lpetrich
Contributor
'That's why we have an Insurrection Act' - Aug 07, 2023
Then getting into fake-electors schemes. After describing Mike Pence's refusal to go along with fake electors,In late 2020, when it was clear that he had lost, Trump started spreading lies that the election was fraudulent, despite being told by his own advisors that there was no basis for believing this. A Trump campaign advisor complained about having to defend “conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership”.
Then talking about a possible second Civil War.However, not everyone in Trump’s circle was so principled. The most hair-raising line of the indictment is a transcript of a conversation between White House deputy counsel Patrick Philbin and a person identified as “Co-conspirator #4″—widely believed to be Jeffrey Clark, a Trump crony in the Justice Department.
Philbin argued that if Trump succeeded with his scheme, there would be riots in every major American city. Clark/Co-conspirator 4 said:
“…that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”
Sit with these words for a minute.
Then talking about his followers attacking Congress on January 6.As I said at the time, it’s no exaggeration to say that a competent fascist could have overthrown the United States government in 2020. We came right up to the edge of killing democracy and turning the country over to a military junta.
It’s possible the military would have refused to follow these orders if Trump had given them—but at minimum, we’d have been plunged into a massive constitutional crisis. And what would have happened if some branches of the military had gone along with the scheme while others refused? Blue states claiming Trump wasn’t president while red states claimed he was? It could have ignited a second Civil War.
Either way, we escaped by the skin of our teeth.