Rick Hasan/Slate:

U.S. v. Trump Will Be the Most Important Case in Our Nation’s History

Forget hush money payments to porn stars hidden as business expenses. Forget showing off classified documents about Iran attack plans to visitors, and then ordering the pool guy to erase the security tapes revealing that he was still holding onto documents that he had promised to return. Forget even corrupt attempts to interfere with election results in Georgia in 2020.

The federal indictment just handed down by special counsel Jack Smith is not only the most important indictment by far of former President Donald Trump. It is perhaps the most important indictment ever handed down to safeguard American democracy and the rule of law in any U.S. court against anyone.

The most interesting part of the trial will be the testimony of star witnesses VP Mike Pence and CoS Mark Meadows.

Rolling Stone:

Trump’s Plan to Save Himself: Scapegoat His Coup Lawyers

"John [Eastman] and Rudy [Giuliani] gave a lot of counsel," one Trump advisor says ominously. "Other people can decide how sound it was"

Trump is on the cusp of being indicted over Jan. 6 and its surrounding events, and if the case goes to trial, his current legal team is preparing an “advice of counsel” argument, attempting to pull blame away from the former president for any possible illegal activity. Plans for such a defense have been percolating since last year, the two sources say.

Several lawyers in Trump’s ever-shifting legal orbit spent time both this and last year quietly studying past high-profile cases involving this particular line of defense. The attorneys tried to game out how such an argument would fare in front of a judge or a jury.

New York Times:

The indictment says Trump had six co-conspirators in his efforts to retain power.

While their identities could not be determined, their descriptions match up with a number of people who were central to the investigation of Jan. 6.

Here is how the indictment describes those conspirators. The identities of the co-conspirators could not immediately be determined, but the descriptions of them appear to match up with a number of people who were central to the investigation into election tampering conducted by prosecutors working for Mr. Smith.

Among those people central to the inquiry were Rudolph W. Giuliani, a lawyer who oversaw Mr. Trump’s attempts to claim the election was marred by widespread fraud; John Eastman, a law professor who provided the legal basis to overturn the election by manipulating the count of electors to the Electoral College; Sidney Powell, a lawyer who pushed Mr. Trump to use the military to seize voting machines and rerun the election; Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official at the time; and Kenneth Chesebro and James Troupis, lawyers who helped flesh out the plan to use fake electors pledged to Mr. Trump in states that were won by President Biden.

David French/New York Times:

There’s little doubt that Trump conspired to interfere with or obstruct the transfer of power after the 2020 election. But to prevail in the case, the government has to prove that he possessed an intent to defraud or to make false statements. In other words, if you were to urge a government official to overturn election results based on a good faith belief that serious fraud had altered the results, you would not be violating the law. Instead, you’d be exercising your First Amendment rights.

The indictment itself recognizes the constitutional issues in play. In Paragraph 3, the prosecutors correctly state that Trump “had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won.”

Thus, it becomes all-important for the prosecution to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Trump knew he lost. Arguably the most important allegations in the indictment detail the many times that senior administration officials — from the vice president to the director of national intelligence to senior members of the Justice Department to senior White House lawyers — told him that there was no fraud or foreign interference sufficient to change the results of the election. That’s why it’s vitally important for the prosecution to cite, for example, the moment when Trump himself purportedly described one of his accused co-conspirators’ election fraud claims as “crazy.”

The French piece is one of the better reads this morning. It’s not a slam dunk case like the documents indictment, but it’s the most important of the cases Trump faces.

There’s lots to discuss here (and please do!) and/but some of the best stuff is still to be written.

Meanwhile here is the other news and opinions:

New York Times:

A Run of Strong Data Buoys Biden on the Economy

Voters continue to rate the president poorly on economic issues, but there are signs the national mood is beginning to improve.

Polls still show Mr. Biden remains underwater on his handling of the economy, with voters more likely to disapprove of his performance than approve of it. Yet there are signs that voters may be brightening their assessment of the economy under Mr. Biden, in part thanks to the mounting effects of the infrastructure, manufacturing and climate bills he has signed into law.

The run of positive economic news comes as his administration looks to credit “Bidenomics” for a sustained run of positive data.

The economy grew at a 2.4 percent annual rate in the second quarter of the year, handily beating economists’ expectations, the Commerce Department reported last week. Price growth slowed in June even as consumer spending picked up. The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of year-over-year inflation, the Personal Consumption Expenditures Index, has now fallen to 3 percent this year from about 7 percent last June — easing the pressure on Mr. Biden from the economic problem that has bedeviled his presidency thus far.

Ron Filipkowski/Meidas Touch:

Desantis Challenges Kamala Harris to Debate Him on Slavery

Instead of taking on Trump, Desantis wants to pick a fight with the VP

Kamala Harris, who has embraced her role as the Administration's culture warrior with relish, immediately seized upon the issue and flew to Florida to give a serious of speeches and town halls to denounce the curriculum.  Perhaps most damaging to Desantis was that two of the most prominent black Republicans in the country - Tim Scott and Byron Donalds - agreed with Harris's criticisms of the curriculum.

The always thin-skinned Desantis responded to the criticism by attacking Scott and Donalds as DC swamp creatures who don't "fight back against the lies" from the Left.  The problem for Desantis is that he is getting hit from Right, Left and Center on this issue with no easy way out other than to backtrack on the policy, which he would never do.

USA Today:

Ron DeSantis looks to settle score with Kamala Harris over Florida's Black history curriculum

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis challenged Vice President Kamala Harris to come to Florida and have a discussion with him about the state's new African American History curriculum, which she has derided as "propaganda" and "lies" over an assertion that slaves benefitted from skills they developed in captivity.

DeSantis invited Harris to meet with him in Tallahassee, the state's capital, as early as Wednesday of this week in a letter that blasted the Biden administration and accused the vice president of attempting to "score cheap political points."

The Florida governor, who is also seeking the GOP nomination for the presidency, said in the Monday letter that his office posted on social media that Biden officials had "repeatedly disparaged our state and misinformed Americans" about the state's Black history standards

Bolts:

Liberals Flip the Wisconsin Supreme Court After Fifteen-Year Wait

The high court’s new majority may strike down the state’s abortion ban and gerrymanders, but Republicans have already signaled they’ll try impeaching judges.

Her victory hands liberals a majority on the supreme court for the first time since 2008. They will keep it until at least 2025, when Justice Ann Bradley’s term expires.

Protasiewicz easily beat her conservative opponent, former Justice Dan Kelly. She leads by 11 percentage points as of Wednesday morning, a feat powered by huge margins and comparatively strong turnout in Milwaukee and Madison’s Dane County, the state’s two urban cores.

Philip Bump/Washington Post:

Another GOP ‘bombshell’ fails to detonate

House Republicans are having a hard time selling the idea that Devon Archer’s testimony was important

Despite [Chairman James] Comer’s claim, though, the allegation is not becoming more credible every day. In fact, it is no more credible now than it was in early May, when Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) first introduced it. But Hannity and Comer have a vested interest in presenting the allegation as credible and a vested interest in suggesting that closed-door testimony from one of Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s former business partners, Devon Archer, added to that credibility.

At this point, it does not. And to see why it does not, consider the central argument made by Comer, Hannity and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Monday night — an argument that is easily debunked right at the start.

Paul Waldman/Washington Post:

Republicans would love to impeach Biden. It would backfire on them.

The dream of impeachment is alive in Congress. House Republicans have filed resolutions to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Vice President Harris and — of course — President Biden. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) hasn’t given his go-ahead to any of them, but he is toying with the idea.

Yet despite their obsession with impeachment, Republicans fundamentally misunderstand it. What makes impeachment unique is also what would make it such a disaster for them.

Max Burns: