“There is no indication of civil disobedience.”
The Secret Service has been politicized. This will have major implications if an arrest warrant is issued for Trump. This article explores what the J6C might reveal next week.
Washington DC 8 July 2022
Introduction
Next week the Jan 6 Committee will hear testimony on the coordination between paramilitary organizations and Trump. The secret service cleared convicted felon proud boy leaders to visit the White House, attend rallies in secured prominent positions and possibly dine with the President. Paramilitary groups were fully integrated parts of the Trump machine. Their activities were coordinated at the highest levels of Trump world. Civil War II does not know the exact chain of command but expects the committee will reveal it went from Trump to “my General” Mike Flynn to Roger Stone to paramilitary leaders Tarrio, Rhodes and others. These people were already publicly known as close associates of one another. The committee will also likely reveal militia funding sources linking them to Trump related funding vehicles through cut outs (the Publix heiress has been a past example). One thing is certain, the Palin standard of “palling around with terrorists” has been met.
The January 6 event was created by the White House as the final opportunity to overturn the election. As Civil War II assessed last year and the Jan 6 committee has conclusively shown in past weeks, the core effort relied on the use of fake electoral slates. The plan required Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the “alternative slates” in order to disrupt the proceeding. In advance, Trump doubted Pence would comply and worked hard on him to capitulate. Closer to the day, Trump knew Pence had rejected the unlawful plan.
Trump loves crowds. They give him energy because they unquestioningly celebrate his every word and blindly do his bidding. Trump intended the crowd to intimidate Pence and the congress into caving into the plan. The heavily armed but small paramilitary forces (with guns on site and in quick reaction caches a few miles from the Capitol) were the last resort if all else failed. Their job was to be the maximum-energy violent vanguard of the mob. They were the ‘tip of the spear’ and were to ‘lead the way’ in an orgy of destructive violence against congress as punishment for not doing Trump’s bidding. The message was received loud and clear. Standing amid the broken glass 147 republicans endorsed Trump’s coup attempt.
Despite right wing social media teeming with threats of extreme violence directly connected to January 6, despite the event being planned by the White House, despite its planned origination point located at the White House; the United States Secret Service assessed “there is no indication of civil disobedience.” Many will rush to judgement and call this an intelligence failure. That would display ignorance of how intelligence works and indicative of a right-wing propaganda cover up. The intelligence assessment was a failure to be sure. A failure of the secret service to maintain its high standard of apolitical service to the nation. Trump’s constant corrosive pressure on everyone around him to conform to his dictates, overwhelmed the ethical and professional code that the agency had faithfully observed since its inception.
It was not a failure to see or hear, it was a failure to understand and/or accept what was being seen and heard. The ability of the agency to think and act independently in the national interest had been suborned by Trump’s never ending demands, large and small, for loyalty. In the end, secret service leaders and many rank and file agents identified Trump’s will as the national interest. To paraphrase Upton Sinclair "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his identity depends upon his not understanding it.”
What was the result of politicization of this vitally important national security institution at the heart of continuity of government? The United States had a coup attempt mounted by one of the secret service’s protectee’s who sent a mob he knew to be armed to assassinate another of its protectee’s. The next leader in the line of succession, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, was also at risk given the hatred that had been directed at her by the president. Accordingly, the mob chanted for both Pence and Pelosi to be executed according to QAnon law. (After the President pro tempore of the Senate, the Secretary of State is next in line. This might explain why Pompeo was ‘exploring’ the 25th Amendment.)
In subsequent investigations, the extent of the politicization of the secret service has come into focus. In a tragic indictment of how far the organization has fallen, it is now necessary to question how will the USSS react to a Department of Justice arrest warrant for secret service protectee Donald J Trump.
This article explores some of the dimensions of these problems and assesses that without urgent and thorough reform, the continuity of government and the rule of law remain in gave danger.
Facts
Fact - The day before the insurrection, VP Pence’s Chief of Staff, Marc Short, warns the head of the Pence USSS detail, Tim Giebels, that the President represented a threat to the Vice President. This is not in dispute.
Fact - Trump incited the mob to turn on Pence - this is not in dispute.
According to the FBI, one man who was charged this week with trespassing and disorderly conduct after making his way into the Senate chamber said in a YouTube video: “Once we found out Pence turned on us and that they had stolen the election, like, officially, the crowd went crazy. I mean, it became a mob.”
Fact - The mob intended to kill the Vice President. This short video makes that clear. This has been confirmed by multiple sources including an interview by this author of Dakota Adams, son of Oath Keeper leader Stewart Rhodes, who said there was no doubt his father’s people would have executed the VP and the democrats. Adams grew up deep inside the paramilitary universe only breaking with it as a young adult and becoming one of its most knowledgeable and incisive critics.
Fact - On Jan 6 as Tim Giebels tried to evacuate Pence from the Capitol, Pence tells him “I’m not getting in the car, Tim,” Pence said. “I trust you, Tim, but you’re not driving the car. If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off. I’m not getting in the car.” The Vice President was concerned that his own detail was corrupt and acting on the orders of the President to prevent the VP from fulfilling his duties. The USSS was at that moment broken. Split between loyalty to a man and loyalty to the constitution. The facts of this event are not in dispute.
Fact - Pence’s National Security Adviser, Keith Kellogg, understood the threat to the VP from the USSS on Jan 6.
From The Washington Post’s excerpt of Carol Leonnig’s and Phil Rucker’s book:
Around this time, Kellogg ran into Tony Ornato in the West Wing. Ornato, who oversaw Secret Service movements, told him that Pence’s detail was planning to move the vice president to Joint Base Andrews.
“You can’t do that, Tony,” Kellogg said. “Leave him where he’s at. He’s got a job to do. I know you guys too well. You’ll fly him to Alaska if you have a chance. Don’t do it.”
There is a difference between evacuating someone from a threat and silencing them in the service of The Leaders plans. Kellogg’s comments suggest his understanding of the threat to the VP was the latter. General Kellogg has not disputed this conversation. Agent Ornato has. In fact, Ornato has disputed every single controversial conversation to which he has been a party.
Fact - Trump was warned by the Secret Service the mob at the ellipse was armed. His response? “You know, I don’t f-ing care that they have weapons… They’re not here to hurt me." He knew who they were there to kill because he was deeply involved in every aspect of the plans for the day as the J6C will reveal on Tuesday. From the moment the plan for Jan 6 was conceived, the entire purpose of the event was to intimidate Pence and the congress to overturn a legitimate election. Trump knew the mob was there to hurt the Vice President, RINO traitors (‘Republicans in Name Only’) and Democrats. That is why the 147 Republicans voted against democracy amidst the broken glass on Jan 6, so in the future the mob would know to target someone else. On the right, in large part thanks to QAnon law, executions have become the sole solution for dealing with anyone who disagrees - whether inside the party or not.
Fact - Secret Service employee’s have come under scrutiny for political allegiances to pro-coup forces. Carol Leonnig author of Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service, commented
"There was a very large contingent of Donald Trump's detail who were personally cheering for Biden to fail," she said "Some of them even took to their personal media accounts to cheer on the insurrection and the individuals rioting up to the Capitol, as patriots.
Other media accounts support this observation
The Secret Service indicated Monday that it was investigating an officer who posted comments on Facebook in which she accused lawmakers who formalized Biden’s win of treason and echoed Trump’s conspiracy theories about the rigging of the election. Social-media posts have already landed at least one officer in the uniformed division under investigation since the siege; according to The Washington Post, the officer urged “patriots” to go on the “offense” to secure victory for Donald Trump.
Fact - the Secret Service is vulnerable to accusations of politicization when the firewall between the civil service and political activity is breached. In a name that keeps surfacing in relationship to the politicization of the service, Agent Tony Ornato was given a political role in 2019 when he was made Deputy White House Chief of Staff for Operations. Seconding an agent to a political position is unprecedented in the history of the service and it had dire consequences for the mission.
Fact - the Secret Service consistently underestimated or downplayed Jan 6 threat assessments. Ornato was in charge of all Presidential security issues when the secret service issued its summary judgement for Jan 6 “There is no indication of civil disobedience.” This fit the pattern for other law enforcement agencies. It was not an intelligence failure but a cultural blind spot. The reason they didn’t see it coming was because the ‘Patriot’ and law enforcement Venn diagrams overlap.
Fact - on at least two occasions the Secret Service cleared convicted felon and Proud Boys paramilitary leader Enrique Tarrio to be around Trump. In Feb 2019 , Tarrio was pictured right behind Trump at a rally. He was also granted access to visit the White House immediately after Trump told Proud Boys to “standby”. Other paramilitary leaders have been reported meeting and even dining with Trump. Tarrio’s activity is not in dispute. The activity of others has not been confirmed.
Fact - Biden's transition team insisted on changes to his proposed detail due to the insider threat posed by secret service agents loyal to Trump. This is standard procedure in banana republics.
Fact - In April 2022 it was revealed that the secret service has been penetrated by at least two heavily armed men masquerading as DHS special agents. This clandestine operation went undetected “for years” . Prosecutors allege “they compromised United States Secret Service (USSS) personnel involved in protective details and with access to the White House complex by lavishing gifts upon them, including rent-free living.” The timeframe they went unnoticed likely includes the final year of the Trump Administration.
At least 4 secret service agents, including one who was on Jill Biden’s detail, were suspended in relationship to the investigation. One of the suspects claimed they were working on a Jan 6 investigation. It is odd that a years-long clandestine operation would claim an association with a high profile national event. Little more is known about the case. It could be fantasists, or domestic or international terrorism. It is hard to think it was merely wannabes given the significant sums of time, effort, money, guns and security paraphernalia involved (including a CAC Card ID making machine and a $60,000 SUV decked out with license plates and specialist kit that fooled actual federal agents into believing it was an official vehicle). It has the hallmarks of a serious terrorist operation.
Likely the public will never know the details. If it is in any way connected to the coup attempt as the Jan 6 claims suggest it might, then it is an alarming example of critical failures in the agency coming at a time of greatest threat since the Kennedy assassination. The important point is it happened at all and went undetected “for years”. That operation alone should be cause of a major security personnel review of the service.
Why being apolitical matters
The rule of law means that America is governed ‘by laws and not men’ (John Adams). All servants of the government swear allegiance to the law. The US Constitution is the foundational law and the operators manual for government. It outlines the roles and responsibilities of the three coequal branches of government and how that paradoxical balance can be maintained as each branch checks the power of the others. Intense partisan battles take place to decide what the policy of the United States will be with regard to all matters, foreign and domestic. Yet implementation of those policies is conducted by apolitical institutions doing their duty according to the law.
That is the theory of government. The remarkable thing about it is the practice of government has largely conformed to the theory. Take the military for an example. The military is not a democracy. It is a top-down hierarchical killing machine run in the manner of a dictatorship. Yet even the most junior grunt can refuse orders - but only unlawful ones.
More than the US military, the United States Secret Service is the ultimate fulcrum where extreme partisanship meets apolitical administration of the law. It is a law enforcement agency with a mission to protect constitution in the form of the office of the Presidency (Article II). The political party or personality of the incumbent can have no bearing on the operations of the USSS. Any deviation from that fundamental principle rapidly becomes extremely dangerous.
Trust is essential to the conduct of every aspect of the business of the agency. Trust of the protectee’s that their lives and those of their family members will be safeguarded by agents who might have vehemently opposing political views and possibly even personal animosity toward the protectee. Trust that they can speak freely in front of agents without fear that political or personal secrets will be used against them. Trust of the people that, regardless of politics, the nation will be spared the trauma and instability that follows in the wake of a political assassination. Trust among agents that they can rely on one another to do their duty regardless of personal political persuasions. Trust is a fragile thing, hard to gain and easy to lose. All the more so in the pressure cooker world of the White House.
It is for these reasons that politicization of the institutions of government can quickly become the ultimate domestic threat to national security. Politicization is the prioritization of partisan loyalty above the law. Its more common expression is ‘party before country’. Recent politicization of the military, intelligence community, law enforcement agencies, and the Department of Justice have all been thoroughly documented.
Politicization of the USSS has barely received any attention. Until now. Suddenly it is all over the news.
The United States had a coup attempt mounted by one of the secret service’s protectee’s who sent an armed mob to assassinate another of its protectee’s. It really does not get more politicized than that. This is by far the most important revelation to have emerged from testimony in the Jan 6 Committee hearings. Incredibly, it is not the one that has received the most attention. That honor goes to a second hand story of Trump throwing a tantrum in the presidential SUV (followed very closely by another Trump tantrum story - this time throwing food like a baby and upending tables like a desperate housewife with declining ratings trying to get back into the shows main storyline).
“Lungegate” is essentially irrelevant except in one respect. No one doubts he regularly loses control of himself - not even his most ardent supporters. To some of them, the idea of their hero taking matters into his own hands and attacking special agents who disobeyed him might add to his strongman allure.
Nevertheless, dueling accounts have now emerged along party lines with a “source close to the Secret Service” confirming that “Engel and the driver are prepared to testify under oath that neither man was physically attacked or assaulted by Trump and that the former president never lunged for the steering wheel of the vehicle”.
Despite this denial, Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony on the lunging story has since been confirmed by other secret services sources who have said the story has been around for a year. Varying interpretations of the words ‘assault’ and ‘grabbing’ and all sorts of other distracting trivia will continue to consume thousands of media man hours. Much to the delight of Trump world. They are eager to keep the actual news story - the attempted assassination of the Vice President of the United States in the service of America’s first coup d'état - off the front page.
The event has become so ludicrous that it has even sprouted its own modern grainy ‘Zapruder’ film complete with comic opera sound track that is magnificently fitting to the darkly dangerous stupidity of the age.
All of this distraction and noise should have been avoided. Airing the second-hand story was the first mis-step by the otherwise exemplary J6C. Having been' ‘given this inch’, the right wing media machine went into overdrive taking it several times around the moon. It remains to be seen whether agents Ornato, Engle and the unnamed driver, will counter-testify under oath and in public. If they fail to do so their credibility will be equally challenged. Then the circus will drive on.
The incident had great value for Trump propagandists. It gave them the smallest sliver of an excuse to sow doubt about everything an otherwise credible witness said. A mountain arose from the molehill and yet again ‘the entertaining’ masked ‘the important’, namely, the undisputed coup attempt in a nuclear armed ‘superpower’ that hitherto never experienced anything like the instability and rapid decline it currently suffers.
Tony Ornato has become the pin-up boy for politicization of the service
However, despite all this stupidity, one important point did emerge. The role of Agent Tony Ornato as the personification of the politicization problems besetting the USSS. In fact, look a little closer into any number of recent controversies at the agency and the name Ornato will not be far behind. Ornato was the agent who confirmed to White House Chief of Staff that firearms including AR-15s were in the crowd. So far, he has not denied this story. That, not lungegate, is the headline: Head of White House security knows AR-15s are in presidential crowd and takes no action. On the contrary, he gave his permission for his protectee to stand before the crowd on an elevated platform. Despite the protective glass, that level of risk would never be acceptable under normal service tactics, techniques and procedures. That is a Kennedy assassination-level failure. It happened because he knew the mob was not there to kill his protectee. Ornato was politicized.
Ornato was not in the SUV and yet it was Ornato who told Hutchison about the limo story. Ornato was the key player in clearing Lafayette Square for the Bible photo-op and has been alleged to have lied about that and other key security events. Ornato was the agent that disputed General Keith Kellogg's account about USSS plans to spirit VP Pence to Joint Base Andrews. In response to the denial, Kellogg has written in glowing terms about Ornato ending with “I would take his sworn testimony to the bank” (emphasis added). At the time of writing no such sworn testimony has been tended and it may be inferred from Kellogg’s artful response that he suspects none will be forthcoming.
Secret service book author and journalist Carol Leonnig has given a number of interviews about Tony Ornato’s role in these events.
"both of these individuals, Bobby Engel and Tony Ornato were very close to President Trump. Some people accused them of, at times, being yes-men and enablers of the President, particularly Tony Ornato.
In a different interview, Leonnig went further stating that
“Trump White House staffers and Secret Service agents have told me repeatedly, [that Ornato is] a Trump acolyte. He will defend the president to the end”
The difficulties Tony Ornato is experiencing in the media, now that his actions are coming to light, might not be entirely his fault. Trump famously ran a chaotic Administration that was chronically understaffed in part by design (all those ‘actings’ didn’t need confirmation, could be easily replaced, and the tenuousness of their situation and aspiration for confirmation guaranteed complete obedience), and in part because so few skilled people would join, or stay. Never-Trumpers denied hundreds, if not thousands, of skilled experts from service across the USG. Those that did hold their noses and attempt to serve the country (as opposed to The Leader) were either fired or chose to resign amid various controversies - many getting the axe by tweet or on cable tv.
Trump loves military and security people because they conform to his child-like idea of a tough guy - provided they always obey him of course. If they show any character or independence of mind they are immediately labeled a “low energy loser”, “sad”, “pathetic” and so on. So it should not have been a surprise that being unable to find someone to fulfill the role of Deputy White House Chief of Staff for Operations, the job was offered to someone within reach that he ‘liked’. He famously likes people only when they like him first (or have kompromat). Trump uses the same standard of evaluating a persons character and abilities as a 5 year old - basing his judgement solely on whether they feign liking him. After all, this was a man who hired random people to be senior government officials because they “looked the part” on tv or were his servile golf caddy.
Making an active duty agent a political decision maker is unprecedented. A former acting secretary of homeland security (responsible for the USSS) Rand Beers said that the Ornato appointment was “extraordinarily unusual.” Carol Leonnig observed the appointment "broke every Secret Service tradition in the book”. Trump chronicler Maggie Haberman agrees, writing that it is “highly unusual for an official from an avowedly apolitical agency to take a high-ranking job inside the White House.”
Trump loves yes-men. Ornato’s decision to break tradition and serve in a political role, his longevity in the position, his acceptance of the J6 intelligence assessment that there was no threat, his judgment on the day after discovering long guns in the crowd, and his constant denials about his side of important conversations about national security; says a lot about Ornato’s likely independence of mind. This might be unfair, but then every single person who closely associates with Trump ends up tarnished in some way or another (google ETTD). The decision to be associated with the brand says a lot about the judgement of the person concerned.
Ornato left his political job and returned to the agency once his boss failed to prevent Biden’s inauguration by becoming America’s first dictator. He is now toiling away as head of the training division. A placement that is the equivalent of being sent to Siberia for a man with his extraordinary resume. Unless of course his leader returns and Ornato’s devotion is rewarded - by appointment as director of the USSS. But only if Ornato doesn’t “rat” to the committee. If he rats, Trump wont want to be his friend anymore. Certainly, the prospect of being a made man is a great incentive for someone in Siberia wondering whether they should take a perjury bullet for their old boss.
One would be hard pressed to find a better illustration of the dire pitfalls of politicization of the USSS than the case of Tony Ornato. Both he and the institution have suffered reputational damage and yet he continues to have an incentive to do Trump’s unethical and illegal bidding into the future. As MOGUL himself would say, let’s wait and see what happens in the next episode of ‘who wants to be a flunky’.
Setting lungegate to one side, perhaps it is worth returning to the buried lede
- namely, that Trump knew all along he lost the election and he was at the center of a series of the multi-pronged efforts to lie, cheat, steal and if necessary, kill, to return to executive privilege - the only remaining protection from the legal consequences of his never ending crime spree (details below).
The politicization of the USSS in this context matters tremendously because the coup is not yet over. In addition to the Bannon ground-up, shadow-government strategy, that includes replacing apolitical election workers and Secretaries of State throughout the local and state election apparatus in contested states with Trump apparatchiks; the Supreme Court is foreshadowing they will give top cover to the Bannon strategy in overturning precedent in Moore v Harper.
Under these conditions, the only way to stop the rolling coup and resulting civil war is for the DOJ to place Trump before justice and have his conduct fully explored, in detail, under oath, in a court of law. Consequently, the allegiance of the secret service might turn out to be a factor in whether the rolling coup can be stopped or, alternatively, given a huge boost. The latter option might be something that a recently sidelined leader of the service might want to explore in order to prove his worth for promotion to director.
[Supreme Court Side Bar
As he has done with the secret service and so many other elements of the US Government, Trump has successfully politicized the Supreme Court. Trump’s judicial coup will facilitate the completion of his on-going political coup. This claim is made separate to the self-evident and total compromise of Justice Clarance Thomas. His wife is a well paid political lobbyist and true believer in the QAnon cult. She texted the White House Chief of Staff the following insanity
“Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.”
Note the present tense. One wonders how she explains away that this hasn’t happened or perhaps she thinks the White House is now full of holograms?
Her husband attempted to cover up her relentless promotion of the coup. It has been recently revealed that she worked closely with coup memo author John Eastman. No doubt he was emboldened by the knowledge that he had the tacit backing of a Supreme Court justice. In fact, that issue arose in testimony before the J6C where Eric Herschmann outlines a discussion with Eastman who attempted to argue the Court would back his plan.
In January, the Supreme Court rejected a request by Trump to block the release of his White House records to the House committee investigating Jan. 6. Clarence Thomas was the only justice to dissent, siding with Trump.
Thomas knew his wife’s extensive contacts with the Chief of staff, Eastman and others was in the documents he tried to conceal from the other branch of government. It is hard to think of a greater outrage against the constitution.
The source of considerable commentary, the Thomas’ have suffered zero consequences for their active participation in the coup attempt as both promoters of the coup and protectors of resulting legal challenges. They are no doubt emboldened and anxious to ensure that their hero never faces any judicial check on his authority in the future. They are a total disgrace and shine a light on the fatuous marketing slogan etched onto the West Pediment of the Supreme Court - namely - equal justice under the law.
Setting all of that astonishing anti-democratic political activity aside, the evidence for the claim that the Court has been suborned by Trump comes instead from the Court itself, in the form of a recent spate of contradictory and precedent-busting decisions. The one thing to remember about Trump is his stubborn, even mindless, relentlessness. He will keep waring on norms, eroding them bit by bit, until they collapse into the sea. He is the first example of a force of nature able to completely destroy the otherwise incredible product of the labors of the founding fathers - which include the constitution and universal declaration of human rights. You’ve got to hand it to him, Trump is achieving what George III, Jefferson Davis, Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin all failed to do. And he is doing it with the support of ~50% of the population eager to see democracy destroyed for their idol.
This is how Trump corrodes the rule of law and politicizes everything, including a coequal branch of government. During the first attempted coup, Trump used a variety of techniques to attempt to suborn the DOJ and through it, the Supreme Court. Trump left a door open to the creation of a Bush v Gore scenario in 2020. His appointment of Kavanaugh and Barrett related directly to their roles in support of Bush in Bush v Gore. Trump surmised from their backgrounds that these appointments would be “his” justices when called upon to support a coup. So when the Supreme Court threw out bogus election fraud cases a livid Trump attacked Justice Kavanaugh. A valuable lesson was learned and the norms of the Court were diminished a step further.
Trump’s intent to use the Court to overturn the election by creating a Bush v Gore scenario was evident months out from voting day. Having taught Kavanaugh a lesson, he then leaned on Barrett. He publicly declared he was "counting on" the Supreme Court to "look at the ballots”. Barrett was awake to Trump’s plan to use the court to steal the election. At her confirmation hearing she found it necessary to state for the record that
"I certainly hope that all members of the committee have more confidence in my integrity than to think I would allow myself to be used as a pawn to decide this election for the American people."
If arrested and convicted, the American people will likely discover in the resulting Trump v US appeal that, yet again, Barrett was lying to get the job. As a result, the United States now faces the prospect that the only way to prevent a dictatorship is through the courts. But even that option is now likely closed because Trump successfully made it “his Court”. Based on its recent spate of unreasonable decisions, the Court can be expected to dutifully overturn any decision that is not favorable to Trump. Yet again, Trump wins.]
Will the USSS, an arm of the DHS, act on a lawful arrest warrant issued by the DOJ?
Five days before Jan 6, I was asked what I thought 2021 held in store. I dashed off a quick off the cuff response as follows:
Trends vectors are bad. Supporters of President so riled up by stolen election talk that risk of violence is medium and growing. On one side they will be seen as patriots, on the other, terrorists (is the VIED in TN portentous?). China and Russia, taking advantage of turmoil in the US, will use every means and opportunity to assert their increasingly virulent interests through cloaked-warfare. The big question for 2021 is will they cross the observable war threshold? [Russia waited until 2022 to invade Ukraine and China has yet to attack Taiwan]. Authoritarianism still grows in the west and anarchy elsewhere. But aside from that, I foresee rainbows and unicorns.
Originally I had thought that the crunch would come on Inauguration Day with a sea of red hats surrounding the White House preventing The Leader’s removal. In that scenario, I could imagine the USSS splitting into pro and anti Trump camps leading to a major crisis - an armed stand off and hostage crisis at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. A national event of that magnitude would require the FBI’s hostage rescue team or possibly even a special operations force response (given the high end military protection systems under the control of the secret service at the White House, including surface to air missiles). I didn’t publish that scenario because I knew it would be criticized as alarmist and partisan.
Today, I am not concerned about being labeled an alarmist. What we now know about J6 fully justifies concern about the agency. Nor am I concerned about being dismissed as a partisan. If only one side of politics is attempting to mount a coup saying so does not make one a partisan. But such common sense positions do not make sense to the Qmob who use labeling to silence opposition to their coup plans.
These are some of the key coup activities that were suspected in the past and that have now been confirmed: the coup plot was premeditated, the Trump base and loyalists are dedicated fanatics, intelligence and national security institutions have been politicized, the Supreme Court has been politicized, Trump insiders have engaged in intimidation of witnesses, Trump fanatics of all kinds have engaged in death threats against elected officials (national and state), death threats against election workers, death threats against anyone who is not a dedicated Trump true believer, and the troubles inside the USSS have arisen in response to Trump’s impact on the allegiance of the agency to the constitution.
Therefore the question about the USSS remains essentially the same as it did when I first wrote that assessment on Jan 1, 2021.
It is logical that federal law enforcement is as politically split as the society from which it is derived. As the fact base at the head of this article shows, the strongman cult had successfully taken hold of enough members of the secret service that some were emboldened to publicly express their fealty to The Leader and The Cause in social media. If that taboo was broken, one can only imagine how water cooler talk has evolved at the agency over the years.
“There is no indication of civil disobedience.”
The insurrection was not a secret service intelligence failure. There was plentiful evidence of trouble brewing. It was a politicization failure that impacted how intelligence was comprehended. Politicization of the secret service changes the way it perceives and assesses threats. A cultural blindspot exists within the law enforcement community in general and the secret service in particular. It is hard for a community dedicated to fighting a ‘war on terror’ to come to grips with the fact that it has only really been concerned with one kind of terrorism (Islamic). Harder still for the vast majority of good law enforcement people to understand / accept that there is another kind of terrorism (christian/white nationalist/Trump cult) and it is replicating within their own ranks.
To paraphrase Upton Sinclair "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his identity depends upon his not understanding it.” It is worth repeating.
Operationally there were warnings before J6. The USSS can not plausibly claim it did not know that all of the President’s inner circle were inciting violence on his behalf for months. They cannot possibly claim that their vaunted surveillance and intelligence apparatus did not pick up the loud, constant, and savage calls for political violence on right wing social media.
All of Trumps lawyers and close associates were inciting violence from the day after the election to J6 and after. Here is a sample from just one article in the right wing Murdoch Wall Street Journal.
The day after the presidential election, Mr. Wood, a well-known lawyer and Trump supporter, drew battle lines.
“Country is on brink of civil war. Not North v. South but Truth v. Lies,” he posted on the social media site Parler. “Freedom Loving Americans are on side of truth. Socialists/Communists/Globalists are on side of lies.”
“Do you think our country is on the verge of an attempted coup/revolution in the disguise of a civil war or is it just me?” Mr. Wood wrote on Parler. “Don’t mistake a coup/revolution for a civil war.”
The same day, [Trump Lawyer, Sidney] Powell said in a Fox Business Network interview: “This is essentially a new American revolution. And anyone who wants this country to remain free needs to step up right now.”
[LTG Mike] Flynn tweeted a link to a news release from an Ohio-based conservative group that called on Mr. Trump to invoke “limited martial law” and hold a new election. Mr. Wood on Parler agreed Mr. Trump “should declare martial law.”
In a Dec. 9 interview Mr. Wood said, “I believe there will be violence in our streets soon.” Ms. Powell answered a Twitter user who asked, “How do we rise up?” She suggested, among other things, to “swarm the state capital, Congress.” Mr. Flynn retweeted her response.
On Jan 6, Mr. Wood joined the call for action. “The time has come Patriots. This is our time. Time to take back our country. Time to fight for our freedom. Pledge your lives, your fortunes, & your sacred honor…TODAY IS OUR DAY.
Other reporting confirms the above examples are not isolated cases. When Chris Krebs, a Trump appointee in charge of national cybersecurity, deemed the election “the most secure in American history,” the President fired him. Joe diGenova, Trump’s attorney, then said that Krebs
“should be drawn and quartered—taken out at dawn and shot.”
The language and imagery of violence had become normalized even among the mainstream Republican Party. The Republican National Committee urged its followers to be prepared to die for their leader.
In December, the Arizona Republican Party reposted a tweet from Ali Alexander, a chief organizer of the Stop the Steal movement, that stated, “I am willing to give my life for this fight.” The Twitter account of the Republican National Committee appended the following comment to the retweet: “He is. Are you?”
The sense that election certification day was a unique last opportunity to effect the outcome of the election was clearly understood by participants.
“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Mr. Trump tweeted on Dec. 19, just one of several of his tweets promoting the day. “Be there, will be wild!”
It was a clear focal point around which to plan, organize and act. Participants understood it for what it was. Said one,
“Bring guns. It’s now or never”.
Another echoed the sentiment,
“Get violent … stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.”
Yet another said
“It’s too late for the First Amendment—we’re exercising our Second Amendment rights this time around,”
and many others repeated the Alex Jones war cry
“1776 will commence again”.
Many openly advocated attacking the government of the United States.
"You can go to Washington on Jan 6 and help storm the Capitol," one anonymous user wrote on Jan. 5. "As many patriots as can be. We will storm the government buildings, kill cops, kill security guards, kill federal employees and agents, and demand a recount.”
Others just wanted blood.
“Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and antifa slave soldiers being spilled”.
In many cases otherwise normal citizens demonstrate how radicalized they have become in a very short period of time, such is the power of disinformation. Guy Reffitt goes from family man to radical. His statements so concerned his family that they contacted the FBI. For example,
“It’s the government that is going to be destroyed in this fight… Congress has made fatal mistakes this time.”
Pauline Bauer screamed to a police officer
"Bring Nancy Pelosi out here now. We want to hang that f***ing bitch"
Of course, it was not just individuals. Groups were as, if not more, agitated and saw an opening to advance their goals through violence. Joe Biggs, a top Proud Boys leader, wrote in a blog post shortly after the election.
“If there ever was a time for there to be a second civil war, it’s now,” he continued “Buy ammo, clean your guns, get storable food and water.”
While they were standing back and standing by waiting for the order, Biggs urged his troops
Every law makers who breaks their own stupid Fucking laws should be dragged out of office and hung.
The Oath Keepers is an organization created for current and former military and law enforcement personnel. The name is derived from the oath to protect the constitution ‘from all enemies foreign and domestic’. In the run up to 1/6, one of its leaders discussed TTPs. They knew firearms were not allowed in the District. So they planned an armed Quick Reaction Force (QRF) to be ready on the day.
“We will have several well equipped QRFs outside DC. And there are many, many others, from other groups, who will be watching and waiting on the outside in case of worst case scenarios.”
The FBI has said it does not monitor all social media looking for trouble. But that statement is not credible. It has contracts with a number of security companies that do just that. Given its charge to discover politically motivated violence before it takes place, the secret service does monitor social media. It is also involved in task forces where intelligence is routinely shared between it and the FBI. Moreover, there are 35000 employees of the FBI, 78000 in the rest of the DOJ (the FBIs home department) and 240,000 in the Department of Homeland Security. Thats over 350,000 American citizens whose task it is to stop stupid things from happening. I’d guess all of them are on, or interact with, social media in some form. Given the heavy representation of law enforcement personnel involved in J6, isn't it surprising that no one in the system saw something or said something? If J6 was planned by al Qaeda the system would have been overwhelmed with reports. The Capitol would have been surrounded with a ring of steel and there would have been a shoot first, ask questions later, energy to it all.
The day before the insurrection the FBI Norfolk field office sent a report to HQ in DC: “As of 5 January 2021, FBI Norfolk received information indicating calls for violence in response to ‘unlawful lockdowns’ to begin on 6 January 2021 in Washington, D.C.” Evidentially, unlike the rest of the FBI, Norfolk field office did have access to social media. Their report continues
“An online thread discussed specific calls for violence to include stating ‘Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled. Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.”
The FBI had also received reports two weeks before the rally from the family of Guy Reffitt which clearly showed his radicalization had progressed to a dangerous level and his intent to attend the rally armed. Reffitt can not be the only one. It should be expected that they received reports on multiple individuals from families and friends of people like Guy Reffitt.
A note on weapons. Pre J6C weapons testimony, J6 deniers constantly argued that no weapons were present and that therefore J6 was just a riot. But it was known from the start that firearms and pipe bombs were present. This quote from the text of the eponymous book behind this substack was completed over a year before the testimony of Cassidy Hutcheson on AR-15s and other firearms being known to the USSS.
There were guns and bombs present that day. Guy Reffitt admitted: “I did bring a weapon on .. federal grounds… The people that were around me were all carrying too.” There is no way to know the extent of guns present as so few were arrested (and thus padded down). At least one man was arrested with a loaded concealed handgun.
One group that were not arrested until after Jan 6 had the following weapons in their vehicle as they drove to DC: “a Glock pistol, a pocket gun, knives, bear mace, ammunition, gas masks, a stun gun, and a baton”. A federal judge in that case noted their plans to attack the Vice President and said that their pre-1/6 communications proved they "expected not only to encounter violence on January 6 but to perpetrate it”.
Inside the District of Columbia, Lonnie Coffman had “a shotgun, a rifle, three pistols and 11 Mason jar bombs inside a cooler that, if detonated, could have acted like napalm.” He had lists of the names of lawmakers and a federal judge. An FBI tipster reported “he was texting about wanting to shoot House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on TV”. Cleveland Meredith Jr was arrested with “2,500 rounds of ammunition, an assault rifle and another gun emblazoned with an American flag”.
The FBI is still hunting for the terrorist who planted “viable” pipebombs at the HQs of the DNC and RNC. Therefore there is a terrorist bomb maker still at large in DC.
Despite all of the above data, the secret service assessed that “there is no indication of civil disobedience” for a massive event planned by the President right in front of the White House. Jill Sanborn, then the FBI's top counterterrorism official, told a Senate committee 3 March "None of us had any intelligence that suggested individuals were going to storm and breach the Capitol”. So how exactly did the FBI’s top CT expert interpret the FBI report that said “glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood ..being spilled. violent..war... We get our President or we die”? Perhaps she thought that described tourism or legitimate political discourse? The former Capitol Police Chief, Steven A. Sund, testified in February before the Senate. “These criminals came prepared for war. None of the intelligence we received predicted what actually occurred.” Clearly that is simply factually incorrect.
These denials contradict Acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman’s sworn testimony to Congress
“By Jan. 4, the department knew that the Jan. 6 event would not be like any of the previous protests held in 2020,” Chief Pittman testified. “We knew that militia groups and white supremacists organizations would be attending. We also knew that some of these participants were intending to bring firearms and other weapons to the event. We knew that there was a strong potential for violence and that Congress was the target.”
Chief Pittman copped endless grief for the firearms comment. Subsequent J6C evidence proves her assessment correct. She also knew that many aggrieved and angry people would attend, that the President and his inner circle had been fanning flames via social media since the election that it was stolen and that the day “would be wild”. She knew that the
“efforts by 13 US Republican Senators to object to the Electoral college results only served to embolden the extremists and conspiracy theorists that showed up in Washington” and she judged that there was potential for a major problem.
How is it that Acting Chief Pittman had better intelligence than the secret service of threats at an event planned by the President in front of the White House?
The answer is simple. She didn’t. USCP and USSS both had access to the same data and analysis. The only difference is that the group that worked closest to Trump did not see a problem. Pittman on the other hand did. Prior to Jan 6, Pittman was the head of protective and intelligence operations. The lack of preparedness of the USCP suggest her concerns were not heeded. I will leave readers to speculate as to why a black female police leader’s prophetic assessment of a threat from white nationalists was ignored by a white male dominated law enforcement community. Tony Ornato’s assessment of the days threat was different to Pittman’s, he was on board with “there is no indication of civil disobedience” .
The reason the secret service and law enforcement generally didn’t see it coming was because the ‘Patriot’ (capital P) and ‘law enforcement’ Venn diagrams overlap. Like the society it serves, law enforcement suffers cultural blind spots. Were that not the case, the one or two dots floating up from an FBI field office in Norfolk VA pointing to Jan 6 might have been connected and taken seriously by someone other than Officer Pittman. There was a serious underestimation of the threat within law enforcement due to cultural mirroring. It was not an intelligence failure in the sense that information on a threat did not make it to the right people in time for action to be taken.
It was a failure to see, hear, and accept unwanted information.
That is a different problem. Cultural blind spots have operational consequences.
The FBI’s use of resources tells its own story. The agency divides its counter-terrorism pie up 80 to 20: 80% goes on fighting international terrorism, 20% domestic. The bureau’s own figures compiled for 2008 to 2018 indicate that the balance of threat is the exact reverse – some 73% of all extremist murders in the US in that period were by far-right terrorists, only 23% by Islamist terrorists.
Cultural blindspots also have strategic consequences. In terms of indicators and warning it does not get much blinder than this: on national television the President himself told a hard-core violent militia to “stand by” to take action in the event he lost the election. That was not a one-off statement either. The President was and is a mayhem generator and his supporters have repeatedly answered the call. The secret service have cable news and social media. Presumably the secret service was aware of the President’s incitements to violence? Or will they have the public believe they are literalists incapable of understanding word play, inference, suggestive hints, and veiled threats? That unless someone directly publicly states that they will commit a specific act of political violence at a set time and place on a set day at a set location, that they have no interest in such a person? Of course that is absurd.
The problem was they were so politicized they failed to see that the man they were there to protect was in fact the leader of a movement preparing to mount a terrorist attack on the US government.
That is the textbook definition of a cultural blind spot. It was not an intelligence failure. It was not even a failure of imagination, which was the ultimate finding of the 9/11 Commission. It was a failure of the secret service to do its most fundamental duty because it had been blinded by politicization. It was monitoring all the calls. It just didn’t think to wonder why they were all coming from inside the house. The White House.
A related problem complicating the ability of law enforcement to comprehend the threat is there was a degree of sympathy with the cause within the ranks. That has certainly been shown in the case of the secret service. Agency employee’s have come under scrutiny for political allegiances to pro-coup forces. Carol Leonnig author of Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service, commented
"There was a very large contingent of Donald Trump's detail who were personally cheering for Biden to fail," she said. "Some of them even took to their personal media accounts to cheer on the insurrection and the individuals rioting up to the Capitol, as patriots.”
Other media accounts support this observation
The Secret Service indicated Monday that it was investigating an officer who posted comments on Facebook in which she accused lawmakers who formalized Biden’s win of treason and echoed Trump’s conspiracy theories about the rigging of the election. Social-media posts have already landed at least one officer in the uniformed division under investigation since the siege; according to The Washington Post, the officer urged “patriots” to go on the “offense” to secure victory for Donald Trump.
A former FBI agent who infiltrated white supremacists groups has written extensively on law enforcement sympathy with right wing extremism. He cites some concerning examples, to include an instruction at a Joint Terrorism Task Force not to share information with local law enforcement because there were known sympathizers in their ranks. This author has had discussions on these issues with retired FBI officials, one of whom said “Yes, I agree. Unfortunately, many people think [supporting Trump is] patriotism”. If that does not prove politicization, what does?
The trouble for the secret service does not end there. A bigger problem is they knew of, and indulged, Trump’s interactions with paramilitary figures as he planned J6. If the service wanted to refine their intelligence assessment on J6 they could have interviewed extremists leaders from the comfort of their White House offices. The USSS gave clearance for extremists to visit the White House, attend rally’s, and possibly to dine with the President.
USSS grants paramilitary street thug last minute Access to White House hours before he goes off and gets involved in a stabbing?
The secret service made a rushed special exception, likely at the behest of a senior official, when it allowed convicted felon Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, to join a “white house tour” at the “last minute” on 12 Dec 2020. Tarrio was in town to attend a pro-Trump rally where his paramilitary street thugs roamed the streets brawling counterprotestors and later became involved in a stabbing incident.
Tarrio is now awaiting trial on charges of seditious conspiracy for “opposing the lawful transfer of presidential power by force”.
A former Trump White House official told Salon that generally felons are “denied [entry], unless a senior member of the administration intervenes”. This was not the first time Tarrio has been close to Trump. In Feb 2019, he attended a Trump rally and was placed by the secret service immediately behind the president in the camera frame. They may or may not have met, but the master of stagecraft knew the signals he was sending with this access and placement of the paramilitary leader. Look at how much time and effort the Apprentice co-producer spends on the placement of a glass of water in a tv interview. Trump knew Tarrio was there, had him placed in shot, and delighted at the message it was sending to his paramilitary forces whom he later ordered to stand by in the event he lost the election.
The White House visit might have passed unnoticed except Tarrio plastered it all over his social media, prompting the White House to issue a statement that Tarrio did not meet the president. It made no reference to meeting with staff. Quite the lawyerly subterfuge from the press office. Unless the US Secret Service databases all blacked out that week and their intelligence analysts all called in sick, the idea that the criminal head of the violent Proud Boys movement just happened to luck out and get on a last-minute random tour is simply laughable.
It would not have been lost on all Tarrio’s extremist buddies (many of whom have criminal records) that he somehow got through advanced screening and checkpoints on the day in question. They would know that his visit was either a massive security blunder or high level endorsement of Tarrio and the organization he represented.
In fact, if you were plotting the violent overthrow of the government that depended on head-kickers to lead a mob to murder political opponents, the imagery of “your domestic terrorist” wandering the halls of the White House would be the ultimate closer. One thing Trump understands all too well is endorsements. One thing the USSS knew for sure, Tarrio presented no threat to the President or his staff.
Joe Biggs, another Proud Boys leader who has also been charged with seditious conspiracy, posted to social media that he had dinner with Trump and Sen Lindsey Graham on Nov. 17, 2019. Salon posted the following account with corroboration from right wing journalist Cassandra Fairbanks, who tweeted confirmation of the meeting with Lindsey.
As to Trump’s participation Salon noted
Biggs posted"awaiting @realDonaldTrump to have dinner with us," and "about to see @RealDonaldTrump at the Trump International DC." No documented evidence exists of a meeting, but Trump was in fact slated to be at the hotel that evening, according to his official White House schedule, which noted that he would give "remarks at a fundraising committee reception" at 8 p.m.
It is hard to imagine Graham being there without the promise of his idol turning up.
The secret service would have run checks on Biggs. Had they done so they would have found an extensive rap sheet. Again, it would have been unusual for the agency to green light someone with a criminal history to be near their protectee. Perhaps the service had some degree of professional respect for the proud boys who had provided close personal protection for key leaders in Trump world like General Flynn and Roger Stone?
Having said that, in fairness to the secret service, given all of the criminals in Trump’s circle, perhaps USSS standards simply had to adapt to the new reality of Trump world teeming with fraudsters, spies, white nationalists, and democracy-hating head-kicking street brawlers?
The Daily Mail, a London gossip rag and purveyor of bikini-clad celeb click bait, even had a feature on Tarrio’s exciting and extensive GOP social life. His social days are now over. The only mingling he is currently engaged in is with other domestic terrorists on seditious conspiracy charges for “opposing the lawful transfer of presidential power by force”.
There is no way J6 can be called an intelligence failure. The storm troops were rilled up and told to stand by. A massive rally was planned a short walk from the Capitol the day Congress was due to certify election results. A political messaging machine went into overdrive to agitate loyalists from the day after the election. J6 was predictable. It was predicted in a strategic sense. Scholars wrote books on the question. Rigged election talk was a feature of 2016. The ‘Stop the Steal’ propaganda campaign was cooked up by Roger Stone in 2016 for the anticipated loss. It went into hibernation and was then repurposed for 2020. In 2016 candidate Trump said he would accept the results only if he won. He used exactly the same rhetoric in 2020 adding that he would not commit to a peaceful transfer of power. He routinely made “jokes” about having more than two terms. He later dropped the pretense and just demanded a third term. J6 was a rehearsal. The secret service was culturally blind to the threat. It may have been so politicized that it enabled the threat. Perhaps the J6C will shed new light on that question?
J6C likely to reveal paramilitary links direct to Trump
Next week the J6C investigates the linkages between the Administration to the Proud Boys and other paramilitary organizations that were the tip of the spear in the attack on Congress. Civil War II anticipates that the committee might reveal that the Tarrio White House visit was part of a coordinated plan to show support for the paramilitary forces being organized by Trump and his inner circle. There is always the chance the visit was something more? It would not be a surprise if Tony Ornato’s name surfaces again in connection to the permissions granted to Tarrio and Biggs to be around the President. The committee will almost certainly show direct links between Trump and Tarrio, Rhodes, et al, via Mike Flynn and Roger Stone, who along with Steve Bannon and Rudi Giuliani, were in the Willard “war room”. This was the same war room the White House Chief of Staff was warned against visiting by Cassidy Hutchinson. Nevertheless, Mark Meadow’s still called in to discuss J5 ‘strategy’ with the hotel room generals.
Will an arrest order for the former President be the Fort Sumter of the 21st C?
Like all former presidents, Trump continues to be protected by a secret service detail. If the DOJ gives the order to arrest Trump, the foregoing analysis suggests that it is not impossible to rule out Trump loyalists inside the secret service mounting an armed resistance. In fact, Civil War II judges the likelihood of such an outcome to be medium to high. Pro-Trump propaganda is filled with calls for violence in support of the leader. There are segments of the law enforcement community who will see participation in ‘protecting my President’ as their patriotic duty that also coincides with their mistaken interpretation of the mission of the USSS. If that happens, what will be the cascading consequences? Will the damage be localized? Or will the USSS split into opposing sides? Will other law enforcement branches of the US Government split on the same lines once they are called upon to intervene? What about the military?
This is why politicization of the secret service is so dangerous.
Don’t rock the boat - don’t arrest Trump
These unanswered questions expose a much more serious issue. Discussion is already circulating that Attorney General Merrick Garland must refrain from ordering the arrest of the former President for fear that it might trigger a split right across the security apparatus of the USG. Things are already so precarious that Generals are publicly discussing the role of the US military in the next stage of the coup.
Civil War II has long held that the leadership of the DOJ is concerned that a split in law enforcement that turns violent might be one of the possible tipping points for a wider conflict in society as a whole. In other words, Merrick Garland will not act for fear that he can not trust his law enforcement officials to do their duty. That an arrest order for the former President might become the Fort Sumter of the 21st C.
Already there have been detailed discussions in the public domain about the possible use of “prosecutorial judgement” in the Trump case to avoid such a scenario. The crux of the issue is as follows: something can be illegal and there is probable cause to make an arrest, but a prosecutor has the authority to do nothing if inaction is in the greater interests of stability and order.
Counter arguments have been presented that in light of the overwhelming eye-witness testimony presented by the Jan 6 Select Committee (which is only about half way done), the AG has no choice but to seek multiple indictments for the extraordinary criminal conduct presented by the committee thus far. To turn a blind eye at this point would be, in and of itself, an incitement to crime. The sense of growing lawlessness that pervades the country would be sharply exacerbated if the DOJ refused to apply its mantra of ‘no one is above the law’. Trump, his family, immediate circle, and his movement, have all engaged in an overwhelming crime spree that is unprecedented in American political history.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) - a non-partisan think tank has conducted a survey of available evidence against the former President and discovered so much data that they found it it necessary to tabulate the results! Focusing only on federal crimes for which Trump is allegedly personally responsible they claim
Donald Trump has been credibly accused of committing at least 48 criminal offenses while he was serving as President of the United States or campaigning for that office.
The CREW table eclipses what Civil War II has reported to date. It should be compared to this well researched astonishing catalogue of 1,056 Trump “cruelties, collusions, and crimes”.
Public appetite for holding Trump accountable is also growing, making it difficult for the DOJ to do nothing. Nearly 6 in 10 people now believe Trump should be charged. If that number stays stable or grows, as the committee continues to present its evidence, then like it or not the DOJ will have to act.
Why the DOJ has not Acted
It is easy to see, comprehend and act on the commission of a single crime. A handful of crimes adds complexity but law enforcement and the DOJ are capable of managing major cases. But what about a crime spree? Multiple crimes, in multiple jurisdictions, involving multiple people, with countless witnesses, with crimes being committed in multiple categories (fraud, election fraud, mail fraud, financial fraud, election rigging, witness intimidation, stolen classified documents) spread out over years of intense and unrelenting criminal activity.
Coping with this complexity is one of the reasons why the J6C has done such a superb job of keeping things sufficiently simple for the public to follow. But it also explains why the media and the public get caught up in trivial tangents to the main story. Sometimes the information just becomes too hard to process. In those cases, psychology directs us to focus on a small easy to understand thing rather than try to get the big picture. It also explains how conspiracy theories flourish. This is why so much attention was spent on “lungegate”.
Prosecuting a crime spree must be incredible complex, requiring prioritization and cross-referencing of all sorts of information, people, and activities in order to maintain some kind of coherence to the process. At what point does the system get overwhelmed and come to a grinding halt? Likely the DOJ has been fighting exactly this problem and explains why it has taken so long for it to take any action against the Trump Terror Network (TTN - for a discussion of this designation see this related article here on Civil War II).
The problem for the USSS is the DOJ is now far more likely to take action than not. In which case, they better be sure they can cope with the fallout of an order to arrest one of their protectee’s.
Conclusion
The United States Secret Service has a no fail mission. National security is contingent on the continuity of government. Whether the threat is nuclear attack, a major conventional war, terrorists flying planes into buildings, or an attempted coup d'état, the service can only maintain the trust of the government and people of the United States by strict adherence to being totally apolitical in everything that it does. The service must at all times be completely independent from those it protects and from all other political pressures that might be brought to bear on it, by any enemy, foreign or domestic. Any divergence from the service’s fundamental bedrock principle of apolitical independence quickly ends in disaster. When politicization occurs, the ability of the service to see, hear and think clearly about threats is compromised. At that point, the national security of the United States is in dire jeopardy.
The president planned and executed an attempted coup d'état. The secret service could not perceive the threat to the nation because it had been totally compromised by the president. Like the rest of the country, it never imagined that a scenario ripped straight from a Tom Clancy novel would come to life. As a consequence, it assessed J6 as posing “no indication of civil disobedience” when there was overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The blindness of the agency was such that upon discovery of firearms in an agitated and aggressive mob, including assault rifles in elevated vantage points, it did not stop its protectee from standing on a stage in front of the crowd. The only way that could have happened was because, like its protectee, it knew the crowd was there to kill others. That hints towards complicity in the plan. What was the purpose of the fake DHS agents that infiltrated the USSS for years?
As they had done in social media since election day, at that moment, on that stage, Trump and his inner circle were screaming for violent vengeance against all those who opposed their coup. The focal point for this wrath was the Vice President. Pence knew he was the primary target for assassination. The day before his staff warned the secret service the president was the threat. The Vice President did not trust his own secret service detail. He knew the secret service would prevent him from fulfilling his duties to certify the election because that is what Trump wanted at all costs.
The secret service has failed its mission. It has been fundamentally compromised. It may still be compromised leaving the United States at risk of a major national security crisis that could yet result in war. A direct threat to the continuity of government was planned and executed by the President of the United States supported by violent armed militias acting on his orders. The next two members of the continuity of government, the Vice President and the Speak of the House of Representatives, along with any other members of congress who validated the certification of the legitimate 2020 election, were the target of an armed mob sent by the president to the Congress for the express purpose of violently eliminating resistance to his plan to take power by force once the fake election scheme failed.
The greatest threat to the national security this nation has ever known since 1860 (because it comes from within and is supported by ~50% of a heavily armed population), has not abated. In fact, it is escalating. The window of opportunity for Trump to complete the coup and regain sanctuary from the consequences of his myriad and unending crimes against the constitution and people of the United States, is rapidly closing. On one side is the law - the J6C, DOJ and various state prosecutors. On the other, the lawless - a fanatical political party, a politicized judiciary and a Qanon-radicalized base backed by paramilitary forces. The law is taking a painfully long time to move against the threat but its deliberative and methodological approach is starting to show its hand. The lawless have been activity stacking local and state election functions with apparatchiks ready to throw any future election to themselves. They are being supported by a politicized judiciary that, like the secret service and ~50% of the national legislature, has been completely compromised by politicization.
It may already be to late to even attempt to enforce the law. Even if the law acts before the lawless take political power for themselves, there is no guarantee that the dictator and his cabal will be surrendered without a fight by what has become a praetorian guard. An armed resistance by splinter groups within the secret service and/or other branches of law enforcement, may well be the tipping point for the outbreak of a wider conflagration. The second civil war will resemble ‘the troubles’ in Northern Ireland at the low intensity end of the spectrum and the insurgency in Iraq at its peak in 2006. As the war deteriorates there will be all sorts of consequences at home and abroad. Just remember America is a nuclear superpower.
Tom Clancy foreshadowed 9/11 with a hijacked plane crashing into the dome of the US Capitol eliminating the entire line of succession in the continuity of government. Not even Clancy could cook up the Trump plot line, its just too ridiculous. A failed businessman turned TV game show host, with billion dollar debts, is bailed out by Russian mobsters acting as cut outs for the Kremlin. Then the game show host, boosted by Kremlin manipulation of social media and with his campaign run by a Kremlin stooge, gets elected President. Before he is able to destroy NATO for Moscow (which already invaded Ukraine), he loses the next election. Based on the advice of his drunken buddy on election night, he just wings it and says he won the election. His lawyers cook up all sorts of fancy lies about his massive win but none of it sticks. So he decides to mount a coup. But his VP has to along with the scheme. Plot twist - the otherwise totally facile lapdog finds his courage at the last minute and refuses to coup, so the game show host, who is loved and adored by paramilitary fascists, decides to whip up a mob and send them to the Congress to assassinate his VP and anyone else who does not sign up to the coup. The plot discovered, and the law closing in, the only thing thats stands between him and dictatorship is a broken secret service unwilling to let him face justice without a fight. Will their battles with the FBI sent to arrest the dictator trigger a new civil war? Wait and see in the next episode of ‘this used to be a serious country’.
Just because it is wilder than anything even the fecund mind of Tom Clancy could create, does not mean is it not happening all around you. Dont be like the secret service. Dont be hoodwinked by the endless constant pressure of the infantile petulant tyrant throwing food and demanding his way. It is because it is such a joke on its face that it is likely to beguile the most serious thinkers and actually work.
Updates
This was the first story in what is becoming a series. It was followed in order by -
Posts
Comment
I sent this out in the morning of 21 July
and it was followed up with
Details of the story include this
House committee officials said that some members of the Secret Service have hired private lawyers. A person familiar with the statement said that Mr. Ornato was one of those who did.
It was later confirmed these are criminal defense attorneys so not connected to providing evidence to the J6C so much as preparing to defend against charges arising from this new criminal investigation.
J6C Hearing 21 July 2022
It was revealed that Pence’s detail thought they were going to die and were leaving messages for their families. This completely outraged me.
This is an exceptional piece of investigative and analytical writing.
I do have one question: with regards to “there is no indication of civil disobedience” would it be correct to say that the statement in question was solely attributed to Ornato and was unaccompanied by any documentation supporting his statement?
I ask this because given his current LinkedIn account details he has two "Interests" that fall under the "Company" category, (https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-ornato-4272972a0/details/interests) that are of telling interest to anyone investigating his connections to Trumpism.
One interest is "Elon Musk" while the other more significant interest is the "America First Policy Institute" which is a de facto primary Trump support organization;
which in light of the following interesting item you have penned in your essay, "Ornato was the agent that disputed General Keith Kellogg's account about USSS plans to spirit VP Pence to Joint Base Andrews. In response to the denial, Kellogg has written in glowing terms about Ornato ending with “I would take his sworn testimony to the bank” (emphasis added). At the time of writing no such sworn testimony has been tended and it may be inferred from Kellogg’s artful response that he suspects none will be forthcoming."
This is of genuinely significant importance given that Lt. General Keith Kellogg is a former Co-Chair, Center for American Security America First Policy Institute. (https://www.americafirstpolicy.com/team/keithkellogg)
You have documented many parts very well. Except I would say that you've not covered the "religious" aspect of it well enough for readers to truly grasp the danger we are in. It is safe to say that to some extent the church has been corrupted. I personally dont believe all involved knew, or know of the expected results of the plans of those eager to steal our govt. But they follow the leader for even a single reason, and apparently for a long time now have directly or indirectly advised congregations on whom to vote for. If I had faith left in any area of our govt., even though it's all pretty terrifying I would not be terrified. But with the release of the J6 comm report it's clear to me that elected officials think its ok to carry on with business as usual. Ommittimg or otherwise protecting those in the ultra privileged classes from the report. They were my last hope. DOJ is clearly not doing what many Americans believe they are, or say they do as a cover to do nothing to save us.