Here Child -
Former President Donald Trump, who is running for president again in 2024 for the Republican nomination, has once again been
indicted on Aug. 1 by Special Counsel Jack Smith, this time for challenging the results of the 2020 election, alleging Trump “spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false.”
According to the indictment, Trump’s electoral challenges, which are allowed under the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, the press and the right petition the government for redress of grievances, and also by the Electoral Count Act, which allows objections to be raised on the floor of Congress, right or wrong, were “uniformly unsuccessful.” In particular, the Electoral Count Act simply provides a procedure for waging challenges, requiring one member of the House and one member of the Senate for the state raising the challenge to hear the objection. That was done, with challenges ready to be heard for the states of Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump additionally had claimed prior to Jan. 6, 2021 that under the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution, Vice President Pence had the power to unilaterally hear the alternate slates of electors that the Trump campaign was putting forward, and to otherwise send the election back to the states for recertification, a point of law that Pence disputed, saying it was up to the states to put forward their electors, which they already had. They disagreed about that, but Trump still persisted in exercising his First Amendment right to raise the challenge and attempt to persuade both Pence and Congress to consider the alternate slates of electors put forth, and if that failed, for Congress to discount the Electoral College votes from the states raising challenges under the objection process provided for under the Electoral Count Act.