The heat is turning up on anyone who left fingerprints on the failed Jan. 6th coup plot. By now, the guilty and the merely nervous are likely gaming out three or four options. Link arms in a wall of silence (or plead the Fifth) hoping to stymie investigators until Republicans can retake the House in 2022 and quash investigations; keep their heads down and hope to escape notice; cooperate with investigators and hope to escape accountability; or mount a second attempt at electing Donald Trump in 2024 through election-rigging in the states.
All of those are in play. Trump confidants Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, John Eastman, and Jeffrey Clark are going the wall-of-silence route. Former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows is trying to both cooperate and not cooperate. Hundreds of unnamed witnesses have already provided depositions to the Jan. 6 committee led by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.). The evidence the committee has already must be voluminous and potentially damning.
Matt Ford of The New Republic considers what is happening outside the Beltway where Trump World is running amuck with or without Trump:
The New York Times reported recently that pro-Trump loyalists who believe the election was stolen have been running for the thousands of local offices that keep the democratic machinery running, sometimes without facing challengers or serious opposition. A November survey by NPR found that only 36 percent of Republicans think that elections are fairly administered and that 38 percent of them won’t believe the 2024 election results if their preferred candidate loses. As a result, some of them appear to be taking that belief to its logical conclusion and taking over their local election boards.
Trump himself is also working to tilt election administration in key states in his favor. In Georgia, where Republican governor Brian Kemp and secretary of state Brad Raffensperger spurned Trump’s calls to block certification or “find votes” in 2020, the former president is backing primary challengers who supported his false voter-fraud claims last year. Axios reported last week that Trump is also trying to remake Michigan’s GOP legislative majority in his image while backing sympathetic candidates for secretary of state offices in key battleground states. If his preferred candidates prevail, it will significantly raise the likelihood that Trump and his allies will overturn or compromise the results next time.
There are more subtle perils that are no less insidious. Conservative politicians and pundits have slowly shifted from denouncing the January 6 rioters to describing them in more sympathetic terms. Some of them are sending unmistakable signals that political violence may be justified in the near-future to their supporters and listeners. And I noted last week that proposals to install Trump as House speaker if Republicans retake the chamber in next year’s midterms could have catastrophic implications for how the 2024 presidential election is conducted.
The PowerPoint plotters may have been crackpots, Dana Milbank acknowledges, but next time they might not be as slapdash in their planning. “They had the will, and possibly the means, to overthrow the 2020 election, but the would-be coup was attempted by clowns: Sidney “Kraken” Powell, the MyPillow guy, Rudy Giuliani of Four Seasons Total Landscaping, and now one Jovan Hutton Pulitzer,” Milbank writes. He describes Pulitzer’s adventures in failed inventions and archaeological crackpottery in several paragraphs, citing a supposed Roman sword found in Nova Scotia that Pulitzer asserts possesses “magical” magnetic properties.
Milbank cautions (Washington Post):
It’s tempting to dismiss charlatans such as Pulitzer, and Trump aides such as Meadows who relied on crackpots. But it’s little comfort that democracy was saved only by the bumbling of the coup plotters.
Next time, we may not be so lucky. And if you don’t think that’s a real threat, I’d like to sell you an ancient Roman sword I found near Halifax.
Stockton and Lawrence (and many other MAGAs) may have sincerely believed Trump’s “steal” bullshit, just as they believed his Russia hoax and Covid hoax claims, just as True the Vote and others believe hundreds of thousands of Them vote illegally, vote twice, and impersonate dead people every election. It’s crazy, but it’s not simply a strategem for all of them. But what Jan. 6 proved was that gathering thousands of pissed-off conspiracy theorists in one place is highly combustible. Throw on accelerant in the form of speeches exhorting them to “fight like hell” and add a spark — send them marching to the U.S. Capitol — and what did they think would happen?
Those who spent hours suggesting options for retaining power to Trump in the Oval Office or in the office of Mark Meadows knew exactly what might happen. They assembled the fuel, threw on accelerant, applied the spark, and fanned the flames. Trump sat watching it all on television, doing nothing.
Trump believes his own bullshit and is unbalanced besides. He has no qualms about turning the country into his own fiefdom, if he can. Next time, the direct plotters will be more methodical about it. And those whose political careers (and freedom) are in jeopardy today will help.