Trump January 6 Insurrection, Conspiracy and Project 25 for Autocracy

Thom Hartmann in Alternet has written a prescient article, ‘What if Trump’s conspiracy was way bigger than we know?’ that both infers from the noise around Trump and also asks, is there something deeper occurring around the GOP, US and transnational politics?

Interesting overview and thesis, withstanding Hartmann has not included related machinations in the Anglosphere, especially U.K., Australia, Russia, Central Eastern Europe and Hungary whether Brexit or Russian influence.

Linked to the latter has been Tufton St. London, US #KochNetwork influence on Brexit, due to antipathy towards EU regulation on environment, fossil fuels, financial transparency and taxes, not to forget open society, liberal democracy and empowered citizens; shared by the Kremlin and right wing Murdoch media.

Then, as disturbing, but maybe not unrelated, is another push from Koch’s Heritage Foundation for GOP permanence in Project 2025 – Koch Heritage Foundation Plan – Trump GOP – Permanent Republican Government.

‘Opinion | What if Trump’s conspiracy was way bigger than we know?

Thom Hartmann 11 Sep ‘23

There was, it increasingly appears, a conspiracy involving some in the most senior levels of the Trump administration to end American representative democracy and replace it with a strongman oligarchy along the lines of Putin’s Russia or Orbán’s Hungary.

This would be followed, after the January 20th swearing-in of Trump for a second term, by a complete realignment of US foreign policy away from NATO and the EU and toward oligarchic, autocratic nations like Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and Hungary.

So, what did Trump do, and why did he do it? And who helped him and why?

There’s little dispute that on January 6th, 2021, an armed mob incited by Donald Trump and led by members of several white supremacist militias tried to murder the Vice President and Speaker of the House to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s 7-million-vote victory in the November 2020 Election.

Evidence is growing, however, that the leadership of this conspiracy to end our form of government and replace it with a Putin-style strongman oligarchy wasn’t limited to Trump, Stone, Giuliani, and a few dozen militia members.

If Trump was truly planning not just to hang onto the presidency but to concurrently seize every lever of power in Washington — the way coups conducted from “inside of government” (like Putin and Orbán did) typically happen — he’d need some help, particularly from the military and the senior levels of federal law enforcement. So let’s start there.

Over at the Department of Defense then-acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller and his Chief of Staff Kash Patel (formerly of Devin Nunes’ staff) were running the place.

They controlled the Pentagon and our armed forces but, more importantly, they controlled the National Guard, whose troops had previously surrounded buildings in the Capitol area three-deep during the peaceful BLM protests in the summer of 2020.

Commander-in-Chief Trump (on whose behalf he acted), then issued a memo (attached at the end of this article) on January 4th specifically directing McCarthy and the National Guard that they were:

• Not authorized to be issued weapons, ammunition, bayonets, batons, or ballistic protection equipment such as helmets and body armor.
• Not to interact physically with protestors, except when necessary in self-defense or defense of others.
• Not to employ any riot control agents.
• Not to share equipment with law enforcement agencies.
• Not authorized to use Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) assets or to conduct ISR or Incident, Awareness, and Assessment activities in assistance to Capitol Police.
• Not allowed to employ helicopters or any other air assets.
• Not to conduct searches, seizures, arrests, or other similar direct law enforcement activity.
• Not authorized to seek support from any non-DC National Guard units.

Then-Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations General Charles Flynn, the brother of convicted/pardoned foreign agent General Michael Flynn (who had been pushing Trump to declare martial law and seize voting machines nationwide) was on the call; both the Pentagon and the Army, it has been reported, lied to the press, Congress, and, apparently, to the Biden administration about his presence on that call for almost a year.

It wasn’t until December that it was widely reported that the National Security Council’s Colonel Earl Matthews (who was also on the call) wrote a memo calling both Charles Flynn and Lt. Gen Walter Piatt, the Director of Army Staff, “absolute and unmitigated liars” for their testimony to Congress in which they both denied they’d argued to withhold the National Guard on January 6th.

If they were involved in a plan to help Trump take over and run the government — as usually happens when coups involve senior levels of the military — it’s going to take a lot of digging to find out, since this coverup of their activities and conversations on January 6th was apparently in place for almost a full year before it was discovered.

This was at the same time that Trump was maintaining possession of documents for which foreign governments would be willing to spend billions. In fact, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China and others have spent billions of dollars on acquiring secrets and documents of that sort, via their annual intelligence Budgets.

Trump would also have needed the support of several foreign governments if he was planning to end American democracy and re-align our nation with oligarchies run along the lines he and Putin were possibly envisioning. Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia would logically be at the top of that list because of their military, oil, and financial power, followed by Turkey, Hungary, and Egypt because of their strategic locations.

A couple of events from last year might highlight the echoes of those plans to end American democracy and re-align our government with Russia/China/Saudi Arabia. If Trump was coordinating with foreign governments, suddenly a lot of seemingly disparate and inchoate events make sense.

Trump and Kushner already had a history of illegally sharing Top Secret “human intelligence” information with Saudi dictator Mohammed Bin Salman dating back to when MBS staged his own coup/takeover of the Saudi Government.

As The Jerusalem Post reported on March 23, 2018: “Kushner, who is the son-in-law of President Donald Trump, and the crown prince had a late October meeting in Riyadh.

“A week later, Mohammed began what he called an ‘anti-corruption crackdown.’ The Saudi government arrested and jailed dozens of members of the Saudi royal family in a Riyadh hotel – among them Saudi figures named in a daily classified brief read by the president and his closest advisers that Kushner read avidly….

“According to the report, Mohammed told confidants that he and Kushner discussed Saudis identified in the classified brief as disloyal to Mohammed.” The day before, CBS and The Intercept quoted MBS as gloating that Kushner was “in his pocket.”

The Washington Post noted that:

“Recently ousted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster expressed early concern that Kushner was freelancing “… [National Security Advisor] McMaster was concerned there were no official records kept of what was said on the calls.

“Tillerson was even more aggrieved, they said, once remarking to staff: ‘Who is secretary of state here?’”

Meanwhile, throughout his presidency, Donald Trump was having secret phone conversations with Russia’s President Putin (over 20 have been identified, including one just days before the 2020 election). 

The Moscow Project from the American Progress Action Fund documents more than 270 known contacts between Russia-linked operatives and members of the Trump Campaign and transition team, as well as at least 38 known meetings just leading up to the 2016 election.

The manager of his 2016 campaign, Paul Manafort, who previously worked on behalf of Vladimir Putin, has recently admitted that he was regularly feeding inside campaign information to Russian intelligence. There is no known parallel to this behavior by any president in American history.

There are, after all,credible assertions that when Trump was elected, members of Russian intelligence and Putin’s inner circle were literally partying in Moscow, explicitly celebrating a victory they truly believed they helped make happen.

In his first months in office, Trump outed an Israeli spy to the Russian Ambassador, resulting in MOSAD having to “burn” (relocate, change identity of) that spy. That, in turn, prompted the CIA to worry that a longtime US spy buried deep in the Kremlin was similarly vulnerable to Trump handing him over to Putin.

On July 31, Trump had another private conversation with Putin. The White House told Congress and the press that they discussed “wildfires” and “trade between the nations.” No droids in this car…

The following week, on August 2nd, The Daily Beast’s Betsy Swan reported that Trump had just asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for a list of all its employees (including all our “spies”) who had worked there more than 90 days, and the request had intelligence officials experiencing “disquiet.”

Within a year, The New York Times ran a story with the headline:

“Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants.” The CIA then alerted spies around the world that their identities had probably been compromised, apparently by Donald Trump himself.

As early as 2018, for example, Senator Rand Paul made a solo trip to Moscow to personally hand-deliver a private note from Trump to Putin. Its contents are still unknown.

Senator Paul has also consistently taken Trump’s side with regard to the 2020 election and, when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago this month, responded with a call for the repeal of the Espionage Act. 

About six months after the Saudis gave Kushner that second batch of billions, we learned that for several months “dozens” of American spies and agents had been “captured or killed” around the world. AsThe Washington Post reported on October 5, 2021:

“Top American counterintelligence officials warned every C.I.A. station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said.”

Is it possible that all these different data points are part of one whole?

That Trump had a plan, worked out with Putin, MBS, a few dozen high administration officials, and a large handful of Republicans in the House and Senate, to overthrow our government and establish an oligarchic system like what is currently in place in Russia and that Fox “News”showcased in Hungary?

That once that overthrow was completed under the gimmick of six Republican-controlled states “discovering voter fraud” and changing their Electoral College votes, the plan was that Trump and his GOP allies (including the 11 Republican senators who, this May,voted against aid to Ukraine) would quickly move to re-align America away from NATO/EU and toward Russia/Saudi Arabia?

• And that the deaths of our spies, the Saudi-driven explosion in oil prices when Biden came into office, Putin’s decision to attack Ukraine, and even Xi’s cranking up his aggression against Taiwan were all just the echoes of Trump’s failed plan?

• Was there a high-level conspiracy in the Trump administration, done in concert with one or more foreign countries, to end democracy in America?

• Did they intend to seize control of our government on January 6 and never let Go?

• Was their next plan to realign us with autocratic nations like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Hungary?

Given how effectively it appears much of the evidence including emails, phone calls, and text messages (that could exonerate as well as convict) has been destroyed, much of that destruction apparently done by Trump himself while in office (toilets, papers being burned, etc.) and, more recently, by Trump appointees still in our government, we may never know.

For other related blog and articles on EU European Union, Media, Koch Network, Political Strategy, Populist Politics and Russia click through:

Russia and Anglosphere – Conservatives and Oligarchs – War vs EU and Future

Conservative Christian CNP – Council for National Policy in US – Influence in UK, Russia and Europe

Russia Report – Anglo Conservatives Compromised by Russian Interference on EU and Brexit

Assange – Useful Idiot or Willing Dupe of the US Right and Putin’s Russia?

Russian Brexit Coup by Putin and Compromised British Conservatives

Strange Conservative Political Links – The Anglosphere, Hungary and Russia

Putin’s Supporters in Europe and Anglosphere: Willing Dupes and Useful Idiots?

Article from the ECFR European Council on Foreign Relations in 2016 describing those aligned or allied with Putin’s Russia on both the European left and right, while the latter are adopted or supported by Putin’s Russia, with recommendations on what Europe could do, warning of Russia’s covert support for populist parties; post Brexit, pre Trump and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

‘Putin’s friends in Europe

The upsurge of populism in Europe has provided Russia with an ample supply of sympathetic political parties across the continent.

Fredrik Wesslau 19 October 2016

The upsurge of populism in Europe has provided Russia with an ample supply of sympathetic political parties across the continent. These parties – mostly from the far right but also from the far left – are pursuing policies and taking positions that advance Russia’s agenda in Europe. They tend to be anti-establishment parties ― some on the extreme fringes of the political spectrum ― that challenge the mainstream liberal order in Europe. Many of these parties are working actively to undo the European project. They are generally suspicious of the United States and want to reduce its influence in Europe.

In June ECFR carried out the first comprehensive survey of ‘insurgent’ parties in Europe. It found that, despite their differences, a majority of them are positively inclined towards Putin’s Russia and pursue policies that promote Russia’s interests in Europe.

While Russia is not responsible for the emergence of these pro-Russian parties, it has embraced them, especially as relations between the West and Russia have deteriorated. The parties are useful for Moscow in that they help legitimise the Kremlin’s policies and amplify Russian disinformation. At times they can also shift Europe’s domestic debates in Russia’s favour. But it is their politics of disruption – underpinned by their scepticism towards the European Union – that does most to destabilise European politics.

It would be a mistake to portray these parties as Russian stooges. The parties’ pro-Russian policies are underpinned by conviction and an affinity with ideological tenets of Putin’s Russia. But while the parties are not under Moscow’s control, the extent to which Russia directly supports them has become an increasingly important question, as tensions rise between Russia and the West. Russian influencing efforts in the West have come under particular scrutiny since the leak of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails in July was attributed to Russian meddling in US politics.

Alignment with Russia

To what extent do the insurgent parties align with Russia? A majority of the 45 insurgent parties identified by ECFR were favourably inclined towards Russia and sympathised with Russian positions. The most pro-Russian of these parties (of a significant size) on the far right are: the AfD, FPÖ, Greece’s Golden Dawn, Hungary’s Jobbik, France’s Front National, Italy’s Northern League, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), and Belgium’s Vlaams Belang (VB). On the far left, the most pro-Russian parties are Cyprus’s AKEL, Germany’s Die Linke, the Czech Republic’s KSCM, Podemos in Spain, and Syriza. The Italian Five Star Movement and the Human Shield Party in Croatia also belong to the pro-Russian camp.

Voting patterns in the European Parliament shows that on issues such as Ukraine, the human rights situation in Russia, and association agreements with Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, the Dutch PVV leads the pack in pro-Russian votes. UKIP, the Sweden Democrats, Italy’s Northern League, and France’s Front National come in a shared second place. Insurgent parties from the far left – Spain’s Podemos, Greece’s Syriza, and Germany’s Die Linke – are not far behind.

All of these parties, with the exception of Syriza and PVV, oppose EU sanctions on Russia and none believe that the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) with Ukraine should be implemented in full. All the parties are Eurosceptic to varying degrees.

The pro-Russian stance of these parties derives largely from conviction and from an ideological affinity with Putin’s Russia. On the far right, many are attracted to Russia’s socially conservative values, its defence of national sovereignty, and its rejection of liberal internationalism and interventionism. On the left, many of the insurgents are attracted by Russia’s antipathy towards globalisation and its challenge to the US-dominated international capitalist order, as well as a nostalgic link to the Soviet Union. Both fringes tend to see Russia as a counter to the United States.

Friends with benefits

These parties have proven useful to Moscow in various ways. They have provided convenient sources of legitimisation domestically – and to some extent internationally – on issues such as Crimea. The Kremlin is able to point to them as “evidence” of Russia not being isolated and of there being supportive voices in Europe. This was seen during the referendum in Crimea in March 2014. While the OCSE did not send observers to Crimea, a group of European politicians from far right parties, including from the FPÖ, VB, FN, Jobbik, and Northern League, went there as observers. This was presented by Moscow as international legitimisation of the referendum.

They have also proven capable of shifting the centre of political discourse in Russia’s favour. In France, for example, former president and presidential hopeful, Nicolas Sarkozy, who belongs to the political mainstream has taken an increasingly sympathetic line towards Russia as presidential elections in 2017 approach. He has called for the lifting of sanctions against Russia and argued that Crimea has a right to become part of Russia. This line is part of his election strategy to adopt positions from the National Front in order to co-opt their votes.

But it is not just in matters of policy that these parties’ sympathies with the Kremlin are revealed. In them Moscow has also found convenient and willing conveyors of its anti-Western, anti-globalisation narratives. Several of the far right leaders, such as Nigel Farage, Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen, are frequent guests on Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik, with Farage reportedly having been offered his own show on RT.

The “Operation Liza” case in Germany, where a false Russian story of a 13-year-old Russian-German girl having been raped by immigrants was picked up and spread by members of the far right AfD and Die Linke, which has close ties to Germans of Russian descent, was a prime example of the role these parties play in amplifying Russian disinformation.

Finally, the anti-EU and anti-NATO strand of insurgent parties benefits Russia by weakening Western consensus and institutions. The Dutch referendum on the EU’s association agreement with Ukraine in April 2016 was an example of how insurgents in the minority were able to obstruct EU policy to Russia’s benefit. But this was most clearly seen in UKIP’s leading role in Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, with several Eurosceptic parties in Europe now following in UKIP’s footsteps and pushing for their own referendums on EU membership. Several parties, including AKEL, Die Linke, FPÖ, Golden Dawn, KSCM, and Jobbik are also opposed to the NATO alliance.

Russian support and the populist upsurge

But while it is clear that Moscow benefits from the pro-Russian stance of populist parties in Europe and in some cases uses them for propaganda purposes, it is less clear to what extent there is collusion. The notion that Russia might be funding agents of influence by providing financing to sympathetic parties in Europe has become more salient as relations between Russia and the West have deteriorated.

The most well-publicised case of a European political party receiving funding from Russia is the loan to Front National, which has aligned itself with Russia on a range of issues. It has recognised Russia’s annexation of Crimea and event sent observers to the Crimean referendum, providing international legitimisation for the Kremlin. 

Leaked SMS exchanges indicate that the Front National’s stance on Crimea was the subject of correspondence between Russian officials, who agreed that the party should be “thanked” somehow for recognising the results of the referendum in Crimea. While Front National has denied that there was any quid pro quo, eight months later the party received a loan of €9.46 million from the First Czech Russian National Bank ― a financial institution with links to the Kremlin. Marine Le Pen has publicly acknowledged the loan – equivalent to the Front National’s total revenue for 2013 – citing the party’s inability to secure financing from European sources.

The founder of Front National, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has also received a €2.5 million loan through his company Cotelec, from a Cyprus-based company that is owned by a former KGB agent who was expelled from Britain in 1985 on charges of spying.

The loans to Front National seem to be a rare case of acknowledged Russian financing of a party.  But does it amount to collusion? Not necessarily since Front National would probably have taken pro-Russian positions in any case. But the money does act as an enabler.

There is circumstantial evidence and rumours of covert support for other radical parties in Europe, but little solid evidence exists in the public domain. The lack of information may not be surprising since this sort of activity typically belongs to the opaque world of intelligence services.

But even if one assumes that Russia does not provide financial support to any other party, the way Moscow uses them to legitimise its own narrative and spread disinformation is in itself a cause for concern. They become ― wittingly or unwittingly ― part of an increasingly assertive and hostile Russian foreign policy towards the West.

So what should Europe do?

To begin with, European leaders should recognise that dealing with domestic populism is the greater challenge. Today, anti-establishment politics are a fact throughout Europe. And the political tides are still moving in their direction; several more may find themselves empowered after elections in Germany, France, Netherlands, and possibly Italy, in 2017.

But while Russia is not behind the growth of populism, it is certainly benefiting from it. Insurgent parties have a right to take positions that align with those of Russia, within the limits of democratic politics. But covert Russian actions to support these parties and to spread disinformation undermine the democratic basis of European societies.

European law enforcement agencies should prioritise looking into Russian covert support for populist parties and taking steps to counter such support. European governments should consider publishing intelligence on this in the public domain. Voters have a right to be informed about whom they are voting for.

European governments should introduce stricter regulation of political party financing, notably when that financing is from foreign sources, and increased transparency requirements in relation to funding. A stricter implementation of national corruption and money laundering legislation would also go some way to countering illegal money transfers.’

For more related articles and blogs on EU European Union, Media, Political Strategy, Populist Politics, Russia and White Nationalism click through:

Russian Brexit Coup by Putin and Compromised British Conservatives

US or UK Sanctions on Murdoch’s Fox News Support for Putin’s Russia?

Koch Industries – Putin – Russia – Ukraine – Koch Network – Think Tanks

Putin’s Russia – Dugin – Alt Right – White Christian Nationalism – the Anglosphere and Europe

Neo Conservative Rasputins? Putin and Dugin – Trump and Bannon – Johnson, Brexit and Cummings

Chomsky, US, Russian Propaganda and Faux Anti-Imperialist Narratives

Fake Anti-Imperialists of the Anglo Left and Right on Ukraine and Russia

Geopolitics – Horseshoe Theory – Russian Invasion of Ukraine – Anglosphere European Far Right and Left