I watched the hearings of the select committee that led to a vote to refer Mark Meadows to the HAtouse for a vote of criminal contempt. It was full of mesmerizing information, some of which led me to revise my view of those events. Here is my take, for what it is worth.
It is quite clear that there was a well thought through,
carefully planned strategy for stealing the election. The most fascinating
tidbit of information that has come out recently, all but lost in the attention
given to Fox News hosts calling Meadows, was that Chuck Grassley, the president
pro tem of the Senate at that point, said on the day before January 6 that he
expected Mike Pence not to be at the Senate the next day and that he therefore
would be presiding. In other words, the plan was to have Mike Pence absent
himself and allow Grassley to refuse to accept the Biden electors from a
variety of states so that the entire matter could be thrown into the House of
Representatives where the 26 states with majority Republican delegations could give
the presidency to Trump. (So much, by
the way, for Joe Biden’s fantasy that he can “work” with the good old
Republican senators with whom he had such a wonderful relationship when he was
in the Senate.) The second most fascinating tidbit is the report that the
Secret Service detail wanted to rush Pence from the Capitol to keep him safe
and that Pence refused because he was afraid that the head of the detail was in
cahoots with Trump and would do him some harm. Just think about that for a
moment.
What is also clear from the details cited by members of the Committee
is that the coup plotters, leaving to one side Trump himself, had absolutely no
desire to see the march on the Capitol turn violent. Republicans in the Capitol,
Fox News hosts, even Don Jr. for God’s sake, frantically texted Meadows
trying to get him to have Trump call off the rioters. These people, who are alas
not stupid, understood that a violent riot would be a disaster for theTrump
plan, as in fact it has. I think it is pretty clear that had the rioters
succeeded in breaking into the House chamber when members were there and if
they had harmed or killed some of the members of Congress, the Capitol police
and the Secret Service would have started firing, dozens or scores of the rioters
would have been killed, and the rest would have turned and fled, stumbling over
one another, crushing some of them to death, and producing a massive rout.
The problem, of course, was that Trump, who is evil but not
terribly bright, was so delighted by the television images of the riot that he
sat there transfixed and ignored the quite sensible advice from his advisers
and family to call it off.
If I understand the situation correctly (and I may be totally
wrong about this), a successful prosecution of Trump and his allies on the
grounds that they provoked and caused the violent riot requires a demonstration
in court that it was their intention that the demonstrators turn violent. The
text messages released yesterday by the Committee seem pretty clearly to show
that that was not their intention and that actually they were horrified by how
things turned out because they thought it would work against their attempt to
carry out a coup.
Which leaves us with the question: could they all be
indicted, prosecuted, and found guilty of sedition? If the answer is no, then
pretty clearly the sedition laws should be stricken from the books.
The threat to American democracy (such as it is) is not that
the next time the rioters will bring weapons. The threat is that state
legislatures will arbitrarily choose to send Trump electors to the Congress
regardless of the outcome of the 2024 vote.
13 comments:
Try them for sedition?
No, they'll be considered political prisoners by millions of their fellow citizens. Something like 60% of Republicans consider that the 2020 was stolen. You don't want roughly 30% of voters believing that the "liberals" are jailing political prisoners. Give them a slap on the wrist, say something nasty about them and send them back to mommy.
As for Trump, this will sound scandalous, but I'd bribe him. Give him 50 billion deposited in a tax haven to assure that he won't run again. He is very corruptible.
Then you have until 2024 to defuse the situation. Don't run Biden again in 2024 or Kamala Harris. Bernie would be perfect, but he's too old. There must be some younger version of Bernie waiting for his or her chance, 100% populist (in the best sense of the word) who will promise them everything and maybe deliver enough to get re-elected to woo the public away from the far right populism.
I know the above sounds cynical, but you've got problems and something being cynical is the only way to face them. I so expect to be attacked for the above that I'm not going to argue about it.
s. wallerstein,
Whom are you invoking in that prescription? Who are the agents that would do the bribing? Who would be deciding which candidates to be run?
Are the people just pawns to be manipulated by the oligarchs and party bosses? If the answer is "yes," then why oppose Trump at all?
Quite a bit of anti-democratic sentiment being revealed here, from so-called lefties.
Prof. Wolff,
I have to ask a question about In Defense of Anarchism that continues to annoy me. How do social contract theorists, past and present, justify obliging future generations to honor the agreements made by a government's founding generation when those future generations have not themselves had the opportunity to choose to accept or reject the agreements? Even if a majority of the founding generation accepts the contract, with the passage of enough time the whole population will have grown so large by the addition of new members that the founding population could no longer be accepted as a majority by itself. In a footnote on p 41 of the 1998 paperback edition you mention "tacit or quasi-contracts ... which are invoked to explain the obligation of succeeding generations." I don't see how any such contracts could hold force. At least not in a society that purports to treat each individual citizen as his or her own decision-maker, who is not bound by obligations on his or her parents etc. (If a father commits a crime, should the son be punished for it?)
(Since you're going to be 88 in less than a fortnight, I figure I need to get this question in now.)
Some may compare Trump to Caesar in trying to take power. But they have to remember that before Caesar became absolute ruler he had to form a Triumvirate with two other politicians in Rome that were also very powerful. I don't believe Trump would share power like Caesar specifically did. Now he might form an alliance with Russia, but Russia's politicians are not American politicians. I do believe Russia's politicians have no real power in the United States except through Trump & several of his followers. It takes a Triumvirate of three great politicians of the same great country to eventually rule the Earth.
1) Is there evidence that Grassley actually planned to thwart the certification? His stating that he expected Pence to bail does not necessarily imply that he was up to no good. I don’t recall him being in the Cruz-Hawley sedition camp, but maybe I’m misremebering.
2) Once it became clear that Pence wasn’t going to go along, what became the plan for the rally? It was reported that once the rioters had breached the building, Giulliani was working the phones trying to extend the delay so they could have time to convince enough people to overturn the results. The storming of the Capitol may not have been exactly planned, but once it happened I think Trump and others saw it as to their advantage — a kind of last ditch effort.
"100% populist (in the best sense of the word)..."
There is no such thing. "Populism" is a totally empty suit and is merely a placeholder for some flavor of authoritarianism.
Those emails reveal the unreliable weaklings - note how they have scrambled to grovel (Movement Conservatism has always been a Leninist project). Releasing them is a useful tactic on the Committee's part.
Watching the videos, I've always assumed there was at least a wet team or two amongst the cannon fodder. Consider this: Take out five Democrats in the House and one Democratic Senator who isn't from New England and is from a state with a Republican governor and the Congress flips. Cadres in the Secret Service detain Pence at Andrews for his "safety" and the traitor Grassley throws the election to the House and Senate.
(Why the wet work? A small number of Republicans are unreliable. E.g. Cheney controls the Wyoming delegation but would either vote present or vote for Biden. Going into the X-files (we have been through the looking glass since 2016, after all), if the House deadlocked, Trump's term still ends at noon on Jan. 20, as does Pence's if the Senate deadlocks. At that point the Speaker becomes president. If the team did its job, the Republicans control the Congress and the Speaker (now president) gets to select the vice president. If McCarthy (think Kalinin) is Speaker, he names Trump VP which a now Republican Congress confirms and McCarthy resigns and the US ends with a whimper.)
Ed, Grassley's willingness to engage in sedition has been known for awhile now. If you look at the videos you will see organized teams. This has all the earmarks of a well planned endeavor.
aaall, I still am not sure what you mean vis-a-vis Grassley? He voted against the objections to the certification raised by Hawley et al. Also, after Jan 6 he issued a statement whose first paragraph reads: “ “The Constitution and our laws give Congress few options and limited authorities when it comes to certifying presidential election results. Congress has no role in conducting elections or adjudicating election disputes, only receiving and formally counting the electoral votes cast in each state. This constitutional process allows the states to determine under their own laws and legal systems how their electoral votes are allocated. And let’s be clear about what the stakes are here. If an objection to a state’s electoral certification is sustained, the state’s electoral votes are thrown out, not reallocated to a different candidate. So anyone voting to object to any state’s certification of electoral votes is voting to disenfranchise an entire state.”
Are you saying he was initially onboard to steal the election but backtracked?
Off thread, sorry, but I know some of you are concerned with this case:
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/craig-murray-writes-about-the-trials-of-julian-assange/
Thank you for the article, from which I learned a new word - "sporran"
Great 7 letter word for Scrabble.
Ed, this is a neutral statement:
"If an objection to a state’s electoral certification is sustained, the state’s electoral votes are thrown out, not reallocated to a different candidate. So anyone voting to object to any state’s certification of electoral votes is voting to disenfranchise an entire state.”
If disenfranchising an entire state resulted in Biden's count falling below 270, well, that was the plan. Lots of folks said lots of things in the aftermath of the attempted coup. Most (including Grassley) seem to have had second thoughts.
Prof. Wolff, the coming danger is both militias with weapons AND state legislatures ignoring the state's voters.
AA, I assume you have picked up on Cheney quoting 18 USC 1505 verbatim during her presentation..
aaall,
Yes.
For those who may not have heard Rep. Cheney recite the contents of the statute, it states:
“Whoever, with intent to avoid, evade, prevent, or obstruct compliance, in whole or in part, with any civil investigative demand duly and properly made under the Antitrust Civil Process Act, willfully withholds, misrepresents, removes from any place, conceals, covers up, destroys, mutilates, alters, or by other means falsifies any documentary material, answers to written interrogatories, or oral testimony, which is the subject of such demand; or attempts to do so or solicits another to do so; or
“Whoever corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication influences, obstructs, or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law under which any pending proceeding is being had before any department or agency of the United States, or the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress—
“Shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331), imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both.”
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