President Trump – angry, manic, desperate, and perpetually needy – had not so legal eagle Sidney Powell back to the White House today to indulge his and her fantasies (ewww!!!!).
SPOTTED tonight at the White House: attorney & conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell.@abdallahcnn & I saw her leaving the residence side of the White House shortly before 9p.
She denied meeting with Trump tonight. When pressed again, she said: “It would be none of your business”— Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) December 21, 2020
Would it be legally viable? White House counsel already told him it wouldn’t be. But Powell/Flynn others are telling him what he wants to hear right now. And if he went ahead with it, it would be destabilizing in a new way.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) December 21, 2020
Fixing after autocorrect fun – I had missed this earlier but the Overstocked CEO was also present for this Friday meeting that two senior Trump aides called “crazy.” https://t.co/rjC2RElKc2
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) December 21, 2020
And just who is Patrick Byrne? Byrne is the former CEO of Overstock who had to resign from that position when it was discovered/disclosed that he’d been having an affair, and enjoying very different types of positions, with Maria Butina. Since then he’s become an avid warrior against the Deep State (there is no Deep State) and for Trump.
In addition, any suggestion if there was talk of a military coup or martial law is also a flat lie. 100% false. I was there for 4 1/2 hours, I heard the entire conversation, that is a 100% fabrication. https://t.co/YloZGhEcpl
— Patrick Byrne (@PatrickByrne) December 20, 2020
Powell, in addition to her two meetings this weekend with the President, has also been airing her grievances.
Just an update on what Sidney Powell — who Trump met with Friday to discuss appointing as a special prosecutor — is retweeting tonight https://t.co/AtSRe1n1pg pic.twitter.com/ZOMV181AjL
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 21, 2020
All of this stupidity reached the point where both Secretary of the Army McCarthy and the Army Chief of Staff GEN McConville issued a statement on Friday that:
There is no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election.
Powell, the perhaps even more unhinged LTG (ret) Flynn, Byrne, and others appear to be indulging Trump’s grievances, delusions, and worst instincts. This includes a new filing with the Supreme Court requesting cert to overturn three Pennsylvania Supreme Court rulings in the quixotic and never ending quest to get the Supreme Court to disenfranchise millions of Americans and allow Trump to remain president.
The senior military leaders have made it clear they are not going to get involved in the election outcome. Every court that Trump’s attorneys – Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis – or attorneys working on his behalf, but not directly for him – Powell, L. Lin Wood, a few others* – have gone to seeking to have all or parts of the election results thrown out have told them they don’t have a case. They don’t have standing, they don’t have anything that is justiciable at the district level or appealable at the appellate level or even constitutionally remediated at the state and US Supreme Court levels. And that’s before we get into just how bad the basic lawyering has been. Wood filed something at the end of last week attesting that there was “plenty of perjury.”
I’m sure some of our own actual legal eagles will weigh in, as I’m not a lawyer and I’m not about to start playing one here, but I don’t even see how Trump could have voting machines seized. They voting machines are the property of municipalities and the election laws that allow their use are state laws. I get that the tennis player illegally acting as the DHS secretary has already explained that DHS doesn’t have the authority to do this, and I’m sure Barr isn’t going to authorize the FBI to do it between now and his last day on Wednesday, so even if Trump could find someone with a badge and a gun to do this I can’t imagine state and local officials would allow it to happen.
And that’s the same thing with Flynn’s and Powell’s and anyone else calling for him to invoke the Insurrection Act, declare martial law, invalidate the election, and thereby remain president. You can’t undertake a coup with a disgraced, pardoned, unhinged retired general; a passel of really bad and incompetent attorneys; a disgraced, unhinged former CEO who can’t keep his fly zipped; and a bunch of people on Twitter. I once planned an insurgency as part of an Army war game – finding host country senior military, law enforcement, and government leaders who had gone to ground after their country had been invaded and organizing them as a host country insurgent/irregular force to harry the invaders while we and our coalition allies in the exercise simulation tried to force the invading army out, retake the country, and reestablish the government – and I couldn’t make chicken salad out of this chicken shit.
All that Trump, Powell, Flynn, Byrne, Giuliani, Powell, and all the sycophants, surrogates, and supporters are doing is degrading America’s political structures and institutions. They are putting the lives of local and state officials, as well as the lives of those working for the voting machine companies in danger. Eventually they’ll start putting state and Federal judges lives in danger. We saw the beginning of that this week with the 4chan hoax about John Roberts.
We’ve got four years of evidence that none of these people can effectively run the government, they’re not about to suddenly become competent revolutionaries. That doesn’t mean they’re not going to put people’s lives in danger or get people hurt or killed. They absolutely will. They’ll definitely do as much damage as they can to the United States, its political structures, its institutions, the constitutional order, and democratic self government as possible. And they’ll keep doing it even once Trump is out of office. As I wrote the night before election day:
Rule or ruin. That was the crux of it in 1860.
They seek to rule or ruin. It is all they have ever sought. They don’t care about party, when they finish consuming and using up what’s left of the Republican Party they’ll attach themselves to another party. Just as they abandoned the Democratic Party and attached themselves like the parasites they are to the Republican Party during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s when it became clear that they could no longer achieve their goals through the Democratic Party. All they care about is ruling or ruining. They don’t care about the ordered liberty, civic rights and responsibilities, and individual rights and responsibilities that animated the founders and framers. They don’t actually care about the Constitution or what it means. They don’t actually care about America and its ideals, the actual promise of those ideals, and the charge laid upon us all by the founders and framers to create a more perfect union. They certainly don’t care about providing for the common defense, securing the blessings of liberty, and promoting the general welfare. They don’t actually care about America or Americans except insofar as they can use America to protect themselves, their property, and their wealth and they can exploit every other American to further enrich themselves. If they cannot rule, then they will always seek to ruin.
Lincoln was clear eyed as to who they were and what they were about in 1860. As we go into election day tomorrow, even if you’ve already cast your vote by mail or in person during early voting, we need to be as clear eyed as Lincoln to the threat they pose to the Republic and recognize that voting tomorrow to disempower these anti-American wreckers is just the first step in a centuries long war for not just control of, but for the soul of, America.
Open thread!
* Because the writers this year have decided to just say “FUCK IT!!!”, one of the attorneys consulting for and aiding the president in his suits regarding Pennsylvania is also the attorney for Ihor Kolomoisky. Kolomoisky is being prosecuted in the US, owns the network that vaulted Zelensky into Ukraine’s presidency, lives in Israel, and may be one of the primary Ukrainian sources of the dirt that Rudy Giuliani has been looking for on Hunter Biden.
Today In the President’s Ongoing, Attempted Coup Du JourPost + Comments (97)