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Donald Trump at CPAC
Trump’s Back — So How Do We Prevent a Cover-Up of the Capitol Attack?
Both Parties Are Resisting a Full Investigation of What Happened on January 6
Now that Donald Trump has returned to public view in Sunday’s CPAC convention and declared himself as the “future” of the Republican Party, we need to ask ourselves, “What are we going to do if he really does attempt a comeback?”
First of all, we must insist that Donald Trump’s recent past be forthrightly addressed before he begins to anoint himself as our “future”.
The problem will be relatively minor if Trump merely retains control of the Republican party and drives it into the ground. That would be a disaster for the GOP and not necessarily good for the country, but it wouldn’t be the end of the American system of government.
What would be a threat to our very system of government itself would be for Donald Trump to win the presidency again if it is proven that he did indeed engineer an insurrection and/or a coup between the November 3 election and the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol.
While the prospect of Trump’s return to power presently seems extremely unlikely given the manner in which he left office, anybody who totally doubts the possibility should simply remember how Trump’s candidacy was derided and dismissed by the supposed “experts” in 2016, or how close he came to reelection in 2020 despite being written off again by those same “experts”.
Perhaps a more provable impeachment argument against Trump than the one of “incitement of insurrection” that was brought against him would have been “dereliction of duty”: the failure to protect the Capitol for the two hours that rioters were busting through windows, killing law enforcement officers and looking to hang Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi. Or at least such a charge could have been made in connection with “incitement of insurrection.”
Investigations in the coming months should reveal a great deal about exactly what happened on January 6th and Donald Trump’s role in it — including how Trump may have attempted a coup versus the government of the United States.
But proving such a case will require a much more thorough investigation — not just of January 6 itself, but of the months which led up to it.
In “Was the Capitol Riot a Revolution or a Cover Up?” Daniel G. Jennings raises important questions which can be summarized primarily around,
“Why did the massive digital and electronic surveillance apparatus run by the National Security Agency (NSA) and other entities not detect the planning for the Capitol Attack? … Did somebody [in the military, intelligence or law enforcement apparatus] deliberately suppress intelligence that could have led the military to protect the Capitol and prevent the insurrection [or promptly ended it once it started?] … What role did foreign governments [and/or wealthy donors] play?”
The m2c4 Medium article “Movin’ On to the Next Demagogue” suggests:
“[We may never know] … just how deep [was] the conspiracy to foment the insurrection … who was involved … how much of the program at the insurrection rally was dictated by Trump and the White House … why the Department of Defense, where Trump had only recently installed the Acting Secretary and two of his political cronies, required a sign off from senior Pentagon leadership in order to deploy the National Guard … [and] if Trump was indeed delighted with the storming of the Capitol as he watched it occur.”
Questions of this magnitude will require a full, thorough and impartial investigation of what happened in order to weed out conspiracy theories from actual facts which must not be swept under the rug of history.
Based on his quick return to public view and his CPAC presentation, it may be surmised that Trump is not just trying to set up another run for the presidency — or even to shape the 2022 midterms — but rather that he is trying to shape the very debate and “spin” around these investigations themselves, just as he successfully did concerning the Mueller report and his two impeachments.
In those events and in the 2020 election Trump has always had the incentive to raise the stakes to “all or nothing” because he personally has had so much to lose: since his election in 2016 Trump has been like a cornered animal fighting for his financial, legal and political life. Don’t mistakenly believe that he won’t similarly raise the stakes again in the coming months in order to try to derail as many of the investigations that will be coming at him as possible.
Fortunately, Trump will no longer have the power of the executive branch of the United States government at his disposal to facilitate such cover-ups. But he will indeed have many of the same abilities to bully congresspersons and other officials as he has had in the past. Americans should not forget how close we came to having the 2020 election results overturned via the 12th Amendment, or how we may have been on the brink of martial law. (And if you don’t believe we were close to martial law, read The War After the Election.)
Unfortunately, the self-interests of BOTH political parties is right now standing in the way of conducting a thorough investigation of exactly what happened between Election Day and the Capitol attack.
Even defeated and out of power, Trump has the majority of the Republican Party operating out of loyalty to him versus to the truth.
Of all the elements of a CPAC speech that ran for an hour and half about “law and order” and “safe borders”, Trump’s speech was most notable for what it didn’t mention: Trump never once mentioned the January 6 Capitol attack itself.
By perpetuating these banal slogans, Trump is already putting a “spin” on an actual ATTACK on the United States Capitol — through the omission of mentioning it at all. Bromides such as “safe borders” and “law and order” are coded diversions intended to deflect blame onto others (versus keeping Trump himself squarely as the most important focus of what happened).
This is why an investigation must be made into what Trump was doing during the two hours between the initiation of the Capitol attack and when the National Guard was finally called in. Such an exploration for the truth must not be limited to media hearsay or rhetorical pablum from politicians, but must involve actual investigations on NUMEROUS LEVELS.
Furthermore, if Nancy Pelosi or other Democrats were careless in protecting the Capitol on January 6, that also needs to be brought out and handled appropriately. Failure by the Democratic Party to thoroughly investigate all aspects of what happened in order to hide its own negligence regarding an event so serious would be as hypocritical as they accuse Mitch McConnell of having been in the excoriating remarks he delivered immediately after failing to vote to convict Trump.
The stakes regarding the events of January 6 and what led up to them are too high for Democrats and Republicans to be playing politics with them.
A failure to deal with these of all issues would add to the cynicism and disgust that the average voter feels regarding BOTH parties — whether this be Trump’s supporters, the far left of the Democratic Party, the ever growing number of Americans in the center of it all who identify as “Independents”, or those who just don’t pay attention because of a deep seated belief that nothing they do makes a damn bit of difference. If Schumer, Nadler, Pelosi & Co. want to save the center of their own party — and more importantly, the nation — then they better investigate these matters to their complete resolution.
We as a nation are still numb from the events of January 6 and must not succumb to the hollow notion that “the system worked” and that everything going forward “will properly take care of itself” now that Trump is out of office. The War After the Election points out how the system DIDN’T necessarily work so well, and how we may owe the preservation of our constitutional processes to chance and luck as much as to a number of checks and balances that lay dormant in that system — dormant because they are too seldom being proactively exercised, and then only by a relatively too few lonely, brave actors.
If the President of the United States had the National Guard and other military, law enforcement and security forces “stand back” on the days leading up to and during the Capitol attack itself, then this needs to be exposed — and if these actions connect to an illegitimate attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, then Trump committed the gravest of crimes and should be barred from running for office again.
If there is proof of a coup attempt, then it must be fully produced and made public — now in civil and legal venues as much as in political ones. The bar must be set extremely high before an American citizen is prevented from running for governmental office.
But we must act now while the events of January 6th are still raw in the nerve endings of our national psyche. We must demand that Congress conduct a full investigation of what happened between Election Day and January 6 and that it enact legislation to curb those presidential powers that might be used in a dictatorial fashion by any future president.
More will be written here and elsewhere about the constitutional and social crises which have arisen out of the 2020 election and its aftermath. To gets notifications regarding these updates which won’t overload your inbox, slide the button below to subscribe to our free monthly newsletter:
For a fuller explanation of how the events that led to the Capitol attack were predicted as far back as the spring of 2020 — and what we can do to prevent them from occurring again — read The War After the Election.
To participate in limiting the presidential powers that could be used by any president to dictatorial ends:
