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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 5, 2021 at 12:05 am
It’s one of the pivotal moments in the classic 1962 movie, The Longest Day.
It’s June 6, 1944. The Allies have launched their long-expected attack on the French coast of Normandy.
This is an all-out assault on Adolf Hitler’s “Atlantic Wall,” to drive German armies out of the European countries they had conquered in 1940.
Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, the commander of all German forces in France, fears the worst.
“We can’t take any chances. I want the reserve panzers moved forward,” he tells his subordinate commander, Major General Gunther Blumentritt.
“But we need permission from the Fuhrer’s headquarters,” replies Blumentritt.
Von Rundstedt: “They won’t dare refuse me! Call the Fuhrer’s headquarters and insist that the panzers be released to me.”
Blumentritt makes the call to Berlin.
The response is disastrous: Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Operations Staff of the Wehrmacht, refuses the request. He will not release the panzers without Adolf Hitler’s approval. And the Fuhrer—who stays up late at night and sleeps during much of the day—is still sleeping .
“This is history,” says Blumentritt to an aide. “We are living an historical moment. We are going to lose the war because our glorious Fuhrer has taken a sleeping pill and is not to be awakened.
“Think of it, Kurt. We are witnessing something which historians will say is completely improbable. And yet it is true. The Fuhrer is not to be awakened! I sometimes wonder which side God is on.”
Gunther Blumentritt
And just as Bluemtritt predicted, defeat came soon for the German forces in France.
Today, Gunther Blumentritt’s words have taken on a special meaning for American citizens: “We are witnessing something which historians will say is completely improbable. And yet it is true.”
On November 3, Joe 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 President Donald 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.
Joe Biden
From the moment Biden was declared the winner, Trump set out to overturn that verdict.
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.
But states ignored his demand and kept counting.
Next, Trump ordered his attorneys to file lawsuits to overturn the election results, charging electoral fraud.
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.
From November 3 to December 14, Trump and his allies lost 59 times in court, either withdrawing cases or having them dismissed by Federal and state judges.
On November 19, Trump invited two Republican legislative leaders from Michigan to the White House—to persuade them to stop the state from certifying the vote.
The Michigan legislators said they would follow the law.
On December 5, Trump called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and asked him to call a special legislative session and convince state legislators to select their own electors that would support him, thus overturning Biden’s win.
Kemp refused, saying he lacked the authority to do so.
Donald Trump
On December 8, the Supreme Court refused to hear Trump’s bid to reverse Pennsylvania’s certification of Biden’s victory. Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA), a Trump ally, argued that the state’s 2.5 million mail-in votes were unconstitutional.
Although Trump had appointed three of the Court’s Justices, not one of them dissented.
On December 10, the Supreme Court refused to let a Texas lawsuit overturn the results in four battleground states: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The majority of their votes had been cast for Biden.
With the Senate due to certify states’ Electoral College results on January 6, Trump pressed Vice President Mike Pence to flip the results of the election to give him a win. This despite the fact that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 limits the Vice President to a largely ceremonial role.
Then, on December 30, Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley announced that, on January 6, 2021, he would object to the certification of some states’ Electoral College results. As many as 140 House Republicans could join him.
This will force Republicans to:
- Vote to reject Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of massive voter fraud; or
- Disenfranchise millions of voters who voted for Biden.
Never before has a losing Presidential candidate mounted a legal coup to overturn an election’s results.
“Josh Hawley and anyone who supports his effort are engaged in the attempted overthrow of democracy,” Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy said.
“There is no evidence that there was any fraud. Senator Hawley apparently believes that if a Democrat wins the presidential race, it must be illegitimate by definition, even absent any actual evidence of misbehavior.”
Nebraska Republican Senator Ben Sasse bluntly offered the reason for this effort: ‘”We have a bunch of ambitious politicians who think there’s a quick way to tap into the president’s populist base without doing any real, long-term damage. But they’re wrong—and this issue is bigger than anyone’s personal ambitions.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 8, 2020 at 12:15 am
Once he became the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump began undermining one public or private institution after another.
On November 3, 80 million voters decided they wanted a change—and elected former Vice President Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States.
Trump refused to accept that verdict. Speaking from the White House in the early hours of November 4, he said:
“Millions and millions of people voted for us tonight, and a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people and we won’t stand for it.”
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 had been systematically destroyed.
- Tampered voting machines had 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. And, one by one, more than 30 cases were withdrawn by Trump’s attorneys or dismissed by Federal judges—some of them appointed by Trump himself.
For 20 days, General Services Administrator Emily Murphy refused to release $7.3 million in transition funding and Federal resources to the President-elect’s team. Under the law governing presidential transitions, Murphy was responsible for determining the winner based on publicly available information before the actual Electoral College vote.
Finally, on November 23, Murphy released the transition funding and resources.
Losing in the courts, Trump invited two Republican legislative leaders from Michigan to the White House to persuade them to stop the state from certifying the vote.
Nothing changed.
On December 5, Trump called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and asked him to call a special legislative session and convince state legislators to select their own electors that would support him, thus overturning Biden’s win.
Kemp refused, saying he lacked the authority to do so.
Meanwhile, top Republicans—such as Vice President Mike Pence and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—have refused to congratulate Biden as the winner. None of them branded Trump’s efforts to overturn the election as those of a tyrant.
Just as Germans did nothing to stop Adolf Hitler’s inexorable march toward war—and the destruction of millions of lives and Germany itself—so, too, did Americans seem paralyzed to put an end to the equally self-destructive reign of the man often dubbed “Carrot Caligula.”
Gaius Caligula was “the mad emperor” of ancient Rome. Like Trump, he lived by a philosophy of “Let them hate me, so long as they fear me.”
He ruled as the most powerful man of his time—three years, 10 months and eight days. And all but the first six months of his reign were drenched in slaughter and debauchery.
There are basically three ways America’s continuing slide into tyranny could have been stopped:
Congressional Republicans could have revolted against Trump’s authority and/or agenda. They could, for example, have demanded that Trump accept the verdict of the electorate—as every other past President had. But they didn’t.
Invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This allows the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to recommend the removal of the President in cases where he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” It also allows the House and Senate to confirm the recommendation over the President’s objection by two-thirds vote.
The Vice President then takes over as President.
A case could easily have been made that Trump, emotionally distraught over his loss and determined to circumvent the will of the electorate, had been rendered unfit to continue in office. But, once again, Republicans let fear be their guide.
He had fired FBI Director James Comey in 2017 and publicly humiliated his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for more than a year until firing him in 2018. Vice President Mike Pence in particular had set new records for sycophancy.
The “Caligula solution.” Like Trump, Caligula delighted in humiliating others. His fatal mistake was taunting Cassius Chaerea, a member of his own bodyguard. Caligula considered Chaerea effeminate because of a weak voice and mocked him with names like “Priapus” and “Venus.”
Gaius Caligula
Sergey Sosnovskiy from Saint-Petersburg, Russia, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
On January 22 41 A.D. Chaerea and several other bodyguards hacked Caligula to death with swords before other guards could save him.
Trump had similarly behaved arrogantly toward his Secret Service guards. He forced them to work without pay during his 35-day government shutdown in 2018. He also forced them to accompany him to COVID-infected states—both during the Presidential campaign and afterward. Many of them were stricken with this often lethal disease as a result.
During the 12 years that Adolf Hitler ruled Nazi Germany, at least 42 assassination plots were launched against him.
The best-known of these literally exploded on July 20, 1944, when Colonel Count Claus Shenk von Stauffenberg planted a bomb in a conference room attended by Hitler and his generals. Hitler survived only by sheer luck.
By contrast, no similar plot was aimed at Donald Trump.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 7, 2020 at 12:24 am
“Why are we letting one man systematically destroy our nation before our eyes?”
It’s a question millions of Americans have asked themselves since Donald Trump became President of the United States.
Millions of Germans asked themselves the same question throughout the six years of World War II.
In September, 1938, as Adolf Hitler threatened to go to war against France and England over Czechoslovakia, most Germans feared he would. They knew that Germany was not ready for war, despite all of their Fuhrer’s boasts about how invincible the Third Reich was.
A group of high-ranking German army officers was prepared to overthrow Hitler—provided that England and France held firm and handed him a major diplomatic reverse.
But then England and France—though more powerful than Germany—flinched at the thought of war.
They surrendered to Hitler’s demands that he be given the “Sudetenland”—the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia, inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans.
Hitler’s popularity among Germans soared. He had expanded the territories of the Reich by absorbing Austria and Czechoslovakia—without a shot being fired!
The plotters in the German high command, realizing that public opinion stood overwhelmingly against them, abandoned their plans for a coup. They decided to wait for a more favorable time.
It never came.
Adolf Hitler and his generals
Less than one year after the infamous “Munich conference,” England and France were at war—and fighting for the lives of their peoples.
As for the Germans: Most of them blindly followed their Fuhrer right to the end—believing his lies (or at least wanting to believe them), serving in his legions, defending his rampant criminality.
And then, in April, 1945, with Russian armies pouring into Berlin, it was too late for conspiracies against the man who had led them to total destruction.
Berliners paid the price for their loyalty to a murderous dictator—through countless rapes, murders and the wholesale destruction of their city. And from 1945 to 1989, Germans living in the eastern part of their country paid the price as slaves to the Soviet Union.
Have Americans learned anything from this this warning from history about subservience to a madman?
The answer seems to be half-yes, half-no.
In 2016, almost 63 million Americans elected Donald Trump—a racist, serial adulterer and longtime fraudster—as President.
On November 3, 2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters outvoted 74,196,153 Republican voters to elect former Vice President Joseph Biden as the 46th President of the United States.
Donald Trump
Upon taking office on January 20, 2017, Trump began undermining one public or private institution after another.
- Repeatedly attacking the nation’s free press for daring to report his growing list of crimes and disasters, calling it “the enemy of the American people.”
- Siding with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency which unanimously agreed that Russia had subverted the 2016 Presidential election.
- Firing FBI Director James Comey for investigating that subversion.
- Giving Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak highly classified CIA Intelligence about an Islamic State plot to turn laptops into concealable bombs.
- Shutting down the Federal Government for 35 days because Democrats refused to fund his ineffective “border wall” between the United States and Mexico. An estimated 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay. The shutdown ended due to public outrage—without Trump getting the funding amount he had demanded.
- Trying to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to smear former Vice President Joe Biden, who was likely to be his Democratic opponent in the 2020 Presidential election.
- Allowing the deadly COVID-19 virus to ravage the country, infecting (to date) 14.8 million Americans and killing 282,000.
- Attacking medical experts and governors who urged Americans to wear masks and socially distance to protect themselves from COVID-19.
- Ordering his Right-wing followers to defy states’ orders to citizens to “stay-at-home” and wear of masks in public to halt surging COVID-19 rates.
And throughout all those outrages, House and Senate Republican majorities remained silent or vigorously supported him.
A typical example:
On June 4, 2020, during protests over the police murder of black security guard George Floyd, a curfew was imposed on Buffalo, New York. As police swept through Niagara Square, Martin Gugino, a 75-year-old peace activist with the Catholic Worker Movement, walked into their path as if attempting to speak with them.
Two officers pushed him and he fell backwards, hitting the back of his head on the pavement and losing consciousness.
On June 9, Trump charged that Gugino was part of a radical leftist “set up.” Trump offered no evidence to back up his slander.
Typical Republican responses included:
- Kentucky Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to say whether Trump’s tweet was appropriate.
- Texas Senator Ted Cruz: “I don’t comment on the tweets.”
- Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson said he hadn’t seen the tweet—and didn’t want it read to him: “I would rather not hear it.”
- Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander: “Voters can evaluate that. I’m not going to give a running commentary on the President’s tweets.”
On November 3, 2020, 80 million voters decided they wanted a change—and elected former Vice President Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on November 19, 2020 at 12:07 am
On October 4, 1943, SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler addressed SS officers stationed in Posen, Poland, about the ongoing campaign to exterminate the Jews of Europe.
He gave a similar speech two days later to an audience of Reichsleiters (national leaders) and Gauleiters (governors), as well as other government representatives.
Himmler intended to alert Reich officials of the extermination campaign the Schutzstaffel (“Protective Squads”)—otherwise known as the SS—and Wehrmacht (German army) had been waging since June, 1941.
The purpose: To make his listeners accessories to his monumental crimes—and to warn them there was no turning back.
Heinrich Himmler
Either Nazi Germany won the war that its Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, had unintentionally unleashed on September 1, 1939—or its topmost officials would themselves face extinction as war criminals.
Said Himmler:
“I want to also mention a very difficult subject before you, with complete candor. It should be discussed amongst us, yet nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public. I am talking about the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people.
“It is one of those things that is easily said: ‘The Jewish people is being exterminated.’…Most of you will know what it means when 100 bodies lie together, when 500 are there or when there are 1000. And to have seen this through and—with the exception of human weakness—to have remained decent, has made us hard and is a page of glory never mentioned and never to be mentioned….
“But altogether we can say: We have carried out this most difficult task for the love of our people. And we have suffered no defect within us, in our soul, in our character.”
Fast forward 76 years—to January, 2020.
On December 18, 2019, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives approved two Articles of Impeachment against President Donald Trump:
Article 1: Abuse of Power: For pressuring Ukraine to assist him in his re-election campaign by damaging former Vice President Joseph Biden, his possible 2020 Democratic rival; and
Article 2: Obstruction of Congress: For obstructing Congress by blocking testimony of subpoenaed witnesses and refusing to provide documents in response to House subpoenas in the impeachment inquiry.
Donald Trump
Trump’s defense in the House had consisted of:
- Refusing to testify himself;
- Refusing to produce witnesses on his behalf;
- Refusing to turn over requested documents;
- Claiming that Democrats were preventing him from testifying or producing witnesses;
- Ordering administration officials to not testify before the six House impeachment committees investigating his behavior.
Those government employees who testified did so voluntarily—and at risk of retaliation. Among these were:
- Ukraine ambassador Bill Taylor;
- Laura Cooper, the top Pentagon official overseeing Ukraine-related U.S. policy;
- Former White House official Fiona Hill; and
- Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
They offered damning testimony against Trump.
When the trial began in the United States Senate on January 16, 2020, Trump’s legal team:
- Did not call any witnesses;
- Did not deny that Trump had sought to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into interfering with the 2020 election;
- Attacked Joseph and Hunter Biden as if they were on trial;
- Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul submitted a written question to presiding Chief Justice John Roberts that included the name of the alleged whistleblower to Trump’s coercion. Roberts refused to read it aloud;
- Paul raced outside the Senate and gave a press conference, where he named the alleged whistleblower—whose identity is protected by law.
Rand Paul
Perhaps even more frightening: One of Trump’s attorneys, Alan Dershowitz, offered Trump—and all future Presidents—a blanket of immunity worthy of a king:
“If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment. Every public official that I know believes that his election is of the public interest.”
Responding to that argument, House Manager Adam Schiff (D-CA) said: “It’s been a remarkable evolution of the presidential defense. It began with, ‘None of that stuff happened here.’ It began with “Nothing to see here.’ It migrated to, ‘OK, they did seek investigations of the president’s political rival.’ And then it became ‘OK.'”
Meanwhile, the Senate majority of 53 Republicans vigorously supported Trump’s demand that no witnesses to his crimes be allowed to testify.
Fast forward to November 3, 2020: Former Vice President Joe Biden defeats Trump for a second term by winning 79,106,010 votes, or 51% of the vote. Trump received 73,363,734 votes, or 47.3% of the vote.
Trump’s reaction:
- Denying that he lost.
- Accusing Democrats of committing massive voter fraud—without offering any evidence to prove it.
- Blocking cooperation with the incoming Biden administration.
- Ignoring the raging COVID-19 pandemic as it kills about 1,000 Americans each day.
And how are Republicans reacting to all this? By publicly supporting Trump’s stonewalling—or refusing to oppose it.
By following the same strategy as Heinrich Himmler, Donald Trump has entangled Republicans in his own crimes.
His infamy is now theirs.
History has brutally condemned those Germans who, knowing the full extent of Adolf Hitler’s crimes, nevertheless signed on to perpetuate and conceal them.
History will render the same damning verdict against Senate and House Republicans who have provided similar cover for Donald Trump.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 13, 2020 at 12:37 am
On August 11, former Vice President Joe Biden—now the Democratic nominee for President—chose California United States Senator Kamala Harris as his Vice Presidential running mate.
Harris had served as District Attorney of San Francisco (2004 – 2011) and as California Attorney General (2011 – 2017). Then, in 2016, she won election to the United States Senate.
In 2019, she ran for the Presidency of the United States. But after 11 months of failing to win major support among voters, she withdrew from the race on December 3.
To tout her candidacy, she had published her memoirs: The Truths We Hold. In these, she described herself as a “progressive prosecutor.”
But among the truths she holds secret: When she served as District Attorney for San Francisco, she set up a secret unit to keep even convicted illegal alien felons out of prison—and in the United States.
Today, with millions of illegal aliens from Central and Latin America flooding into the United States, the spotlight has shifted from the incarceration of blacks to that of Hispanics.
Illegal immigration—and what to do about it—is now the hottest political issue in the country.
For liberals of the Democratic party, “open borders” appears to be the solution to illegal immigration. Yet the vast majority of Americans support legal immigration—while rejecting illegal immigration.
And Kamala Harris’ record as San Francisco District Attorney is hardly reassuring on this issue.
Secretly, she created a program, called Back on Track, to train convicted illegal aliens for jobs they could not legally hold. This was a flagrant violation of Federal immigration law.
U.S. Senator Kamala Harris
Completion led to the expunging of a felony conviction, making it highly popular among convicted criminals.
One such alumnus was Alexander Izaguirre, an illegal alien who had been arrested twice within eight months—for purse-snatching and selling cocaine.
In July, 2008, four months after pleading guilty to selling cocaine, Izaguirre assaulted Amanda Kiefer, a legal San Francisco resident.
Snatching her purse, he jumped into an SUV, then tried to run Kiefer down. Terrified, she leaped onto the hood and saw Izaguirre and a driver laughing.
The driver slammed on the brakes, sending Kiefer flying onto the pavement and fracturing her skull.
D.A.’s office let illegal immigrants go https://tinyurl.com/yyhp3hb6
Back on Track became a centerpiece of Harris’ campaign for state Attorney General.
Until the the Los Angeles Times questioned her about the Izaguirre case, Harris had never publicly admitted that the program included illegal aliens.
Harris claimed she first learned that illegal aliens were training for jobs only after Izaguirre was arrested for the Kiefer assault.
Harris said it was a “flaw in the design” of the program to let illegal aliens into the program. “I believe we fixed it,” she told the Times.
Harris never released statistics on how many illegal aliens were included since the program started in 2005.
She said that after Izaguirre’s arrest she never asked—or learned—how many illegal aliens were in Back on Track. A strange lapse in curiosity for a prosecutor charged with enforcing the law.
When Harris learned that illegal aliens were enrolled, she allowed those who were following the rules to finish the program and have their criminal records expunged.
It is not the duty of local law enforcement, she said, to enforce Federal immigration laws.
So much for her oath to faithfully defend the Constitution of the United States and that of the state of California “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
From 2005 to 2009, 113 admitted drug dealers graduated from Back on Track. Another 99 were kicked off the program for failing to meet the requirements. They were sentenced under their guilty plea, the D.A.’s office claimed.
Harris told the Times that graduates of Back on Track were less likely than other offenders to commit crimes again. But her spokeswoman refused to offer detailed statistics to back this up.
When Harris became San Francisco District Attorney, she vowed she would “never charge the death penalty.”
Amanda Kiefer left California. Interviewed by the Times, she said she could not understand why San Francisco police and prosecutors would allow convicted illegal aliens back onto the streets.
“If they’re committing crimes,” she said, “I think there’s something wrong that they’re not being deported.”
At the outset of his Presidential campaign, Joe Biden pledged to choose a woman for his Vice Presidential running mate. Among those he could have chosen:
- Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who stood up to Trump-inspired anti-mask protesters threatening violence; and
- Illinois United States Senator Tammy Duckworth, who, as an Army officer, lost both legs in Iraq in 2004 after her helicopter was shot down by Iraqi insurgents.
Either would have lent significant gravitas to Biden’s candidacy. But Whitmer and Duckworth suffered the misfortune of being white—at a time when Uber liberals were demanding that Biden pick a “woman of color.”
By which they meant: Any color other than white.
Illegal immigration is President Donald Trump’s signature issue. And he has already tried to portray Biden as soft on crime and harsh on police.
Harris, with her record of protecting criminal illegal aliens at the expense of law-abiding American citizens, will easily fit both of these descriptions.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 4, 2020 at 12:10 am
In September, 1938, as Adolf Hitler threatened to go to war against France and England over Czechoslovakia, most Germans feared he would. They knew that Germany was not ready for war, despite all of their Fuhrer’s boasts about how invincible the Third Reich was.
A group of high-ranking German army officers was prepared to overthrow Hitler—provided that England and France held firm and handed him a major diplomatic reverse.
But then England and France—though more powerful than Germany—surrendered to Hitler’s demands for the “Sudetenland”—the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia, inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans.
Hitler’s popularity among Germans soared.
The plotters in the German high command, realizing that public opinion stood overwhelmingly against them, abandoned their plans for a coup. They decided to wait for a more favorable time.
It never came.
Adolf Hitler and his generals
Less than one year after the infamous “Munich conference,” World War II erupted.
Most Germans blindly followed their Fuhrer right to the end—believing his lies (or at least wanting to believe them), serving in his legions, defending his rampant criminality.
Germans paid the price for their loyalty to a murderous dictator—not just on the battlefield, but through countless rapes, murders and the wholesale destruction of their cities. And from 1945 to 1989, Germans living in the eastern part of their country paid the price as slaves to the Soviet Union.
Americans have learned nothing from this warning from history about subservience to a madman.
In 2016, almost 63 million Americans elected Donald Trump—a racist, serial adulterer and longtime fraudster—as President.
Upon taking office in January, 2017, Trump began undermining one public or private institution after another. Among his outrages:
- Repeatedly and viciously attacked the nation’s free press for daring to report his growing list of crimes and disasters, calling it “the enemy of the American people.”
- Publicly sided with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against American Intelligence agencies (FBI, CIA, National Security Agency) which unanimously agreed that Russia had subverted the 2016 Presidential election,
- Fired FBI Director James Comey for investigating that subversion.
- Gave Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak highly classified CIA Intelligence about an Islamic State plot to turn laptops into concealable bombs.
- Allowed predatory corporations to subvert Federal regulatory protections for consumers and the environment.
- Shut down the Federal Government for more than a month on December 22, 2018, because Democrats refused to fund his “border wall” between the United States and Mexico. An estimated 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay.
- Threatened members of Congress with treason charges for daring to challenge him.
- Since being acquitted of impeachable offenses by the Senate, fired the Inspectors General (IG) of five cabinet departments in six weeks.
Donald Trump
Through all those outrages, House and Senate Republican majorities remained silent or vigorously supported him.
Democrats seemed unable to cope with Trump’s legislative agenda and his personal attacks on Twitter and in press conferences.
Even when the press unearthed his latest corruptions, the public didn’t care.
And now, with the 2020 Presidential election fast approaching, Trump has unleashed his latest outrage—while Americans who could stand against it do nothing: Trump now is laying the groundwork to discredit the outcome if he loses.
And it’s increasingly looking as if he will.
His tactics: Make it difficult to vote, guarantee voting is slow and complicated and raise questions about the outcome.
He wants to claim that if former Vice President Joe Biden wins, he was elected through a fraudulent mail-in vote.
Republicans have not protested any of this. Nor would they likely protest if Trump illegally occupied the White House in the face of massive vote fraud—on his part.
(His Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, won the popular vote in 2016—but lost in the Electoral College. But that didn’t prevent Trump from claiming that he would have won the popular vote except for massive fraud—which never happened.)
Whatever happens, Trump will claim he won.
In 2012, after President Barack Obama defeated his endorsed candidate, Mitt Romney, Trump tweeted:
- Lets fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice!
- The world is laughing at us. We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty.
- Our nation is totally divided!
- The loser one! [Trump’s spelling]
- He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country!
And even if he’s forced to leave office, he will undercut the ability of his successor to govern.
During World War II, scores of high-ranking German army officers risked their lives to plot the overthrow—and even assassination—of Adolf Hitler. Their efforts culminated in the ill-fated July 20, 1944 bomb plot that left Hitler badly injured but still in total command of Germany.
It would take only Vice President Mike Pence and eight Cabinet officers to courageously invoke the 25th Amendment and find Donald Trump “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,”
Yet even that small a number of honorable men cannot be found within the Trump administration.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 17, 2020 at 12:15 am
Special Counsel Robert Mueller III submitted his findings to Attorney General William Barr on March 22, 2019. A redacted version of the 448-page report was publicly released by the Department of Justice on April 18.
By that date, Mueller had:
- Indicted 34 people—including four former Trump campaign advisers.
- Indicted three Russian companies.
- Obtained eight guilty pleas to felonies or convictions—including five Trump associates and campaign officials.
- Unveiled Russians’ determination to elect Trump over Hillary Clinton.
- Revealed that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn discussed removing sanctions against Russia with then-Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, during the transition period.
- Discovered that Trump associates knew about Russian outreach efforts during the campaign.
On July 24, 2019, Mueller testified before the House Judiciary Committee. There he revealed that Donald Trump, the President of the United States, had:
- Sought Russian interference during the 2016 Presidential campaign.
- Benefited from that intervention.
- Concealed his close personal economic ties to Vladimir Putin by lying to the public about his hidden attempts to secure a construction project in Moscow.
- Lied to the special prosecutor.
- Directed subordinates to falsify records.
- Tried to exert “undue influence” on law enforcement in order to protect himself and his allies.
While appearing before Congress, Mueller was forced to:
- Testify for seven hours before the House Judiciary Committee and the House Intelligence Committee.
- Endure powerful, hot klieg lights needed by television cameras.
- Patiently take questions that were at times self-serving
- Respectfully answer questions meant to attack his personal and professional integrity.
- Simplify complex legal scenarios for men and women who have the attention span of a gnat.
Although Mueller was joined by former deputy special counsel Aaron Zebley, Zebley was forbidden to give testimony. He could only serve as Mueller’s counsel, giving quiet advice.
So the entire seven hours of public testimony fell on the shoulders of a 74-year-old man. No wonder he appeared tired by the end of the day.
And what was his reward?
A July 26, 2019 article in The Atlantic—entitled “The Press Has Adopted Trump’s Reality-Show Standards”—sums up the general reaction of the nation’s press to these bombshell revelations:
“In any other administration, in any other time, a special prosecutor, former FBI director, and decorated Marine testifying that the president of the United States was an unprosecuted felon who encouraged and then benefited from an attack on American democracy in pursuit of personal and political gain would bring the country to a grinding halt.
“But the American political press found Mueller insufficiently dazzling.”
Among those media:
- The New York Times: “Mueller’s Performance Was a Departure From His Much-Fabled Stamina.”
- The Washington Post: “On Mueller’s Final Day on the National Stage, a Halting, Faltering Performance.” And another reporter dubbed him a “weary old man.”
- The Hill: “Muller’s ‘Blockbuster’ Appearance Turned into ‘Bomb’ of Performance.”
- Politico: “Bob Mueller Is Struggling.”
- Right-wing media openly questioned Mueller’s health. These same media never mentioned that Trump is grotesquely overweight, never walks when he can ride, and eats a diet high in fats and calories.
In short: The nation’s most influential news media—on which citizens depend for their understanding of national and international personalities and events—has adopted the standards of teenagers.
* * * * *
Americans like their heroes young and powerful—preferably invincible. They want their heroes to be handsome and their villains to be ugly. They want to see lots of explosions and collapsing buildings.
And if a superhero can deliver a zinger of a line while throwing a KO punch, so much the better.
Lacking a sense of history—or concern for it—most Americans remain ignorant of the men, women and events that have shaped the era in which they live.
Most of those who watched Robert Mueller testify before Congress knew nothing of the sacrifices he had made for his country:
- As a Marine Vietnam veteran decorated for heroism (1968-1971);
- As a United States Attorney (1986-1987 and 1998-2001);
- As a United States Assistant Attorney General (1990-1993 and 2001); and
- As director of the FBI (2001-2013).
Robert Mueller
A news media that prizes glitz over substance has abdicated the role intended for it by the Founding Fathers: To act as a watchdog over the nation’s leaders.
That does not, however, diminish the legacy of Robert Mueller’s achievements—as Special Counsel and every other position he has held.
Revered within the law enforcement community, he will forever rank among the giants who personify courage and integrity
As a soldier, prosecutor, FBI director and Special Counsel, Robert Mueller took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
So did Donald Trump when he was inaugurated the nation’s 45th President. And so did every Republican member of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The difference between Robert Mueller and Trump—and the overwhelming majority of Republican Congressional members—is this: Mueller, like a compass pointing True North, has always stayed faithful to that oath.
In doing so, he carried on his shoulders the burdens created when millions of racist, hate-filled Americans deliberately sent a corrupt, Russian-backed egomaniac and would-be dictator to the White House.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 16, 2020 at 12:30 am
Altogether, four Russian oligarchs—Len Blavatnik, Alexander Shustorovich, Andrew Intrater and Simon Kukes––contributed $10.4 million from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017. Of this, 99% went to Republicans.
As Senate Majority Leader, Kentucky United States Senator Mitch McConnell participated in high-level intelligence briefings in 2016. From agencies such as the FBI, CIA and the code-cracking National Security Agency, he learned that the Russians were trying to subvert the electoral process.
In October, 2016, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) issued a joint statement: The Russian government had directed the effort to subvert the 2016 Presidential election.
Two weeks later, McConnell’s PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik.
On March 30, 2017, McConnell’s PAC accepted another $1 million from Blavatnik. This was just 10 days after former FBI Director James Comey testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia’s efforts to subvert the 2016 election.
Billionaires don’t give huge sums to politicians without expecting to get something in return. And this is especially true—and frightening—when the contributors are linked to a former KGB agent like Vladimir Putin, whose aggressive intentions are increasingly on display.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller thus faced increased hostility from Republicans who no doubt feared their own ownership by Moscow would become a focus of his investigation.
But there was another powerful reason why so many Republicans closed ranks with President Donald Trump against him:
#2: Republicans feared enraging Trump’s fanatical base.
On August 30, 2017, an article in Salon sought to explain why Trump was so popular among his supporters.
Its headline ran: “Most Americans Strongly Dislike Trump, But the Angry Minority That Adores Him Controls Our Politics.”
It described these voters as representing about one-third of the Republican party:
“These are older and more conservative white people, for the most part, who believe he should not listen to other Republicans and should follow his own instincts….
“They like Trump’s coarse personality, and approve of the fact that he treats women like his personal playthings. They enjoy it when he expresses sympathy for neo-Nazis and neo-Confederate white supremacists.
“They cheer when he declares his love for torture, tells the police to rough up suspects and vows to mandate the death penalty for certain crimes. (Which of course the president cannot do.)
“…This cohort of the Republican party didn’t vote for Trump because of his supposed policies on trade or his threat to withdraw from NATO. They voted for him because he said out loud what they were thinking. A petty, sophomoric, crude bully is apparently what they want as a leader.”
And keeping that cohort constantly stirred up was the Right-wing Fox News Network. This was not a source of legitimate news but the propaganda arm of the Fascistic Right and the Republican party.
Donald Trump
On May 18, 2018, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks offered this political commentary on The PBS Newshour: “I would just say, I observe politically, I do think if Trump fired Mueller tomorrow, the Republican Party would back him.
“Because I think Fox News has created a predicate. They have done thousands of surveys and investigations about Mueller as a political operative.”
And Brooks’ fellow political commentator, liberal syndicated columnist Mark Shields, echoed those sentiments: “At the same time, I think what we learned is that the defense of Donald Trump, led by himself and [his attorney] Rudy Giuliani, is to savage and torment, denigrate, vilify and libel Bob Mueller.
“Bob Mueller happens to be an American who turned down an eight-figure income to be a major corporate lawyer, instead became a public servant. He’s a man who volunteered and carries the wounds of battle from having been a Marine platoon leader in Vietnam.
“He is a public servant. He has not said a word. He has not given an interview. He has not leaked to anybody. And he stands vilified by Trump and Giuliani and their cohorts and their outriders. It is indefensible.
“And they are trying to exact the same damage upon the Justice Department of the country, the FBI and this country that Joe McCarthy did on the State Department, which has never fully recovered from his libelous attacks.”
David Brooks and Mark Shields
According to a Pew Research Center survey, that one-third of Republicans who fanatically supported Trump comprised only 16% of the population. That left 65% of Republicans who were revolted by Trump’s personality and behavior.
But that 65% of Republicans were being advised by GOP political consultants to vigorously support him.
“Your heart tells you that he’s bad for the country,” one anonymous consultant told the Salon reporter. “Your head looks at polling data among Republican primary voters and sees how popular he is.”
It’s precisely these hard-core Fascists who come out in mid-term elections—and they’re scaring the remaining 65% who make up the GOP establishment.
The highest priority of that establishment, after all, is to hold onto their privileged positions in the House and Senate. And anything that might jeopardize that—including what’s best for the country—can go hang.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 15, 2020 at 12:12 am
On November 8, 2016, millions of racist, hate-filled Americans took “revenge” on the nation’s first black President—by deliberately voting a Russian-backed egomaniac and would-be dictator into the White House.
By doing so, they set in motion events that would lead Robert S. Mueller III to assume the consequences—and burdens—of their brutal, Fascistic desires.
On May 9, 2017, President Donald Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey.
By doing so, he hoped to derail the Bureau’s investigation of documented ties between Russian Intelligence agents and high-ranking officials of the 2016 Trump Presidential campaign.
A national firestorm erupted—unprecedented since President Richard M. Nixon had fired Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox on October 20, 1973.
To squelch it, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein moved quickly.
On May 17, 2017, he appointed Robert S. Mueller 111 to serve as Special Counsel for the United States Department of Justice.
Rosenstein charged Mueller to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump, and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”
Trump claimed from the outset that there was “no collusion” between him and members of Russia’s Intelligence community. But he acted like a guilty man desperate to stop the investigation before it uncovers the full extent of his criminality.
Since then, Trump, his shills in Congress and Right-wing Fox News relentlessly attacked Mueller’s integrity and investigative methods.
From the outset of that investigation, there were widespread fears that Trump would fire Mueller, just as he did Comey. Those fears increased over the weekend of March 17-18, 2018, when Trump spewed a series of angry tweets on Twitter:
- “The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime. It was based on fraudulent activities and a Fake Dossier paid for by Crooked Hillary and the DNC, and improperly used in FISA COURT for surveillance of my campaign. WITCH HUNT!”
- “Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans? Another Dem recently added…does anyone think this is fair? And yet, there is NO COLLUSION!”
- “A total WITCH HUNT with massive conflicts of interest!”
On October 30, details emerged about a Right-wing plot to discredit the probe by falsely accusing Mueller of sexually abusing or harassing women.
Jennifer Taub, a law professor at Vermont Law School, told The Atlantic that a man working for Surefire Intelligence, a private investigative agency, had offered to pay her if she could provide dirt on Mueller. She didn’t respond and forwarded the information to the Special Counsel’s office.
Jennifer Taub
House and Senate Republicans almost universally refused to speak out against threats by Trump to fire deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and/or Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Or, more importantly, to take action to prevent or punish him for doing so.
On April 17, 2018, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would not allow legislation to protect Robert Mueller’s independent investigation into Russian subversion of the 2016 Presidential election to reach the Senate floor.
Mitch McConnell
“I’m the one who decides what we take to the floor. That’s my responsibility as majority leader. We’ll not be having this on the floor of the Senate,” the Kntucky Republican said in an interview on Fox News.
Earlier that day, another Republican, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, claimed that legislation to protect Mueller was “unnecessary.”
“It would not be in the President’s interest to [fire Mueller] and I think he knows that,” said the Wisconsin Congressman.
Why have so few Republicans dared to stand against Trump?
Two major reasons:
#1: Because many House and Senate Republicans received millions of dollars in “campaign contributions” from Russian oligarchs who are answerable to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
In short: Bribe monies.
The Kremlin
The following data comes from the Federal Elections Commission.
One major Russian contributor is Len Blavatnik. During the 2015-16 election cycle, he proved one of the largest donors to GOP Political Action Committees (PACs).
Blavatnik’s net worth is estimated at $20 billion. In 2016, he gave $6.35 million to GOP PACs.
In 2017, he gave millions of dollars to top Republican leaders—such as Senators Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio (Florida) and Lindsey Graham (South Carolina).
Specifically, Blavatnik contributed:
- A total of $1.5 million to PACs associated with Rubio.
- $1 million to Trump’s Inaugural Committee.
- $1 million to McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund.
- $3.5 million to a PAC associated with McConnell.
- $1.1 million to Unintimidated PAC, associated with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.
- $200,000 to the Arizona Grassroots Action PAC, associated with Arizona Senator John McCain.
- $250,000 to New Day for America PAC, associated with Ohio Governor John Kasich.
- $800,000 went to the Security is Strength PAC, associated with Senator Lindsey Graham.
Another Russian oligarch, Alexander Shustorovich, contributed $1 million to Trump’s Inaugural Committee.
A third oligarch, Andrew Intrater, contributed $250,000 to Trump’s Inaugural Committee.
And a fourth, Simon Kukes, contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 14, 2020 at 1:01 am
His face is lined and his gray hair is topped with a black hat. This is clearly not a young man. If he’s seen his share of violence, he doesn’t talk about it.
His name: Will Kane, as played by Gary Cooper. And he’s the local marshal of an anonymous Western town.
He’s about to face four armed and vicious criminals who intend to murder him. And he’s going to do it without support from the very citizens he’s sworn to defend.
“High Noon,” the 1952 movie in which this story takes place, won a Best Actor Academy Award for its star, Cooper. It was nominated for another six Academy Awards and won four (Actor, Editing, Music-Score, and Music-Song).
Its opening tune, “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling,” played incessantly on radios throughout the United States. President Dwight D. Eisenhower added his kudos to the movie, and often hummed its theme in the White House.
Fast forward to an America 66 years later.
A similar morality play opened—-in real life, not on a movie set. At stake wasn’t simply the life of one man but perhaps the future of American democracy.
Carrying that burden was Robert Swan Mueller III.
Like the Gary Cooper character in “High Noon,” he was not a young man—born on August 7, 1944. And, like Cooper’s Will Kane, he is tall, gray-haired and tight-lipped.
But while Cooper never saw military service, Mueller did. A 1966 graduate of Princeton University, he served as a Marine Corps infantry platoon commander during the Vietnam War.
Wounded in combat, among the military awards he received were:
- The Bronze Star Medal with Combat “V” for heroism (for saving a wounded Marine while under enemy fire).
- The Purple Heart Medal (awarded for wounds in combat).
- Two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with Combat “V”.
- Combat Action Ribbon.
- National Defense Service Medal.
Having given three years of his life (1968-1971) to the Marines, Mueller devoted the rest of his life to law enforcement.
Robert Mueller
A 1973 graduate of the University of Virginia Law School, Mueller served as:
- United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts (1986-1987);
- United States Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division (1990-1993);
- United States Attorney for the Northern District of California (1998-2001);
- United States Deputy Attorney General (January 20, 2001– May 10, 2001).
On September 4, 2001—seven days before Al-Qaeda’s monstrous 9/11 attacks on Washington and New York—President George W. Bush appointed him director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Widely praised for his integrity and effectiveness, he served his full 10-year term—the legal maximum.
But when President Barack Obama took office in 2009, he asked Mueller—a lifelong Republican—to stay on for an additional two years until a suitable replacement could be found.
Mueller agreed—and was succeeded by a fellow Justice Department colleague named James Comey.
Retiring from the FBI in 2013 at age 69, Mueller’s 27-year career as a dedicated law enforcer seemed at last to be over.
Then, on May 9, 2017, President Donald Trump fired Comey as FBI director. There were five reasons for this:
- Comey had refused to pledge his personal loyalty to Trump. Trump had made the “request” during a private dinner at the White House in January.
- Comey told Trump that he would always be honest with him. But that didn’t satisfy Trump’s demand that the head of the FBI act as his personal secret police chief—as was the case in the former Soviet Union.
- Trump had tried to coerce Comey into dropping the FBI’s investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, for his secret ties to Russia and Turkey. Comey had similarly resisted that demand.
- Comey had recently asked the Justice Department to fund an expanded FBI investigation into well-documented contacts between Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign and Russian Intelligence agents.
- The goal of that collaboration: To elect Trump over Hillary Clinton, a longtime foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
James Comey
On May 10—the day after firing Comey—Trump met in the Oval Office with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Kislyak was reportedly a top recruiter for Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence agency. He had been closely linked with Jeff Sessions, now Attorney General, and fired National Security Adviser Mike Flynn.
“I just fired the head of the F.B.I.,” Trump told the two dignitaries. “He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
And on May 11, Trump, interviewed on NBC News by reporter Lester Holt, said: “And in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said ‘you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.'”
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FUTURE HISTORIANS WILL NOT BELIEVE IT HAPPENED–BUT IT DID
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 5, 2021 at 12:05 amIt’s one of the pivotal moments in the classic 1962 movie, The Longest Day.
It’s June 6, 1944. The Allies have launched their long-expected attack on the French coast of Normandy.
This is an all-out assault on Adolf Hitler’s “Atlantic Wall,” to drive German armies out of the European countries they had conquered in 1940.
Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, the commander of all German forces in France, fears the worst.
“We can’t take any chances. I want the reserve panzers moved forward,” he tells his subordinate commander, Major General Gunther Blumentritt.
“But we need permission from the Fuhrer’s headquarters,” replies Blumentritt.
Von Rundstedt: “They won’t dare refuse me! Call the Fuhrer’s headquarters and insist that the panzers be released to me.”
Blumentritt makes the call to Berlin.
The response is disastrous: Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Operations Staff of the Wehrmacht, refuses the request. He will not release the panzers without Adolf Hitler’s approval. And the Fuhrer—who stays up late at night and sleeps during much of the day—is still sleeping .
“This is history,” says Blumentritt to an aide. “We are living an historical moment. We are going to lose the war because our glorious Fuhrer has taken a sleeping pill and is not to be awakened.
“Think of it, Kurt. We are witnessing something which historians will say is completely improbable. And yet it is true. The Fuhrer is not to be awakened! I sometimes wonder which side God is on.”
Gunther Blumentritt
And just as Bluemtritt predicted, defeat came soon for the German forces in France.
Today, Gunther Blumentritt’s words have taken on a special meaning for American citizens: “We are witnessing something which historians will say is completely improbable. And yet it is true.”
On November 3, Joe 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 President Donald 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.
Joe Biden
From the moment Biden was declared the winner, Trump set out to overturn that verdict.
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.
But states ignored his demand and kept counting.
Next, Trump ordered his attorneys to file lawsuits to overturn the election results, charging electoral fraud.
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.
From November 3 to December 14, Trump and his allies lost 59 times in court, either withdrawing cases or having them dismissed by Federal and state judges.
On November 19, Trump invited two Republican legislative leaders from Michigan to the White House—to persuade them to stop the state from certifying the vote.
The Michigan legislators said they would follow the law.
On December 5, Trump called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and asked him to call a special legislative session and convince state legislators to select their own electors that would support him, thus overturning Biden’s win.
Kemp refused, saying he lacked the authority to do so.
Donald Trump
On December 8, the Supreme Court refused to hear Trump’s bid to reverse Pennsylvania’s certification of Biden’s victory. Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA), a Trump ally, argued that the state’s 2.5 million mail-in votes were unconstitutional.
Although Trump had appointed three of the Court’s Justices, not one of them dissented.
On December 10, the Supreme Court refused to let a Texas lawsuit overturn the results in four battleground states: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The majority of their votes had been cast for Biden.
With the Senate due to certify states’ Electoral College results on January 6, Trump pressed Vice President Mike Pence to flip the results of the election to give him a win. This despite the fact that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 limits the Vice President to a largely ceremonial role.
Then, on December 30, Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley announced that, on January 6, 2021, he would object to the certification of some states’ Electoral College results. As many as 140 House Republicans could join him.
This will force Republicans to:
Never before has a losing Presidential candidate mounted a legal coup to overturn an election’s results.
“Josh Hawley and anyone who supports his effort are engaged in the attempted overthrow of democracy,” Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy said.
“There is no evidence that there was any fraud. Senator Hawley apparently believes that if a Democrat wins the presidential race, it must be illegitimate by definition, even absent any actual evidence of misbehavior.”
Nebraska Republican Senator Ben Sasse bluntly offered the reason for this effort: ‘”We have a bunch of ambitious politicians who think there’s a quick way to tap into the president’s populist base without doing any real, long-term damage. But they’re wrong—and this issue is bigger than anyone’s personal ambitions.”
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