COMMENTARY: Stealing Votes Is the Worst Kind of Theft

Black vote. In this modern context, updated in 1948, it raises the seriousness of Trump’s alleged actions.

If you were one of the 81 million Americans who voted for the winning Biden/Harris ticket, Trump was doing all he could to keep your vote from counting in order to stay in power.

If you weren’t, Trump’s still trying to change the will of the people.

cuses on Trump’s pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the decertification process on Jan. 6, 2021, with the insurrection as a backdrop.

Pence told Trump as early as Christmas Day 2020, “You know, I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome.”

By Emil Guillermo

My latest monologue, “Emil Amok: Lost NPR Host…” will be this Saturday at the SF Fringe’s Cutting Ball Theater at 277 Taylor.

That’s not Taylor Swift’s street.

It’s the Tenderloin. If you know it only from the news, or driving by, you might freak out. But a theater stands there like an oasis. That art is being created in the Tenderloin gives hope.

It’s also where my Dad hung around when he was among the first of the Filipinos to come in great numbers to America in the 1920s.

So, for me, performing there is kind of a homecoming.

And it’s the reason I feel the way I do about the third Trump indictment that was unsealed last week.

Trump? My Filipino father? Follow along.

My father, a fry cook most of his life in union restaurants in San Francisco, didn’t have much. But he had the right to vote.

After coming here as a colonized Filipino barred from voting, he managed to become a U.S. citizen later in life, which earned him the only real opportunity he really valued in this country. With the vote, my father had a voice in our democracy.

Take away the vote, and you take away America.

That’s really at the heart of the latest Trump indictment filed in federal district court in Wash., D.C.

More than the previous two indictments – which involved paying hush money to an adult film star in New York, or mishandling of classified documents in Florida, this third indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice was for crimes against democracy.

What else do you call it when a president loses an election and does whatever he can to stay in power, to the point of attempting to negate all the votes cast for the winner Joe Biden?

It’s an outrageous ploy, and it’s all outlined in the historic indictment, the first ever to allege federal crimes committed by a sitting U.S. president.

The first three counts allege Trump’s conspiracy to defraud the United States by spreading lies about winning the 2020 election that he knew he had lost.

It further alleges that Trump used “dishonesty, fraud and deceit to impair, obstruct and defeat the lawful government function” to count and certify the vote on Jan. 6, 2021.

But it’s the fourth count that’s the gut punch to our democracy.

The indictment alleges Trump engaged in a conspiracy against the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted, a violation of 18 U.S.C. section 241.

It’s the part of the 1870 civil rights law that stopped the Ku Klux Klan from interfering with the

Trump and his cronies like to claim he’s the victim in this new indictment, but the real victims are those 81 million Americans who voted for the winner.

If you voted, this indictment is about you.

It’s also crafted in a way that takes away any First Amendment defense by acknowledging Trump has a right to lie about an election. He also has a legal right to challenge an election and ask for a recount.

But Trump doesn’t have the right to obstruct a vote certification process by creating false slates of electors from various states, in place of real ones, to certify a fake election in Congress.

The indictment also isn’t focused on Trump’s speech, but on his actions.

Oddly, the Trump defense has been to eschew legal argument and take a political/media approach, essentially hinting at invalid defenses.

Trump attorney John Lauro is saying his client didn’t “technically” violate the Constitution by his actions because to ask people to overturn an election is “aspirational.”

Sounds good in a bar argument, but not a court of law.

Talking about criminal activity isn’t excused because you were just being “aspirational.”

It’s the desperate approach one takes when you can’t win. All Trump can do is destroy trust in everything, including democracy.

NO INSURRECTION

The indictment also doesn’t charge insurrection, though we know what we saw from the videos of that day.

Instead, the third indictment fo- ler has created many incredible stories about Black people in the future, yet there have been no movies made of her work.

The second part of the day was a one-on-one discussion between Boots Riley and Cheryl Dunye.

Riley, who is best known for writing and directing the movie “Sorry to Bother You,” talked about his journey through the entertainment industry, beginning as a rapper struggling to pay rent after he dropped out of high school to pursue music, to eventually becoming a famous filmmaker.

Also a filmmaker, Dunye relayed how her work deals with the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, through the lens of a Black lesbian.

But Trump continued to press Pence, even berating him for opposing a lawsuit to block certification of the lost election. Pence said he thought there was no constitutional basis for it. Trump allegedly replied, “You’re too honest.”

This indictment is no conspiracy by Democrats.

This indictment exposes an attempted theft of our democracy, a modern American coup.

Yet, the more we know, the less Republicans and the general public seem to care.

Keep caring.

A fourth indictment in Georgia appears to be imminent for the person who could become president again.

This is the existential crisis of our democracy as it stands today.

We’re either a country that believes in the rule of law and holds our leaders accountable, or our country is about the cult of personality, and we allow the use of lies and deceit to destroy our nation. And give those corrupt leaders free reign.

Arrested and arraigned for a third time last week, Trump, in his own executive version of “Three Strikes You’re Out,” continues to criticize it all as a “phony witch hunt” and “election interference.”

He also claims to be the victim. But if he were alive, my dad, a loyal and dedicated voter, would see through all that.

And if you voted in 2020, you should too.

(You can read the indictment on Trump’s alleged crimes against our democracy at https://www. scribd.com/document/662462402/ Trump-Indictment# Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator.

Simon