Jack Smith’s extensive filing has been yielding up veritable jewels of information on the utter corruption of the first Trump administration and the horrific plans that were in place for a second administration. We are blessed that this information is coming out now, a month before voting day, and I sincerely hope that this level of detail does not get lost in the sheer volume of Trump news. The problem with Trump has always been that he is such an anomaly, and his organization, his family and his administration were so utterly different and corrupt, compared to anything that we’ve seen before in American politics, that it all washes over us like an ocean wave. The particulars get lost and it’s crucial that they don’t. Marcy Wheeler has done an outstanding job of fleshing out the details:Bear in mind, this was all four years ago, at this time in the fall, and this is where we could have gone as a nation. And this is also where we could plummet to in a few months, if America is stupid enough to put Trump back in office.
On December 13, [Chesebro] sent [Rudy] a memorandum that envisioned a scenario in which Pence would use the fraudulent slates as a pretext to claim that there were dueling slates of electors from the targeted states and negotiate a solution to defeat Biden.312 On the same day, the defendant resumed almost daily direct contact with [Bannon,] who maintained a podcast that disseminated the defendant’s false fraud claims.313 On December 14, [Bannon’s] podcast focused on spreading lies about the defendant’s fraudulent electors—including the false claim that their votes were merely a contingency in the event the defendant won legal challenges in the targeted states.314 [my emphasis]
Let me make something explicit to serve as background for a post on what fuckery we might expect in the next month or so.
- October 31: “He’s gonna declare himself a winner.” J6C (Originally sourced to MoJo)
- November 13: “Trump just fired.”
- December 13: Bannon resumes daily contact.
- December 14: Alternate electors. J6C
- January 2: “The Vice President’s role is not “ministerial.” J6C
- January 2: Trump wanted Pence briefed by Eastman immediately.
- January 4: Pre-Pence Willard Hotel meeting, from which Rudy calls Trump.
- January 4: Post-Pence Willard Hotel meeting.
- January 5: “Fuck his lawyer.”
- January 5: Call with Trump before “All hell is going to break loose.” J6C
Between the period on October 31, 2020, when Steve Bannon was explaining that Trump would declare victory regardless if he won, and the period, starting on December 13, when Bannon started planning events that would lead to “All Hell [Breaking] Loose” on January 6, alleged co-conspirator Bannon had less contact with Trump for a period, then resumed “almost daily direct contact” with him. In that period, Bannon was trying to figure out how to get out of his prosecution for cheating Trump supporters in the Build the Wall scheme (here’s the RECAP docket).
He was arrested on August 20 on Guo Wengui’s yacht (a yacht allegedly acquired through Guo’s separate conspiracy to cheat his supporters, a fraud in which Bannon was also treated as a co-conspirator). That day, Bill Burck — who had successfully gotten Bannon through slowly evolving testimony the Mueller investigation with no charges — represented him at his arraignment, as he did for an initial appearance via Zoom on August 31. Bannon spent some part of the next two months working with Rudy Giuliani, Robert Costello, and Jack Maxey, fiddling with a hard drive copied from a laptop once associated with Hunter Biden’s iCloud account. Meanwhile, Burck delayed the first status hearing in the case — originally scheduled for October 26 and rescheduled for November 9 — based on his own trial schedule.
On November 3, Donald Trump did declare victory before key swing states were counted.
On November 5, Steve Bannon called to put Anthony Fauci and Chris Wray’s heads on pikes.
STEVE BANNON (HOST): Second term kicks off with firing Wray, firing Fauci.
Now I actually want to go a step farther but I realize the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man. I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England, I’d put the heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you’re gone — time to stop playing games. blow it all up, put Ric Grenell today as the interim head of the FBI, that’ll light them up, right.
Ric Grenell as the head of the FBI? OMFG. If that isn’t an image straight out of the bowels of Hell, designed to strike terror in one’s soul, then I don’t know what is. And make no mistake, this is where we would be, not could be, but WOULD be going, with Project 2025 and a second Trump administration.
Steve Bannon will be out of prison right around Election Day and there is nothing that would please him more, I feel confident in saying, then getting on board for a second Trump administration and the end of America as we know it. Bear in mind, the drafters of Project 2025 have had years now to ponder what went wrong the first time, when Trump was so woefully unprepared that he and “My Star” son-in-law Jared Kushner, didn’t even know that they would have to hire people to answer the telephones.
Trump literally fell into office the last time, in 2016, and he broke his fall by giving his kids senior positions in government. You may remember that Jared was looking for people to fill governmental offices by going to Amazon and seeing who had written books on certain topics. That’s how he found Peter Navarro. Other posts were secured by similar means and Steve Bannon had an office in the West Wing, which he called the War Room, same as his podcast, and he wrote strategies on a white board for Trump’s executive orders. As bad as all that was, a second Trump administration will be exponentially worse.
On December 11, Robert Costello entered his appearance as Bannon’s new lawyer. At the time, Costello was best known for the allegations from the Mueller Report seeming to offer assurances from “friends in high places” that Michael Cohen would be pardoned if he covered for Trump. But Costello’s role, as a participant as much as counsel, in the Hunter Biden laptop caper would seemingly expand the timeline of his relationship with Bannon.
Two days after Costello entered his appearance for Bannon, according to Jack Smith’s immunity filing, Bannon and Trump resumed near-daily conversations leading up to January 6.
Bannon’s actual pardon would make short work for Costello. On January 19, 2021 — less than two weeks after “All hell [broke] loose” with Bannon as an alleged co-conspirator — Trump pardoned Bannon for cheating Trump’s own supporters. But Trump made it clear with his selectivity that the pardon had nothing to do with a perceived injustice: Trump pardoned none of Bannon’s co-conspirators. His three co-conspirators remain in prison at least through next year.
Trump pardoned Bannon for cheating Trump’s own supporters. He cared more about meeting Bannon’s needs than protecting those who believe in Trump.
When tangential We Build the Wall associates Dustin Stockton and Jennfier Lawrence explained why they provided (unreliable) testimony to the January 6 Committee, they implied it arose, in part, from frustration that Bannon had gotten pardoned but they had not.
The small fish end up in prison. Witness Tina Peter’s recent incarceration. The big fish, the whales, in fact, survive to go on and grift another day.
And bear in mind, as Wheeler says, “John Roberts says none of this matters. The evidence that Donald Trump was using pardons as leverage to associates to help attack democracy doesn’t matter. He doesn’t want to hear any evidence of such official conduct, even if used as part of a quid pro quo.”
Bannon will be out of Danbury prison soon and he’ll face his state trial. We’ll see what happens. But if Trump gets reelected, expect all semblance of the rule of law to vanish overnight. And his followers, his MAGA cult, are oblivious to all this.
Good chronology summary, add Dec 19 trumpie tweet: “Be there will be wild!”
How did they know back then it would be wild? Planning for it all along is the ONLY answer.
Reading your article above, does make a rational being worry and shudder. In addition, the following is just as worrisome and shudder inducing, titled ‘More Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership’ see: