Once again and not for the last time, I suspect, I marvel at the fact that the guard rails of democracy actually held after Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and went into denial and lost his damn mind. As you have probably heard, Trump drafted an executive order wherein he was going to have the Department of Defense go out and seize voting machines. This was Sidney Powell’s brainchild. Evidently Trump went along with her harebrained scheme to some extent, at least insofar as drafting the order. It’s suspected that Powell is the author and it is a real piece of work in any event.

“This draft order represents not only an abuse of emergency powers, but a total misunderstanding of them,” said Liza Goitein, co-director of the liberty and national security program at the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice. “The order doesn’t even make the basic finding of an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat’ that would be necessary to trigger any action under [federal emergency powers law]. It’s the legal equivalent of a kid scrawling on the wall with crayons.”

And that is par for this administration’s course. In the valley of the blind the one eyed man is king and in the valley of the Trump administration, the sun never came out and everybody wore patches on both eyes so if there was a one eyed man, you wouldn’t have known who it was anyway.

This Politico article contains a link to the executive order.

By the authority vested in me as President of the United States pursuant to the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, including Article 2 section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, Executive Orders 123444, 143545, National Security Presidential Memoranda 14 and 21, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) (IEEPA) and all applicable Executive Orders derived therefrom, the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C.16011 et seq.) (NBA), and section 401 of title 4, United States Code:

I, Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, finnd that the forensic report of the Antrim County, Michigan voting machines, released December 14, 2020, and other evidence submitteed to me in support of this order, provide probable cause sufficcient to require action under the authorities cited above because of evidence of international and foreign interference in the November 4, 2020, election. Dominion Voting Systems and related companies are owned or heavily controlled and influuenced by foreign agents, countries, and interests.

Thee forensic report prepared by experts found that “the Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influuence election results. Thee system intentionally generates an enormously high number of ballot errors. Thee intentional errors lead to bulk adjudication of ballots with no oversight, no transparency, and no audit trail. Theis leads to voter or election fraud.”

Thee report found the election management system to be wrought with unacceptable and unlawful vulnerabilities––including access to the internet––probable cause to finnd evidence of fraud, and numerous malicious actions. Theere is also probable cause to finnd that Dominion Voting Systems, Smartmatic, Electronic Systems & Softwware, and Hart Inter Civic, Clarity Election Night Reporting, Edison Research, Sequoia, Scytl, and similar or related entities, agents or assigns, have the same fluaws and were subject to foreign interference in the 2020 election in the United States.

Theere is probable cause to finnd these systems bear the same crucial code “features” and defects that allowed the same outside and foreign interference in our election, in which there is probable cause to finnd votes were in fact altered and manipulated contrary to the will of the voters. Dominion Voting Systems is based in Toronto, Canada, and assigns its intellectual property including patents on its finrmware and softwware to Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Corporation (HSBC), a bank with its foundation in China and its current headquarters in London, United Kingdom.

Thee Dominion Voting system is owned and controlled by foreign entities. Multiple expert witnesses and cyber experts identifined acts of foreign interference in the election prior to November 4, 2020 and continued in the following weeks.

In fact, there is probable cause to finnd a massive cyber-atteack by foreign interests on our crucial national infrastructure surrounding our election––not the least of which was the hacking of the voter registration system by Iran. (B.O. 143500 of May 11. 2017) Just days prior to the election of November 4, 2020, federal Judge Totenberg found, aftwer three days of testimony including by Dominion executive Eric Coomers: Theere are “true risks posed by the new BMD [Ballot Marking Device of Georgia’s Dominion Voting Systems] voting system as well as its manner implementation.

Theese risks are neither hypothetical nor remote under the current circumstances. Thee insularity of the Defendants’ and Dominion’s stance here in evaluation and management of the security and vulnerability of the BMD system does not benefint the public or citizens’ confindent exercise of the franchise. Thee stealth vote alteration or operational interference risks posed by malware that can be effeectively invisible to detection, whether intentionally seeded or not, are high once implanted, if equipment and softwware systems are not properly protected, implemented, and audited.

Thee modality of the BMD systems’ capacity to deprive voters of their cast votes without burden, long wait times, and insecurity regarding how their votes are actually cast and recorded in the unverifined QR code makes the potential constitutional deprivation less transparently visible as well, at least until any portions of the system implode because of system breach, breakdown, or crashes. Any operational shortcuts now in setteing up or running election equipment or softwware creates other risks that can adversely impact the voting process.

It goes on like this for quite a while. As you see, the draft is filled with misspellings, typos, and even an occasionally misstructured sentence, which marks it as probably written by Powell. She can’t seem to put together a professional document in any sense of the word, not even basics like spelling and grammar.

This article also goes on to detail a speech that Trump intended to give after the insurrection. The flavor of this speech is dead opposite from the one he finally gave after three hours of doing nothing. And it begs the question, one more time, of WHAT happened in those three hours? If this was where he started out, or at least where somebody wanted him to start out, denouncing the violence, how in the world did he end up where he got to, telling violent protesters how much he loved them, three hours later?

Apparently what happened is that the draft you’re about to read a part of was intended to be released the following day but that never happened. You saw his video after three hours of rioting and you never saw any version of this.

“I would like to begin today by addressing the heinous attack that took place yesterday at the United States Capitol,” it opens. “Like all Americans, I was outraged and sickened by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem. I immediately deployed the National Guard and federal law enforcement to secure the building and expel the intruders. America is, and must always be, a nation of law and order.”

Politico goes on to explain:

That claim that Trump immediately ordered the National Guard to head to the Capitol may be false. The Jan. 6 select committee sent a letter Thursday saying that Trump’s defense secretary at the time of the riot, Chris Miller, “has testified under oath that the President never contacted him at any time on January 6th, and never, at any time, issued him any order to deploy the National Guard.”

The “national healing” document continued with sharp criticism of the attack.

“The Demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American Democracy,” the remarks state. “I am directing the Department of Justice to ensure all lawbreakers are prosecuted to the fullest extent” of the law.”

The document follows with a direct communication to the rioters: “We must send a message – not with mercy but with justice. To those who engaged in acts of violence and destruction, I want to be very clear: you do not represent me. You do not represent our movement. You do not represent our country. And if you broke the law, you belong in jail.”

The remarks departed significantly from the way he described the rioters in other contexts. In a video released during the attack, Trump struck a tone of empathy with the mob.

And here are sentiments you bloody well never heard come out of Trump’s mouth, also from the draft of the speech he never gave on January 7.

Trump “vigorously pursued every legal avenue to contest the election results,” the remarks add, and still urges election “reform” so voters could be confident about future contests.

“But as for THIS election, Congress has now certified the results,” the remarks say. “The election fight is over. A new administration will be inaugurated on January 20th. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power. This moment calls for healing and reconciliation.”

It is blatantly apparent at this point that there were some people in the White House trying to go one way and Trump was hell bent on going a totally different way. What is obvious at this point is that some people were urging Trump to give it up and he made the decision to stand by the Big Lie and megaphone it.

I can’t wait for the January 6 committee to flesh out more of these details. This is stunning and even as I say that, I have no doubt whatsoever that a lot of even stranger information will surface as the J6 Committee continues its investigation.

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5 COMMENTS

  1. Let’s see…a fat white man is hiding & sweating as he hears the voices of two women, Cheney & James sounding like the hounds closing in.

  2. I’m speculating, and doubt we will ever get the real, full story, but given the plants Trump put in place over at the Pentagon word of this plan got out to the people that needed to know about it. General Milley, Chair of the Joint Chiefs had already and more importantly publicly made clear the military was staying out of this. I have no doubt at all his fellow service heads (and their second in commands) were all of a single mind that if Trump tried to pull some outrageous stunt – something like this for example – they would all go in front of the cameras and both call him out and hold up their letters of resignation as they were obligated to refuse to follow an illegal order. I’d suspect various drafts covering different types of stuff Trump might try had been prepared in advance, all starting with Posse Comitatus and going on from there.

    What many civilians don’t fully understand is chain-of-command. It starts with the President and other civilian leaders but there comes a point where actual orders to conduct specific actions have to be written down (and not via some fucking TWEET) and signed by the proper people. At the Joint Chief’s level refusal of an order(s) would be a big fucking deal and immediately wind up in front of the courts. But there’s another issue that’s important. Yes, Trump could elevate flunkies to carry out these orders but JCS members are Senate confirmable and the question of whether snap appointees even had authority to conduct this type of mobilization would mean a LOT of officers down the chain of command, having already been “prepped” by Milley’s earlier public pronouncements would be hesitant to carry them out.

    Implementation would have been incomplete and slow rolling when this whole thing depended on speed in its execution.

    Having considered all that, and especially the virtual certainty that the Joint Chiefs had wind of this cluster-fuck order don’t you think it’s likely they communicated to some of the sane people, say Cippilone and others in the White House Counsel’s Office that the plan was a non-starter that would blow up in not just Trump’s face but everyone in the West Wing? Keep in mind there are reports the people in that office made it known they were about to resign en masse and I for one think they too knew of this, knew how bogus it was legally and wanted to create as much distance between themselves and the bat-shit crazies and the “mere” zealots like them.

    I think that what went on during those three hours was a fierce battle between Trump and his “go for it” advisors and others who saw the reality that for all his “Generalissimo” bravado Trump wouldn’t have the military backing him up. Fucking with the National Guard response was one thing, but getting military forces out there around the country to start seizing voting machines was something else entirely and that the latter simply wasn’t going to happen. It took a while, but Trump was I think eventually convinced that his orders wouldn’t be obeyed, and combined with a moment of lucidity about Powell’s and Rudy’s legal acumen and advice he decided to back down and try something else.

    If our Democratic Republic survives, I think history will elevate JCS Chairman Milley to hero status for holding the line and making it clear our armed forces wouldn’t carry out illegal orders.

  3. A coup of that magnitude would need the military as it has gone elsewhere. We veterans take an oath to defend against ALL enemies, foreign & domestic. Soft politicians don’t take oaths seriously, & I’m afraid that’s because our culture doesn’t. Otherwise explain how all the senators stood in front of national TV cameras & took 2 oaths for 2 different impeachment trials & the Republicans promptly pissed on them WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES. U get what u tolerate. Sadly.

  4. It ignores that voting machines aren’t owned by the feds, or by the companies that make them, but by states and local jurisdictions. Also, there’s absolutely no evidence backing up the claims that the doc makes about them.

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