Originally published at: The plan was to use military to put down any opposition to Trump staying in office after election loss | Boing Boing
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Protect, destroy, whatever.
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Even though we all kinda knew conversations like this were probably happening inside that cesspool of an administration, it’s still really striking to see it in black and white like that. It really was as bad as we all thought.
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The plan was to use military to put down any opposition to Trump
Isn’t that how most successful violent coups work?
Thank fuck the perps were incompetent & poorly organized this time around…
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The person who said this is Jeffrey Clark, who was a mid-level Justice Department lawyer working on environmental issues. He supported Trump’s plan to try to illegally cling to power and Trump nearly made him Acting Attorney General—until he was told if he did, the entire top brass of the Justice Department would resign en masse.
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“Stupid Watergate” just gets scarier and scarier the more we find out. Their plans were almost enough to overthrow the mechanisms of government that have kept us relatively united for… well… America doesn’t always live up to its own promises, but it does work. Not for everyone equally, but the engine works and the car drives. Almost undone by a confederacy of absolute dunces. The possibility of the triumph of the stupid really is starting to feel spooky.
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Probably just as well that Trump spent so much of his Presidency dissing the military so he probably wouldn’t have had enough backing to put together a military coup anyway.
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They had a lot more of a plan than I gave them credit for at the time, and I’m not sure it would have worked, had they actually gone through with it (and not just half-assed bits of it), but it sure would have been ugly. We would have had an actual civil war, potentially - even if it might have been a quite small one.
My biggest fear is Trump actually gets elected, and he does all the shit he was thinking of the last time (and more) and he doesn’t half-ass it. I don’t know if being unable to run again would be enough to assuage his ego (“I didn’t lose because I couldn’t run”) so he’d actually leave after four years, or that would guarantee he’d not willingly leave office at all… I’m starting to think the latter.
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They had a lot more of a plan than I gave them credit for at the time
The public has only gotten to see most of the surface level stuff, most of which sounded either backasswards, like drunk rednecks deciding to bodge together an airplane out of rusty F-150’s and jumping it off a ramp into the lake, or left enough wiggle room for there to be some weak attempt at plausible deniability.
This shit? This shit right here is what MOST of us who paid attention were worried about. Because as much of a dipshit as Trump acts on social media, he’s still a ruthless prick and not nearly as much of a buffoon as he puts on to appeal to the masses. His television persona is not his real persona. He’s not super smart by any means (people who spew evidence to be used in their upcoming trials during television interviews are, by clear definition, not smart), but he is also not dumb and dumber. He’s been manipulating facts and evidence for DECADES now, and only the fact he couldn’t control all the levers of government and all the people who worked in it has brought him to this point. He was not CEO of the United States, he was an elected official, and some folks actually take the Constitution seriously and don’t fall for that bullshit of making it more like a business.
Heaven help us if enough of those people are replaced to tip the balance the other way.
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Eff this guy & everyone in his administration! I despised Traitor Tot when he first appeared on my radar back in the 80’s, I never watched the Apprentice, and I celebrated every time he declared bankruptcy.
So FUCK THIS GUY! Yes, yes, wheels justice turn slow & yes, ducks in a row & all that, but he’s now a private citizen. I don’t care if it’s “unprecedented” (man, I’ve come to hate that word}, but all of these are CRIMES! Not civil bankruptcy court wherein he can weasel out of repercussions.
I’m tired of all the “this is bad” or “here’s what our legal analyst thinks” in various news reports; Here’s what I want to see: indictment - trial - sentencing - incarceration. Full stop! 
/end rant.
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More specifically, Clark has worked against environmental issues. He has tried to argue against the regulation of carbon dioxide, and represented BP in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. His career has been to make the world burn.
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There must be something Stone did which isn’t covered by the pardon and is good for a couple of years behind bars.
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For anyone who doesn’t feel like reading the indictment (it is long and, at times, anger inducing), the plan outlined in it was basically this:
Plan A: Convince state officials and/or state legislatures in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, New Mexico, and Michigan to overturn their elections and name Trump’s electors instead. All the lawsuits they filed were a part of this effort. It failed mainly because none of the state officials and very few legislators had any interest in going along with the plan. And a lot of those people were, and are, big Trump supporters, so at least a lot of them seem to have a line they wouldn’t cross. Yay?
Plan B: Select alternate slates of electors anyway, under the pretense that it was just in case any of the lawsuits came out in Trump’s favor, have them meet and vote on the same day as the true electors, trying to stay as close as possible to legal requirements for how electors actually vote for President. They largely failed at this, even though they did select alternate electors and had them vote. But they did it in ways that were absolutely not in accordance with the law, they lied to the fake electors about what they were doing and why, and violated more than one law in doing so. Their real goal with this part of the plan, however, was to disrupt the certification of the election on January 6. They wanted Pence to have two sets of electoral votes in his hands from those 7 states, so that he would either accept the Trump electors votes, or claim that because he had multiple slates from those states, delay certification and return those to their respective state legislatures for the legislatures to decide. This did not work because, as horrible as he is, Pence also had a line he would not cross and he steadfastly refused to participate in the scheme. His staffers even refused to accept the alternate elector’s paperwork when they were delivered to the VP’s office.
Plan C: Incite the crowd at the rally on January 6, with the hopes that it would disrupt the certification until another day, or intimidate Pence into going along with the plan. Or give them time to work on various Senators to make and sustain objections to the election results. This part of the plan was not well thought out or organized. It was basically their Hail Mary move.
I get the impression from the indictment that CCs 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 came up with this plan, and did a lot to move it forward, as did Trump, of course. CC 3, Sidney Powell, is just kind of an incompetent useful idiot who helped spread the lies.
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Yeah. This idea sounds like a Stone/Bannon production.
And I hope they catch Stephen Miller too.
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I think Republicans should be very, very glad the scheme wasn’t successful. I don’t think there would’ve been much forgiveness. I think a lot of Republican politicians would’ve ended up dead in the aftermath.
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That is truly not a scenario to long for. You are right, but there would have been lots of business for the crematories.
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On the upside, the military leadership absolutely despised Trump and had a history of telling him to fuck off.
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The current right wing has been showing its contempt for the military by delaying promotions in order to push its fetus worship agenda.
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Potato potahto am I right?
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