By now it should be apparent that Trump is not going to concede, ever. It should also be apparent that he will do anything at all to stay in power regardless of whether or not it is legal, or has any real chance of success, or how much harm it may cause the country. The only constraint he might conceivably have would be to avoid harm to himself. So far, nothing he has done as president has harmed him in any significant way and it's unlikely he would think that any new action will do so, either. If he becomes a private citizen and stays in the United States he will likely (and rightly) be prosecuted in New York at the very least. That gives him every reason to bet the bank to stay in power. If he fails, all he needs is an escape plan. If he wins he cements that power, perhaps permanently. Betting the bank is also his personality. Expecting him to do anything else would be to expect him to act out of character.
Nevertheless, a lot of people are considering it a done deal that Biden will be inaugurated on January 20th. I don't consider anything to be a done deal until it is, in fact, done. Trump is giving every indication that he is going to use military force to attempt to overturn the election. He has a lot of backing for it. If we all just dismiss this threat and assume that he won't be successful he will be successful. We have to recognize that there are a whole lot of people in this country that want to prevent the transition at any cost. We should also acknowledge that there are a lot of people itching for civil war. Add to that the fact that we have been under attack from Russia - a formidable enemy - and we can assume they have more attacks planned. If we ignore all of that, it is at our own peril.
History rhymes
An article in Foreign Policy about a month ago compared Russia's attempted (and failed) coup of August 1991 to the successful (depending on your point of view) coup of October 1993. That article suggests such a coup would not be successful in the United States today but I think it missed the mark. What is happening in the U.S. has some important similarities to what happened in Russia in 1993. Also importantly, several differences make something like this more of a danger here. The events in Russia are referred to as “the Russian constitutional crisis of 1993”, “Black October”, or the “1993 October Coup”. As a disclaimer, I am not a scholar of Russian history and this is not intended to be a scholarly review of the 1993 event. The point of this article is to get an idea of what might happen here. History won't repeat, but understanding it can help us see a path for Trump to stay in power today.
Boris Yeltsin was elected president of the Russian republic in June 1991 with 57% of the vote. When the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, Yeltsin became the first president of post-Soviet Russia. Under the Soviet-era constitution which was still in place, parliament had more power than the president. In the previous elections, a one-party system had been in existence and therefore Congress and the Supreme Soviet were filled with pro-Soviet leaders. A power struggle ensued between the president and parliament. Skipping over all of the details leading up to the crisis, the salient point here is that there was a ten-day period when the balance of power dramatically shifted. Here is what happened:
On September 21, 1993, Yeltsin moved to dissolve the Russian parliament. The parliament rejected the order and blockaded themselves in the Russian White House (the building that houses parliament) where they impeached Yeltsin and proclaimed vice-president Alexander Rutskoy to be the acting president. Yeltsin cut off electricity and hot water to the building. On October 3rd, demonstrators who supported the Supreme Soviet reached the White House. Later that day, those demonstrators stormed the Moscow mayor’s office and they attempted to take over the main television center. In the early morning of October 4th, at Yeltsin’s order, the army used tanks in Moscow to shell the White House and they arrested leaders of the resistance. At this point it was pretty much over. Estimates vary but probably a few hundred people had been killed in the skirmishes. Once Yeltsin had control he banned the political parties that opposed him. Even so, in a special election two months later, anti-Yeltsin politicians were elected to parliament in huge numbers. At the same time, however, a new constitution was approved by referendum which gave Yeltsin expanded powers and which limited the power of parliament.
That’s a high-level overview. If you get into the details it gets a little murkier. There are very different narratives around the events of October 1993 as well as what came before and what the ultimate effect has been. The narratives depend on whether you believe Yeltsin was in the right or whether you believe the Supreme Soviet was in the right. The narratives around what is currently happening in the United States are similarly discordant. Let’s look at this from a few different angles.
What actually was it?
The legitimacy of the elected leaders was in dispute
Part of the pro-Yeltsin narrative maintains that the members of the Supreme Soviet weren’t elected in a democratic way because when they were elected in 1990 it was still a one-party system. Parliament had refused to go along with Yeltsin's call for a new election of parliament but they did create a referendum with confidence/no-confidence votes for Yeltsin and for parliament. Yeltsin had majority approval but parliament did not. Parliament then decided that the no confidence vote, to be valid, had to be a majority of all Russian citizens rather than just the ones who actually voted. They used this logic to justify the pro-parliament stance that ignoring the results of the referendum was correct and that the existing officials should remain in parliament until the next election. This would provide a check on Yeltsin and keep the existing constitution. So both sides claimed legal authority.
[Not being a Russian scholar, I’m not going to try to comment on the truth of any of the opposing claims, but simply note that the two sides have said different things about it and have differing opinions on which facts are even relevant let alone accurate.]
The reasons are different in the United States today but we, too, have a tremendous amount of contention regarding who legitimately has power. That contention is much greater here than it was in Russia in 1993. The issue foremost in our minds right now obviously regards the election we just had.
Less than three weeks after the election, 73% of Trump voters polled said they thought Trump won the election and two-thirds said he should never concede. Even after the Electoral College voted and the Supreme Court tossed out the Texas Attorney General's lawsuit, those numbers remain very high.
Perhaps more importantly, a rather large portion of Trump's supporters don't seem to care whether the election was fair or not; they want him to remain president regardless. A poll done shortly before the election gives us this alarming statistic: "40% of Trump's supporters "wanted the president to contest the election even if he lost the popular vote by 10 to 12 points."
We also have, as they had in Russia, the losing side of a vote attempting to redefine, after the fact, the rules of that vote in their favor. In Russia, it was the parliament redefining what "at least 50%" meant. Here in the United States, it is Trump and his allies claiming that certain types of votes are illegal despite having been determined to be legal prior to the election.
This is by no means Trump's first attempt at claiming legal authority that he does not rightly have, and denying it to his opponents who should rightly have authority but who are forced to spend months and years in court to enforce that authority. During the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, much of the disagreement involved whether Congress has authority to oversee the Executive Branch to which Republicans answered with a resounding 'no' - or at least not if the oversight is of a Republican president. This theme has been a recurring one and Trump's (and Mitch McConnell's) success at it is astounding.
You might vehemently disagree with the previous paragraph. In doing so you would disagree with not only me, but with a whole lot of other people on the left and even with many moderate Republicans. And if you do disagree, it is another demonstration of this point: that there is a huge amount of disagreement regarding who legitimately has authority.
There are two more key differences on this issue between the U.S. today and Russia in 1993, and they are not hopeful. The first is that in Russia, parliament was for the most part, united against Yeltsin (some members had heeded his call to disband and had left but the others stood together). In the United States right now, it appears that most Republicans in Congress either support Trump's efforts to overturn the election or are unwilling to stop him from doing so. According to the Washington Post, one month after the election two Republicans in Congress said outright that they believe Trump won the election and another 220 congressional Republicans refused to say who won. That's 89% that would not acknowledge Biden as President-Elect. Many have actively spread conspiracy theories about election fraud. After the Electoral College vote, a lot of those have finally acknowledged Biden as President-Elect but not all of them. It appears that Trump will have the support in Congress to force debate regarding the electors although it does not look like he has the support to win that debate - at least not if the debate were to happen without interference. Unfortunately, it does look like Trump is planning interference. He has called on his supporters to come to Washington to protest that day. We'll get to that momentarily. One last thing before we leave this topic: some Republicans (Lindsey Graham, for example) have continued to spread conspiracy theories around Biden while simultaneously acknowledging him as President-Elect. Those conspiracy theories will continue to fuel the anger of Trump's base more than acknowledging Biden as President-Elect could calm it.
The second and maybe even more important difference on this subject between the U.S. today and Russia in 1993 is that the current dispute regards who will have power in the future. If Trump does attempt the military-style self-coup he has been talking about, it will most likely happen when Congress meets to certify the Electoral College votes on January 6th. Biden will have no legal authority at that time. Of course Trump won't have legal authority to pull off a self-coup either, but that won't stop him. He is already turning on people around him who don't support it. Biden, on the other hand, really likes to play by the rules and I think that he thinks that the side that plays by the rules will prevail. Unless Congress suddenly steps up to the plate right now, I think that assumption is wrong. Therefore, I think Biden is going to have no choice but to assert his authority prior to inauguration in order to ensure that his inauguration isn't preempted entirely. This doesn't match Biden's personality though. Trump is almost certainly expecting to go unchallenged both by the current Congress as well as by Biden. And no, simply allowing the process to play out as it is supposed to is not a real challenge to the military-style force that we will be seeing on January 6th if it is not somehow preempted.
The legitimacy of the constitution was in dispute
The Russian constitution, having been created in 1978 during the Soviet-era, was a vestige of the Russian Revolution of 1917. A key component of the pro-Yeltsin narrative is that when the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991 the existing constitution was no longer reflective of the new country. According to this narrative, Yeltsin had negotiated with parliament to hold a referendum in April 1993 on a new constitution but parliament reneged on the agreement. The assertion is that because parliament reneged on the agreement the existing constitution was no longer valid even without a referendum to replace it, and therefore Yeltsin was justified in dissolving parliament.
According to the pro-Soviet narrative, the existing constitution was still the existing constitution and was therefore binding law. They believe that, according to the constitution, Yeltsin did not have the authority to dissolve parliament but that parliament did have the authority to impeach Yeltsin. Some of these narratives don’t even mention the topic of an agreement for a referendum on a new one. Going back on their word would likely have been viewed as mere politics anyway, especially if the agreement was a gentleman’s one and not a legal one.
So how is this important in the United States today? Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield - one of the two Michigan lawmakers invited to the White House when Trump first attempted to prevent the certification of the state's election results - upon his return to Michigan, laid out the process by which a delay in certification could lead to a constitutional crisis for the state. After first telling us that the meeting with Trump had nothing to do with the election (not a credible claim, to say the least), he then went on to assure us that he will not interfere but then immediately launched into reasons why the certification should be delayed. Trump later attempted to persuade Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to replace the state's electors and he called the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for assistance in overturning the election there. The attempts to manufacture constitutional crises at the state level were unsuccessful but that doesn't mean they won't be successful in similar attempts with regards to the United States Constitution.
As you may be aware, we already have some very big disagreements on the legitimacy of our Constitution. Most obvious are disagreements regarding the interpretation. This includes things like whether the federal government or state governments should reign supreme, what separation of church and state means, who is protected under the Constitution, whether the Emoluments Clause has any real meaning, what freedom of speech covers, whether the militias we see today are protected - and even encouraged - or illegal, and whether impeachment itself is a valid action or treason. The points of dispute make a long list.
But it’s much bigger than that. There are a lot of people, on both the left and the right, who want to make radical changes to our Constitution. The push from conservatives has been especially strong, and driven by players like the Koch brothers who certainly seem to want the U.S. to be an oligarchic society like many countries in Eastern Europe now are. In 2018, former Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn said, "I think we're three or four years away"(from a constitutional convention). Coburn also said, "We're in a battle for the future of our country. We're either going to become a socialist, Marxist country like western Europe, or we're going to be free. As far as me and my family and my guns, I'm going to be free." He is by no means alone. A lot of these conservatives are our elected leaders in Congress.
Tom Coburn's statements are worth taking a deeper look at. Our Constitution spells out a rather cumbrous means for replacing it with a new one. Yet, two years ago, the late senator predicted the Constitution would be replaced in 2021 or 2022. That's coming up. Was this just wishful thinking on his part or did he know something about these efforts that the rest of us - who have only barely, if at all, been paying attention to this topic - don't know? I'm going to bet it's the latter: there have been efforts along these lines that most don't know about and those efforts were expected to bear fruit right about now. It is entirely possible that the allure of a constitutional convention might help explain some congressional Republican's reluctance to counter any of Trump's even most egregious statements and actions throughout his presidency. They might have believed that if they stuck by him they would get to rewrite the Constitution as many of them have been wanting for years. They would be wrong about this, of course. The end result would be Trump's constitution, not theirs. Nevertheless, there are still a lot of people who think a new constitution would be a good thing.
The other concerning part of Coburn's comments is his desire to not be like Western Europe. Seriously? Western Europe? Throughout my lifetime, most of us in the United States have prided ourselves on how we, along with Western Europe, value democracy and free thinking and equality and so on. We have never looked at other parts of the world where they don't have those things and yearned to be like them. We have never longed to be controlled like in Communist China. We have never longed for religious rule like the Sharia law in Muslim countries. We have never watched authoritarians disappear people off the streets and thought, "yes, THAT's the image of an ideal country." Never, that is, until now. Our country is changing.
While it may be tempting to dismiss the idea of a constitutional convention as outside the realm of possibility, doing so would not be wise. It only requires 34 states to call for one and 15 have already passed a Convention of States resolution. The resolution has passed in one chamber of the legislature in an additional 8 states, and there is active legislation for such a resolution in 16 more. This article in The Hill explains the concerns about the possibility of a runaway convention if one were called - meaning a convention might not be limited to discuss only the topics approved by the states. It also points out that one group seeking a convention "claims - using highly dubious math - to have resolutions from 28 of the 34 states required to compel Congress to call such a convention." With this last election, Republicans have full control of 22 states and at least partial control of the legislatures of 8. All of the recently elected officials will have taken office by the second week of January. If they are organized, they could do a lot before January 20th. At this point, I don't think a forced constitutional convention is likely to be an immediate concern (mainly because I think there are other options for Trump to get what he wants) but some people may be using the idea as reasoning to back Trump so I don't think we should entirely ignore it.
Further, some evangelicals have been outspoken in their support of using a military coup to bring their world view into the laws of the United States. There are also conservatives who are currently major players (these are not just people on the fringe) who believe that the ends justify the means. The most visible of these is Alan Dershowitz who, in declaring during the impeachment hearings that Trump's attempts to get reelected by pressuring Ukraine to find dirt on Biden were justified, argued that you can’t impeach a president for doing what they believe is good for the country, and that every president believes that their reelection is good for the country. This is obviously problematic in that it follows that pretty much anything goes when you are attempting to stay in power, including overriding the free will of the people. If you would believe Dershowitz, the only criteria is that the president must believe that his staying in power is good for the country. This is the antithesis of democracy.
Additionally, there are quite a number of groups that are all behind Trump who also have issues with our Constitution. As I wrote about in my last post, religious zealots who want to usher in the End Times, 'evil cabal' conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazi fascists, and adherents of accelerationism are just some of the groups who take issue with Western democracy in general or with the Constitution in particular. So there is a lot more contention about the Constitution of the United States than I think most people realize. That puts it in grave danger.
As a side note, let's not overlook the fact that the practice of reneging on agreements has become the norm in the United States Congress. Republicans in Congress promising - and then withholding - aid to the states that are suffering due to the pandemic is one recent example. Another is the change in tune regarding whether or not it is appropriate to provide a hearing for Supreme Court nominees during an election year. Even the idea of encouraging state electors to renege on their duty to represent the will of the people is somehow not a huge surprise this year. Good faith agreements are now a thing of the past.
Each side accused the other of inciting violence
In October 1993, each side blamed the other for the violence. The pro-Soviet side said that Yeltsin, in attempting to dissolve parliament and then shelling the White House, brought Russia to the brink of civil war. The pro-Yeltsin side said the opposite: that Yeltsin saved Russia from a civil war that would have occurred had he not stopped parliament. Yeltsin claimed that he had no choice but to send tanks to the White House because the leadership in the Supreme Soviet had incited demonstrators to storm the TV station and mayor’s office - a claim that Khasbulatov denied.
The claims in the U.S. about the other side inciting violence are already much, much bigger. Throughout his candidacy and presidency Trump built his persona as a tough guy. To his supporters, he promotes the idea that fighting is the way to freedom...their own freedom, that is. And he has instilled the idea that his supporters' freedom is contingent upon others losing their freedom. We all remember the 'lock her up' chants (which even now still make an occasional appearance). We also all remember the pictures of kids in cages at the border - a policy Trump defended as necessary to protect our country from illegal immigrants who he had termed "rapists" and "murderers".
During his first campaign, Trump told supporters to 'knock the crap out of' potential hecklers at a rally. We've seen President Trump retweet a meme of himself taking down CNN in a wrestling match. He tweeted there would be a civil war if he were removed from office by impeachment. During the BLM protests, he told governors and law enforcement to 'dominate' protestors. He threatened military violence against looters in Minnesota, telling the governor, "Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!" He has sided with Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager accused of killing of two protestors in Wisconsin. He has called on his supporters to rise up against their local governments, tweeting "LIBERATE MICHIGAN!", "LIBERATE MINNESOTA!" and "LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!" He has normalized authoritarian-style use of extreme force on citizens, most recently changing the regulations for federal executions to allow firing squad, poison gas, and electrocutions. The threat extends to anyone who dares contradict him. A Trump campaign lawyer said that the fired CISA director - who said the 2020 election was the most secure in history - "should be drawn and quartered, taken out at dawn and shot." It has been a steady barrage of violent and threatening rhetoric coming from the White House. All of it encourages the same pro-violence mindset in his supporters.
People on the left, mainstream media, civil right's groups, governors and other prominent elected officials have repeatedly called on Trump to stop this violent rhetoric. Military leaders - who normally stay out of politics - have denounced Trump's threats to use the military against protestors. Even a Georgia election official - a Republican - pleaded for Trump to stop promoting lies about the election. He said: "stop inspiring people to commit acts of violence. Someone's going to get hurt; someone's going to get shot; someone's going to get killed. And it's not right."
Trump certainly has his defenders, though, and he has been telling them that the violence is coming from the left. He built a campaign around the "Law and Order" slogan in which he claims the Black Lives Matter movement and far left groups like antifa are destroying our cities. He blames Democratic mayors and city council members of encouraging looting and graffiti thereby making the cities unsafe. He says they are promoting violence with their willingness to listen to the concerns of the protestors and with their attempts to calm the situation peacefully rather than by having police crack down on those protestors. In this view, Kyle Rittenhouse is the good guy for killing a couple of protestors because he was there to save the city from looting, never mind that he wasn't a resident of that city or even state. Killing people is considered lawful while association with - or mere physical proximity to - people destroying property is considered worthy of the death penalty. No trial needed. Right-wing media promotes this narrative, too, and it has taken hold.
This is not new. Right-wing media has been accusing the left of planning violence for years. With Trump's loss in the election, it is now coming to a head.
The military equivocated, then backed the president
In 1993 Russia, many thought the military would back parliament but after a few hours of uncertainty the military ended up following through with Yeltsin's order and shelled the White House. This military.wiki article explains:
A similar mistake appears to be happening here. Biden seems to be acting on the assumption that the military will refuse to follow unconstitutional orders if Trump gives them. Numerous op-eds have said the military wouldn't do such a thing and the authors of these op-eds have also pointed out that high-ranking military leaders have said they won't follow unconstitutional orders. I see several problems with this thinking.
The first is that the expectation that members of the military will know that the order is unconstitutional is asking for a lot. According to this New York Times exit poll of the 2020 election, 54% of the military supported Trump while only 44% supported Biden. Patricia Ravalgi - who spent 19 years with "intelligence jobs in Congress, at the FBI ad the Department of Homeland Security" - said in this article, “support for Donald Trump among a large segment of the U.S. military is downright cult-like” and "the constant drumbeat of right-wing conspiracy theories and hateful political rhetoric has found its way into a sizable portion of the U.S. military's rank and file." Regarding the criticism of Trump by numerous retired four-star generals, she said "the attacks by the general, and Trump's willingness to return fire, only endeared him to the rank and file more." The portion of the military that believes the fictional stolen election narrative that Trump has been peddling will be significant and they are likely to believe that Trump's orders are constitutional.
We have already seen some examples of this. During the Black Lives Matter protests this past summer Trump sent in federal officials who, in addition to firing tear gas and 'less lethal' weapons at peaceful protestors, also nabbed people off the street just like we would expect to see in an authoritarian country. As reported by ABC News, in a hearing about these events, a federal judge "found that tweets by President Donald Trump helped to incite improper conduct by federal officers responding to racial justice protests in Portland, Oregon." In a poll of active-duty military personnel, 22% thought Trump's idea of deploying active-duty military personnel to quell civil unrest in American cities was justified. While their numbers were significantly lower than the 74% who disagreed, the nearly one in four that do agree are very likely to go along with most unconstitutional orders along these lines that Trump might give.
In the Lafayette Square incident where Trump had the National Guard clear the way for him to have a photo-op at a church (the one where he's holding the Bible upside-down), members of the National Guard later expressed their concerns about what happened but they still went along with it. This is expected. People in the lower ranks are going to find it very hard to disobey orders even if they think those orders are unconstitutional. They could be court-martialed for doing that. On a slightly positive note, there is a group that is providing legal advice to those who have questions about a given order. Unfortunately, there is often not time between the receipt of the order and its expected execution to confer with a lawyer. Most in this group will follow the orders of their commanding officers even if they are uncomfortable with the orders.
Another problem with this thinking is that it is very difficult to know what the leadership is actually going to do. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley has since apologized for his participation in that photo op. While he seems sincere and it is hopeful that he would respond better the next time, it's hard to know for sure. And despite what many of the higher-ranking military officials have said about not following unconstitutional orders, we really can't know how they all feel about it. People are often quite good at hiding their true beliefs. We won't know how an individual would react to an unconstitutional order until that unconstitutional order is given.
We also have to remember that Trump does have some support in military leadership. As Fox News reported before the election, 235 former military leaders wrote a letter supporting Trump in which they warned that "our historic way of life is at stake." If you didn't notice, that is an existential statement. They truly believe that Biden is the danger to the U.S., not Trump. Signatories include retired Army and Air Force generals and Navy Admirals.
We should also remember that not all of the military leadership have the highest ethical standards. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn spent more than 3 years in prison until Trump pardoned him after the election. As we all know, Flynn later retweeted a call for Trump to declare martial law to hold a new election. So these calls for martial law aren't only coming from civilians that have been caught up in Trump's rhetoric. And let's not forget that some in Trump's orbit and his administration share his affinity for the use of torture. Even if it isn't widely approved of, torture has been a thing across quite a few presidencies. I don't think we can realistically expect that military leadership's understanding of what it means to 'do the right thing' universally matches our understanding of it. I think it is safe to assume that a significant number in military leadership do support Trump now even as he tries to overturn the election, and many of them will continue to do so regardless of the constitutionality of that support in the near future.
Trump's recent defense personnel changes, including the firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and the resignations of other top civilian officials, are also of considerable concern as he is replacing them with his loyalists. We also have to wonder why now the change to put Special Ops under civilian control. Just since the election, Trump has removed several experts from the Defense Policy Board, some of whom had been on that board for decades, and has fired several members of the Defense Business Board. The timing for all of these changes seems suspect, and that's an understatement.
Trump has worked very hard to get local law enforcement on his side, too. He has repeatedly called for law enforcement to rough up people they are arresting, and has said security should be rougher on protestors at his rallies. The crowd goes wild whenever he says things like this. The more he talks this way, the more people think this behavior is the right behavior. The protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd gave him more opportunity to pit law enforcement against citizens demanding justice for police brutality. He was able to rewrite the narrative and in so doing cemented the support of police unions around the country. On top of all that, white nationalists and right-wing militias have worked methodically over the last several decades to infiltrate law enforcement throughout the country. That includes at state and local levels as well as within the military. White nationalists love Trump. What this means is that it is likely that in many cities throughout the country, the police forces will side with Trump in a conflict. Mayors and city councils will not be able to stop them if Trump convinces them that he is now giving the orders. This idea is utterly against how we in the United States expect that state and local governments have control over their own cities and states. That expectation is immaterial, however, when you are dealing with a charismatic leader. Such a leader can convince local law enforcement that there is a higher purpose and that they must turn against their locally-elected officials. In fact, we should expect this to happen. Unless something changes really quickly here and the opportunity for this is preempted, we can count on it occurring in some cities.
Further, on Tuesday Trump pardoned fifteen people including four war criminals who had opened fire on a busy Baghdad square, an event known as the Nisour Square massacre. Those four war criminals were contractors who worked for Blackwater. As Charles P. Pierce put it, "Erik Prince Now Owes the President* a Favor. Think About That."
We're still not done with this topic as there are additional problems for Biden here. As noted earlier, he won't have the legal authority to command the military until January 20th. If even a small number of the military are willing to follow Trump's unconstitutional orders to, for example, get control of Congress before they "illegally" (according to Trump) certify Biden as the winner of the election, it would be very hard to stop them. Don't be naive about this. It is by no means out of the question that Trump would order the military to fire on the Capitol building in January 2021 like Yeltsin ordered tanks to fire on the Russian White House in October 1993. On the contrary, this sounds exactly like something he would do. There are some in the military who would follow orders like these.
That type of military action would only be stopped with a military counter-response. But Biden won't legally have the authority to command the military at that point. There will certainly be generals who would refuse to follow an unconstitutional order to take control of Congress but mounting a counter-strike is an entirely different matter. The only person with the constitutional authority to send in the military to save Congress from a military strike will be Trump and if he's the one authorizing Congress be attacked in the first place that's a problem. To counter an unconstitutional use of the military by Trump, Biden would have to respond in a way that is also illegal. He would have to assert control of the military before January 20th. In a situation like this, such a move would be necessary but there would be no legal grounds for it. And if Trump retains power, we can be sure that Biden (and everyone who followed him) would be tried for treason. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. The very idea of stepping outside legal bounds - even in this type of extreme situation where the Constitution was already effectively suspended - also seems like it would be very much out of character for Biden and I think he would find it hard to do.
With regards to not repeating Rutskoy's mistake of relying exclusively on high-level officers, Biden will have to tread very carefully. He needs to counter Trump's narrative to the rank and file regarding the legitimacy of the election, but he can't use any active-duty high-ranking military officers to do so. Why? Because some of the rank and file members who support Trump will view Biden-supporting officers as committing treason and they will report them. That would enable Trump to respond by moving those officers out of the way. To avoid Rutskoy's mistake, Biden and former military (both former officers and former rank and file) should start now in making the direct appeal to active-duty rank and file. But they have to do it in such a way that Trump can't claim that it is the Biden camp, rather than the Trump camp, that is planning a coup. That may not be possible, especially considering that Trump is already claiming that Biden winning the election was itself a coup. There is no good answer.
The role of civilians is very different today than in 1993
During the constitutional crisis of 1993 in Russia, pro-Soviet leaders were accused of providing weapons to civilians and inciting them to storm the mayor's office and the television station. They were quickly vanquished by the far greater military might available to Yeltsin.
In the United States today, it is a very different situation and a vastly worse one. Trump, unlike Yeltsin, has both current control of the military and the backing of the majority of armed citizens. He is openly preparing both of those groups to take up arms on his behalf. Regarding the first group, he has asked his advisors about the use of the military to overturn the election. This is an action that, although setting off alarms among those in the military concerned about such a self-coup, has most certainly simultaneously triggered his supporters in the military to prepare for such a coup. Regarding the second, he has called for his supporters to flock to Washington to protest Congress certifying the Electoral College votes. He tweeted: "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!" When Trump told the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by", he was telling them to stand by until he called them. In this tweet, he called them.
This is not something that Trump is organizing out of nothing. Civil war has been a hot topic on right-wing websites and talk shows for years. In March 2019, Rep. Steve King posted a meme about Republicans having 8 trillion bullets in the event of a civil war. "Wonder who would win...", he tweeted with a smiling emoji. That bloodlust has only increased in the four years of Trump's presidency. Armed civilians have been told to "rise up", to "stand by", to "LIBERATE MICHIGAN!" and other states. It's been a steady stream of encouragement coming from both the White House and from Republican elected officials at the state and national level. Before the impeachment hearings, Trump said outright that a civil war would erupt if he were removed from office. The comments were embraced with #CivilWar2 and #CivilWarSignup trending on twitter. As Oath Keepers Milia wrote, "This is the truth. This is where we are. We ARE on the verge of a HOT civil war." Post-election, it has been #CivilWar2020 trending. The Oath Keepers are the largest paramilitary in the U.S. and since the election they have said they will refuse to recognize Biden as president and will 'resist'.
At the local level, it's not only civilians in self-styled militias nor is it only law enforcement that we need to be concerned about. There are a lot of local elected officials around the country that support these militias and support overturning the election. As a reminder, seventeen state's Attorneys General supported the Texas Attorney General's lawsuit to throw out ballots in other states. A gubernatorial candidate in Virginia said Trump should declare martial law. And the Arizona Republican Party retweeted a right-wing extremist who said he is "willing to give up my life for this fight" and then the state GOP asked, "He is. Are you?"
This may all look like just talk but it is not. On April 30th, armed protestors stormed the Michigan State House. In October, the FBI arrested more than a dozen men in a plot to kidnap Gov. Whitmer or related charges. Those arrested had allegedly discussed taking other officials hostage as well and executing them on television.
International backing didn't come from the usual allies
The West supported Yeltsin because Yeltsin was pro-democracy and pro-capitalism. At the time, the West and former Soviet Bloc countries were not exactly allies. We had been enemies for decades though we were certainly happy to see Russia's ideology moving towards our own. However, as far as I can tell, the West vocalized their support after the fact but didn't have anything to do with the events of October 1993 themselves.
We already have at least one international player not simply vocalizing support for Trump but actively working to tip the scales in his favor. Our intelligence agencies, the Special Counsel's report, and even the bipartisan Senate report all acknowledge that Russia unquestionably attempted to interfere in our 2016 election and was successful in doing so. We also know that Russia continued their disinformation campaigns prior to the 2020 election. There should be no doubt that right now Russia is continuing their efforts to disrupt the United States as much as possible. Keeping Trump in power would no doubt do that as Trump has demonstrated that he is realigning the United States with oligarchies and autocrats which is obviously a major blow to the Western world. A civil war in the United States would be just as effective in diminishing the strength of the West, perhaps even more so. We can know without any question that Russia will do everything in its power to bring about one, if not both, of those two outcomes. We can take that as simply a given. I'll repeat that: it is a given that Russia is going to do everything it can to push the United States into a civil war. We are on the edge of one and they are almost certain to be successful.
The bipartisan - repeat, bipartisan - Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 election said that Paul Manafort's willingness to share information with Russian operatives "represented a grave counterintelligence threat." It also detailed interactions between Roger Stone and WikiLeaks, and noted that WikiLeaks "very likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort." Trump has just pardoned both Manafort and Stone, along with numerous others involved in Russia's efforts to undermine our elections. Those of you who participated in creating that report: how can you still think that Trump is some innocent bystander in all of this?
Russian state media doesn't see Trump as an innocent bystander. They have been very appreciative of Trump even while mocking him - referring to him as "our Trump", "Trumpusha", and "Comrade Trump." They have suggested that Trump should flee the United States to avoid prosecution and take asylum in Russia.
Further, we have just recently learned that Russia successfully hacked numerous government agencies and private sector companies. So far, everyone seems to be treating this as merely a spying operation - huge in scope, but not of any immediate consequence. This analysis is coming from both Democrats and Republicans. I don't tend to see Republicans as Pollyannaish in terms of external threats to our country, but here we are. The utter chaos of the last four years has blinded everyone. I think it is far more likely that Russia has put other backdoors into these systems and is intending to exploit them when the time comes. I expect that we will see what they are intending to do only when they actually do it. I also expect that their timing will be coordinated with Trump's timing to incite the militias to take control of Congress on January 6th. We should expect our key infrastructures to be severely disrupted. Cell phone and internet communications, emergency services, basic utilities like electricity and water, and government buildings are all likely targets. Infrastructure attacks have already started, although not via cyber warfare and we don't yet know who is responsible. A car bomb in Nashville this morning hit AT&T and temporarily disrupted communications nation-wide.
If that doesn't scare you enough, in September we learned that Russia has used drone swarms in military exercises. In case you have forgotten (or never knew), drone swarms were spotted in Nebraska and Colorado a year ago. State, local, and federal agencies put together a task force to identify what was going on and people were asked to call local law enforcement if they spotted what could be a "command control" vehicle for these drones. As far as I know, the source was never identified. In Seattle last summer, there was another report of drones flying in formation and I don't believe that source was ever identified, either. I'm sure it didn't help that Trump was done so much to hobble our own intelligence agencies, such as by shaking up the National Counterterrorism Center several times over the last year and a half. That many disruptions, coming one after another in one department after another, is harmful (to put it mildly) to our national security.
Earlier this week, Russia and China conducted joint military exercises with bombers including some capable of launching nuclear bombs, sending Japan and South Korea scrambling in response. The exercises would also put the United States military in the region on alert. Things are heating up on multiple fronts.
Let's be clear about this: The United States has been attacked multiple times by Russia since 2016 - propaganda attacks on our elections, bounties on our soldiers, cyber attacks on our federal agencies and on a vast swath of private companies. Trump's response has been to insist that either these things aren't happening or that Russia isn't behind any of it. Instead of focusing our national security forces to defend us, Trump has made them stand down, mostly by dismantling or disrupting the agencies that are supposed to protect us. The United States is being led to slaughter.
What else?
Trump looks like he is going to shut down the government on Monday citing objections to the latest Covid-relief bill. The objections are about things his administration specifically asked for. Democrats had wanted a larger stimulus check but had compromised with Republicans and agreed to a mere $600 - the amount the White House had proposed. The compromise allowed Congress to pass the bill. Then Trump turned around and changed his mind on it, now demanding a $2,000 stimulus check. Stupidly, House Democrats are now siding with Trump and trying to force the House GOP to increase the amount to the number Trump is demanding. Trump has no intention of signing the bill. His goal is either to just create a distraction or to shut down the government, maybe both. He doesn't give a rat's ass about the stimulus check and that is not a reason he is blocking the bill. Congress needs to just override his veto. They can't let the fight over this bill, as critically important as it is, distract everyone from the even more pressing problems of Trump dismantling our national defenses and walking us into a civil war.
The United States is facing other threats abroad as well. The U.S. embassy in Baghdad was attacked last Sunday, presumably by Iran. This may be an attempt by Iran to get back at the United States for last January's assassination of Qasem Soleimani. Or it may be a false flag attempt by Trump to divert attention from what is happening here. In November, after the election, Trump had asked his advisors about options to attack Iran's main nuclear site, giving credence to the second possibility. Either way, all of this disruption is creating a very bad environment with respect to international threats.
What should we expect on January 6th?
As mentioned earlier, Trump has called his supporters to Washington to protest. We all know that it is mainly the armed militias he is calling upon. They know it, too. He said, "Be there, will be wild!" How would he know it's going to be wild unless he has something planned? It's obvious (to me, anyway) that he has something planned. We should count on it. The only real question is: what?
I can see a few possibilities. The first is that he is going to try to force Congress to refuse to certify the electoral college votes. On Tuesday, Trump retweeted a letter that was written on Pence's behalf to the states that Trump is contesting. The letter was to inform the states that Pence would refuse to accept their electors. It is such a brazen attempt to undermine our election process that the subject line read "Operation PENCE CARD." Trump and his allies are now trying to make the vice-president of the United States the sole decider of who won the election. So far, Pence seems to be unwilling to play along but there are some things that might sway him. For instance, it is possible - though unlikely - that Russia might have some kompromat on him. If so, he might be persuadable. If not, that's where the militias come in.
The militias are the second possibility. Trump hasn't (yet) given the command to these militias to take over Congress but I would put the likelihood of that occurring at nearly 100%. Some of his supporters WILL follow such a command. No question about it. Let's just think back a few months to what happened in Michigan. Trump tweeted: "LIBERATE MICHIGAN!" and his armed supporters stormed the Michigan State House. The United States Congress isn't really any different and it won't be better protected. The D.C. police are not going to be a match for tens of thousands of armed militia members. There won't be federal backup if Trump doesn't provide it. Worse, if Trump does provide it, we should have every reason to be concerned that those sent in will have been screened for their loyalty to Trump.
Back to what happened in Michigan... According to this article in Michigan Advance, Mike Shirkey and Lee Chatfield - the two Michigan legislators who met with Trump just before the election results were certified there, and who were seen celebrating with Dom Perignon at Trump Hotel - had joined an anti-Whitmer rally hours after the news broke of the of the plot to kidnap her. Shirkey had also met with a small group of the armed protestors on April 30th and didn't allow media presence. Two of those arrested in the kidnapping plot had been photographed in the Senate gallery on April 30th. This is by no means evidence that either Shirkey or Chatfield knew of the kidnapping plot or even have connections to the perpetrators. It's still concerning enough that I hope it has already been checked out, though. At this point, most people are taking the fact that Chatfield and Shirkey did not prevent the state from certifying the election results as an indication that whatever Trump tried with them didn't work. What we should be doing is taking that as a reminder that we don't, in fact, know what they discussed. Trump, after all, seemed to think the meeting went his way.
Note that if the militias are willing to take over Congress, it won't even be necessary for Trump to call in the military to do that. He could simply have them stand down. To be sure, a lot in the military would object to the militias taking over Congress, but up until January 20th, Trump gives the orders. Military leaders would have to take it upon themselves to decide to invoke the Insurrection Act to protect Congress from the militias but they don't have the legal authority to invoke it.
However it goes, we can expect things will get violent in D.C.
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