Conspiracy 101: What Is a Conspiracy, and How Can It Be Proven?

By John Thompson

It has been a long-running joke with conservatives about how boatloads of "right-wing conspiracies" turned out to be 100 percent true. The list is long and includes Hunter Biden’s laptop, the various Russia hoaxes and J6 conspiracies, the origin of the Wu Flu, the safety and efficacy of various COVID vaccines, and countless others.

Recently, our country has seen violent anti-ICE riots and, with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s revelations, what might accurately be called a "Team Obama" circle of treason to undermine Trump’s first term in office. With Trump now back in the White House, conservatives have rightfully focused on what has always been the true nature of conspiracy, and that is the conspiracy to commit crimes of various types. There is an understandable desire to have justice brought to those who have sown such dishonest chaos these last years. This article is a brief primer on how that might occur. Put another way, we talk about conspiracies all the time, but what does it actually mean, and what does it take in actual, practical criminal law terms to prove such a crime?

Here we go.

Conspiracy Defined

First, let’s give the legal definition of conspiracy. And before we get too far into the weeds, if you remember nothing else, think of it like a sports team – you win as a team, you lose as a team. Everybody gets the credit or the blame. I have simplified the legal definition slightly, but only because the nuances are not worth the trouble. You generally have three (3) elements to a conspiracy charge. They are:

The defendant agreed with another to commit a crime.
At the time of the agreement, the defendant or someone else in the conspiracy actually intended to commit that crime.
There was one "overt act" done in furtherance of the crime.

One other important caveat to all of this is that a conspirator is not only guilty of the crime contemplated, say, robbery or car theft, but also guilty of offenses that fall within the scope of the unlawful agreement and could reasonably have been foreseen to be a necessary or natural consequence of the unlawful agreement. An example of that might be when you plan a car theft, and somebody gets shot and killed when it happens. The defendant is guilty of the car theft and the murder, as murder is a natural and foreseeable consequence of the car theft.

An Easy Example

It’s not rocket surgery, but let’s give an easy example. Assume that the possession of pizza is a crime. Assume further that you are sitting around with family and/or friends, and you decide that’s what you wanted for dinner. That is your agreement. Then add what is called an "overt act," and you have your completed conspiracy to possess pizza. That overt act can be something very simple, like looking up the phone number for the pizza parlor or maybe tossing the keys to your car to the friend/family member who is going to go get the pizza. It makes no difference that you might not want to eat pizza, or even that no pizza was actually gotten – in technical terms, when you add that overt act to get the pizza, the conspiracy is complete.

How to Actually Prove Your Favorite Conspiracy

The ICE riots were (are) violent and seemingly pre-planned. Watching the videos, you can see the coordinated signs, supplies, and attacks, and you wonder who paid for all of that and how they organized it. The lowest level of the conspiracy is fairly easy to establish, as many/most of the actual rioters will make statements when apprehended, and investigation into things like social media and their electronic devices will reveal their communication and coordination with co-rioters. Throw in videos of the riots and possession of weapons – an example might be the frozen water bottles they hurl at law enforcement – and again, that proof is gathered from the on-the-street foot soldiers of chaos.

But what about the folks who are levels above them, the ones who are financing and planning those riots? Sufficient proof for those types will be harder to gather, but like taking down a drug ring, you start at the bottom and work your way up to the top. Each level of involvement will have connections to the next above it. You will get search warrants for the electronic communications, emails, texts, etc., that connect and coordinate. You will also get search warrants for bank records tracing the movement of funds. Along the way, some of the co-conspirators will talk and give you leads. This part of the investigation will require more patience and attention to detail, and the target suspects will try to hide behind the First Amendment, claiming, ‘’We were only in it to sponsor peaceful protests.” The devil will be in the details, but a thorough investigation will likely be able to find those details.

Turning to the recent disclosures of what I’m calling the Team Obama Circle of Treason, they may indeed yield criminal charges. At this stage, we know relatively little, but it is said that there is a mountain of preserved communications that are damning to the participants. I should mention that this group of target suspects will be very cagey and likely to lawyer up and make no statements to law enforcement. We hear of whistleblowers who are coming forward; are they legitimate, or are they merely the lowest level of the conspiracy, trying to talk their way out of trouble?

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Let’s take a look at 18 US Code, Chapter 115, at Section 2384. It reads:

§2384. Seditious conspiracy
If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

Could that statute be used against Team Obama? How ironic, and how sweet would the justice be if this and other statutes that were used to grossly overcharge and pursue the J6’ers were instead used against those who may have used their government power to try and destroy a sitting, lawfully elected President of the United States. A tremendous amount of sophisticated work will need to be done to see if that might happen, but six months into President Trump’s second term, he seems to have the team assembled to investigate it.

To quote the lyrics of the song "Independence Day" by Martina McBride:

Let the whole world know that today is a day of reckoning
Let the weak be strong
Let the right be wrong
Roll the stone away
Let the guilty pay
It's Independence Day

May the Lord grant our leaders clear vision, diligence, and wisdom to do what should be done.