In what Constitutional experts are calling an "elegant" legal move, Special Counsel Jack Smith has cited a post-Civil War civil rights statute as one of three laws Defendant Trump may be prosecuted under in the target letter Smith served last Sunday. The law, 18 U.S. Code 241 is called "Conspiracy Against Rights" in the criminal code, and was passed during the Reconstruction Era at a time when Black citizens were facing extraordinary amounts of violence in the South when they tried to vote.

The law is said to have been passed, at least in part, against Ku Klux Klan violence, and was part of a number of statutes passed to support the rights Black citizens and others enjoyed following the passage of the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing all citizens equal protection of the laws.

The law should send chills down the spine of Defendant Trump. Here it is in its entirety:

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or

If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured--

The first scary thing about the law for Defendant Trump is that it is specifically crafted as a conspiracy statute. The second scary thing is its broad scope. The third scary thing is found in its final section, which specifies that if death results from violations, or if kidnapping is involved in commission of the crime being prosecuted under the act, punishment can be "any term of years or life, or both, or may be sentenced to death."