Donald just took another significant step toward eroding the rule of law in the United States of America. Of course, he’s never had anything but contempt for the rule of law, at least as it applies to him, and one of the most significant examples of this was his trying, on January 2, 2021, to convince Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, to help him steal the election:

So look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more that we have because we won the state.

11,780. That’s an oddly specific number. But it wasn’t a coincidence. 11,779 votes were the margin of Donald’s loss in Georgia, and he wanted Raffensperger to “find” just enough votes to change the results of the election in Donald’s favor.

As we know, in the aftermath of the 2020 election, Joe Biden won the general election by almost 8 million votes. Donald refused to accept the results, and he refused to concede. Then he and several co-conspirators tried to overturn the results of that free and fair election by creating fake slates of electors in states Biden actually won. Instead of certifying the legitimate electors chosen by voters, allies in multiple swing states met secretly and signed documents falsely claiming that they were duly elected electors. These fraudulent certificates were then sent to Congress and the National Archives. As a result of this criminal conspiracy, 19 people were indicted, including Donald.

Over the weekend, Politico reported that Donald issued sweeping unconditional pardons to Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, and dozens of others who helped him attempt to overturn the 2020 election. The pardons cover a broad range of actions related to his fake elector scheme. It also applies to the efforts to pressure state officials to block election certification on January 6th, 2021, the day that the President of the United States incited an insurrection against his own government.

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