TO: Merrick Brian Garland – United States Attorney General

I hold the highest regard for your personal integrity. After graduating from Harvard Law School, you served as a special assistant to Attorney General Benjamin Civviletti from 1979 to 1981. 

As a federal prosecutor, you played a leading role in the investigation and prosecution of the Oklahoma City bombers.

You served as judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (1997 – 2021) and then as Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (2013 – 2020).

In 2016, President Barack Obama nominated you to serve as an associate Justice of the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy created by the death of Antonin Scalia. But Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold a hearing or vote on your nomination. 

Merrick Garland

Yet, with due regard for your years of dedicated service to the rule of law, I am forced to say: You are now presiding over the closing days of the American Republic.

As the bestselling book, Peril, makes clear, there was a detailed plan by Republicans to illegally retain President Donald Trump in office. The votes of 81 million Americans who had voted for former Vice President Joseph Biden would have been scrapped in what was intended to be a Right-wing coup.

According to authors Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, attorney John Eastman first proposed the plan to Vice President Mike Pence on January 4 in the Oval Office with Trump in attendance. The memo called for throwing out the election results in seven states under the false claim that those states had used alternate electors.

Eastman’s memo was sent to Senator Mile Lee (R-Utah) and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who served as one of Trump’s attorneys at the time. They tried to convince Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) that there was rampant fraud in the 2020 election.

Both Graham and Lee reportedly argued that the fraud claims had no merit.

On January 6, the United States Senate, with Vice President Mike Pence presiding, would certify states’ Electoral College results of that election.

Since Biden had gotten 306 votes compared to 232 for Trump, the outcome was already known.

On that morning, Trump tried to convince Pence to reject the electoral votes that had been cast for Biden. This would mean flipping the results of the 2020 Presidential election to give him a win.

Pence replied that he lacked the power to overturn those results.

But as Pence went off to the Capitol Building housing the Senate and House of Representatives, Trump had one last card to play.

Mike Pence

For weeks Trump had ordered his legions of Right-wing Stormtrumpers to descend on Washington, D.C. by January 6. 

On December 20, he had tweeted: “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” 

In tweets, he promoted the rally again on December 27 and 30, and January 1.

On January 6, Trump appeared at the Ellipse, a 52-acre park south of the White House fence and north of Constitution Avenue and the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

A stage had been set up for him to address tens of thousands of his supporters, who eagerly awaited him.  

Trump ordered them to march on the Capitol building to express their anger at the voting process and to intimidate their elected officials to reject the results. 

Donald Trump addresses his Stormtrumpers 

“All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by a bold and radical left Democrats which is what they are doing and stolen by the fake news media.

“Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal….

“Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back….And we’re going to have to fight much harder….

“And after this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down to the Capitol. And we’re going to cheer on our brave Senators and Congressmen and women and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.

“Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated.”

The Stormtrumpers marched to the United States Capitol—and quickly brushed aside Capitol Police.

Capitol Police facing off with Stormtrumpers

Among their outrages:

• Members of the mob attacked police with chemical agents and lead pipes.
• A Capitol Hill police officer was knocked off his feet, dragged into the mob surging toward the building, and beaten with the pole of an American flag. 
• One attacker was shot as protesters forced their way toward the House Chamber where members of Congress were sheltering in place.