How pathological does one have to be to mount a color revolution domestically? To manufacture millions of fake ballots and then brazen it out; not simply hanging on to what has been stolen, but actively attacking those who have been dispossessed? To evince no sheepishness, but to double down instead? In the realm of personal relationships, these behavioral traits would likely be judged entitled and sociopathic. To cheat is one thing, with the added bonus of no real downside. It's the unrelenting need to destroy that comes with it that's disturbing.
Nowhere has this been more obvious, in recent times, than with the ongoing attempted destruction of Donald Trump. Having tried and failed for at least four years, the ruling class had been reduced to obstruction, insubordination and acts of sabotage. The election couldn't come quick enough; they had a plan.
The legislatures in the swing states were entirely sidelined in 2020. Governors exercised their emergency powers and adjourned those legislatures that were sitting, the better to exploit their hegemony. Nevada's legislature wasn't due to meet in an even-numbered year in any event and Georgia and Arizona have part-time lawmakers who only meet in the first half of the year, unless recalled for an emergency session. If legislators aren't in session, they are not able to perform certain tasks, which would include any election-related investigations. They were also in no position to countermand any off-the-books consent agreements entered into by election officials and Democrats or ignore any overreaching judgements by activist judges. They were, in effect, impotent and ignored, while Boards of Electors, courts, Governors and Secretaries of State rode roughshod over election law.
(The Electoral College is a somewhat arcane procedure, which nonetheless preserves representation in a way that a national vote scheme would not - the big urban centres would gain undue influence and small states and rural areas would simply be overlooked. Both candidates nominate electors, but only the winners' are appointed. These electors are then honor bound to cast their votes according to voter preferences in the Electoral College in January.)
The result? Within three weeks of the election, 70% of Republicans thought the election had been stolen from Trump - 30% of Democrats agreed.(1) At that stage, much of the evidence that has subsequently been uncovered had not been presented to the voting public, but around half of them already had severe reservations.
One might, therefore, expect those in charge of the election process to have a question or two about the authenticity of their particular result. But, no. That is not the modern Democrat way – they don't take backward steps, even when to do so would be tactically astute. They simply double down, because how things are perceived by the rubes is not a matter than concerns them. Plus, of course, because they know that they are correct in all their positions, they have the right to take whatever they want, whenever they want to. And that especially applies to elections.
Leftists resent the entire premise of elections. They don't believe that they should have to persuade people to agree with them. Why would they? Why should they have to go through all the bother of having to campaign when there's an easier way? They believe that their ideas are the best and that any opposition therefore lacks legitimacy, but they know that, despite all that, they are still a minority. Their ideological positions on the likes of BLM, the gun rights and free speech are not shared by a majority of the voting public, but Democrats still want the power to impose their vision and there is only one way to do that – cheat and then carry on as if nothing untoward has just occurred.
Accordingly, no qualms as to the veracity of the election existed in the top executive positions in the swing states, those charged with certifying the results.
“There is some ambiguity ... as to whether “executive” refers to the governor or the secretary of state. But in all three key states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — both figures are Democrats.”(2)
One or other of these officials is responsible for that task in every state in the country and it is only when the validity of the election is attested that the electors for that state are confirmed. However, the legislature is still the higher power, not the executive officials, as Article II of the Constitution states that the manner in which the electors are appointed is solely within the gift of lawmakers. It so happens that, over time, state legislatures had devolved that duty to others, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't change the process if they felt that it wasn't being properly conducted.
Granted, that would take backbone and was therefore highly unlikely and it is instructive, looking back, to note that with regard to electoral challenges, all the running was done by the President's lawyers. While it is true that the legislatures were out of session (and Governors in the swing states were determined to keep it that way), the overall lack of urgency in the states was instructive. If 70% of Republican voters believed that the election was fraudulent, one might expect that those whose ultimate duty it was to oversee the elections might have been amongst the keenest supporters (and, indeed, instigators) of an investigation, but that wasn't the case. Leadership in House and Senate alike in states such as Arizona and Michigan were not eager to be confronted with evidence, of which there was plenty.
However, Trump and his election team were in no mood to make it easy for the Republican majorities. Mayor Giuliani, the President's lawyer, ultimately did presentations to Republican lawmakers in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin. When they had little choice but to endure the avalanche of affidavits and the like, usually as a result of unilateral action by more junior members of a state's Republican Congress, the local Republican leadership felt obliged to deploy diversionary tactics. The straw man put in regular appearances, whereby the Republican leader would assert that he was not going to intervene and unilaterally appoint electors himself because state law dictated that the electorate alone decided who received the Electoral College votes.
This ignored the central tenet of Trump's argument (which the evidence supported), which was that the election was a sham and that, because of Democrat fraud, the voters weren't truly deciding – the Democrats were. These responses also contrived to paint him as a demagogue, who simply wished to subvert the election for himself on some sort of whim. Republican leaders in at least four of the swing states made these transparently false statements,(3)(4)(5)(6) signalling their intention to sit on their hands and ignore the obvious. One suspects that they were also under orders from national leadership, as Trump's ouster would enhance their ability to appeal to corporate donors who were otherwise unwilling to be seen funding the party of Trump.
A second falsehood also gained traction, which went something like this; “as loyal Republicans, we are (of course) concerned by the allegations of irregularities and potential fraud that are being leveled. As such, we will act if those claims can be substantiated by a court of law.” As previously established, the courts have no say in the matter – it's the legislatures' duty to certify that an election is fair and, as a corollary, it was also their job to investigate the allegations themselves. The problem was that the standard of proof that would be required to rescind an election outcome is not defined; the legislature would have had to have come up with their own methodology and then run the gauntlet of extreme Democrat invective and lawfare and that was never going to happen.
However, by abdicating their responsibility, they placed all the onus on the judiciary, secure in the knowledge that they, too, would almost certainly suffer a similar loss of nerve and do everything in their power to avoid putting their heads on the chopping block. Of course, that is precisely what happened. Of the twenty eight campaign lawsuits that made it to court (as opposed to the multitude of private actions that are always agglomerated into the total when some apologist wants to massage the narrative), only eight were actually taken up, of which Trump won six, including one in Pennsylvania which the election officials simply ignored.(7)
The rest were largely dismissed for “lack of standing”, a legal concept that is sufficiently amorphous and subjective as to give cover to any judge seeking to duck a contentious issue. And the post-election atmosphere was rabid – big law firms were threatened with ruin if they even entertained the thought of representing Trump (still the President) and some lawyers were even physically threatened.(8) Judges would have read the tea leaves and seen that a similar fate lay in store for them if they started thinking independently . Additionally,
“”...the time constraints that govern election contests, primarily designed to serve important interests and needs of election officials and the public interest in finality, simply do not work well in those elections where misconduct” is widespread and multifaceted.”(9)
Or, put another way, once the fraud has been perpetrated, the process of baking it into the record takes precedence. That being the case, election officials can ignore state law with impunity as courts aren't interested in playing a central role in someone else's drama, and the malefactors who committed the fraud are also the same people who will deny it ever took place. Yet another example of a system or a procedure that, in the hands of honest administrators would work tolerably well, but which is insufficiently robust if a bad actor is in the ascendant, at which point it acts in furtherance of the fraud.
In this case, even a finding that the Wisconsin Governor and other election officials acted outside the state law with regard to absentee ballots has no practical effect six weeks after the election.(10) By then, Wisconsin (along with all the other contested states) had long since certified their joke of an election and there was absolutely no chance that anybody would have the courage to reopen that particular can of worms.
Certification is not intended to be simply a rubber stamp process, but that is exactly what it has become, because the poachers are also the gamekeepers. One cannot expect those responsible for (at minimum) allowing the election to be manipulated, to turn themselves in, so there was going to be no hesitation from state officials, whether Democrat or Republican. And, in truth, the pressure on everyone concerned in the certification process was immense.
Any official in the swing states who wouldn't play ball (and there were a few at county level)(11) was threatened and misled and would have known that their resistance was always going to be ineffective – state canvassing boards or the courts would inevitably override their objections. The Democrats and their lapdogs in the media continually repeated the mantra that the election was fair, that there was no evidence of fraud (both lies) and that, because no court had declared that there had been any “widespread fraud”, there automatically hadn't been any and that any legislature that acted against this overwhelming narrative, was “subverting the will of the people” - in short, the familiar panoply of lies and intimidation.
In those circumstances, how many individuals are going to go down with the ship on a matter of principle? How many judges will want to do their duty when to do so is to commit professional hari-kari? Especially as the appellate court is sure to overrule them, or run out the clock so that the sacred timetable can be accommodated, regardless of the merits of the case? That attitude was apparent in case after case and it even found an echo in the highest court in the land. Ultimately, self-sacrifice in the service of a glorious victory is one thing – doing the same when defeat is unavoidable is, psychologically, another entirely.
The intimidation tactics deployed by Big Business – who told the major law firms that they would take their accounts elsewhere if their lawyers represented Trump – had inflicted considerable damage on the President's legal battles in the swing states. The complexity of the effort, on different points of law and with different tranches of evidence spread over seven states required coordination, but that was, perforce, lacking.
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) was asked to intervene by the state of Texas and others, which claimed that their constitutional rights had been undermined by the failure of other states to properly enforce election law. This was effectively an attempt to bypass the intentional logjam in the lower courts and allow SCOTUS to rule on the manifest breaches of election law that had been allowed to occur in all the swing states. SCOTUS, somewhat predictably, ruled that Texas didn't have standing and thereby avoided an examination of the evidence.(12)
This was not the first time that the court had been asked to give an opinion on the conduct of the election. In October 2020, the Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth unilaterally altered the deadline for absentee ballots. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court then added a further requirement, ensuring that even absentee ballots with indecipherable postmarks (that cannot be proven to have arrived before election day) must be counted. This activity -and more besides - was contrary to state law and should have been simply ignored, as neither the SoS nor the courts had any right to alter state election law. Instead, perhaps sensing that county Election Boards would do the bidding of the court rather than the legislature, the state appealed to SCOTUS for a stay.
In so doing – appealing to yet another court, even if was SCOTUS - they tacitly acknowledged that the SoS and the courts had some sort of veto over state law and that the judicial system was the appropriate avenue through which to seek recourse. Nonetheless, it should have been a slam dunk; a chance for the court to reaffirm the constitutional requirement that the state legislature alone was the arbiter of election law. However, this was during a period when only eight Justices were in place, after one had died and before her successor had taken her place and the Chief Justice, a notorious “centrist”, voted with the activist progressives ensuring that the vote was split 4-4, which meant no stay. A request for an expedited review was not granted either and, eventually, the court ran out the clock until any judgement had been rendered moot by events.
This failure to uphold legislative primacy had widespread ramifications. The message that could have been disseminated – that, firstly, SCOTUS was prepared to rule on election issues and, secondly, that judicial overreach would not be tolerated – wasn't. Instead, the opposite message was received and understood. SCOTUS as an entity (not the four Justices who got it right) had proved itself as spineless as every other part of the system, which is clearly a large problem. If what is, effectively, the ultimate judicial backstop fails, confidence in the entire system fails with it. The promise that, no matter how much partisan malfeasance had infected a particular case, SCOTUS could be relied upon to do the right thing, has been betrayed in a fashion that is impossible to ignore. That isn't a good place to be.
Trump was left in no-man's land. The Republicans in the state legislatures in swing states had been presented with compelling evidence of electoral fraud, of a quantity that was clearly sufficient to steal the election in each of their states. (Most conservative figures who are prepared to acknowledge this reality stop short of putting a state by state number on the fraud, which is sensible enough as granular investigations have not been attempted. However, logic dictates that there would have been very little point in making such an enormous effort if the Democrats then allowed themselves to come up short.)
But without being called into session, there was little they could do. Alternate electors were slated in seven separate states (Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada and New Mexico), so that the President kept his options open. The idea was that, in a circumstance where a court in a particular state found that the fraud had been sufficient to effect the outcome of their election, alternate electors were on hand. This would give the respective legislature the opportunity to decertify the Biden electors and certify Trump's slate.
This is an important point that the Democrats and the media prefer not to dwell on; the alternates were not certified, for two main reasons – firstly, the legislatures wouldn't certify without an investigation of their own and, secondly, they weren't able to certify electors if they weren't in session. These electors were on standby; unless activated, they had no legitimate status. As such, the Biden electors were not usurped. Opponents tend to ignore one other fact as well, which is that this scheme is not without precedent.
In the presidential election of 1960, the Republican Governor of Hawaii declared Nixon the winner and prepared to send three electors to Washington. However, a judge granted Kennedy's team a recount, which dragged on for weeks. The Democrats in the legislature went so far as to actually certify a second set of electors prior to their challenge being resolved (so, a step further than in the 2020 stand-offs). At the point at which the Electoral College met, the conundrum had not yet been resolved, but it was the Democrat slate that the VP confirmed when the Electoral College was counted five weeks later, after the result had been overturned in JFK's favor.(13)
However, at the time (and since) the media have constantly referred to Trump's alternates as 'fake electors', who claimed that they were the rightful electors, and that the President was trying to overturn a legitimate election. There are all the usual talking points; there's no evidence, the courts have disproved any and all allegations, Trump is peddling “The Big Lie”. The one thing they will never discuss is the detail of any of it, because detail is not their friend. It's the exact same play-book that we see with “climate change” and, latterly, the “pandemic”.
In all cases, assertions are made by experts, either in person or via the administrative state's various adjuncts, and the evidence that would give credence to their assertions is seldom, if ever, covered in any real detail. On the rare occasions that it is, it's contorted into shapes that fit the official line, whether by cherry picking or outright misrepresentation (see anything to do with PCR tests, case fatality rates or “the hottest Sunday since records began”). Any challenge to the orthodoxy is dismissed with a liberal use of pejoratives such as “anti-vaxxer”, “denier”, “hesitant” or the evergreen CIA inspired “conspiracy theorist”.
With regard to the 2020 election, no court made a genuine finding on the evidence. The vast majority abdicated their responsibility and the few that didn't simply adopted the view of the respondent without reference to the evidence. By the end of December, while still at home twiddling their thumbs, Republican state legislators seemed to have realized that the courts were not going to come to the rescue. Belatedly, and quite possibly reluctantly, they saw that their role might have to be greatly expanded.
Prior to the official, seemingly ceremonial counting of the Electoral College votes on January 6th, at least five of the legislatures in the swing states wrote to the VP, Mike Pence. It was to be his duty to preside over the count. However, as the Pennsylvania legislature made clear (and the other states echoed), the state executives who had certified the Biden slate of electors had done so illegally and had violated state law in the process. The legislatures told Pence that he could not rely on those electors.
Pennsylvania also told him that they had been trying to persuade the Governor to call them into special session for a month, so that they may determine whether the irregularities and fraud that had been perpetrated in their state was sufficient to effect the result of the election. They requested that Pence adjourn the joint session of Congress for a week so that, now that they were back in regular session, they could make a determination and then let the VP know whether the current electors were to be decertified. The constitutional right to decertify electors belong to a state's House and Senate, acting in concert.(14)
The Democrats and the Fourth Estate, perhaps anticipating one final roadblock, had been assiduously peddling the line that the constitutional timeline had to be observed, no matter what, whilst failing to acknowledge that the only date that was constitutionally sacrosanct was the January 20th inauguration; every other date (January 6th included) was simply a tradition or a procedural relic.
Nonetheless, the pleas from the legislatures – no matter how well evidenced – were all set to be summarily disregarded until the sudden discovery of law review articles from the early 2000's that opined that the VP's role in proceedings was not as perfunctory as assumed. A student of history would already have come to this realization, as the Hawaii example clearly set a precedent, but the circumstances of the 2000 election also served to further refine the constitutional point.
The confusion engendered by the contested Florida election of that year shone a spotlight onto the role of the VP as the President of the Senate and the presiding officer in the Electoral College vote. Coincidentally, as with Nixon in 1960, VP Gore was confronted with an enormous conflict of interest as he was also the presidential candidate and would be required to decide his own fate. Nixon avoided making a decision in 1960, as results elsewhere made Hawaii's college votes moot, but Gore was obliged to deal with the issue more proactively. As a result, the expert consensus was that the Vice President was responsible for determining the validity of electoral votes if there were questions about them,(15) as the VP is the only person with an active role in the procedure.
But that was in 2000 and what's good for the goose is emphatically not good for the gander. Gore was a Democrat and therefore a perfectly credentialed individual, whereas Pence was the hated Trump's sidekick and not to be allowed to make choices that might not be the approved ones. Therefore, his role was purely ceremonial. That was the Democrat position, naturally. Similarly, they were entitled to spend four years incessantly claiming that Trump was an illegitimate President – despite the fact that there was no evidence to support such an assertion, as detailed in the Mueller Report – but Trump was forbidden from challenging a blatantly fraudulent election. As always, particularly with the progressives, politics is downstream from character and the only consistency on display was Democratic omniscience.
There was one other fly in the ointment, but it was inconsequential enough to not merit mention in some of these legal opinions. The 1887 Electoral Count Act (believed to be at least partly unconstitutional) included a stipulation which stated that once a count has been started, it should be seen through to the end – no adjournments. Pence believed that this was his get-out-of-jail free card and told the President's lawyer that he therefore grant the legislatures' wish as the count had to be concluded on 6th January.
It was explained to him that perhaps counting electoral college votes that the states themselves had told him were illegally cast (and, in the process, certifying an election that was still being contested, in breach of his duty), was a somewhat larger sin than breaching a procedural rule from a bill that was likely unconstitutional.(16) And, once again for the avoidance of doubt, Secretaries of State and Governors are constitutionally subordinate to the legislatures with regard to the conduct of elections. They are deputized to certify electors but the legislatures retain plenary power; if they say that the electors have been illegally selected, they've been illegally selected.
It is important to note that, even though the aforementioned law reports asserted that the Constitution did not forbid the VP from making a unilateral decision as to which slate of dueling electors they would count, Pence was not requested to endorse the uncertified Republicans. Trump's lawyer told the VP that this course of action, while not specifically ruled out, would still be foolish. Pence was simply asked to refer the issue back to the states, as per their request, to allow them to review and investigate, as which point they would either confirm that the Democrat electors were to be endorsed, or that they were to be decertified in favor of the Republican ones or, perhaps, that neither slates were to be counted. Pence was emphatically not asked to make the decision himself.
In a fair world, Pence would have acceded to the states' requests and the chips would then have fallen wherever the states cast them. In our unfair world, where to demonstrate fidelity to election integrity and the Constitution provokes outrage amongst friend and foe alike, Pence should still have done his duty and treated the ensuing vitriol as a badge of honor. Instead, he did what he was, in all probability, temperamentally inclined to do (and probably under orders to do, also) – he betrayed the voting public and the President and, in a statement released on the afternoon of January 6th, propped up the straw man one last time, stating that
“... it is my considered judgement that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming constitutional authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.”(17)
Which, as we know, he had not been asked to do. But, in inferring that he had been asked to do so, he also threw Trump and his lawyer under the bus, which must have been part of the plan. There were extra helpings of unctuousness and several invocations of the Almighty, in typically American fashion, and that was that. The legislatures in the swing states were to be forced back into their lane and the Big Steal was to be allowed to proceed unimpeded. (Ironically, in 2022, there was confirmation that Trump's lawyer had been right all along, with the passage of a “bipartisan reform” of the 1887 Act, designed to prevent a future VP from doing what Pence didn't do, but could have.(18) Presumably, the Democrats aren't planning on losing another election – ever – and so don't need the wiggle room.)
Between them, whether through abject cowardice or by design, SCOTUS and the VP had ensured that the huge numbers of Americans who believed that the election had been stolen would simply be ignored. Perhaps the promise of a reprise of the BLM inspired Summer of Love influenced their thinking. It was certainly intended to. But there is evidence that the Uniparty had a backup plan in place, just in case Pence decided to go off road; a plan that, when implemented, served to further at least three different ends – a distraction from Pence's perfidy, a stick to beat deplorable dissenters with and a way of perhaps permanently ridding themselves of Orange Man Bad.
The only avenue left open by Pence's decision was the performative theater of objections during the certification of the electoral votes, the process Democrats tried to use in 2016, but which had failed miserably, as an objection is only heard when a member of the House and a Senator object together and no Democrat Senator wanted to be party to a two hour bloviation, sans evidence, and a subsequent vote in both Houses that would simply confirm the inevitable.
But for Pence, this was familiar (and approved) territory; he was content to permit objections and was also prepared to allow evidence of “voting irregularities” to be presented so that it was given “proper consideration” - just as long as he didn't have to do anything about, a position that is ludicrous on its face.(19) The votes that would follow each objection would not change the outcome, as the Democrats had ensured that the Big Steal had also provided them with a majority in both chambers, but still. How could the presiding officer sit through hours of evidence (each objection is allocated two hours) and then simply certify what everyone watching would now know to be illegitimate?
The usual RINO suspects were out in force and they were very much in the majority, even before the events of the day. Senator Inhofe's statement was representative of the breed:
“My job on Wednesday is clear, and there are only two things I am permitted to do under the Constitution: ensure the electors are properly certified and count the electoral votes, even when I disagree with the outcome. To challenge a state's certification, given how specific the Constitution is, would be a violation of my oath of office — that is not something I am willing to do and is not something Oklahomans would want me to do."(20)
This, despite the fact the swing state legislatures had made it perfectly clear that the electors were not properly certified. Numerous other milquetoast Never-Trumpers hid behind similar faux justifications. Perhaps 14 of the 49 would have voted to uphold any objections, which were therefore doomed to fail, but the evidence of fraud would still have been read into the record. In addition, a group of eleven Republican Senators proposed a separate solution to the impasse–that-wasn't, a recommendation that Congress should follow a precedent from 1877 when serious allegations of fraud in three states were made:
"We should follow that precedent. To wit, Congress should immediately appoint an Electoral Commission, with full investigatory and fact-finding authority, to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states. Once completed, individual states would evaluate the Commission's findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed.”(21)
This has the appearance of an elaborate form of ass-covering; signalling loyalty to the leader, by proposing a solution to a problem that well over half of both Houses refused to admit even existed and which was therefore doomed to failure. Needless to say, a deafening silence ensued and, despite the enthusiasm of over a hundred House Representatives, only three Republican Senators actually signed on to formally object. As the session approached, exposés of the elections in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia were the only ones that were set to be heard.
My impression is that what happened on the afternoon of January 6th at the US Capitol was a necessary part of the Uniparty plan. I'll set out evidence in support of that position shortly, but first consider the effect that the demonstration-cum-riot had on the day's proceedings. The motions to pause the certification to examine election fraud in Arizona and Pennsylvania were well advertised in advance and were primed to be introduced. Under normal order in Congress, there would have no way to prevent them from being presented which, as previously noted, would have resulted in the airing of Democratic dirty laundry and the dismemberment (live on air) of the “safest election in history” narrative that had been so relentlessly force-fed to the population.
An uncontested count can take as little as 27 minutes, start to finish, and Arizona's count would come early. Just as Senator Cruz was launching into his peroration, business was suddenly suspended and the lead actors were escorted from the building. Representatives and Senators then scattered to the four winds, lest the rioters get ahold of them and the entire session was delayed by seven hours. As it transpires, the only way that the 1887 statute – the one stating that the count may not be adjourned once it has commenced – can be circumvented is in response to an immediate crisis. Naturally, an “insurrection” meets that definition and, crucially, the House Speaker was therefore permitted to unilaterally impose emergency measures.
This meant that, when the joint session reconvened, proceedings were conducted under a different set of rules:
“These rules abandon and make it clear that the ONLY purpose of the new session was to EXPEDITE the certification and dismiss all prior regular session procedural rules. This is why those two motions to table votes to consider a debate and pause to the certifications of state vote electors never happened later that evening...”(22)
All of which is remarkably convenient, as no objections were allowed to be entered into the record. This omission had the additional procedural effect of blocking a pathway to a future SCOTUS appeal and it gave some of the Republican Senators who were adamant that they were going to vote against certification a way out. As such, they were well represented among the ranks of the patently dishonest after the mêlée. Here, Senator Loeffler bids for the podium with this disingenuous offering:
“... when I arrived in Washington this morning I fully intended to object to the certification of the Electoral votes. However, the events that have transpired today have forced me to reconsider, and I cannot now in good conscience object to the certification of these electors. The violence, the lawlessness and siege of the halls of Congress are abhorrent...”(23)
Even the cerebrally challenged ought to be able to spot the glaring non-sequitur. If the election was irregular and, on that basis, needed to be challenged, it hadn't suddenly become regular due to a riot at the Capitol. It's difficult to imagine that she isn't aware of the nonsense she spouted, but perhaps she was simply playing to the echo-chamber on The Hill and simping to the blue side of the aisle.
So, by the wee small hours of January 7th, Pence had abrogated his responsibility, Biden had been confirmed as the next President, Republican dissidents had been largely shamed and neutered, the RINOS were back in the ascendancy and the evidence of Uniparty corruption had been stuffed behind the arras. At which point, we might once again reflect on FDR's famous assertion:
“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”(24)
In truth, we should have immediately been suspicious. Even without knowledge of the finer parliamentary detail, the riot at the Capitol was an anomaly. Trump supporters had no history of violence; that was the province of Antifa and their buddies in BLM. And when unexpected events occur, the first question should always be “Cui bono?” That is especially so in this case, as when one starts to examine the unexpected event in detail, the narrative starts to crumble rather swiftly.
That there might be trouble on January 6th was well known weeks in advance. It is a little known fact that there was a riot on inauguration day in 2017, as well; at least 217 arrests were made, mostly just a few blocks from the White House. “Activists” in black clothes and masks threw rocks and bottles at the police, set fire to multiple vehicles and smashed windows with baseball bats,(25) in a now familiar demonstration of what happens when Leftists don't get what they want. This time around, it would be MAGA protesting a genuinely stolen election and the opportunity for a false flag operation should have been obvious.
The responsibility for security at the Capitol on January 6th rested with three people; the newly minted House Speaker (Nancy Pelosi), the Leader of the Senate (Chuck Schumer) and the Chief of the Capitol Police (Steven Sund). The two Democrats were advised by their respective Sergeants-at-arms. Additionally, the Mayor of Washington (Muriel Bowser) was responsible for the metro area and was also in the loop on most decisions affecting the Capitol. The planning for January 6th started as far back as the summer of 2020.
The Electoral College count wasn't usually an occasion that excited much attention, but it was clear that things would be different this year. The President was due to hold a rally on the Ellipse Grounds, a 45 minute hike from the Capitol and there was every possibility that it would be massive. The National Park Service certainly thought so, as they adjusted the permit from 5,000 to 30,000 just two days prior to the event.(26)
Figure 1
In the event, the best guesstimate is that 120,000 protesters turned up on the day,(27) which is perhaps the first of many circumstances that we are supposed to believe was a surprise to the powers-that-be. It wasn't even the only rally in DC with a permit on January 6th; there were two others nearby, with permits for 30,000 and 15,000 respectively.(28) In short, large numbers could be guaranteed.
Trump and his administration were cognisant of the potential for problems, as was the Mayor. She requested support from the Washington DC National Guard (DCNG) on 31st December, although she categorically ruled out further reinforcements unless the Metro Police were consulted:
“To be clear, the District of Columbia is not requesting other federal law enforcement personnel and discourages any additional deployment without immediate notification to, and consultation with, MPD if such plans are underway.”(29)
Her request was eventually granted on 4th January. Bowser was allocated 340 troops to assist with traffic control and subway support; the only element that might actually be of use in an emergency was the Quick Reaction Force, but that was waiting at Joint Base Andrews some miles away.(30) In a very unusual move, the Secretary of Defence issued a memo which directed that those in DC were not to be issued weapons, body armour nor helmets,(31) which ensured that they could not be deployed in a public order situation, if that eventuality came about.
On 3rd January, the Capitol Police confirmed that they weren't requesting any assistance from the DCNG. Trump was informed of the overall situation and agreed with the Mayor's request, a curious course of action for an alleged insurrectionist; one might have thought that he would be doing his best to ensure that Washington was as denuded of security personnel as possible. However, even the best laid plans can swiftly unravel – and this plan could hardly be said to belong to that category – and from 4th January onwards things start to go South.
The Chief of the Capitol Police was not accorded the freedom of decision-making enjoyed by the Mayor. Any request for the National Guard had to be authorised by the Congressional leadership via the Sergeants-at-arms and Sund was privy to intelligence which alleged that
"...members of the Proud Boys, white supremacist groups, Antifa, and other extremist groups were expected to participate in the Jan. 6 event and that they may be inclined to become violent."(32)
Despite this, the assessment concluded that the probability of violence was remote, which seems somewhat counter-intuitive, but the Chief knew that the report echoed an earlier one, for a December 12th MAGA protest, that passed off without much fuss but by January 4th, he had changed his mind about the desirability of DCNG back-up. It was then that he asked permission from House and Senate Sergeants-at-arms to place them on standby. They refused, as the Democrat leadership supposedly didn't like the “optics” of army personnel at the Capitol,(33) which passes the smell test in one sense as one can readily accept the proposition that politicians make stupid decisions based on what looks good, rather than what is required. Nonetheless, when testifying after the event, the General in command of the DC National Guard stated that the “optics” reasoning had not been a factor on any previous occasion.(34)
It appears, in retrospect, that the Chief was being hung out to dry. It wasn't as if he hadn't recognised some level of threat and he appears to have had a re-think about the intelligence assessment and decided that it was better to be safe than sorry. However, it wasn't his call to make and his masters were of a different opinion. His replacement (he was forced to resign in the aftermath of the riot) testified that the leadership of the Capitol Police were not complacent in the run-up to the rally. She acknowledged that they were aware that extremist groups were going to attend, adding that they thought that this protest would be different to others.
“We also knew that some of these participants were intending to bring firearms and other weapons to the event. We knew that there was a strong potential for violence and that Congress was the target.”(35)
In the aftermath, many of the players were seeking to burnish their actions and slough off the blame onto any convenient scapegoat. However, this part of the account rings true, as the request for the DCNG was, in fact, made but it's far from clear whether anyone within the administration was updated about the changing intelligence landscape. There is no mention of any such notification in the after-action report and it's entirely conceivable that Pelosi and Schumer kept things to themselves, especially if the motivation subsequently imputed to them is true – a false flag attack on a Capitol defended by the DCNG would be considerably harder to provoke.
It's not difficult to see how the piecemeal leadership structure would also have facilitated confusion. The Chief didn't have freedom to manoeuvre and the decision-making structure above him was unwieldy. The jurisdictional divide between Metro and Capitol police forces was always likely to lead to co-ordination issues and the administration was effectively out of the loop, without necessarily knowing what they didn't know.
And then, on 5th January, the FBI claim that they sent an email to the Capitol Police stating that they had discovered calls for violence in protest at unlawful lock-downs, starting the day after. Apparently, they'd discovered a message board thread which stated:
“Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled. Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.”(36)
There was more; people sharing maps of the Capitol's tunnels, rallying points identified in nearby states - all appropriately rabid and textbook right wing extremist. And damning if the FBI account is true (a big if), because there is no record of any action taken as a result. This might be because nobody senior at the Capitol Police ever received it – that's what they are saying, in any event. The claim is that the FBI sent it to more junior officers, who then didn't notify their superiors, which is absolutely not what you do if you were the FBI and you are in receipt of intelligence that threatens a civil war. The entire episode is jarringly implausible – it's possible that the agency was trying to cover its ass and simultaneously bolster the insurrection narrative, but doing so in a way that wouldn't result in enhanced security at the Capitol.
Whatever the truth of the various accounts, the net result was a woeful under-preparedness. No proper fencing was erected, there was a failure to liaise with organisers who were holders of permits and no extra personnel – of whatever hue – were provided as on-the-scene back-up.(37) Trump was on the record as having proposed a deployment of 10,000-20,000 guardsmen (he even ordered 10,000 troops to be activated)(38), but Pelosi and Schumer were having none of it. They were seemingly determined to ensure that obvious vulnerabilities were retained rather than addressed.
There was one final curiosity, an order from an Assistant Chief not to utilise stun grenades and sting balls – allegedly because there was a fear that the Capitol Police didn't know how to deploy them properly, despite their extensive experience of riots in 2017 and 2020.(39) All in all, it's difficult to escape the conclusion that there was a deliberate dereliction of duty by the two Democrats.
The timeline of what happened next has been memory-holed by the media, as it doesn't fit the narrative. What's supposed to have happened is that Trump egged on the MAGA protestors who then stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent Biden's confirmation as winner of the election. The rioters were further inflamed by Pence's letter, which clearly indicated that he was not going to grant the state legislatures' request and was going to confirm illegally appointed electors. Depending on what version you've heard, the rioters may have killed a police officer by hitting him over the head with a fire-extinguisher. Other members of law enforcement also died.
This is all hogwash. Trump's speech started at midday. The first wave of protestors arrived at the Capitol at around 12.40 and the outer perimeter was breached fifteen minutes later. Trump didn't finish speaking until 13.11 and, as previously asserted, it takes an additional 45 minutes to reach the Capitol from the Ellipse. By 13.09, the Chief had already called the Sergeants-at-arms, again requesting the National Guard. They said they'd “run it up the chain” and come back to him. Pelosi didn't approve the request until 13.43.(40)
However, after the DCNG had allegedly been overzealous in confronting the “mostly peaceful” arsonists of the Summer of Love, the Major General in charge had been required to seek further authority from the Pentagon before deployment of his troops.(41) On the day, this was not forthcoming until 15:00. The National Guard didn't, therefore, arrive until 17.00, by which time the riot was over.(42)
Congress was evacuated at 13.26. The narrative states that this was because of the extreme danger posed to lawmakers by the MAGA hordes. It wasn't. It was because of the discovery of two pipe-bombs, one outside the RNC HQ (discovered by Capitol Police) and one outside the DNC HQ (attended by DC Metro Police), both just before 13.00. This compromised security at the Capitol itself, so it was evacuated.(43)
The Capitol building itself was breached at around 14.15, by which time Sund was phoning the DCNG directly. So, the narrative timing is off. Anybody attending Trump's speech wouldn't have been back at the Capitol until around 14.00 at the earliest, an hour after the initial breach was made. The inescapable conclusion is that the violence must have been instigated by individuals who hadn't heard Trump speak. Had they done so, they would have heard him calling for those supporters at his speech to
“...peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on our brave Senators and Congressmen and women.”(44)
He also stated that his view was that only the electors who had been lawfully slated should be counted, which would exclude the swing states as their legislatures had specifically stated that theirs weren't. And Pence released his letter via Twitter at 13.02, after the outer cordon had been compromised,(45) which gives the lie to yet another part of the official record. Lastly, while there were deaths that day – four of them – they were all protestors, one of whom got shot by police. No-one hit the police officer in the head with a fire-extinguisher; he died the next day from a stroke, not from injuries sustained at the Capitol. But the Capitol Police version of events, whilst an outright lie, provided sustenance for the Fourth Estate and the Biden regime, which has repeated the lie to this day:
“Officer Sicknick was responding to the riots on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol and was injured while physically engaging with protesters. He returned to his division office and collapsed. He was taken to a local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.”(46)
If one wanted to be sure that a crisis would happen along at the precise moment that one was required, it would be unwise to rely on the mob, regardless of how many operatives were embedded within it. Timing could easily be problematic; they may take longer than expected to rile, despite relentless provocation. The pipe-bombs, however, can be discovered at a time of one's convenience, which is particularly so given the locations. This would appear to have been Plan A. Clearly, given what transpired with the protestors, the Chief would have been obliged to declare a crisis at some point anyway, which makes January 6th remarkable in another way – two, totally separate crises that necessitated the evacuation of Congress within minutes of each other and at a time of maximum benefit to the Democrats.
But the crowd still rioted, did it not? They still forced their way into the Capitol and inflicted unwarranted violence on police. Well, yes and no. There's are numerous false notes in the January 6th narrative, which include the role the federal government played in the incident and also the actions of the Capitol Police. For starters, there were (at the minimum) dozens of government operatives in the crowds that day; there were at least 40 within just one group, the Proud Boys, as court documents now reveal.(47) There were also federales within the Oath Keepers, who provided security for Trump's speech that day.(48)
Secondly, some of the main instigators of the riot, even those whose identities are public knowledge, have not been charged with any offences. The infamous Scaffold Commander, responsible for coordinating protesters and urging them to enter the Capitol, has never been arrested and bears a startling resemblance to a well known left wing journalist – the Commander is on the left in the image below, the journalist on the right.
Figure 2
Ray Epps, a man who spent the 24 hours prior to the riot encouraging all and sundry to storm “The People's House” and who was present at the initial breach of the outer cordon (and looked to be the one in charge of the situation) has never been charged; but he has been thanked for co-operating with the sham that was the January 6th Committee.(49) Incidentally, the breach occurred one minute after the alleged discovery of the pipe-bombs (50) and the small team responsible hauled all barricades, signage and fencing off to the side – ordinarily, this area is open to the public.(51)
Figure 3 Epps, on the left, seconds before the first breach.
By the time Epps and co. had done their work, the first part of the federal trap was already a success, as hundreds of Trump supporters (arriving later, having attended his speech) would unwittingly trespass on federal grounds. Epps then positioned himself under the Scaffold Commander and urged the crowds forward.
Figure 4
These two are far from the only individuals present on January 6th who have led a charmed life, in marked contrast to others who were merely milling around, outside the Capitol. Neither of them are even on the Most Wanted List.(52) None of which should be much of a surprise; US law enforcement has a long and inglorious record of using undercover officials to participate in protests and also to escalate them, if that was deemed to be a desirable outcome (53) and the intelligence community has decades of experience in fomenting color revolutions overseas.(54) As Revolver previously noted:
“Students of FBI history should quickly absorb the lesson that infiltrating Feds are like roaches: whenever you spot one, it is guaranteed there are dozens of others nearby. Feds simply never, ever, operate alone....So if Ray Epps was instructed by the government to play his part in various recruiting, breaching and crowd control efforts that day, we would expect many other informants to be set up around him.”(55)
Figure 5
And so, once the bulk of the Trump supporters who had come from the Ellipse arrived, there were thousands in the Capitol grounds. But, despite the exhortations of Epps and the Scaffold Commander, the atmosphere was far from febrile. In fact, only a couple of people were pushing the police line and even they desisted after a short while. Unaccountably, that's when the Capitol Police started using munitions on the crowd; flashbangs, Tasers, rubber bullets, the latter often at point blank range into people's faces. At least five or six individuals were shot and these were people who were simply standing there, rather than attacking police. For context, a rubber bullet to the head can be fatal (56) and police doctrine forbids targetting that part of the body.
“It went crazy at that precise time when the protesters, all standing in the west side terrace, and then shots start going off and people are getting hit in the faces… There were a couple of agitators in the crowd don’t get me wrong, but what took it to a whole different level is people being shot in the face with rubber bullets. That’s where people who were angry got even angrier and rightfully so.”(57)
Figure 6
It was a sustained assault. One particular officer was at it for seventy five minutes before he realized that his efforts were counterproductive.(58) Even a self-confessed Antifa operative, who was in the crowd that day, professed himself dumbfounded:
“The police have never been violent with right-wing protesters. This was so unexpected to everybody that I know because the police and the right-wing have always been, like, hand in hand, you know what I’m saying? … For us to see the police attack and assault people that are their largest supporters ... It’s like biting the hand that feeds you.”(59)
But this was Washington DC, a district that votes 93% Democrat and these weren't simply right-wing protesters – they were Trump supporters, which is an subterranean category of person to many on the Far Left. The Deplorables aren't entitled to the same protections as others and, that being the case, there was no downside in sticking it to them. The flashbangs were a particular danger. Some people were set on fire by the explosions. Two others died at the scene from heart attacks and the police continued throwing the grenades even as paramedics attempted to reach the fallen men.(60) The tension ratcheted up. Another person died a little later, probably of suffocation after being doused in noxious gas and then trampled as police beat protesters.(61)
None of which is to condone violence, by either side of the dispute. However, decrying violence against the police simply on the basis that they are the police is ethically deficient. If they perform their duties legitimately they should be supported but, if the police behave in a reprehensible way, they have forfeit their moral authority which, lest we forget, is granted to them via the consent of the governed. Naturally, this is not the way they see it, nor is it a view that is condoned by those that seek to use them in ways that exceed their charter.
On January 6th, a peculiar dynamic was at play in the police response; one which makes sense in the round (for those of a conspiratorial bent), but which consisted of two diametrically opposed methodologies. On the one hand, the extremely heavy-handed and persistent over-reaction by police which had the effect of radicalising a crowd that hadn't been particularly problematic and on the other hand, what amounted to an open doors policy combined with guided tours of the Capitol building.
The latter assertion should not be capable of dispute, given that there are numerous videos showing Capitol police officers ushering protestors into the building, which is not to say that partisan judges and the legacy media haven't expended considerable capital in denying it. Nonetheless, at around 14.30, around 300 people walked in to the Capitol building while police made little effort to stop them – in any event, no violence was occasioned. Not only that, but they entered through a magnetised double door that had been deactivated from inside.(62)
Others walked through doors that were actually held open by the police. The famous QAnon Shaman (Jacob Chansley), the alleged insurrectionist who said a prayer in the Chamber and thanked police, was accompanied by up to nine officers as he wandered about the building.
“As Chansley himself noted in a subsequent interview, he genuinely did not think that he or any of the other protesters were committing a crime specifically because the officers had allowed them into the building and were guiding them through.
“The one very serious regret that I have [is] believing that when we were waved in by police officers that it was acceptable,” said Chansley.”(63)
Chansley was sentenced to 41 months imprisonment for walking around the Capitol, otherwise known as obstruction of an official proceeding. He spent 300 days in solitary confinement, pre-trial.(64) While it is indisputable that some people acted badly, whether premeditatedly or due to the mob effect, the vast majority of those indicted face trespassing charges; 919 out of 1,000 by March 2023. No-one was charged with a firearms offence.(65) And despite numerous unjustified acts of violence by the police – including those already alluded to, plus instances of officers pushing women down staircases and pushing a man backwards over a terrace wall – none were disciplined.
The deaths of the four Trump supporters, all directly or indirectly the result of excessive force, also went unpunished. The “insurrection”, continually invoked by Democrat and Republican aside, is the only game in town; “Our Democracy™” was allegedly on the verge of collapse, which is just one more lie which has been baked into the narrative by virtue of the Goebbels dictum: tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.
“Nearly all occupiers either had a plane reservation or car ride scheduled for that evening or for the next day. These protesters did not seek to stay beyond their short sojourn. No organized attempt to "overthrow" the U.S. government was in play.”(66)
It is even probable that thousands of indictments, which rely on the fact of the presence of the VP or the prospective VP (Kamala Harris), are likely improperly laid.(67) What is not in much doubt is the presence of agent provocateurs and that they, in addition to Epps and the Scaffold Commander, were heavily involved in instigating events. In the immediate aftermath, an individual who had been trained as a professional agitator back in the 1970s, identified four distinct units present on the ground:
“Plainclothes militants. Militant, aggressive men in Donald Trump and MAGA gear at a front police line at the base of the temporary presidential inaugural platform;
Agents-provocateurs. Scattered groups of men exhorting the marchers to gather closely and tightly toward the center of the outside of the Capitol building and prevent them from leaving;
Fake Trump protesters. A few young men wearing Trump or MAGA hats backwards and who did not fit in with the rest of the crowd in terms of their actions and demeanor, whom I presumed to be Antifa or other leftist agitators; and
Disciplined, uniformed column of attackers. A column of organized, disciplined men, wearing similar but not identical camouflage uniforms and black gear, some with helmets and GoPro cameras or wearing subdued Punisher skull patches.”(68)
This person further observed that the crowd itself was, primarily, a cross-section of friendly, earnest Americans; apart from the few who didn't fit in. And who might they be? Two years later, at the jury trial of one of the protestors, a captain in the Capital Police (Mendoza) let the cat out of the bag:
““Defense Counsel Brad Geyer: Isn’t it true that you had a lot of people, a large quantity of people walking down two streets that dead-ended at the Capitol?”
Mendoza: “Yes, sir.”
Geyer: “And would it be fair to say that at least at some of the leading edges of that crowd, they contained bad people or provocateurs; is that fair?”
Mendoza: “It’s fair.”
Geyer: “Dangerous people?”
Mendoza: “Yes.”
Geyer: “Violent people?”
Mendoza: “Yes.”
Geyer: “Highly trained violent people?”
Mendoza: “Yes.”
Geyer: “Highly trained violent people who work and coordinate together?”
Mendoza: “Yes.””(69)
It's pretty difficult to see why a Capitol Police officer would make such a story up, particularly given the fact that it holes the “insurrection” narrative below the waterline and also because a confession such as this might result in some personal consequences. And the bad actors referenced in this testimony may not all be the same individuals that an Antifa whistle-blower has stated were present on the day; that group numbered at least 100, although as many as 250 had been at the pre-meeting the day prior.(70)
President Trump had been tweeting throughout the afternoon. At 14.36, he urged people to support law enforcement who he said were on the side of the country. At 15.13, he urged people to remain peaceful and respect the law and at 16.17 he said:
“...you have to go home now ... We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. ... So go home. We love you, you're very special. ... I know how you feel. But go home and go home in peace.”(71)
When the dust settled, all Trump had done was protest a blatantly fraudulent election. This was not acceptable to those who had orchestrated it; not only because they wished to conceal their actions, but also because Trump deserved it in their eyes. The various parties weren't all in on their condemnation of Trump's efforts from the outset (the RINOs and Never Trumpers were obliged to remain neutral initially), but the “insurrection” narrative gave the Establishment all the excuse they needed. Facebook and Twitter removed Trump's messages that evening (at 19.00 and 19.02 respectively), two administration officials resigned in protest and the Senate Republican leader blamed the President for what had occurred. By 03.40 the next day, the coup was complete.
All that has so far been recounted here is the mechanics of the coup and it may be that you are unconvinced; perhaps intent is an issue, although it's reasonable to infer a deliberate course of action when so much effort has gone into obscuring reality. Perhaps you are an alumni of the School of Coincidences. Perhaps, you think Trump doth protest too much which is, additionally, unappealing and aggravating.
Setting aside the fact that, if he is right and the election was stolen, he has every right to complain until his dying day; that if cheating goes unpunished and uncorrected it will inevitably happen again; and that, as always, it's not about the messenger, but the message and a personal dislike should not blind one to that truism, it's not as though astute observers weren't warning about what was coming prior to the election.
Furthermore, those connected to the coup weren't quite as covert as they might have been, mostly due to their perception that it was necessary to prepare the public for what might prove to be drastic measures. Time magazine published a story that purports to tell the tale of behind-the-scenes manoeuvring by numerous interested parties who managed to “save” the election. However, that's simply the approved version (which still has conservatives clutching their pearls), which makes absolutely no mention of algorithms and fake ballots. It's a classic limited hangout which allows the Right to express outrage at the machinations that are confessed to and mocking the Left for being stupid enough to tell us what they did, while all concerned ignore the elephant in the room.
A bit of deconstruction is in order. First, some Janet and John boilerplate assertions:
“There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans.”(72)
There's nothing surprising about it – it's an alliance that's been in place since Obama took office and embraced the likes of BLM.
“The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all, a failure of the central act of democratic self-governance that has been a hallmark of America since its founding.”(73)
Of course. Our Democracy™ was under remorseless attack via the existing electoral system, which is a difficult case for the Left to make given that it is largely controlled (at the state level) by them. The article also makes much use of the “voter suppression” trope, alleging that Trump was trying to block a legitimate election, and emphasises the allegedly bi-partisan nature of the effort to prevent him from so doing. One such individual, allegedly a Trump supporter, has tweeted that Trump is “a sore loser....a hypocrite” and “someone who should never be president of our country”.(74)
“...he spent the months following Nov. 3 trying to steal the election he’d lost–with lawsuits and conspiracy theories, pressure on state and local officials, and finally summoning his army of supporters to the Jan. 6 rally that ended in deadly violence at the Capitol.” (75)
The entire screed is simply a by-the-numbers repetition of all the usual Leftist talking points, long on lies and short on fact. The author claims to be revealing a conspiracy to protect the integrity of the election; apparently, despite the Zuckerboxes, the blatant censorship and shadow-banning of conservative voices and the blizzards of election-related lawfare, we should be surprised to learn that there was:
“...a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.”(76)
Anybody paying the slightest bit of attention would have known that Trump had been under the pump for his entire presidency; investigations, impeachment and constant vilification by the Left were the tools of choice. That the globalists in Big Business also hated him for his America First agenda was also difficult to miss. He couldn't even find enough loyalists to staff his administration and, as a consequence, found himself continually betrayed and undermined by both his own appointees and the bureaucrats entrenched in the administrative state. Promoting the idea that he would be able to “steal the election” was disingenuous in the extreme, both in prospect and (as delineated) in reality.
Aside from the fact that the author implicitly assumes that corporations and activists should be the arbiters of election integrity (rather than the constitutionally designated state legislatures) and that the conspiracy she describes is an open-and-shut instance of election interference, the article is notable in two further regards; firstly, for the writer's lack of self awareness and sense of entitlement (and Time magazine's tin ear) and, secondly, for its sins of omission – for what it didn't say.
The Right, in response, was faux outraged. They bloviated about a “rigged” election (rather than a stolen one) in entirely predictable fashion, typical of a cuckolded, controlled opposition. It's a prime example of an oft-repeated phenomenon - shiny new object is discovered, which can be examined from every angle, while the truth of what happened in the actual election goes unaddressed. They have plenty of form in that regard.
The first intimations of a coming coup were way back in June 2020, when the Secretary of Defense went public with a warning to the President – don't invoke the Insurrection Act to deal with the nationwide riots. The implicit message (bolstered by rumblings from the military) was that he would not comply with a Presidential Order,(77) which is almost certainly not unprecedented in modern times; but doing so openly certainly was. For context, insurrection is defined as “the act or an instance of open revolt against civil authority or a constituted government”.(78) Going to the press and and stating that
“...the option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire situations. We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act...”(79)
sounds an awful lot like a text-book example of it. Then there was the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), another “bipartisan” gathering of ruling class apparatchiks, who took it upon themselves to conduct a tabletop exercise examining the possible outcomes of the upcoming election. The ostensibly Republican members were the expected mix of anti-Trumpers and establishment Democrats and the founder of the group was a long-time associate of (you'll never guess) George Soros.
The report, which was, of course, leaked, gamed various outcomes:
“One such outcome was a clear Trump win. In that eventuality, former Bill Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, playing Biden, refused to concede, pressured states that Trump won to send Democrats to the formal Electoral College vote, and trusted that the military would take care of the rest.”(80)
It's worth noting that this course of action was advocated regardless of the integrity of the election. Indeed, Hillary made the exact same point, effectively a reprise of her own inability to accept reality – she told Biden that he shouldn't concede under any circumstances,(81) because she believed that the Left would win in the end. Just in case Trump wasn't receiving the message in clear, a couple of retired generals wrote an open letter to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, outlining what they thought he ought to do in the event of a contested election. This was in August 2020. The letter makes no mention of the constitutional right of the President to contest what he already knew was going to be fraudulent (from his public utterings). Instead, it baldly states:
“In a few months’ time, you may have to choose between defying a lawless president or betraying your Constitutional oath. We write to assist you in thinking clearly about that choice. If Donald Trump refuses to leave office at the expiration of his constitutional term, the United States military must remove him by force, and you must give that order.”(82)
That this letter was even written, let alone published openly, speaks to the extraordinarily febrile atmosphere that prevailed and also to the desperation of the ruling elites; any commitment to the observation of democratic norms was abandoned. And yet, these individuals faced no sanction. They were merely cyphers for those on active duty and their message was a necessary part of the plan. The public needed to be softened up; to be persuaded that, were Trump to be removed by force, it would somehow be his fault.
They also needed to be convinced that any outcome other than a Biden-Harris landslide would be catastrophic, would lead to “violence in the streets” and a “constitutional impasse”(83) which, translated, means that if the Democrats didn't get the result they wanted, they'd simply unleash the “racial justice warriors”, once more.
I don't believe that Trump would have been allowed to remain in power under any circumstances. The tenor of the ruling class' rhetoric leaves little doubt – they clearly regarded him as an existential threat to what they refer to as democracy, but which is more accurately characterised as a continuance of their reign, voters be damned.
Trump has the ability to get under their collective skin – the veil slips and he brings out the worst in them, so much so that the TIP didn't even bother to pretend; the outcome of the election was unambiguously of secondary importance. Even the military, if we are to give credence to Newsweek's reporting, had come down on the side of a coup, if necessary:
“The word "coup" may evoke some sunglasses-wearing general standing at a podium announcing that the military has deposed the civilian leadership for the good of the country. But circumventing and even ignoring the commander-in-chief and the chief executive, as the nation's most powerful security officials did, was a coup nonetheless.”(84)
The election hung on the results in the swing states and the Democrat/RINO establishment made sure that they were called for Biden (no matter how long that took) and, once that had happened, there was no going back. The lower courts ran for cover and SCOTUS, given the opportunity to uphold the Constitution by simply reaffirming the primacy of the state legislatures, bottled it – to be scrupulously accurate, the three feckless liberals (who can always be relied upon to “re-imagine” the Constitution when it really matters) were joined by an overly political Chief Justice who, it is alleged, was more worried about what the Democrat rent-a-mob might do than he was about doing his duty:
"Are you going to be responsible for the rioting if we hear this case? … Don't tell me about Bush v. Gore, we weren't dealing with riots then. You are forgetting what your role here is Neil, and I don't want to hear from the two junior justices any more. I will tell you how you will vote."(85)
So, its seems that, even if the Uniparty didn't have enough phantom ballots ahead of time, the algorithm would give them enough breathing space to either rustle up some more or double count others. Any potential screw-ups in that department wouldn't be terminal because the legacy media would relentlessly reinforce a narrative that had already been floated pre-election, namely that Trump was going to “baselessly” allege fraud. However, none of the courts would find in his favour on any substantive issue (at least, not in time to affect the outcome) and, even if they did, the result would go unreported. If all else failed, the 82nd Airborne would go to the Oval Office at 12.01 and turf him out on his ear.(86)
There is a wealth of evidence to demonstrate that the Capitol riot on January 6th was a false flag operation, run by the Feds, which served several ends. It prevented at least some of the evidence of electoral fraud becoming public and provided all the pretext that pseudo-Republican Senators needed to withdraw their support for Trump's Electoral College objections. From then on in, nary a single Republican Representative nor Senator has had the courage to take on the mantle of “election denier” - the Overton Window doesnn't allow it. The “insurrection” has also been used to go after anybody remotely MAGA who may have been at the Capitol that day and even some that weren't.(87) It was used as fodder for a second impeachment and now another indictment of the former President.
I had always thought that the post-election period was a time of potential jeopardy for the architects of the coup. I now see that, whilst avoiding any pratfalls was favourite, it wasn't essential. They would have done the needful regardless, up to and including a military coup. Had there been any pushback, there is no doubt that it would have been ruthlessly crushed. There wouldn't have been any of the hands-off policing that was a feature of the summer riots – there would have been flashbangs and rubber bullets and, if necessary, lethal force. The security apparatus would have done as it was told – there was no space in the public square for a discussion about an illegitimate President and, therefore, no wind in the sails of any doubters. And so, one way or the other, there was only ever going to be one outcome.
But the excesses that were necessary to achieve it inevitably left traces. A surprising majority of the population (65%) aren't buying some or all of it – not even January 6th.(88) It turns out that the more often the regime gets caught in a lie, the less likely people are to believe it next time around and, while covering up marginal untruths might be achievable (or, if discovered, easily forgiven), attempting to deep six a succession of implausible outcomes is considerably more difficult, even prior to the mistrust engendered by the plandemic's slow reveal.
Not that the cabal loses any sleep over it. Contrary to the opinion of a good number of conservative pundits, there has never been any evidence to suggest that that the elites fear the great unwashed. On the contrary – they don't make a habit of treading carefully and they don't even bother to cover their tracks properly. They use the same play-book in every scenario; lie and cheat, enlist the “experts” (scientists, courts, the WHO) to validate their malfeasance, rely on the media megaphone to enforce the narrative and then ruthlessly destroy any dissenter whose head is still above the parapet. If they feared us they'd at least try and finesse things, but they don't.
And so the Biden administration came to pass, along with majorities in both Houses of Congress. The imposter had been vanquished; for now, anyway, but possibly not for good. For that to be achieved, efforts would have to be redoubled and the Constitution would, once again, be shown to be a dead letter.
Citations
(4) https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/pennsylvania-election-jake-corman-20201119.html
(5) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/us/politics/trump-michigan-election.html
(6) https://yellowsheetreport.com/2020/11/19/yellow-sheet-report-for-thursday-november-19-2020/
(8) https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/standing_with_john_eastman.html
(9) https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2020-07/LM268_0.pdf
(16) Ditto
(20) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/electoral-college-certification-more-republican-senators-not-object/
(24) https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/franklin_d_roosevelt_164126
(25) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-inauguration-protests-idUSKBN1540J7
(26) https://heavy.com/news/maga-march-trump-dc-rally-crowd-photos/
(27) https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-classified-documents-reveal-number-january-6-protestors-1661296
(28) Ditto
(30) https://fightwithkash.com/articles/capitol-riots-department-of-defense-timeline
(31) https://www.nationalmemo.com/miller-disarmed-national-guard
(38) https://humanevents.com/2023/06/25/jack-posobiec-the-trump-wray-conversations
(43) https://beckernews.com/new-url-40333/
(44) https://thenationalpulse.com/archive-post/trump-fact-check-capitol/
(45) https://fightwithkash.com/articles/capitol-riots-department-of-defense-timeline
(46) https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/loss-uscp-colleague-brian-d-sicknick
(50) https://conservativeleak.com/breaking-investigation-exposes-massive-cover-up-6th-committee-stunned/
(51) https://theintercept.com/2020/06/02/history-united-states-government-infiltration-protests/
(52) https://conservativeleak.com/breaking-investigation-exposes-massive-cover-up-6th-committee-stunned/
(53) https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/capitol-violence
(54) https://countercurrents.org/2018/04/c-i-a-color-revolutions/
(56) https://conservativeleak.com/breaking-investigation-exposes-massive-cover-up-6th-committee-stunned/
(57) https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/05/exclusive-j6-footage-defense-attorney-exposes-exact-moment/
(58) Ditto
(60) https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/06/jan-6-antifa-whistleblower-writes-letter-prison-admits/
(62) Ditto
(63) https://www.ronjohnson.senate.gov/services/files/F8EEEE5C-12AE-4D10-A8E3-4EA857C3119C
(65) https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/07/secret-surveillance-video-dismantles-january-6-narrative/
(66) https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/10/a-handy-january-6-fact-sheet/
(67) https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/07/thirty_months_of_lies_about_jan_6th.html
(68) https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/17/will-the-next-j6-trial-expose-another-justice-department-lie/
(69) https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/14/i-saw-provocateurs-at-the-capitol-riot-on-jan-6/
(70) https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/13/what-the-january-6-videos-will-show/
(71) https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/06/jan-6-antifa-whistleblower-writes-letter-prison-admits/
(73) https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
(74) Ditto
(75) https://twitter.com/zachwamp/status/681135096800350208
(76) https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
(78) https://www.wordnik.com/words/insurrection
(84) https://www.newsweek.com/silent-coup-against-donald-trump-emerged-super-secure-meeting-room-1647132
(85) https://archive.vn/bZCNv#selection-1405.0-1425.35
Figure 1 https://heavy.com/news/maga-march-trump-dc-rally-crowd-photos/
Figure 3 https://www.dailydot.com/debug/revolver-news-ray-epps-fbi/
Figure 4 https://conservativeleak.com/breaking-investigation-exposes-massive-cover-up-6th-committee-stunned/
Figure 5 Ditto
Figure 6 https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/05/exclusive-j6-footage-defense-attorney-exposes-exact-moment/