Prosecutors are charging Trump using laws made to fight the KKK. Here's why | Sidney Blumenthal

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

52% : In 1896, the supreme court ruling in Plessy v Ferguson upholding segregation was the capstone on a series of court decisions eviscerating Reconstruction laws.
47% : In the 1872 campaign, a large faction of the national Republican party opposed the KKK Act and advocated reconciliation with the south.
46% : Smith has indicted Trump under the KKK Act, which incorporates the 14th amendment, section 3, of the constitution.
46% : The justice department brought the case against 18 killers under the federal conspiracy statutes of the KKK Act before a grand jury presided over by federal judge William Harold Cox, a diehard segregationist.
45% : During Reconstruction that section was used within the KKK Act to suppress precisely that insurrection.
43% : "It is precisely under section 241 of the Ku Klux Klan Act, upheld by the supreme court in an opinion that establishes the broadest possible application, that the justice department indicted Donald Trump on 1 August 2023.
42% : The Republicans lost their House majority in 1874; Democrats cut the justice department's budget for enforcing the KKK Act.
41% : Taking his 14th amendment argument to its logical conclusion, his attorney, D John Sauer, argued before the three-judge panel that Trump could order the military to assassinate an opponent and be protected from indictment unless he was first impeached and convicted by the Senate.
40% : In early February, the US supreme court will also rule on the Colorado supreme court's decision to disqualify Trump from the state's ballot for his part in the insurrection.
40% : Cox dismissed the charges brought under section 241 of the KKK Act - a "conspiracy against rights", extending federal criminal jurisdiction over private actors interfering with other citizens' "free exercise of enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States".
39% : "This never happened," Donald Trump said when the story reappeared in 2022.
39% : Trump's indictment under section 241 of the KKK Act tests the federal government's ability and willingness to secure basic voting rights and defend the constitution.
38% : They urge relief for Trump as a naive gesture of good faith, as if even-handedness will encourage tolerance and pluralism.
34% : A number of commentators opine that Trump must not be held to account because it would arouse his enraged followers and violate the spirit of direct democracy (never mind the spirit of the law).
34% : Meanwhile, at the federal appeals court hearing on his claim that he is immune from all prosecution because he is exempt from the 14th amendment, Trump threatened that if his trials proceed, if he fails to be granted "absolute immunity", and if he loses the election, there would be "bedlam" - yet another incitement to insurrection.
30% : But, with flagrant irresponsibility, virtually all of the Republican presidential primary candidates have offered that they would pardon Trump.
28% : Trump has been charged on the same grounds that Klansmen were prosecuted, not only during Reconstruction but also during the civil rights era of the 1960s, and he has been removed from the ballot on the same basis as Confederate traitors were removed from elective office.
28% : Under the KKK Act, Grant's attorney general, Amos Akerman, successfully prosecuted more than 1,100 cases against members of the Klan, effectively breaking it up.
27% : "Trump's indictment under the KKK Act is the core of the charges against him.
26% : "The special prosecutor then made clear that the law that Trump had violated was the pertinent section of the KKK Act: "In violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 241.
24% : Complacent commentators have dismissed the charges that Trump has brought on himself, hoping to calm the waters by vainly demonstrating their fair-mindedness.
24% : Trump's attorney seemed unaware or indifferent that by the same logic President Biden could with impunity order the assassination of Trump.
22% : There are clear and compelling reasons why Trump has been indicted under the KKK Act and disqualified under the 14th amendment, section 3.
8% : After the civil war, Klansmen were prosecuted - and Confederate traitors forced from office - by the same laws Trump has now run afoul ofOn Tuesday, in response to the federal case brought by special prosecutor Jack Smith over Trump's alleged role in the January 6 insurrection, Trump threatened a new round of violence - or "bedlam" - if he loses the election.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.