John Kerry said he would not take part in the protest, saying:

Our legal teams on the ground have found no evidence that would change the outcome of the election.

Kerry, a sitting Senator, said that he would be introducing legislation to improve accountability and transparency in future elections.

In 2000 a series of problems involving incompletely detached "chads" from ballot punch cards made the vote count questionable in Florida. With a vote count margin of 537 votes out of almost six million, the rules on how to count and recount questionable ballots moved the winner back and forth between Al Gore and George Bush. The Supreme Court intervened and in a five to four vote, with justices following the party of the president that appointed them, decided a technical point in a way that gave the margin of victory to Bush. Al Gore announced that he would accept the decision of the Court.

In 2018 Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams lost a close election for Georgia governor to Brian Kemp, then the chief election official for the state. He had done a wholesale purge of 500,000 from the voter rolls, the largest cancellation of voter registrations in U.S. history, according to the Atlanta Constitution. The purge had a disparate effect on the electorate, causing more poor people, young people, and Blacks to be de-registered. Abrams conceded the election, saying 

I acknowledge that former Secretary of State Brian Kemp will be certified as the victor in the 2018 gubernatorial election.

She went on to say

But to watch an elected official who claims to represent the people in this state baldly pin his hopes for election on suppression of the people's democratic right to vote has been truly appalling.

Her response was to file a lawsuit in the courts and to set about registering the 800,000 new voters who were eligible to vote in the 2000 election.

The words and actions taken in these three instances were legal and reasonable. At the time Republicans accused the Democrats of being "sore losers" --  as Democrats now accuse Trump. But there is a giant difference between these three instances and what Trump and his allies have done.

Trump did not accept the evidence of audits and the adjudication of the courts. He ignores and denies their decisions. He went beyond the free speech right to protest. He took illegal actions by creating a conspiracy to defraud the United States.  As the House January 6 Committee and the Jack Smith and Georgia indictments outline, Trump orchestrated a multi-pronged plan. The group action included false statements proposed in a Department of Justice letter to state legislatures stating that the DoJ found evidence of fraud, pressure and threats on state officials to reverse the vote in their states, an attempt to solicit a false confession from an election worker, managing creation of fraudulent certificates of election in multiple states, and an effort to get the Vice President to discard valid electoral votes. Those fraudulent elector ballots stating that they were "duly elected" were not spontaneously created in the states by over-eager and hopeful partisans. They were part of a plan, coordinated at the highest levels in the White House. So was the effort to plant false information about the findings of the Department of Justice.  Acting deputy AG Richard Donoghue's contemporaneous notes, quoting Trump, read.

Donoghue: "That's an exact quote from the president, yes."

Trump is not being indicted for his claims about the election. He has a free speech right to say what he wants, whether there is evidence for it or not. But it is criminal to do a series of acts to create fraudulent documents to carry out a fraudulent goal. It is criminal to do so in the context of urging public officials to disobey their oaths of office.

Republicans claim many Democrats despise Trump. They are correct. Many Democrats think he is dangerous and corrupt. That would be reason to impeach him, a political venue. The indictments are now in a legal venue. The question for investigators, prosecutors, and the trial court juries is not whether Trump is dangerous, corrupt, or despicable in their minds. It is whether or not he did criminal acts. There is substantial evidence that he did.

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