More than two years after he tried to establish himself as a dictator, Donald Trump remained free.

And he was still repeating “The Big Lie”: That he won the 2020 Presidential election but was cheated of victory by widespread voter fraud.         

This was on a par with “The Big Lie” that had gripped Nazi Germany after World War 1: That the nation had been “stabbed in the back” by civilian Communists and Jews.

The result: Two-thirds of Republicans still rejected the legitimacy of the 2020 election of Joe Biden.

Facing 91 criminal charges in four criminal cases, Trump—unlike any other criminal defendant—was not even required to post bond.

In Florida, he faced 40 felony counts for illegally withholding highly classified government documents. Yet a judge he had appointed—Aileen Cannon—repeatedly delayed the start of his trial.

According to former United States Attorney Joyce Vance, her goal was clearly to delay the trial past the November, 2024, Presidential election.

Aileen Cannon

Trump repeatedly slandered—and even threatened—prosecutors, witnesses, judges and jurors in the four cases he faced. He claimed he was simply exercising his right to “freedom of speech” as a Presidential candidate.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who was overseeing Trump’s election interference case, imposed a limited gag order on Trump in October, 2023. But this was lifted by the U.S. Court of Appeals while it heard appeals from Trump’s lawyers, who wanted it removed completely.

Most ominously, an August 29, 2023 story by the Associated Press reported: Right-wing “think tanks”—led by the long-established Heritage Foundation—were plotting to remake the federal government into a Fascist dictatorship:  

“With more than a year to go before the 2024 election, a constellation of conservative organizations is preparing for a possible second White House term for Donald Trump, recruiting thousands of Americans to come to Washington on a mission to dismantle the federal government and replace it with a vision closer to his own….

Heritage Foundation

Ser Amantio di Nicolao, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

“Trump-era conservatives want to gut the ‘administrative state’ from within, by ousting federal employees they believe are standing in the way of the president’s agenda and replacing them with like-minded officials more eager to fulfill a new executive’s approach to governing.

“Much of the new president’s agenda would be accomplished by reinstating what’s called Schedule F — a Trump-era executive order that would reclassify tens of thousands of the 2 million federal employees as essentially at-will workers who could more easily be fired.”

Meanwhile, Trump openly called for ending Constitutionally-granted freedoms: 

On December 3, 2022, he wrote in a Truth Social post:

“Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” 

A November 14, 2023 analysis by CNN’s Stephen Collinson warned:

“The former and possibly future commander in chief aspires to strongman power if he wins back the White House next year. He believes his authority would be absolute. He wants vengeance against his political enemies. He’d pose the greatest challenge to the rule of law and the Constitution in modern times, seek to crush press freedoms and gut the machinery of government.

“None of this is speculation. Trump is saying and showing exactly what he would do in his rallies, social media posts, interviews, lawyers’ filings and even appearances in court that he uses to stigmatize the legal system. And Trump’s ambitions should be taken seriously because one year from the election, President Joe Biden’s reelection hopes are far from secure.”

As an example of Trump’s rhetoric, Ruth Ben-Ghiat  professor of history at New York University and author of the bestselling book, Strongmen, cites the former President’s address on Veterans Day, 2023:

“We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections, and will do anything possible, they will do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.” 

Speaking on the November 13, 2023 edition of The PBS Newshour, Ben-Ghiat said:

“Since the fascists, authoritarians always want to do two things—they want to change the way that people see violence, making it into something necessary and patriotic and even morally righteous, and they want to change the way people see their targets. And so they use dehumanizing language. And former President Trump is doing both.

“He’s been using his rallies since 2015 to shift the idea of violence into something positive. And now he’s starting to use dehumanizing rhetoric, all these groups who live like vermin. And this is what the original fascists did.

“Hitler started talking about Jews as parasites in 1920. So by the time he got in 1933, Germans had been exposed to this dehumanizing rhetoric for 13 years.

“And Mussolini literally talked about rats. After he had become dictator in 1927, he said, we need to kill rats who are bringing infectious diseases and Bolshevism from the east. And so this matches up with Trump talking about immigrants bringing disease and other such things.

“So this is very dangerous rhetoric with a very precise fascist history.”

On January 6, 2021, President Donald 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 of the 2020 Presidential election.

The Stormtrumpers marched to the United States Capitol—and quickly brushed aside Capitol Police, who made little effort to arrest or shoot them.

Capitol Police facing off with Stormtrumpers

• One attacker was shot as protesters forced their way toward the House Chamber where members of Congress were sheltering in place.
• Members of the mob attacked police with chemical agents or 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.
• Several rioters carried plastic handcuffs, possibly intending to take hostages.
• Others carried treasonous Confederate flags.
• Shouts of “Hang Pence!” often rang out.
• Improvised explosive devices were found in several locations in Washington, D.C.
• Many of the lawmakers’ office buildings were occupied and vandalized—including that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a favorite Right-wing target.

Stormtrumpers inside the Capitol Building

More than three hours passed before police—using riot gear, shields and batons—retook control of the Capitol.

And Trump?  

• After giving his inflammatory speech, he returned to the White House—to watch his handiwork on television and rage-tweet against Vice President Mike Pence.
• He was “delighted” at the attack—and surprised that others weren’t, as angry Republican Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse said later. 
• He initially denied requests to mobilize the National Guard. 
• Six hours after the rioting began, Pat A. Cipollone, the White House Counsel and other officials intervened and deployed the National Guard.
• While the rioting was still erupting, Trump posted a video on Twitter: “I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us….But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order….So go home. We love you. You’re very special.”  

His administration was closing with the same contempt for law and democracy that had characterized it from its outset.

Joseph R. Biden legitimately assumed the Presidency on January 20, 2021.

Yet it was only on November 22, 2022, that his handpicked Attorney General, Merrick Garland, appointed Jack Smith as independent special counsel.

Smith had served in the Justice Department as an assistant U.S. attorney, acting U.S. attorney and head of the agency’s Public Integrity Section.

From 2008 to 2010, Smith worked as investigation coordinator for the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. He thus oversaw cases against government officials and militia members accused of war crimes and genocide.

Jack Smith

He now became responsible for overseeing two preexisting Justice Department criminal investigations into Trump. 

On June 8, 2023, a grand jury indicted Trump on seven federal criminal charges related to his handling of classified documents. This marked the first time in American history that a serving or former president had been indicted on a federal criminal charge.

On August 1, a second grand jury indicted Trump on four more federal felony counts for attempting to overturn the 2020 Presidential election and inciting a riot against Congress on January 6, 2021.

Meanwhile, Trump publicly attacked Smith as even notorious Mafia bosses like John Gotti never dared attack their prosecutors. 

Trump attacked Smith as “deranged” and a “Trump-hating prosecutor,” adding that “his wife and family despise me much more than he does.” 

A typical Trump post on his website, Truth Social, exploded on August 28, 2023: 

“It has just been reported that aides to TRUMP prosecutor, Deranged Jack Smith, met with high officials at the White House just prior to these political SleazeBags Indicating me OVER NOTHING.

“If this is so, which it is, that means that Biden and his Fascist Thugs knew and APPROVED of this Country dividing Form of Election Interference, despite their insisting that they ‘knew nothing.” 

Such attacks led the Justice Department to increase the security detail for Smith from two to at least four deputy U.S. marshals on a 24-hour basis.

Many of Trump’s supporters believed that Smith was acting on behalf of President Biden to deprive Trump of the chance to run for the White House a third time.

The January 6 coup attempt proved beyond doubt his followers’ capacity for violence.

On November 14, 2023, the Justice Department urged a Washington, DC, appeals court to uphold the gag order against Trump in his federal election subversion criminal case. Prosecutors charged that Trump’s attacks on Smith and his family demonstrated why restrictions on Trump’s speech were necessary. 

“There has never been a criminal case in which a court has granted a defendant an unfettered right to try his case in the media, malign the prosecutor and his family, and …target specific witnesses with attacks on their character and credibility,” Smith’s team told the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals in a filing.