Trump Orders Assassination of a US Official
Trump Orders Assassination of a US Official
Enough is enough
Washington DC 5 July 2023
Another blatant call for violence from Trump - this time to assassinate federal prosecutor Jack Smith. This is in addition to past threats against officers of the Court and Federal officials. For example, the judge who issued the search warrant for MAL had to go into hiding with his family. Gabriel Sterling said before Jan 6, this has to stop before someone gets killed. After two years of no consequences, we can now add: this has to stop before Court officials are assassinated. This is not sui generis. Trump has an established track record of inciting violence and his followers have an established track record of acting on his orders. This is on top of the climate of constant threats of violent retribution that has taken over US politics.
Enough is enough. Trump should be charged with the crime of threatening a federal official and held in pre-trial detention. Tolerance for his intolerance has to end. How many times will he be allowed to order his paramilitary forces to kill on his behalf while the DOJ sits idle?
The Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haas, has said Trump is the greatest threat facing the United States - more dangerous than terrorists, China, or Russia - a position that will be familiar to readers of CWII. Stunningly however, the system evidently still cant quite accept the reality of the threat. This is a clear and present danger to US national security and needs to be treated as such with the urgency it deserves.
Did we broadcast daily chants of “Death to America” by bin Laden when he lived in luxury in California two years after 9/11? What will it take for people to wake up? If J6 was not enough, will a lone wolf sniper putting Jack Smith “out to rest” be enough? Had Pence been hanged on J6, would anything have been different? The normalization of Trump’s stochastic terrorism1 , serial criminality, and destruction of norms of peaceful political conduct has to stop. It is an open, festering, gangrenous, scar on our nation that only gets worse with inaction.
The Law on Threatening a Federal Official
The law is pretty clear cut.
Threatening officials [like a Federal prosecutor] is a Class D or C felony, usually carrying maximum penalties of 5 or 10 years under 18 U.S.C. § 875, 18 U.S.C. § 876 and other statutes… [When national boundaries are transcended by such a threat, it is considered a terrorist threat.]
There are three elements of the offense of making an illegal threat:
(i) there must be a transmission in interstate commerce; [check]
(ii) there must be a communication containing the threat; [check]
(iii) and the threat must be a threat to injure the person of another. [check]
In determining what constitutes a true threat, the courts hold that what must be proved is that a reasonable recipient of the communication would consider it a threat under the circumstances. [check]
Trump Threats and Their Consequences
Trump made a true threat here in his mob-boss 'wink-wink' way. This is of a piece with “stand back and stand by” and “will be wild”. His paramilitaries know precisely what he is saying. As one of his terrorist followers told another pre-J6
Immediately after “stand back and stand by” Proud Boys were jubilant:
“Armed and Ready, Mr. President,”
“President Trump told the proud boys to stand by because someone needs to deal with ANTIFA … well sir! We’re ready!!” wrote one Proud Boy. “Trump basically said to go f— them up! this makes me so happy,” he continued.
“Standing by, sir,” another man wrote in the chat.
Recruitment skyrocketed. None of these people are particularly bright but they all immediately understood the “coded message”. The usual Trump defenses of ‘it was just a joke’ or ‘it was the perfect tweet, I never told anyone to do anything wrong’ should by now be taken for what they are - a smoke screen that works only on willing dummies.
Weeks after stand-back and stand-by, Trump gives his paramilitaries the target, date and time:
“I’LL BE THERE, AND I’LL BE WILD, SIR!!!” wrote user ‘donaldismydad’ on TheDonald.win.
"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."
“[T]here is not enough cops in DC to stop what is coming,”
“[W]aiting for Trump to say the word,” a person said, and “this is what Trump expects,” exclaimed another.
After a Dec. 19 post on TheDonald.win titled "How do I join the Proud Boys?" the most popular response was by the user ‘eplettner’: "Come to DC on January 6th."
Users posted pictures of flights and buses full of Trump supporters en route to D.C. for the event on Jan. 6. One user, who called themself ‘2021is1776’ posted a picture of his hotel room full of weapons and tactical gear.
Multiple Calls for Violence and Civil War
In addition to the J6 event, every stage of Trump federal legal cases have been accompanied by calls for violence and civil war by Trump and elected politicians.
Following the search warrant executed at MAL - the right wing went berserk. This is the epitome of the erosions of norms often mentioned on Civil Wars II. The kind of rhetoric we saw in the lead up to J6 on fascist channels is now all over mainstream social media.
Jack Posobiec told his 1.8 million Twitter followers that the “federal security state has declared war on Donald J Trump and his supporters.” The picture below captures the reactions of just a few mainstream fascist political leaders and B grade commentators in the first hours after the search.
“I already bought my ammo”
“Civil war! Pick up arms, people!”
“Civil War 2.0 just kicked off.”
“Let’s do the war.”
“One step closer to a kinetic civil war.”
The ideation in favor of extremism and violence is much worse inside the more restricted world of far right social media like the chans and telegram.
“Time to take the gloves off,” far-right activist and GOP congressional candidate Laura Loomer wrote on her telegram channel. “It’s been time. If you’re a freedom-loving American, you must remove the words decorum and civility from your vocabulary. This is a WAR! And it’s time to obliterate these communists.”
Vice news reports that
The top comment on the main thread about the raid on Tuesday morning was: “Lock and load.” In the same thread, another user wrote: “It certainly feels like they’re treating it as a hot civil war. When this is all said and done, the people responsible for these tyrannical actions need to be hanged.”
For more examples see these past CWII reports:
Today’s Threat
That history is the backdrop of todays incitment:
Put-out (put-down “like a dog”), rest (in peace), get tough (fight like hell) - the word-salad rhetoric is boringly familiar. Only an idiot would defend this language as not inciting violence. Especially in light of the long sordid track record of Trump and his supporters - in Congress and the media who have all engaged in various degrees of stochastic terrorism.2
The danger is magnified because America has been numbed to the threat. Thats a very vulnerable place to be. The reality is anyone else doing this would have been locked up years ago. The foot soldiers that previously answered the call have been tried and convicted - some for sedition. Some say those convictions have scared off future violence. Trump called for violence for his NYC court appearance and nothing happened. The NYPD is as big as the Dutch Army (35,000+) and Manhattan hates Trump. More surprising was no action in Miami - far fewer cops and in a deeply Maga state. It may be fear of prison or insufficient time to plan an assault.
Absence of terrorism does not absolve the call for assassination of a federal prosecutor by The Leader of the “Law and Order” party. Like everything else with Trump and Maga, it is all Orwellian double-speak where the opposite is reality. Trump terrorists may have been scared off or they may be planning something big for a future milestone - like conviction.
The Next McVeigh
A Timothy McVeigh is most likely out there and thinking hard about the biggest impact he can have in the service of his ever more desperate Leader. Hundreds, if not over a thousand, highly trained military snipers have returned from twenty years of futile and frustrating war to a country that says nice things but does not care. A similar number of law enforcement snipers are also moving through the system. Following the pattern of the general population, 50% will be Trump supporters. Of those, a small percentage 1-2% may have become radicalized. Thats possibly 20.3
The only way to disempower the leader of a terrorist movement is to subject them to the rule of law. The 14th Amendment of the constitution is doubly applicable here. First the equal protection clause means Trump’s ongoing incitements to radical violence must be treated like any other defendant in a case before a Federal court. None of this activity would stand in any other case. In addition, with his own long range jet airliner, and open welcome in non-extradition states like Russia (where he has long sought business opportunities), Trump is the personification of a flight risk. Secondly, he should be disqualified from office immediately based on his track record of dishonoring his oath of office.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Jack Smith and his family are at risk. The threat is out in the open and clearly documented. There is an established track record of this defendant calling for, and receiving, violent support for his my myriad criminal and terroristic activities against the United States of America.
The DOJ must act now before more blood is shed.
This level of delusion is extremely dangerous. If someone with military skills is this far gone anything is possible - see video at the link
https://twitter.com/HotMoozik/status/1676314741894176768?s=20
Stochastic terrorism is “the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted.”
Here’s the idea behind stochastic terrorism:
A leader or organization uses rhetoric in the mass media against a group of people.
This rhetoric, while hostile or hateful, doesn’t explicitly tell someone to carry out an act of violence against that group, but a person, feeling threatened, is motivated to do so as a result.
That individual act of political violence can’t be predicted as such, but that violence will happen is much more probable thanks to the rhetoric.
This rhetoric is thus called stochastic terrorism because of the way it incites random violence.
Idiots will argue about literalism v coded messages. As noted above, those who seek violent solutions on behalf of “The Leader” understand all too well how to decode the thinly veiled orders. People have died and not just on J6. CWII’s annual predictions noted the most likely attacks will be lone wolves and there have been many of those.
The most well known is the fanatic who shot up the FBI office after the MAL search warrant, egged on by Fox News talking heads and Maga members of Congress.
As a former DOD civilian, almost all CWII’s friends are veterans. Yet the facts are hard to ignore. A disproportionate number of J6 defendants are veterans. McVeigh was a disillusioned veteran. Through no fault of their own, veterans are an abused population. A small percentage of whom can be vulnerable to manipulation. Ashlii Babbit is a classic case in point. The issue is not that they served the nation, its the skills they gained along the way.