Posts Tagged ‘NATIONAL GUARD’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on February 16, 2021 at 12:23 am
PREVENTING TREASON IN 2020
Donald Trump didn’t win a majority of the popular vote in 2016—but he got enough help from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to put him over the top in the Electoral College.
And Trump gladly reciprocated.
On July 16, 2018, Trump attended a press conference in Helsinki, Finland, with Putin.
There he blamed American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—instead of Putin for Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election: “I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”
In early 2020, SEAL Team Six raided a Taliban outpost and recovered $500,000 in American cash. The CIA believed that Putin had offered money to Taliban militants to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. Trump—who received Intelligence from a wide range of military and civilian agencies—claimed he wasn’t told.
So notorious was the role played by Russian trolls and hackers in winning Trump the 2016 election that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was determined to prevent a repetition in 2020.
The man ultimately tasked with this mission was Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency run by DHS.
Chris Krebs
Krebs launched a massive effort to counter lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms. Among his duties:
- Sharing Intelligence from agencies such as the CIA and National Security Agency with local officials about foreign efforts at election interference.
- Ensuring that domestic voting equipment was secure.
- Attacking domestic misinformation head-on.
As a result, Krebs was widely praised for revamping the department’s cybersecurity efforts and increasing coordination with state and local governments.
By all accounts—except Trump’s—the 2020 election went very smoothly.
As a result of the vast increase in election security, Trump not only failed to win the popular vote again but couldn’t get the help he expected from Putin.
On November 17, Trump fired Chris Krebs.
The reason: Krebs had not only countered Russian propaganda lies—he had dared to counter Trump’s as well. For example: He rejected Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud: There “is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
Too cowardly to confront Krebs, Trump fired him by tweet—and accompanied the outrage with yet another lie:
“The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud, including dead people voting, poll watchers not allowed into polling locations, glitches in the voting machines which changed votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more. Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.”
In a November 17 story on the CNN website, CNN reporters Kaitlan Collins and Paul LeBlanc bluntly concluded:
“[Krebs’] dismissal underscores the lengths Trump is willing to go to punish those who don’t adopt his conspiratorial view of the election.
“Since CNN and other outlets called the race for President-elect Joe Biden, Trump has refused to accept the results, instead pushing baseless conspiracies that his second term is being stolen.
“This includes falsely claiming during an election night address that he had already won reelection, that he had won states that were actually still up in the air at the time and that his opponents were perpetrating a fraud.”
TRUMP’S FINAL SCHEMES TO REMAIN IN POWER
On November 3, Joseph Biden became President-elect of the United States by winning 81,283,495 votes, or 51.4% of the vote, compared to 74,223,755 votes, or 46.9% of the vote cast for Trump.
In the Electoral College—which actually determines the winner—the results were even more stunning: 306 votes for Biden, compared with 232 for Trump. It takes 270 votes to be declared the victor.
From the moment Biden was declared the winner, Trump set out to overturn that verdict.
Joseph Biden
Trump refused to accept that verdict.
Speaking from the White House in the early hours of November 4, Trump sounded like a petulant child whose planned outing has been suddenly called off:
“We were getting ready for a big celebration, we were winning everything and all of a sudden it was just called off. The results tonight have been phenomenal…I mean literally we were just all set to get outside and just celebrate something that was so beautiful, so good, such a vote such a success.”
For the first time in American history, a President demanded a halt to the counting of votes while the outcome of an election hung in doubt.
States ignored his demand and kept counting.
Next, Trump ordered his attorneys to file lawsuits to overturn the election results, charging electoral fraud. Specifically:
- Illegal aliens had been allowed to vote.
- Trump ballots were systematically destroyed.
- A sinister computer program turned Trump votes into Biden ones.
Throughout November and December, cases were filed in Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota and Georgia challenging the election results. None were supported by evidence of fraud—as even Trump’s lawyers admitted when questioned by judges.
On November 13, nine cases meant to attack President-Elect Joseph Biden’s win in key states were denied or dropped. A law firm challenging the vote count in Pennsylvania withdrew from the effort.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on February 15, 2021 at 12:25 am
HISTORY’S LESSON ON TREASON
Whatever may have been my political opinions before, I have one sentiment now: That is, we have a government, and laws, and a flag, and they must all be sustained. There are but two parties now, traitors and patriots, and I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter and, I trust, the stronger party.
—Ulysses S. Grant
History teaches us that republics that tolerate treason soon become former republics.
Example: #1: In February, 1917, Alexander Kerensky became president of the Russian Provisional Government after the fall of Tsar Nicholas II.
Warned that Bolshevik leaders were plotting his overthrow, he refused to order their arrests: “In Russia, it’s always been too easy to arrest people who disagree with you.”
Alexander Kerensky
On November 7, 1917, he found himself overthrown and fleeing the country for his life. A Communist government, presided over by Vladimir Lenin, assumed absolute power—and held onto it for the next 74 years
Example #2: On November 9, 1923, Nazi Party Fuhrer Adolf Hitler tried to overthrow the government in Munich, Bavaria.
About 2,000 Nazis marched to the center of Munich, where they confronted heavily-armed police. A shootout erupted, killing 16 Nazis and four policemen.
Hitler was injured during the clash, but managed to escape. Two days later, he was arrested and charged with treason.
Put on trial, he found himself treated as a celebrity by a judge sympathetic to Right-wing groups. He was allowed to brutally cross-examine witnesses and even make inflammatory speeches.
At the end of the trial, he was convicted of treason and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.
Serving time in Landsberg Prison, in Bavaria. he was given a huge cell, allowed to receive unlimited visitors and gifts, and treated with deference by guards and inmates.
Hitler used his time in prison to write his infamous book, Mein Kampf-–“My Struggle.” Part autobiography, part political treatise, it laid out his future plans—including the extermination of the Jews and the conquest of the Soviet Union.
Adolf Hitler leaving Landsberg Prison, December, 20, 1924
Nine months later, he was released on parole—by authorities loyal to the authoritarian Right instead of the newly-created Weimar Republic.
Hitler immediately began rebuilding the shattered Nazi party—and deciding on a new strategy to gain power. Never again would he resort to armed force. He would win office by election—or intrigue.
On January 30, 1933, those intrigues made him Chancellor of Germany.
Writes historian Volker Ullrich, in his monumental 2016 biography, Hitler: Ascent 1889 – 1939: “Historians have perennially tried to answer the question of whether Hitler’s rise to power could have been halted….
“There were repeated opportunities to end Hitler’s run of triumphs. The most obvious one was after the failed Putsch of November 1923. Had the Munich rabble-rouser been forced to serve his full five-year term of imprisonment in Landsberg, it is extremely unlikely that he would have been able to restart his political career.”
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ELECTIONS OF 2016 AND 2020
During the 2016 Presidential race, Russian propaganda played a major role in convincing millions of Americans to vote for Donald Trump. Social media platforms—especially Facebook and Twitter—were flooded with genuinely fake news to sow discord among Americans and create a pathway for Trump’s election.
And where Internet trolls left off, Russian computer hackers took over.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, had quickly assessed Trump as an egotistical narcissist. By appealing to Trump’s vanity, Putin expected to sharply reduce the military and political threat the United States represented to a resurgent Russia.
Donald Trump didn’t win a majority of the popular vote in 2016—but he got enough help from Putin to put him over the top in the Electoral College.
And Trump gladly reciprocated.
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump
From his first day in office, he sided with brutal dictators (Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong-On, China’s Xi Jinping) and declared war on America’s oldest and most reliable allies (Canada, Britain, France).
When he spoke with Putin face-to-face, he afterward demanded that the lone translator surrender his notes, so there would be no record of what he had agreed to with Putin.
On May 10, 2017, Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office—and gave them highly classified CIA Intelligence about an Islamic State plot to turn laptops into concealable bombs.
Not only did this occur in the Oval Office, but it happened on the day after he fired FBI Director James Comey for refusing to become Trump’s version of a KGB chief.
“I just fired the head of the FBI,” Trump told the two dignitaries. “He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
On numerous occasions Donald Trump fiercely denied any Russian connections. On January 11, 2017, he tweeted: “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!”
But Trump’s son, Eric, bragged in 2014: “Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 4, 2021 at 12:08 am
According to American political scientist George Michael: “Right-wing terrorism and violence has a long history in America.”
The Supreme Court’s decision, in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), striking down segregated facilities, unleashed a wave of Ku Klux Klan violence against blacks, civil rights activists and Jews. Between 1956 and 1963, an estimated 130 bombings ravaged the South.
Ku Klux Klan flag
During the 1980s, more than 75 Right-wing extremists were prosecuted in the United States for acts of terrorism, carrying out six attacks.
The April 19, 1995 attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols killed 168 people. It was the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in the history of the United States until 9/11.
By 2020, Right-wing terrorism accounted for the majority of terrorist attacks and plots in the United States. A 2017 Government Accountability Office report stated that Right-wing extremist groups were responsible for 73% of violent extremist incidents resulting in deaths since September 12, 2001.
Right-wing violence rose sharply during the Barack Obama administration and especially during the Presidency of Donald Trump. His remark after the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that there were “some very fine people on both sides” convinced white supremacists that he favored their goals, if not their methods.
On January 6, 2021, thousands of Right-wing Trump supporters—many of them armed—stormed the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.
Their goal: To stop members of Congress from counting Electoral Votes cast in the 2020 Presidential election, from which former Vice President Joseph R. Biden was expected to emerge the winner.
After overwhelming the Capitol Police force, they damaged and occupied parts of the building for several hours. Legislators huddled fearfully while National Guard units from several states finally evicted the insurrectionists.
The Capitol attack marked the first time in American history when a defeated Presidential candidate violently sought to remain in office.
It may also mark a desperately-needed change in the priorities of American law enforcement, which has traditionally focused on Left-wingers—and especially blacks—as the country’s mortal enemies.
Numerous commentators have noted the contrast between the tepid police response to the Capitol attack by white Right-wingers and the brutal crackdown on peaceful liberal blacks protesting the murder of George Floyd in Washington D.C. on June 1, 2020.
U.S. Park Police and National Guard troops used tear gas, rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades, horses, shields and batons to clear protesters from Lafayette Square—so Trump could stage a photo-op at St. John’s Episcopal Church.
After 9/11, American law enforcement and Intelligence agencies initiated major reforms to focus on Islamic terrorism.
A similar reform effort, focusing on Right-wing terrorism, could include the following:
- The FBI’s designating Right-wing political and terrorist groups as the Nation’s #1 enemy.
- Turning the Bureau’s powerful arsenal—bugs, wiretaps, informants, SWAT teams—on them.
- Prosecuting militia groups for violating Federal firearms laws.
- Using Federal anti-terrorist laws to arrest, prosecute and imprison Right-wingers who openly carry firearms and threaten violence, even if states allow such display of firearms.
FBI SWAT member
- Creating tip hotlines for reporting illegal Right-wing activities—and offering rewards for information that leads to arrests.
- Treating calls for the murder of members of Congress—as Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has done—as felonies punishable by lengthy imprisonment.
- Prosecuting Right-wing leaders involved in the treasonous attempt to overthrow the United States in the Capitol Building attack.
- Prosecuting as “accessories to treason” all those Republican members of Congress who stoked Right-wing anger by lying that the 2020 Presidential election had been stolen from Donald Trump, although every objective news source proved he had lost.
- Directing the Treasury Department’s Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) at fundamentalist Christian churches that finance Right-wing terrorism—just as it halts the financing of Islamic terrorist groups by Islamic organizations.
- Using drones, planes and/or helicopters to provide security against similar Right-wing terror demonstrations—especially in Washington, D.C.
- Using the Federal Communications Commission to ban Fox News—the Nation’s #1 Right-wing propaganda network—from representing itself as a legitimate news network, and requiring that its stories carry labels warning viewers: “This is Right-wing propaganda, NOT news.”
- Encouraging victims of Right-wing hate-speech—such as the parents of murdered children at Sandy Hook Elementary School—to file libel/slander lawsuits against their abusers.
- Seizing the assets of individuals and organizations found guilty of Right-wing terrorism offenses.
Such an overhaul would almost certainly include the Justice Department indicting and prosecuting Donald Trump for inciting the treasonous attack on the Capitol Building on January 6.
The 75,000,000 Americans who voted to give him a second term still look to him for leadership. As do the majority of Republicans in the House and Senate.
It is a certainty that Senate Republicans will refuse to convict him in his second impeachment trial—just as they refused in the first. They have already offered their excuse: “It’s unconstitutional to impeach a former President.”
But as a former President, he can still be prosecuted for crimes he committed while in office—just as a former Senator or Supreme Court Justice can.
Whatever the outcome, this would send an unmistakable message to Right-wing terrorists: Your days of immunity are over—and you will be held accountable for your terrorist acts, just as Islamic terrorist groups are.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 3, 2021 at 12:10 am
Before 9/11, the United States did not attack Islamic terrorism in a coordinated basis.
In the October 4, 2001 episode of the PBS investigative series, “Frontline,” legendary journalist Bob Woodward described the results that followed:
“These terrorist incidents—they used the tools that were available, but it was never in a coherent way. I know from talking to those people at the time, it was always, ‘Oh, we’ve got this crisis. We’re dealing with the Achille Lauro now,’ or ‘We’re dealing with Quaddafi,’ or ‘We’re dealing with Libyan hit squads,’ or ‘We’re dealing with Beirut.’
“And it never—they never got in a position where they said, ‘You know, this is a real serious threat,’ not just episodically, but it’s going to be a threat to this country throughout the administration, future administrations.
“We need to organize to fight it. It can’t be a back-bench operation for the FBI and the CIA. It’s got to be somebody’s issue, so it’s on their desk every day. What do we know? What’s being planned? What are the threats out there?”
Bob Woodward
The 1993 attack on the World Trade Center well illustrates what Woodward was talking about.
On February 26, 1993, a truck bomb detonated below the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The 1,336 pound urea nitrate-hydrogen device was supposed to topple the North Tower into the South Tower, bringing down both towers and killing tens of thousands of people.
It failed to do so, but killed six people, and injured over 1,000.
The attack was planned by a group of Islamic terrorists including Ramzi Yousef, Mohammed Salameh, Abdul Rachman Yasin, Mahmud Abouhalima, Ahmed Ajaj and Nidal A. Ayyad.
They received financing from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who later became the principal financier of the 9/11 attacks.
Instead of treating this as a declaration of Islamic war upon the United States, the newly-installed Bill Clinton administration chose to consider it a purely criminal matter.
In March 1994, four men were convicted of carrying out the bombing: Abouhalima, Ajaj, Ayyad, and Salameh. The charges included conspiracy, explosive destruction of property, and interstate transportation of explosives.
In November 1997, two more were convicted: Yousef, the organizer behind the bombings, and Eyad Ismoil, who drove the truck carrying the bomb.
On September 11, 2001, 19 Islamic terrorists snuffed out the lives of 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania.
They did so by turning four commercial jetliners into fuel-bombs—and crashing them into, respectively, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City; the Pentagon, in Washington, D.C.; and—unintentionally—a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
(The fourth airliner had been aimed at the White House or the Capitol Building. But its passengers, alerted by radio broadcasts of the doom awaiting them, resolved to take over the plane instead. The hijackers slammed the jet into the ground to avoid capture.)
World Trade Center – September 11, 2001
But within less than a month, American warplanes began carpet-bombing Afghanistan, whose rogue Islamic “government” refused to surrender Osama bin Laden, the had of Al-Qaeda who had masterminded the attacks.
By December, 2001, the power of the Taliban was broken—and bin Laden was driven into hiding in Pakistan.
For more than 16 years, the United States—through its global military and espionage networks—relentlessly hunted down most of those responsible for that September carnage.
On May 1, 2011, U.S. Navy SEALS invaded bin Laden’s fortified mansion in Abbottabad, Pakistan—and shot him dead.
And today—almost 20 years after the 9/11 attacks, the United States continues to wage war against Islamic terrorists.
One by one, the leading figures of Taliban, Haqqani and Al-Qaeda have been identified, located with help from coerced or paid-off informants, and targeted for drone strikes. Taking a leadership position in any of these—or other—Islamic terrorist groups has become virtually a death-sentence.
A Predator drone
Nor is the Pentagon the only agency targeting Islamic terrorism. After 9/11, the Treasury Department initiated the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) to identify, track, and pursue terrorists and their networks.
The program tracks terrorist money flows, assists in uncovering terrorist cells and mapping terrorist networks within the United States and abroad.
Yet another result of 9/11 was increased cooperation between the FBI and the CIA.
The CIA’s mandate, prior to the September 11 attacks, had been to target foreign enemies. The FBI’s mandate had been to target domestic ones.
This often brought the two agencies into bureaucratic conflict when confronting foreign-based or -financed terrorists. Neither agency was certain where its jurisdiction ended and the other one’s began.
The 9/11 attacks forced the FBI and CIA—and, even more importantly, Congress—to recognize the need for sharing information.
Almost 20 years after the devastating attacks of September 11, no Islamic terrorist group has mounted a similar one in the United States.
But on January 6, thousands of Right-wing supporters of President Donald J. Trump—many of them armed—stormed the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.
Inside, members of Congress were counting Electoral Votes cast in the 2020 Presidential election. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden was expected to emerge the winner.
For Trump—who had often “joked” about becoming “President-for-Life”—this was intolerable. And it must be prevented by any means—legal or otherwise.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 19, 2021 at 12:38 am
“At the time of the Civil War [white anger and resentment] took the form of Southern white men angry at the idea that the federal government would interfere with their right to own Black slaves.
“Today, I think this takes the form of white people who believe that Black and brown people are making gains, or getting special treatment, at their expense,” warns Nina Silber, co-president of the Society of Civil War Historians.
And California Democratic Representative Maxine Waters believes this anger could lead to civil war: “Since his first day in office, [Donald Trump] has spent four years abusing his power, lying, embracing authoritarianism (and) radicalizing his supporters against democracy.
“This corruption poisoned the minds of his supporters, inciting them to willingly join with white supremacists, neo-Nazis and paramilitary extremists in a siege of the United State Capitol building, the very seat of American democracy.”
Attack on the Capitol Building
But there is a way to abort that danger—provided that those who cherish democracy are willing to employ weapons as effective as those used by the Right.
Case in point: The FBI’s successful war on the Ku Klux Klan.
Klansmen had shot, lynched and bombed their way across the Deep South, especially in Alabama and Mississippi. Many Southern sheriffs and police chiefs were Klan sympathizers, if not outright members and accomplices.
On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
President Lyndon B. Johnson called J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary director of the FBI, and ordered an all-out investigation: “I want you to have the same kind of Intelligence [on the Klan] that you have on the communists.”
Poster for missing civil rights workers
For decades, Hoover had refused to tackle white hate groups. And, in truth, no President had been willing to give him the order to do so. But now a President had given him such an order.
In August, the FBI uncovered the bodies of the three missing civil rights activists—Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney.
On September 2, 1964, the Bureau launched a full-blown counterintelligence program against the Klan—COINTELPRO—WHITE HATE in FBI-speak.
Tim Weiner, author of Enemies: A History of the FBI, chronicles the methods used by the Bureau:
“WHITE-HATE intensified in the fall of 1964. It involved all the techniques in the FBI’s long-running attack on the Left. Once a week….FBI agents interrogated all known members of the White Knights of the KKK, blaming other Klansmen for being snitches and naming names, sowing deep suspicion among Klan members. Few knew who was an informer and who was not.
A Ku Klux Klan meeting
“The FBI dangled small fortunes before potential Klan informers, offered outright bribes to Klansmen who could serve as double agents inside state and local police forces, planted bugs and wiretaps in Klaverns, carried out black bag jobs to steal membership lists….”
Other tactics included:
- Contacting the news media to publicize arrests and identify Klan leaders;
- Informing the employers of known Klansmen of their employees’ criminal activity, resulting in the firing of untold numbers of them;
- Breaking up the marriages of Klansmen by circulating rumors of their infidelity among their wives.
“My father fought the Klan in Massachusetts,” recalled William C. Sullivan, who headed the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division in the 1960s. “I always used to be frightened when I was a kid and I saw the fiery crosses burning in the hillside near our farm.
“When the Klan reached 14,000 in the mid-sixties, I asked to take over the investigation of the Klan. When I left the Bureau in 1971, the Klan was down to a completely disorganized 4,300. It was broken.
“They were dirty, rough fellows. And we went after them with rough, tough methods.”
William C. Sullivan
According to Neil J. Welch, the retired Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the FBI’s Buffalo, New York office:
In a rural county near Natchez, two Klansmen threatened to kill the next FBI agent who came to town. Agent Paul Cummings organized a squad of G-men and visited the Klansmen’s favorite bar. He dared the Klansmen to back up their threat. When none appeared, Cummings shot out the bar’s windows. There were no more threats on FBI agents in that area.
“A Klan Bureau of Investigation (KBI) was created to counter the FBI, and its members placed the wives and children of agents under surveillance, harassing them with taunts and anonymous phone calls,” wrote Welch in his memoir, Inside Hoover’s FBI.
“It was a serious miscalculation. The most dangerous members of the KBI were systematically identified and assigned to agents selected solely because they were comparatively dangerous. The agents had full discretion.
“During the next few months, a number of men previously involved in Klan violence around the state seemed, by remarkable coincidence, to experience misfortune. Some disappeared from the area. Some were forced to leave Mississippi for health reasons. A few took unplanned trips to places like Mexico and seemed to lose all interest in the Klan upon their return.”
The FBI’s counterintelligence war against the Klan ended in 1971.
Only when America has a President willing to wage all-out war on the Fascistic Right will the country be safe from this enemy within.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 18, 2021 at 12:06 pm
Donald Trump will leave a legacy of lies, racism, criminality and treason when he leaves the White House on January 20.
But his longest-lasting—and most destructive—legacy can now be seen in the nation’s Capitol.
Every Presidential Inaugural proves a nightmarish challenge for Federal military and law enforcement agencies charged with protecting the next President and Vice President of the United States.
Inauguration of President Barack Obama – January 20, 2009
But that is not the end of their assignment.
Also needing protection are the dignitaries—members of Congress, Supreme Court Justices, invited foreign heads of state—and the crowd of thousands of onlookers attending.
But the January 20 swearing in of Joseph Robinette Biden as President and Kamala Devi Harris as Vice President will be like no other in recent American history.
The reason: The current President, Donald J. Trump, has fiercely resisted the peaceful transfer of power from himself to Biden.
On November 3,2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters elected former Vice President Biden the 46th President of the United States. Trump, running for a second term, got 74,196,153 votes.
Since then, Trump has:
- Refused to concede;
- Claimed he was the victim of massive vote fraud;
- Ordered his attorneys to file at least 60 lawsuits to overturn the election results;
- Tried to strongarm governors and secretaries of state in contested states to give him the election; and
- Encouraged members of the House and Senate to contest the counting of Electoral College votes.
With all of that failed, Trump played his final card to illegally gain another four years of power: He summoned thousands of his Stormtrumper followers to Washington, D.C. And, on January 6, he ordered them to “fight like hell” and “stop the steal.”
Stormtrumpers attacking the Capitol Building
Tyler Merbler from USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Tens of thousands of Stormtrumpers attacked and breached the United States Capitol. They easily brushed aside Capitol Police, who made no effort to arrest or shoot them.
Many of the lawmakers’ offices were occupied and vandalized. One Capitol police officer was killed and more than 50 others were injured.
Not until nightfall—hours later—did police finally restore order to the capitol.
That night, members of Congress once again met to count Electoral College votes—and certify Biden as the winner.
Nevertheless, Trump still refuses to concede and even attend the inauguration of his successor—something that every outgoing President has done with one exception.
In 1869, outgoing President Andrew Johnson refused to attend the inaugural ceremonies, as President-elect Ulysses S. Grant refused to sit with him in the carriage going to it.
Early on the morning of January 20, Trump reportedly intends to take Air Force One to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. He doesn’t intend to meet with Biden or ask him for use of Air Force One to reach Mar-a-Lago.
As a result of the January 6 assault on the Capitol Building, Federal law enforcement is bracing for the worst.
Before that assault, plans had called for 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the Inaugural celebration. Now 25,000 are being deployed—more troops in Washington than in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their gear includes shields for COVID and combat.
Installing razor wire for security at Capitol
The FBI has warned of armed protests by Right-wing groups in Washington, D.C., and in state capitols across the country. Among the precautions taken:
- A seven-foot, non-scalable fence—topped with barbed wire—has been erected around the Capitol Hill complex.
- Road traffic in much of Washington has been halted.
- Streets have been closed through January 21, the day after the Inauguration.
- The closures are centered around downtown Washington, Capitol Hill, Union Station, the Lincoln Memorial, the National Mall and the White House.
- Vehicles entering these restricted zones will be swept for weapons and explosives before being allowed to proceed.
- Four major bridges between Virginia and Washington, D.C., will also be closed to all traffic for 48 hours.
- National Guard troops are patrolling the city in Humvees.
- Agents from the FBI, Secret Service, the National Parks Service, FEMA and the Washington Metropolitan Police Department will provide constant security until the event has concluded.
In addition, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a statement that the United States Army would supply troops to ensure a smooth transition of power.
The last time Washington, D.C. saw such heavy precautions imposed was on March 4, 1861—with the First Inaugural of President Abraham Lincoln. The South had warned that the election of an anti-slavery President would mean the dissolving of the Union
There was a frightening sense of tension as rumors floated of a plot to assassinate Lincoln before or during the ceremony.
Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln
Historian Stephen B. Oates, in his highly acclaimed 1977 biography With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln, writes:
“[The Presidential] carriage bumped over the cobblestones of Pennsylvania Avenue, part of a gala parade that featured horse-drawn floats and strutting military bands. Double files of cavalry road along the flanks of the carriage and infantry marched behind….
“And troops were everywhere, deployed by General [Winfield] Scott to guard against assassination. Cavalry on skittish horses cordoned off intersections. Infantry mingled with the sidewalk crowds, and sharpshooters peered over rooftops on both sides of the avenue. It was as though the country were already at war.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on September 9, 2020 at 12:03 am
Eighty-six years after Adolf Hitler declared himself “the Supreme Judge of the German people,” the United States faces the same fate under President Donald J. Trump.
On September 2, Trump sent a memo to Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Attorney General William P. Barr. Its message: Find ways to cut funding to several cities controlled by Democrats.
Trump singled out four cities for defunding: Portland, Oregon; Washington, D.C.; Seattle, Washington; and New York City.
Trump gave his official reason for this move: “Anarchy has recently beset some of our states and cities. My administration will not allow federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones.”
He blames rising crime rates on Black Lives Matter protesters and blacks who have looted and burned stores during nationwide protests against police brutality. And he claims that only he can save America from a civil war ignited by such protesters.
At the same time, he has totally ignored—or defended—armed white militias who have faced off with Black Lives Matter protesters.
The memo seemed especially aimed at New York City, where Mayor Bill de Blasio and the state’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, have been highly critical of Trump’s failure to stem the Coronavirus pandemic.
On Twitter, Cuomo accused Trump of trying to strip funding that cities and states need to recover from Coronavirus: “He is not a king. He cannot ‘defund’ NYC. It’s an illegal stunt.”
Andrew Cuomo
Bill Neidhardt, a spokesman for de Blasio, tweeted: “As much as Donald Trump wants New York City to drop dead, we will never let this stand. This has nothing to do with ‘law and order’. This is a racist campaign stunt out of the Oval Office to attack millions of people of color.”
Trump’s directive “intrudes on Congress’ power of the purse, would never stand up in court and is nothing more than a distraction from the fact that Americans are less safe under the Trump administration,” said Evan Hollander, a spokesman for the Democratic majority of the House Appropriations Committee.
“It seems the only place where there is no respect for the rule of law is the White House,” Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said.
She attacked Trump’s move as a tactic to further divide Americans when the Coronavirus pandemic demanded leadership and unity.
Trump “continues to believe that disenfranchising people living in this country to advance his petty grudges is an effective political strategy,” tweeted Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler.
On June 1, Trump declared: ”I am your President of law and order, and an ally of all peaceful protesters.”
But on that same evening, Trump ordered police, Secret Service agents and National Guard troops to violently remove peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square, which borders St. John’s Church near the White House.
They were protesting the murder of George Floyd, a black unemployed restaurant security guard, by a white Minneapolis police officer on May 25.
The purpose of the removal: To allow Trump to have a photo op outside the church.
Donald Trump at St. John’s Church
As for his claim of being “your President of law and order.”
Trump is only the third United States President—after Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton—to be impeached. Charged with obstruction of Congress and abuse of power by a Democratic House of Representatives, he was acquitted by the Republican-majority Senate on February 5.
In addition, Trump has waged all-out war on the following legal institutions:
- The FBI: When FBI Director James Comey dared to pursue a probe into Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election on Trump’s behalf, Trump fired him without warning on May 9, 2017.
- The Justice Department: Trump repeatedly attacked his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for not “protecting” him from agents pursuing the Russia investigation. On November 7, 2018, the day after Democrats won a majority of House seats, Trump fired Sessions.
- The Special Counsel: He tried to fire Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, the man appointed to investigate the Russian government’s interference in the 2016 Presidential election.
- The Judiciary: On October 20, 2018, Trump attacked U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar as an “Obama judge.” Tigar had ruled that the administration must consider asylum claims no matter where migrants cross the U.S. border.
- The Electoral Process: On September 2, Trump urged residents in the critical political battleground of North Carolina to try to vote twice in the Nov. 3 election, once by mail and once in person—a totally illegal act..
On the private-sector front:
- On December 10, 2019, Trump paid $2 million to eight charities as part of a settlement where he admitted to misusing funds raised by the Donald J. Trump Foundation. These had been used to promote his presidential bid and pay off business debts. He was forced to close the charity as a result.
- Legal action also forced Trump to shut down his unaccredited Trump University, which the conservative magazine National Review described as a “massive scam.” Although he boasted that he never settled lawsuits, he settled this one in November, 2016, for a reported $25 million rather than go to trial.
When Donald Trump calls himself a “law and order President,” he means: “My order is your law.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on September 8, 2020 at 12:06 am
On June 30, 1934, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler ordered a massive purge of his private army, the S.A., or Brownshirts. It was carried out by Hitler’s elite army-within-an-army, the Schutzstaffel, or Protective Squads, better known as the SS.
The Brownshirts (also known as “Stiormtroopers”) had been instrumental in securing Hitler’s rise to Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. They had intimidated political opponents (especially Communists) and organized mass rallies for the Nazi Party.
But after Hitler reached the pinnacle of power, they became a liability.
Ernst Rohm, their commander, had served as a tough army officer during World War 1. He was one of the few men allowed to use “du,” the personal form of “you” in German, when addressing Hitler.
Rohm urged Hitler to disband the regular German army, the Reichswehr, and replace it with his own undisciplined paramilitary legions as the nation’s defense force.
Ernst Rohm
Frightened by Rohm’s ambitions, the generals of the Reichswehr gave Hitler an ultimatum: Get rid of Rohm—or they would get rid of him.
Hitler didn’t hesitate. Backed by armed thugs, he stormed into Rohm’s apartment, catching him in bed with a young S.A. Stormtrooper.
Accusing his onetime friend of treasonously plotting to overthrow him, Hitler screamed: “You’re going to be shot!”
Rohm was not plotting a coup. But the generals had the whip hand—and, for Hitler, that was enough to literally sign Rohm’s death warrant.
Hours later, sitting in a prison cell, Rohm was offered a pistol with a single bullet.
“Adolf himself should do the dirty work,” said Rohm, adding: “All revolutions devour their own children.”
One hour later, Rohm died in a hail of SS bullets.
Earlier throughout that day, so had several hundred of his longtime S.A. cronies. Many of them yelled “Heil Hitler!” as they stood against barracks walls waiting to be shot.
SS firing squad
Thirteen days later, addressing the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament, Hitler justified his purge in a nationally broadcast speech: “If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the Supreme Judge of the German people!
“I gave the order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason, and I further gave the order to cauterize down to the raw flesh the ulcers of this poisoning of the wells in our domestic life.
“Let the nation know that its existence—which depends on its internal order and security—cannot be threatened with impunity by anyone! And let it be known for all time to come that if anyone raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.”
Adolf Hitler addressing parliament
Eighty-six years after Adolf Hitler declared himself “the Supreme Judge of the German people,” the United States faces the same fate under President Donald J. Trump.
On September 2, Trump sent a memo to Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Attorney General William P. Barr. Its title: “Reviewing Funding to State and Local Government Recipients That Are Permitting Anarchy, Violence and Destruction in American Cities.”
Both officials were ordered to find ways to cut funding to several cities controlled by Democrats.
Donald Trump
Accusing local and state officials of abdicating their duties, Trump wrote: “Anarchy has recently beset some of our states and cities. My administration will not allow federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones.”
In his memo, Trump ordered Vought to issue guidance in 30 days “to the heads of agencies on restricting eligibility of or otherwise disfavoring, to the maximum extent permitted by law, anarchist jurisdictions in the receipt of Federal grants.”
And he gave Barr 14 days to identify “anarchist jurisdictions” that “permitted violence and the destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures” to restore order.
Trump singled out four cities for defunding: Portland, Oregon; Washington, D.C.; Seattle, Washington; and New York City.
The move threatens billions of dollars for many of the country’s largest urban cities.
But protecting American citizens from crime is not the real reason for this effort.
Polls show Trump trailing his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. As a result, Trump is resorting to the classic Republican tactics of smear and fear.
He wants to shift public attention from his failure to halt the escalating Coronavirus pandemic—which has already killed more than 189,000 Americans and left 25 million unemployed.
He also wants to turn Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality into white counter-protest at the ballot box.
Trump has long relied on divide-and-rule tactics to gain and hold power. He hopes to persuade suburban whites that he is the only thing standing between them and a black crime wave about to engulf them.
The hatred that millions of older whites—especially rural ones—felt for most of their fellow Americans gave Trump the White House in 2016. Trump hopes that such hatred—combined with fear—will do it again in 2020.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 10, 2020 at 12:08 am
Donald Trump believes himself to be a genius at public relations and salesmanship. And Julie Talenfeld, an award-winning and highly respected marketing communications professional, agrees with him.
Calling Trump “our generation’s greatest salesman,” the president of BoardroomPR writes: “…In Trump we have a true master marketer. He tore through the U.S. presidential election process and, without spending much – if any – of his own money, and cast aside an impressive line-up of Republican contenders on his way to beating Hillary Clinton.”
Julie Talenfeld
How did he do it?
Talenfeld lays out four reasons:
- He captured the news headlines from the very start.
- He mastered wordplay.
- He’s all about image and stagecraft.
- He’s a master of the media.
But on June 1, Trump’s mastery of the media failed him.
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a black unemployed restaurant security guard, had been murdered by Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer. While Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down on a city street during an arrest, Chauvin kept his knee on the right side of Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds.
Cities across the United States erupted in mass protests over Floyd’s death—and police killings of black victims generally. Most of these demonstrations proved peaceful.
But cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City saw stores looted, vandalized and/or burned.
On June 1, President Trump ordered police, Secret Service agents and National Guard troops to violently remove peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square, which borders St. John’s Church near the White House.
The reason: To allow Trump to have a photo opportunity outside the church.
“We have a great country,” said Trump. “We have the best country in the world…we will make it even greater. And it won’t take long….It’s coming back strong. It’ll be greater than ever before.”
Donald Trump at St. John’s Church
“I imposed a curfew at 7pm,” tweeted Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. “A full 25 minutes before the curfew & w/o provocation, federal police used munitions on peaceful protestors in front of the White House, an act that will make the job of @DCPoliceDept officers more difficult. Shameful!”
Video of the assault spread quickly on social media and news outlets, sparking nationwide outrage.
In addition, Trump turned the normally well-protected White House into an armed fortress. Blocks of tall, black reinforced fencing were erected. Military vehicles patrolled Pennsylvania Avenue.
Lafayette Square, across from the White House—normally occupied by selfie-taking tourists—was fenced off and filled with heavily-armed National Guard troops and Secret Service agents.
Even worse: on the night of May 29, Trump was briefly taken to the White House underground bunker as protesters gathered outside the Executive Mansion following George Floyd’s death. He was there for a little under an hour.
But the PR damage was done. For millions, he would now be “The Bunker Bitch.”
Contrast that with the example of Sheriff Christopher Swanson of Genesee County, Michigan.
Sheriff Christopher Swanson
Confronting a mass of aroused demonstrators in Flint Township on May 30, Swanson responded: “We want to be with you all for real.”
Swanson removed his helmet. His deputies laid their batons down.
“I want to make this a parade, not a protest. So, you tell us what you need to do.”
“Walk with us!” the protesters shouted.
“Let’s walk, let’s walk,” said Swanson.
Cheering and applause resounded.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” Swanson said as he and the cheering crowd proceeded. “Where do you want to walk? We’ll walk all night.”
And Swanson and his fellow officers walked in sympathy with the protesters.
No rioting followed.
Appearing on The PBS Newshour on June 1, Swanson said:
“I can tell you that that night on May 30 made history on how to handle protests in a way that was honorable. Our city is already under enough oppression. We are already dealing with economic issues, a water crisis, and a pandemic.
“And it was just the right thing to do. As a veteran police officer who knows the community, I saw acts of kindness with fist bump, a small hug. And I went to my right, and I saw that. And I said, I’m taking the helmet off. We’re putting our batons down and I’m walking in the crowd.
“And when I did that, that act of vulnerability, probably wasn’t the best tactical move, by any means. It sent a message. And that message was that I need to say, we don’t agree, that’s not who we are, what happened to Mr. Floyd.
“And when I said that to the crowd, the second question, what do we need to do now is to walk with us, that changed everything, because now they had a voice. And they wanted somebody to listen to, and that’s what was the change agent.
“I love my people. I love the people of the community. I have served them for my entire adult life. I felt comfortable, although not the best tactical decision, as I mentioned. But I knew that, if I laid down my weapons and I walked in, in a position of vulnerability, they would see this as an action, not just words.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 9, 2020 at 12:07 am
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a black unemployed restaurant security guard, was murdered by Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer. While Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down on a city street during an arrest, Chauvin kept his knee on the right side of Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds.
Cities across the United States erupted in mass protests over Floyd’s death—and police killings of black victims generally. Most of these demonstrations proved peaceful.
But cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City saw stores looted, vandalized and/or burned. In response, President Donald Trump called for harsh policing, telling governors in a nationwide conference call that they must “dominate” protesters or be seen as “weak.”
Death of George Floyd
To drive home his point, on June 1, Trump ordered police, Secret Service agents and National Guard troops to violently remove peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square, which borders St. John’s Church near the White House.
The purpose of the removal: To allow Trump to have a photo opportunity outside the church.
“I imposed a curfew at 7pm,” tweeted Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. “A full 25 minutes before the curfew & w/o provocation, federal police used munitions on peaceful protestors in front of the White House, an act that will make the job of @DCPoliceDept officers more difficult. Shameful!”
Video of the assault spread quickly on social media and news outlets, sparking outrage. The next day, the US Park Police (USPP) responded to the criticisms: “No tear gas was used by USPP officers or other assisting law enforcement partners to close the area at Lafayette Park.”
But the agency admitted that, while it hadn’t used tear gas, it had used smoke canisters and pepper balls. In addition, police used horses, shields and batons to beat back the demonstrators.
While the protesters were being cleared from the area, Trump appeared in the White House Rose Garden and said: “I will fight to protect you—I am your president of law and order and an ally of all peaceful protesters.”
This from the man who had been impeached by the House of Representatives in December, 2019, for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Only a majority-Republican Senate—fearful of losing their seats if they convicted Trump on the overwhelming evidence presented against him—had saved him from ouster.
On June 3, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany compared Trump’s photo-op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s visits to bombed British cities during World War II:
“Through all of time, we have seen presidents and leaders across the world who have had leadership moments and very powerful symbols that were important for a nation to see at any given time to show a message of resilience and determination.
“Like Churchill, we saw him inspecting the bombing damage. It sent a powerful message of leadership to the British people.”
Kayleigh McEnany
Comparing Trump to Churchill proved a huge leap of imagination on McEnany’s part.
For starters, Churchill was an avowed and relentless opponent of Fascism—and especially its most infamous exponent, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler.
During the 1930s, as Europe’s democracies ignored or quailed before Nazi threats, Churchill demanded that England arm for the coming war against Nazi Germany.
Trump, a Fascistic dictator by nature, tries to rule by fiat and identifies with dictators—most notably Communist ones, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un.
Second, throughout World War II, Churchill had only one bodyguard—Inspector Walter Thompson, of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch.
Winston Churchill (testing a submachinegun); Walter Thompson (in black fedora)
During bombing raids, Churchill often climbed atop London buildings to watch the bombardment—or raced to cities he had just learned were under attack.
Trump, on the other hand, is regularly protected by hundreds of Secret Service agents who are supplemented by hundreds of local police.
Moreover, Trump has turned the normally well-protected White House into an armed fortress. Block after block of tall, black reinforced fencing has been erected in recent days. Tan military vehicles roll along Pennsylvania Avenue and camo-clad troops patrol the corner where tourists used to buy red, white and blue USA sweatshirts.
Lafayette Square, across from the White House—normally full of selfie-taking tourists—is now behind the steel fence perimeter and filled with heavily-armed National Guard troops and Secret Service agents.
Third, as a young man, Churchill had served his country as a second lieutenant in the Fourth Queen’s Own Hussars regiment of the British Army. He volunteered to campaign against Islamic rebels in the Swat Valley of north-west India. In Egypt, he joined the 21st Lancers and subsequently saw action in the Battle of Omdurman.
Trump, on the other hand, used his father’s influence to win five draft deferments during the Vietnam war—four allowing him to complete college and one for “bone spurs.”
There is a lesson here for Kayleigh McEnany—and all future Trump apologists: Do your homework before you make easily-debunked claims on his behalf.
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TREASON’S GREETINGS: PART TWO (OF FOUR)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on February 16, 2021 at 12:23 amPREVENTING TREASON IN 2020
Donald Trump didn’t win a majority of the popular vote in 2016—but he got enough help from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to put him over the top in the Electoral College.
And Trump gladly reciprocated.
On July 16, 2018, Trump attended a press conference in Helsinki, Finland, with Putin.
There he blamed American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—instead of Putin for Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election: “I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”
In early 2020, SEAL Team Six raided a Taliban outpost and recovered $500,000 in American cash. The CIA believed that Putin had offered money to Taliban militants to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. Trump—who received Intelligence from a wide range of military and civilian agencies—claimed he wasn’t told.
So notorious was the role played by Russian trolls and hackers in winning Trump the 2016 election that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was determined to prevent a repetition in 2020.
The man ultimately tasked with this mission was Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency run by DHS.
Chris Krebs
Krebs launched a massive effort to counter lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms. Among his duties:
As a result, Krebs was widely praised for revamping the department’s cybersecurity efforts and increasing coordination with state and local governments.
By all accounts—except Trump’s—the 2020 election went very smoothly.
As a result of the vast increase in election security, Trump not only failed to win the popular vote again but couldn’t get the help he expected from Putin.
On November 17, Trump fired Chris Krebs.
The reason: Krebs had not only countered Russian propaganda lies—he had dared to counter Trump’s as well. For example: He rejected Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud: There “is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
Too cowardly to confront Krebs, Trump fired him by tweet—and accompanied the outrage with yet another lie:
“The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud, including dead people voting, poll watchers not allowed into polling locations, glitches in the voting machines which changed votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more. Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.”
In a November 17 story on the CNN website, CNN reporters Kaitlan Collins and Paul LeBlanc bluntly concluded:
“[Krebs’] dismissal underscores the lengths Trump is willing to go to punish those who don’t adopt his conspiratorial view of the election.
“Since CNN and other outlets called the race for President-elect Joe Biden, Trump has refused to accept the results, instead pushing baseless conspiracies that his second term is being stolen.
“This includes falsely claiming during an election night address that he had already won reelection, that he had won states that were actually still up in the air at the time and that his opponents were perpetrating a fraud.”
TRUMP’S FINAL SCHEMES TO REMAIN IN POWER
On November 3, Joseph Biden became President-elect of the United States by winning 81,283,495 votes, or 51.4% of the vote, compared to 74,223,755 votes, or 46.9% of the vote cast for Trump.
In the Electoral College—which actually determines the winner—the results were even more stunning: 306 votes for Biden, compared with 232 for Trump. It takes 270 votes to be declared the victor.
From the moment Biden was declared the winner, Trump set out to overturn that verdict.
Joseph Biden
Trump refused to accept that verdict.
Speaking from the White House in the early hours of November 4, Trump sounded like a petulant child whose planned outing has been suddenly called off:
“We were getting ready for a big celebration, we were winning everything and all of a sudden it was just called off. The results tonight have been phenomenal…I mean literally we were just all set to get outside and just celebrate something that was so beautiful, so good, such a vote such a success.”
For the first time in American history, a President demanded a halt to the counting of votes while the outcome of an election hung in doubt.
States ignored his demand and kept counting.
Next, Trump ordered his attorneys to file lawsuits to overturn the election results, charging electoral fraud. Specifically:
Throughout November and December, cases were filed in Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota and Georgia challenging the election results. None were supported by evidence of fraud—as even Trump’s lawyers admitted when questioned by judges.
On November 13, nine cases meant to attack President-Elect Joseph Biden’s win in key states were denied or dropped. A law firm challenging the vote count in Pennsylvania withdrew from the effort.
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