If Ronna McDaniel Offered A Bribe While Pimping the Big Lie She’s Toast and Trump’s Up For Indictment #5

Where is Indiana Jones when you need him? The corruption in the GOP runs as deep as any archeological dig. When it comes to the Big Lie and Donald Trump’s desperate machinations to hang onto power, we keep unearthing more and more double dealing and duplicity, layer upon layer. Now we find out that Ronna McDaniel, the RNC chair, offered a quid pro quo to election officials in Michigan in exchange for them not certifying Joe Biden as the winner. McDaniel has not been winning any GOP popularity contests lately and if it turns out that she broke the law against bribing a federal official in an effort to keep Trump in power, I don’t see any way she’s going to keep her job. And her personal liberty may become an issue as well, and finally, this isn’t going to do Trump any good. Politico:

A newly unearthed recording of Donald Trump and Ronna McDaniel pressuring two county officials in Michigan not to certify the 2020 election could be the very definition of shocking but not surprising news.

On one hand, the fact that Trump and McDaniel called Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, the two GOP canvassers in Wayne County, has been known for some time and is included in the House Jan. 6 committee’s report. […]

Andrew Weissmann, a former DOJ prosecutor, suggested on X last night that the recording could open the door to a federal bribery charge: “Trump and Ronna McDaniel — Offering a thing of value to a public official to violate oath of office = a crime.”

Others see new fuel to power Smith’s election subversion case as well as something that Georgia prosecutors might use to bolster their own case against Trump.

Now here’s where things get interesting. The tape in question paints a very different picture than what we were led to believe happened before. Palmer has described the call far more innocently than the new tapes reveal. But Judge J. Michael Luttig has a different idea about it all.

“This new evidence is of a piece with, and bolsters, the considerable other similar evidence of the former president’s interference in the 2020 presidential election that both Jack Smith and Fani Willis have assembled,” he said, referring to the state prosecutor who has charged Trump and associates in Fulton County, Georgia. “The president was not acting in furtherance of his duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed when he attempted to interfere in the presidential election in Michigan and elsewhere.” […]

Ty Cobb, who once served as Trump’s lawyer and whose views on the 14th Amendment the Trump campaign has recently highlighted, said he saw the recordings as “likely a violation” of the federal honest services fraud statute.

“Also, shows the depths to which Trump personally participated in fraudulently pimping the ‘Big Lie,’” Cobb said. “McDaniel is equally exposed. Clearly, evidence going to the core conspiracies charged by the special prosecutor.”

And other people chimed in with their viewpoints along similar lines.

It seems like Ronna McDaniel could be in some trouble in Michigan and Donald Trump may be facing a fifth set of charges. A promise was offered in exchange for an official act unlike in Georgia where the preferred method appears to have been limited to browbeating state officials. pic.twitter.com/hwSSN5gEoO

— Anthony Michael Kreis (@AnthonyMKreis) December 22, 2023

If we think of bribery statues as criminalizing the offering/accepting of goods that are enriching or personally benefiting the public official, then dangling an attorney falls outside that prohibition. But the terms of this statute aren’t so limited. Be curious to see caselaw…

— Anthony Michael Kreis (@AnthonyMKreis) December 22, 2023

It will be interesting to see the case law indeed. And Karl Rove, who knows the ins and outs of the GOP like few people, likewise sees McDaniel as toast.

I take it this is something that @FoxNews has even given up trying to hide?

— Geraldo Just Geraldo (@gvravel) December 22, 2023

It’s less than ten days until the New Year, folks. I wonder how many more bombshells will go off between now and then? I’m already deaf from just the ones that have gone off this week. My sense of things is that nothing is going to relent. We’re going to roar out of 2023 and careen into 2024. Think Indy 500 on steroids and that’s about the pace that I expect things to continue to go downhill for Trump and his GOP enablers.

And when all is said and done, I sincerely believe that the Trump era will tank the Republican party. Trump will destroy what’s left and I believe we will see some new conservative party form from the ashes. That’s where all of this is inexorably heading. I see no other way.

The GOP had any number of offramps with respect to Trump. Certainly the first impeachment was the offramp they could have and should have used. If the party had enough cohesiveness and unity to do so at that time, we’d be looking at a very different situation today. But they didn’t and the same held true for impeachment two, no taking the offramp there.

So they’re stuck with Trump, evidently, until the bitter end. And it’s not going to be his bitter end — although that will come — it’s going to be theirs. I would bet my last dollar that many are the secret meetings at night, where the midnight oil has burned and high rolling GOPers have sat and conferred, “What are we doing to do?” And the response has been, “We have to completely crash and burn. And then rebuild.” We’ll see and not too long from now.

But long before that happens, Ronna McDaniel will be toast. And it’s very likely that Trump Indictment #5 may be in the works as an outworking of these facts.