Finding Trump

In 2003, I took my children to see the animated movie, Finding Nemo, about a little clown fish who gets lost from his family and his quest to be reunited with them. At the point of the movie when it looked like Nemo was going to be lost forever, my 5-year-old son turned to me and whispered, “don’t worry daddy, they’re going to find Nemo. They couldn’t call the movie, Finding Nemo, if they didn’t find Nemo.” I thought about that movie and my son’s observation on Thursday, when former President Donald Trump and 18 of his associates were arrested in Fulton County Georgia for conspiracy to overturn an election. Trump who is leading current President Joe Biden in the polls for the 2024 Presidential election, had been indicted earlier by far-left wing District Attorney, Fani Willis, because he had the temerity to question the results of the Presidential election that Joe Biden supposedly won in 2020. 

Trump’s indictment was the result of a grand jury investigation that was triggered by the reporting that Trump had asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, to “find the votes” he needed to win, implying that Trump had wanted the Secretary of State to fabricate votes out of thin air for him. In reality, Trump said, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.” He didn’t say “create the votes” or “manufacture the votes” or “stuff the ballot box”, he said “find the votes” that he believed were legitimately his. Similar to my son’s observation about Nemo, he wouldn’t have used the word “find”, if he didn’t actually believe the legitimate votes existed. Trump believed, and still does, that Republican votes in certain counties were suppressed, and that there were votes for him that were illegally not counted. None of Trump’s opinion are criminal. Believing that an election was fraudulent or stolen is not criminal behavior. Asking someone to look for votes that you believe actually exist but have been suppressed is not criminal. Challenging Presidential election results is not criminal. Prior to 2020, three times this century, losing Presidential candidates challenged the results of their election – all of them were Democrats, though.