In their ongoing crusade to criminalize dissent, former President Donald Trump’s persecutors might have sunk to a new low.
Trump’s latest criminal indictment, handed up Monday by a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, claimed the leading GOP 2024 presidential contender and his associates “constituted a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in various related criminal activities.”
It included one assertion that defies belief.
In a section that detailed the supposed acts of racketeering, “Act 22” accused Trump of encouraging his Twitter followers to turn on the television.
“On or about the 3rd day of December 2020, DONALD JOHN TRUMP caused to be tweeted from the Twitter account @RealDonaldTrump, ‘Georgia hearings now on @OANN. Amazing!’ This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy,” the indictment read.
This is not a joke. In the dystopian world of leftist prosecutors, telling people on social media to watch a hearing on the One America News Network amounts to racketeering.
The New York Times, of course, published an annotated version of the indictment Tuesday.
“The inclusion in the indictment of multiple tweets by Mr. Trump suggests the expansive nature of the racketeering charges,” the Times’ Alan Feuer wrote. “It would be difficult to prove that each tweet was a criminal act on its own, but prosecutors are suggesting that each one was part of the larger conspiracy to obstruct the election.”
This functions as pornography for affluent liberals afflicted by Trump Derangement Syndrome.
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For those unafflicted by intense and irrational hatred, however, the entire indictment appeared as little more than the latest manifestation of a dying establishment’s wrath.
In this context, Act 22 has tragi-comic elements about it. And people noticed.
Monday and Tuesday on X, formerly Twitter, a number of prominent conservatives highlighted the ludicrous Act 22.
Charlie Kirk, for instance, expressed both disbelief and alarm.
“This is an actual line from the Georgia indictment,” he said in a post. “This is not a criminal case. It is a bid to nullify the United States Constitution.”
This is an actual line from the Georgia indictment.
This is not a criminal case. It is a bid to nullify the United States Constitution. pic.twitter.com/D7ZGSC4KMH
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) August 15, 2023
Margot Cleveland, senior legal correspondent at The Federalist, leaned more to the comic side on racketeering and Act 22.
“OMgosh…are they for real?” Cleveland said regarding the indictment’s first supposed racketeering charge.
THREAD: OMgosh…are they for real? 1/ pic.twitter.com/nwkvfsaeB0
— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) August 15, 2023
“LOL. It wasn’t even a mean tweet!” she added in a follow-up post on Act 22.
2/ LOL. It wasn’t even a mean tweet! pic.twitter.com/mWzDPzQ9Rt
— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) August 15, 2023
Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin noted the irony of Act 22 in light of recent and genuine political conspiracies.
“If telling people to turn on their TV is an illegal ‘conspiracy,’ what is it called when a group of ‘intelligence officials’ coordinate with a political campaign to falsely claim that Hunter Biden’s laptop is ‘Russian disinformation’?” Tiffany said in a post on Tuesday.
If telling people to turn on their TV is an illegal “conspiracy,” what is it called when a group of “intelligence officials” coordinate with a political campaign to falsely claim that Hunter Biden’s laptop is “Russian disinformation”? pic.twitter.com/8t9MgfSJvm
— Rep. Tom Tiffany (@RepTiffany) August 15, 2023
Meanwhile, to highlight the hypocrisy of the entire indictment, conservative commentator Greg Price posted a clip of former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton claiming that she had the 2016 election stolen from her.
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) August 15, 2023
Price also shared a video featuring clips of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow repeatedly pushing the now-discredited Russian collusion narrative.
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) August 15, 2023
On the whole, Act 22 seems so bizarre that it leads to one of only two possible conclusions.
First, those responsible for the Georgia indictment actually believe that encouraging Twitter followers to turn on the television constitutes an act of “conspiracy.”
If so, one cannot imagine stronger evidence of Trump Derangement Syndrome. After all, what other form of impairment could convince a group of adult humans that “conspirators” openly tweet their plans? Would not the act of tweeting expose the conspiracy?
In any event, where Trump Derangement Syndrome prevails, we must set logic aside.
Second, those responsible for the Georgia indictment recognize the absurdity of Act 22 but do not care.
In fact, they regard the brazen absurdity as proof that they do not have to care what you think.
Thus, Trump’s Georgia persecutors, like his persecutors elsewhere, appear as either desperate lunatics or calculating tyrants.
No third alternative seems possible.
