Harris cutting him off and locking him up Chants prevent further delays in Trump’s federal case starting January 6

Harris cutting him off and locking him up Chants prevent further delays in Trump's federal case starting January 6
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Vice President Kamala Harris may be attempting to refrain from using language similar to that which was present at Trump rallies in 2016 by trying to stop the “lock him up” shouts directed at Donald Trump during Harris-Walz events this week.

However, Harris has another very good reason to refrain from endorsing that kind of language: The federal criminal accusations that Trump is currently facing could be further delayed or complicated by any remarks or expressions of support from her. This covers the cases Jack Smith, the special counsel, brought regarding election meddling in 2020 and on January 6.

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Even though the Supreme Court weakened Trump’s Jan. 6 argument, the matter will proceed to trial if Harris wins the election in November. Any remarks Harris makes regarding the trial might provide the former president’s legal team with ammunition to claim in court that she violated Trump’s right to due process. Harris is the vice president in office and served as an advisor to the government that chose the attorney general, who oversaw the case. This includes any implication that imprisoning Trump would be a specific objective (as Trump stated about Hillary Clinton on numerous occasions throughout the 2016 campaign).

She responded to fans at a Harris rally in Wisconsin this week when a “lock him up” chant started, saying, “We’re going to let the courts handle that.” She used the same response at another gathering. “We have to defeat him in November,” she declared.

Harris, a career prosecutor, has refrained from bringing up the variety of civil and criminal charges that Trump has encountered lately. Given her knowledge of the potential influence she may have on Trump’s ongoing legal matters, Harris has surrounded herself with former members of the Justice Department, such as her brother-in-law Tony West, a senior DOJ official, and former Attorney General Eric Holder, who investigated her potential vice presidential candidates.

However, Harris is not constrained in the same way when talking about any municipal and state lawsuits against Trump or instances that have already been decided.

“I was chosen to serve as a US senator. I was chosen to serve as California’s attorney general. At her first campaign rally last month, Harris stated, “And I was a courtroom prosecutor before then.” She has repeatedly repeated this statement. I played a variety of offenders in those roles, including predators who mistreated women, con artists who defrauded customers, and cheats who disobeyed the law in order to benefit themselves. Hear me out: I am aware of Donald Trump’s personality.

Upon close examination, Harris’s allusions to predators who mistreat women, con artists who defraud customers, and cheats who flout the law for personal benefit seem to be allusions to past civil or criminal cases that Trump has been involved in rather than the one he is currently facing on January 6. A jury in 2023 found Trump guilty of sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll; earlier this year, a judge in New York ordered Trump to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for civil fraud; and in May, a case involving the breaching of campaign finance laws to provide hush money to an adult film actor during the 2016 campaign resulted in a 34-count conviction.

In any debate, Harris—who on the eve of January 6, 2021, walked within feet of a pipe bomb that had been put at the DNC headquarters—will have a difficult time discussing the Capitol incident and Trump’s attempts to hold onto power following his loss in 2020.

Additionally, it’s likely that she won’t bring up much of Trump’s handling of secret documents: A court prosecution concerning Trump’s purported mishandling of sensitive documents was dismissed by a federal judge chosen by him; however, the Justice Department has appealed, and the case may still stand.

The fact that she is a part of the administration “complicates her campaign position, just as it would have complicated for President Joe Biden,” according to Bill Shipley, a former federal prosecutor who is currently defending a number of defendants in court on January 6. Furthermore, Shipley pointed out that Harris is a lawyer, raising potential ethical concerns if she discussed ongoing cases.

There are Justice Department guidelines for sharing information about ongoing cases with the media, and the DOJ has a practice of trying to stay inside the “four corners,” which means that court documents, not statements made by the media, are the primary source of information about ongoing cases. Although the Justice Department is the sole entity obligated by these regulations, Harris made a point of highlighting to voters her willingness to uphold the boundaries that have separated the agency from the White House for many years, dating back to the Watergate affair.

When NBC News questioned Harris’s team about why she had stopped the “lock him up” chants, the vice president stated in a statement that she was concentrating on encouraging people to defeat Trump in November.

“Vice President Harris’s message is straightforward: voting this November to stop Donald Trump and his destructive Project 2025 agenda,” a campaign official stated.

“If Joe Biden and Kamala Harris hadn’t actively leveraged the legal system to try and imprison President Trump before the election, it would have been hilarious,” the Trump campaign said in response to an inquiry regarding the shouts.

Despite the fact that Smith, a more independent special counsel, brought the federal charges against Trump and has actively pursued cases against both Democrats and Republicans, the Biden administration has been accused by the Trump campaign and Republicans in Congress of weaponizing the Justice Department against Trump.

Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden, was found guilty of gun crimes thanks to the efforts of another special counsel appointed by the Justice Department during the Biden administration. This individual was a previous Trump appointment. After supervising an examination into Biden’s handling of sensitive papers, the Republican nominee for the third special counsel, who had previously served as Trump’s top federal prosecutor, chose not to press charges.

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