Jack Smith's Jan. 6 Brief - Six Takeaways from Jewish Sources

I originally put this packet together before the ‘24 election. But it’s even more relevant now, with Trump trying to erase Jan. 6 from our collective memory. Every Trump act is anathema to Jewish law.

I originally put this packet together in Oct. 2024, before the election, so it is not in response to Jack Smith’s recent daylong testimony. But it is even more relevant now, with Trump trying to erase Jan. 6 from our collective memory. His efforts have, unfortunately, largely succeeded.

• See Boston Globe: Trump’s campaign to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 attack has largely succeeded. Here’s why.

• A plaque memorializing the sacrifices of police officers on that day has been relegated to storage rather than put up at the Capitol, as required by law (NPR).

• See also my prescient piece (written in 2022, during the Biden era): We must commemorate Jan. 6. A national fast is the best way to do so.

• Click here for my pre-election reminder: Since Trump keeps on attacking American Jews, here are 52 reasons, based on Jewish sources, why three quarters of American Jews won't vote for him.

• Click here also for my piece, Greatest Hits from the Trump Era #1: Moving the Embassy to Jerusalem.

  Here are some passages from Jack Smith's January 6 brief, as seen through the prism of Jewish sources and as I described them in Oct. of 2024, before the election. These are intended to be an invitation to read the entire brief. Don’t be intimidated from reading it. Smith intentionally composed it in layperson’s English, not in legalese. It serves as a helpful summary of the greatest crime ever perpetrated on our democracy. Whether or not the case ever goes to to trial, this brief stands as part of the historical record. At a time when the Trump doublethink has transformed Jan. 6 into a festival of merry-making on the Capitol steps, we need to reinforce the true details - and no better time than today.

  So let’s cover some of the key passages from the brief, focusing on the sections where the crime is laid out, as opposed to those sections devoted to the bogus Supreme Court ruling, in which Smith argues that these were not official Presidential duties.

1. Trump employs deceit at every stage of the electoral process (p.4)

*** In Jewish tradition, lying is almost always forbidden, though required in certain exceptional cases, such as to save a life….The Talmud forbids lying or deceiving others: "The Holy One, blessed be God, hates a person who says one thing with his mouth and another in his heart" (Pesahim 113b).

2. He tells people that he was planning a false declaration of victory ahead of the final vote tally (p.5), which is precisely what he did.

2. 

***Jewish sources see the grave dangers of talebearing, or as Bill Clinton calls it, “Making up stuff.” In Genesis, the false narrative Joseph’s brothers tell about the supposed demise of their kin nearly drives Jacob to the grave. And see below a tragic Midrash explaining why Sarah’s death occurs in the Torah just after the binding of Isaac. Satan (more of a folk figure here than “the devil” of Christian mythology) tells a Big Lie to Sarah, saying that Isaac died on top of the mountain. Having no way to text Abraham for verification, she dies a bitter death. (Legends of the Jews 1:5:261)

3. Trump tries to sow chaos and confusion - even rioting - to upset the count (p.8)

   

***Rioting has always been especially dangerous for Jews, manufactured, manipulative chaos all the more. We’ve seen how, inevitably, when protesters turn violent, Jews almost invariably become targets. Using violence and sowing chaos to achieve aims (especially fraudulent ones) are beyond irresponsible. Just as a reminder, here is a partial listing of anti-Jewish riots that have taken place in history.

4. Trump cruelly and deliberately upends the lives of the Georgian poll workers (p.22).

The horrible libel that turned the lives of Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ‘Shaye” Moss upside down reminds me of the story of Naboth’s vineyard, from 1 Kings 21:1-16. For those who may not recall, King Ahab wanted to buy Naboth's vineyard to use as a vegetable garden, but Naboth refused, claiming that the land was his ancestral inheritance and that God told him never to sell it. Ahab was furious and returned home to sulk. Queen Jezebel had Naboth convicted on false charges and stoned to death, and Ahab seized the vineyard.

Of all the innocent people whose lives have been ruined by Trump’s callous disregard for decency and lack of basic human empathy, Freeman and Moss at least found some justice in the end, being awarded a hefty sum from Giuliani. Naboth was not so lucky, but that’s because he didn’t live in a republic, and we do - if we can keep it.

Were he alive in a Trumpian 2025, his vineyard would surely be appropriated as a new Trump golf course.

If Trump wins the next election, we’ll all be toiling in Naboth’s vineyard. Of all the commandments Trump has broken, the one about bearing false witness seems to be his “go-to” sin. He breaks that one almost every time he opens his mouth. And it’s a big deal in Jewish law. Fully eight of the 613 mitzvot enumerated by Maimonides revolve around bearing false witness. And Maimonides never even heard about Springfield, Ohio.

5. Trump and his accomplices try to hide their crimes (p.59)

“And for the sin which we have committed before You openly or secretly. (Yom Kippur liturgy)”

We can see from Isaiah 59:2 that the same Hebrew word used for secrecy in sinning, “s-t-r,” also connotes secrecy from God - with the hiding of God’s face, God’s grace, from the sinner.

The commentator Rashbam notes that in Deut. 27, there’s a list of 12 sins for which curses are pronounced in a special ceremony on two mountains near Shechem. Why pick those particular sins, asks Rabbanit Bracha Jaffe? Because, according the commentator Rashbam, they are all performed in secret.

Rashbam:

Twelve sins for twelve tribes...being of the type that one commits in private… when one is unobserved and no witnesses are present.

Here are some examples:

15 “Cursed is the man who makes a statue or a molten God...and places it in secret.”
18 “Cursed is the one who misleads a blind person on the road”
24 “Cursed is the one who strikes his fellow in secret”
25 “Cursed is the one who accepts bribery”

Jaffe writes:

The Torah is giving us the message that - yes - it’s wrong to transgress but it’s much worse to do it in secret. Secrecy carries with it: shame and fear. I think that there is more we can learn from this. In our own lives, secrets and secrecy can be a tremendous burden. Hiding our secrets can be exhausting.

Evidently not if you are Donald Trump and his accomplices.

6. The incitement at the Ellipse (pp 74-5)

***To what can I compare this speech in the annals of Jewish history? Korach perhaps. Or Eliezer Ben Yair, the zealot at Masada who convinced the people that suicide (or technically mass murder, since each person took their life of their neighbor) is somehow the preferred Jewish choice, when it almost never is.

But unlike Eliezer and Korach, Trump didn’t put his own life on the line. He convinced his people to march to the Capitol and said he would be there with him, but he didn’t go. He was both a demagogic liar and a coward.

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