Strange things have been known to happen between election day and inauguration day. It seems this pattern is repeating itself. Like any pattern, understanding lies in remembering the past.
I call attention to events at the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco Texas. The ATF began investigating and attempting to infiltrate the Davidian’s in May of 1992. Bill Clinton took office on January 20th, 1993. The ATF shootout that kicked off the siege was on February 28th.
George Bush Sr assisted Clinton in dealing with the situation and even appeared on TV with him. It may be that Bush Sr wasn’t aware of the ATF project and did Clinton a righteous by participating. William Barr (former AG during Bush’s term) assisted the AG Janet Reno. It was rumored Barr actually forced her out of her own office in his exuberance to help out. Barr wrote the justification for the Federal governments actions at Waco as he did for the FBI at Ruby Ridge.
Later, Janet Reno opened an investigation of the FBI and had Federal Marshal’s raid their offices. Here’s the point. The whole thing was carefully timed. It was prepared before, then executed during, a Democratic president’s term.
Let’s consider the protests and forced entry into the White House on the day the Electoral Vote was tallied and confirmed. This ill advised event was planned out by some right wing activists. These guys were able to foment enough discontent with the election of Biden to go to DC and forcefully enter the presidential residence and Congressional buildings. Who are they? Whatever possessed them?
The National Guard was noticeably absent. There were fore warnings of this protest. Then chief of the Capitol Police, Steven Sund, requested assistance six times and was denied (NPR). He claims he asked ahead of time for a Guard presence but House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving had declined suggesting he inform the command so they would be available on short notice. He did so. Sund has since resigned his post.
The protesters were obviously showing their discontent based on the belief that Biden didn’t really win the election. They are wrong. Biden won by an historically significant margin. 7 million votes. Their belief the election had been rigged was false.
Starting investigations into election fraud are not without warrant (The Federalist). Statistically speaking there was definitely some fraud. Over 1,000 cases of voter fraud have been prosecuted in the past 20 years. The question is was it enough to throw the election. The answer is no.
One example of voter fraud was New Mexico in 2004. GW Bush received votes from the dead and from children. This and other irregularities made a case for groups to challenge the election results. The challengers raised the required $200,000 and filed. The filing was declined by then Governor Bill Richardson (see RawStory and this previous blog) on grounds that changing the state’s results wouldn’t affect the outcome of the national elections. The fee was raised to $2 million in the next legislative session.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million votes. The results of the electoral college put Donald Trump in office. As this Washington Post article points out; 80,000 people in three states made his win possible. Researchers found online voting machines were easy to hack (engadget) and others found 3 dozen voting systems were online in 2020 (NBC). We can assume the problem was worse in 2016. It is easy to see how someone who was good at math could have hacked the right places, with just enough votes, to put Trump into office. Could this have been accomplished with a popular vote loss of 7 million? Less likely.
Either way, Trump lost the popular vote in both elections. We should get rid of the electoral college. It is obviously a vulnerable part of our democratic process.
Because of Trump’s unprecedented win investigations into online web hosts like Facebook, and calls for censorship of their content, immediately followed. Stupid. Even with the alleged online pro Trump propaganda (said to be from Putin‘s boys) he didn’t win the popular vote. In other words, online propaganda didn’t put Trump into office.
What is the endgame with these demonstrations? These people unwittingly participated in a charade. They were talked into joining the protest partially by online influencers of unknown alignment. Those protesters were not stopped by the National Guard troops that should have been in place. They weren’t repelled later by Guardsmen who were supposedly on call.
In the future, when vote fraud is suspected by the right or the left, the claims will be easily dismissed as radicalism.
It’s getting close to Inauguration Day. Because of last weeks protests there is security all over DC. This is prudent. What could go wrong?
A violent protest would be an excuse for the establishment to institute a crack down on “domestic extremists” or anyone they want to arrest and label a domestic extremist. It could also be used as a sales pitch for anti 2nd amendment legislation.
An extremely violent protest or a terrorist act could result in a government crackdown or a declaration of marshal law.
A terrorist act, no matter who creates it, would probably be blamed on MAGA types or Q types.
Any reaction by the government would be blamed on the Democrats.
Notice how none of it would be blamed on the Neo Cons.