Once Again: It's Time to Impeach the President in the Lame Duck. He Will Never Stop This.
It seems bad that all 10 (ten) of the former United States Secretaries of Defense who still reside on this earthly plane felt compelled to publish a letter over the weekend warning that "efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory." The implication is that the current commander-in-chief of the armed forces, President Donald Trump, may be considering roping those forces into his ongoing assault on the American constitutional republic. That is, he may be looking at using military force to overturn the will of the people as expressed through their votes in a democratic election. This is what is colloquially known as "dictator shit."
The group of concerned ex-secretaries included two of the current president's former Pentagon chiefs, James Mattis and Mark Esper, the latter of whom was forced out fairly recently as Donald Trump responded to his decisive loss in the 2020 election by making some personnel adjustments in the Department of Defense. If we saw this in another country—authoritarian strongman installs new leadership in nation's security services as he seeks to stay in power—we would rightly see it as a democracy in peril, a country on the brink of an autocratic plunge. What, one wonders, was Donald Trump's criteria for choosing new leadership at the Pentagon while he simultaneously wages a relentless disinformation war to try to get the election results thrown out, a war in which victory would see him installed as president for another term? The official story was that he wanted people who'd get us out of Afghanistan, an explanation that requires you to believe that Donald Trump is currently concerned about the welfare of human beings who do not share his last name. And even then, you've got to think he'd throw Junior overboard if it came to that.
Meanwhile, it seems he's paired his public campaign to overturn the election he lost with a private push to use mob-boss tactics, finely honed from his decades making very above-board Business Deals, to pressure local public officials to change vote tallies. (Former FBI Director James Comey testified that Trump spoke in mafia-don parlance—"that thing"—while Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, also said Trump gives orders in "code," wherein he instructs his lackeys to engage in Definitely Legal behavior without saying so explicitly.) We now have a tape of the president's call with Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in which the president at one point appeared to threaten the election administrator with criminal penalties if he didn't "find 11,780 votes" to make Trump the winner in Georgia.
TRUMP: And you are going to find that they are—which is totally illegal—it is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know, what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. And that’s a big risk. But they are shredding ballots, in my opinion, based on what I’ve heard. And they are removing machinery, and they’re moving it as fast as they can, both of which are criminal finds. And you can’t let it happen, and you are letting it happen. You know, I mean, I’m notifying you that you’re letting it happen. So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.
I'm no lawyer, but it does appear that the president is looking to obtain something of value using threats, a rather basic definition of extortion.
Incredibly, one reason the Georgia secretary of state decided to record his phone call with the president was, according to Politico, the office's previous experience dealing with the president's allies.
So why not record the call with the president, Raffensperger’s advisers thought, if nothing else for fact-checking purposes. “This is a man who has a history of reinventing history as it occurs,” one of them told Playbook. “So if he’s going to try to dispute anything on the call, it’s nice to have something like this, hard evidence, to dispute whatever he’s claiming about the secretary. Lindsey Graham asked us to throw out legally cast ballots. So yeah, after that call, we decided maybe we should do this.”
Another reason may have been that this was reportedly Trump's 19th attempt to get Raffensperger on the phone. That's the kind of persistence you might expect from a man who fears what may await him in terms of criminal exposure if he loses the protections of the presidency.
In their letter, the ex-SecDefs warned that "civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic." That might be true, but they might also be in a position to benefit from the president's pardon campaign, in which he's offered up sweeping indulgences to those who've observed omertà when dealing with law enforcement. Why wouldn't he do the same for any in the new cast of characters at the Pentagon and beyond?
On November 19, 2020, we suggested the president may need to be impeached in the lame-duck period on the basis that he will never stop trying to steal the election and, even if he fails, that he will do untold damage to the country leading up to January 20. In the time since, he has reportedly discussed—in the Oval Office—instituting martial law in order to force a Mulligan Election. Even before the SecDefs popped up, the Secretary of the Army felt compelled to issue a statement declaring the U.S. military won't be doing Coup Things. The president should be impeached and removed from office as soon as possible. Then state and federal authorities should gather evidence around what he has done and, if the evidence supports it, prosecute him for any crimes committed to the fullest extent of the law. There must be consequences.
As it stands, over 100 Republicans in the House of Representatives have pledged to reject the election results, and 12 Republican senators have joined them, climbing all over each other to desecrate the American republic if it means a bump in their 2024 presidential prospects. But they've surely calculated this cynical bullshit is worth it at least partly on the basis that there will be zero repercussions for this behavior. They hail from gerrymandered districts and deep-red states, and the Republican base is now so radicalized that an electoral process that ends in Democratic victory is by-definition illegitimate. Real America voted for Mr. Trump, and they want him in there regardless of what everyone else voted for. But beyond the entrenched structural issues, these elected traitors to the republic can also count on the meekness of congressional Democrats. This is one of America's two major political parties careening into full-on authoritarianism while, so far, the other one merely expresses concern.
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