Former Intelligence Officer Issues Chilling Warning About Trump Insurgency

By Chauncey Devega, Salon (July 25)

To this point, the House Jan. 6 committee hearings and related investigations have decisively established that Donald Trump and his confederates, including some Republican members of Congress, were involved in a serious, nationwide conspiracy spanning from the local to the federal level aimed at nullifying the results of the 2020 presidential election and installing Trump as an autocratic ruler.

Several apparent crimes were committed as part of this coup plot, likely including seditious conspiracy, voter fraud, financial fraud, witness tampering, obstruction of Congress and perhaps even acts of terrorism.

The assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by thousands of Trump’s armed followers, including right-wing paramilitaries, was a key part of the coup plot. Trump’s mob was not “random” or “hapless” or “unarmed” or “uncoordinated” as too many observers in the mainstream news media and elsewhere have long insisted. Some were armed with lethal weapons including pistols and assault rifles. Their goals were clear: Keep Donald Trump in power at any cost, in defiance of the will of the American people. Their methods were obvious: Use any means necessary, up to and including lethal violence, to stop the certification of the 2020 election.

Trump and his confederates’ coup plot also involved contingency plans to use the military to seize voting machines in order to “prove” non-existent voter fraud and the Big Lie.

Last week’s primetime hearing focused on Trump’s actions during the 187 minutes beginning at the end of his incendiary speech at the Ellipse through the siege and invasion of the Capitol, up to the time when he finally and reluctantly asked his followers to stop the attack. At any point during those 187 minutes, Trump could have told his followers to end their attack on the Capitol. Nearly all of them would have likely obeyed. He could also have ordered the military and law enforcement to bring an end to the terrorist attack. He chose not to.

This was much more than dereliction of duty or “inaction,” as some have described it.

The sum total of the facts show that Donald Trump did not order law enforcement and the military to intervene on Jan. 6 because he was allowing his attack force the time they needed to break through the defenses of the Capitol, rampage, and cause general chaos and mayhem so that he could then somehow remain in power.

It was a strategy that came very close to succeeding. The Republican-fascist movement’s war on democracy is escalating. The events of Jan. 6 were not the end of that war, but the beginning of what will be a long conflict over the future of American democracy.

To discuss that larger conflict and much more, I recently spoke with Malcolm Nance, a former senior chief petty officer in the U.S. Navy, an intelligence analyst and a leading expert in counterterrorism studies.

Read the rest of this story here: https://www.rawstory.com/former-intelligence-officer-issues-a-chilling-warning-about-the-trump-insurgency/