by Betsy Woodruff Swan
Politico.com
01/21/2022 12:21 PM EST
Updated: 01/21/2022 03:24 PM EST
Among the records that Donald Trump’s lawyers tried to shield from Jan. 6 investigators are a draft executive order that would have directed the defense secretary to seize voting machines and a document titled “Remarks on National Healing.”
POLITICO has reviewed both documents. The text of the draft executive order is published here for the first time.
The executive order — which also would have appointed a special counsel to probe the 2020 election — was never issued. The remarks are a draft of a speech Trump gave the next day. Together, the two documents point to the wildly divergent perspectives of White House advisers and allies during Trump’s frenetic final weeks in office.
It’s not clear who wrote either document. But the draft executive order is dated Dec. 16, 2020, and is consistent with proposals that lawyer Sidney Powell made to the then-president. On Dec. 18, 2020, Powell, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump administration lawyer Emily Newman, and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne met with Trump in the Oval Office.
In that meeting, Powell urged Trump to seize voting machines and to appoint her as a special counsel to investigate the election, according to Axios.
A spokesperson for the House’s Jan. 6 select committee confirmed earlier Friday that the panel had received the last of the documents that Trump’s lawyers tried to keep under wraps and later declined to comment for this story on these two documents.
The draft executive order
The draft executive order shows that the weeks between Election Day and the Capitol attack could have been even more chaotic than they were. It credulously cites conspiracy theories about election fraud in Georgia and Michigan, as well as debunked notions about Dominion voting machines.
The order empowers the defense secretary to “seize, collect, retain and analyze all machines, equipment, electronically stored information, and material records required for retention under” a U.S. law that relates to preservation of election records. It also cites a lawsuit filed in 2017 against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
Additionally, the draft order would have given the defense secretary 60 days to write an assessment of the 2020 election. That suggests it could have been a gambit to keep Trump in power until at least mid-February of 2021.
The full text of the never-issued executive order can be read here.
December 16, 2020
PRESIDENTIAL FINDINGS TO PRESERVE COLLECT AND ANALYZE NATIONAL SECURITY INFORMATION REGARDING THE 2020 GENERAL ELECTION
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 123 33, 138 48, National Security Presidential Memoranda 13 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.1601 et seq.) (NBA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code:
I, Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, find that the forensic report of the Antrim County, Michigan voting machines, released December 13, 2020, and other evidence submitted to me in support of this order, provide probable cause sufficient to require action under the authorities cited above because of evidence of international and foreign interference in the November 3, 2020, election. Dominion Voting Systems and related companies are owned or heavily controlled and influenced by foreign agents, countries, and interests. The forensic report prepared by experts found that "the Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results. The system intentionally generates an enormously high number of ballot errors. The intentional errors lead to bulk adjudication of ballots with no oversight, no transparency, and no audit trail. This leads to voter or election fraud." The report found the election management system to be wrought with unacceptable and unlawful vulnerabilities––including access to the internet––probable cause to find evidence of fraud, and numerous malicious actions.
There is also probable cause to find that Dominion Voting Systems, Smartmatic, Electronic Systems & Software, and Hart Inter Civic, Clarity Election Night Reporting, Edison Research, Sequoia, Scytl, and similar or related entities, agents or assigns, have the same flaws and were subject to foreign interference in the 2020 election in the United States. There is probable cause to find 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 find 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 firmware and software to Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Corporation (HSBC), a bank with its foundation in China and its current headquarters in London, United Kingdom. The Dominion Voting system is owned and controlled by foreign entities. Multiple expert witnesses and cyber experts identified acts of foreign interference in the election prior to November 3, 2020 and continued in the following weeks. In fact, there is probable cause to find a massive cyber-attack 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. 138 00 of May 11. 2017)
Just days prior to the election of November 3, 2020, federal Judge Totenberg found, after three days of testimony including by Dominion executive Eric Coomers:There 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. These risks are neither hypothetical nor remote under the current circumstances. The insularity of the Defendants' and Dominion's stance here in evaluation and management of the security and vulnerability of the BMD system does not benefit the public or citizens' confident exercise of the franchise. The stealth vote alteration or operational interference risks posed by malware that can be effectively invisible to detection, whether intentionally seeded or not, are high once implanted, if equipment and software systems are not properly protected, implemented, and audited. The 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 unverified 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 setting up or running election equipment or software creates other risks that can adversely impact the voting process.
"The Plaintiffs' national cybersecurity experts convincingly present evidence that this is not a question of "right this actually ever happen?" -- but *when it will happen, especially if further protective measures are not taken. Given the masking nature of malware and the current systems described here, if the State and Dominion simply stand by and say, "we have never seen it," the future does not bode well.
"Still, this is year one for Georgia in implementation of this new BMD system as the first state in the nation to embrace statewide implementation of this QR barcode-based BMD system for its entire population. Electoral dysfunction -- cyber or otherwise -- should not be desired as a mode of proof. It may well land unfortunately on the State's doorstep. The Court certainly hopes not." [FOOTNOTE 1: Case 1:17-cv-029 89-AT Document 964 Filed 10/11/20 Page 146 of 147]
And, yet it did. Every defect and hazard of which Judge Totenberg warned happened in Georgia. Witnesses in Georgia have provided evidence of crashes, the replacement of a server, impermissible updates to the system, connections to the internet, and both Coffee and Ware counties have identified a significant percentage of votes being wrongly allocated contrary to the will of the voter. Coffee County Georgia has refused to certify its result.
Accordingly, I hereby order:
(1) Effective immediately, the Secretary of Defense shall seize, collect, retain and analyze all machines, equipment, electronically stored information, and material records required for retention under United States Code Title 42, Sections 1974-1974(e), including but not limited to those identified in footnote 1. The Secretary of Defense has discretion to determine the interdiction of national critical infrastructure supporting federal elections. Designated locations will be identified in the operation order.
(2) Within 7 days of commencement of operations, the initial assessment must be provided to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The final assessment must be provided to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence no later than 60 days from commencement of operations.
(3) The Director of National Intelligence shall deliver this assessment and appropriate supporting information to the President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Homeland Security.
(4) A direct liaison to be authorized to coordinate as required between the applicable U.S. Departments and Agencies.
(5) The Secretary of Defense may select by name or by unit federalization of appropriate National Guard support.
(6) The Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Security will coordinate support requirements as needed from the Department of Homeland Security.
(7) The appointment of a Special Counsel to oversee this operation and institute all criminal and civil proceedings as appropriate based on the evidence collected and provided all resources necessary to carry out her duties consistent with federal laws and the Constitution.
-------------------------------------------------------------
DONALD J. TRUMP
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge on Sunday expressed serious concerns about Georgia’s new election system but declined to order the state to abandon its touchscreen voting machines in favor of hand-marked paper ballots for the November election.
-- Judge won’t order immediate switch to hand-marked ballots, by Kate Brumback, AP News, October 11, 2020
It opens by citing a host of presidential authorities to permit the steps that Trump would take, including the Constitution and Executive Order 12333, a well-known order governing the intelligence community. But the draft executive order also cites two classified documents: National Security Presidential Memoranda 13 and 21.
The existence of the first of those memoranda is publicly known, but the existence of the second has not been previously reported. NSPM 13 governs the Pentagon’s offensive cyber operations. According to a person with knowledge of the memoranda, 21 makes small adjustments to 13, and the two documents are viewed within the executive branch as a pair.
The fact that the draft executive order’s author knew about the existence of Memorandum 21 suggests that they had access to information about sensitive government secrets, the person told POLITICO.
The draft order also greenlit “the appointment of a Special Counsel to oversee this operation and institute all criminal and civil proceedings as appropriate based on the evidence collected and provided all resources necessary to carry out her duties consistent with federal laws and the Constitution.”
To bolster its provisions, the draft order cites “the forensic report of the Antrim County, Michigan voting machines.” That report was produced by Russ Ramsland, who confused precincts in Minnesota for those in Michigan, according to the Washington Post.
An affidavit filed by President Trump’s legal team intended to prove voter fraud in Michigan apparently used data taken from counties in Minnesota, the latest in a series of embarrassing missteps that have made Mr. Trump’s uphill legal fight even steeper.
As part of the Trump campaign’s effort to discredit the results in battleground states, the lawyers Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell have made a series of unsubstantiated and outlandish claims that Dominion Voting Systems, which sells voting software to states, electronically erased millions of Trump votes at the secret behest of liberal operatives.
To bolster that claim, they have pointed to areas that had abnormally high turnout rates compared to prior elections, most recently as part of a case filed in Georgia intended to show a nationwide pattern of fraud.
On Wednesday, L. Lin Wood, an Atlanta lawyer working with the team, filed an analysis from Russell Ramsland, a failed Republican congressional candidate and self-proclaimed election fraud expert, purporting to show suspiciously high turnout in blue areas of Michigan.
When the editors of Powerline, a conservative legal website whose contributors hail from Minnesota and other parts of the Upper Midwest, reviewed the nine-page document, they discovered a major problem: Many municipalities cited in the Michigan document — Monticello, Albertville, Lake Lillian, Houston, Brownsville, Runeberg, Wolf Lake, Height of Land, Detroit Lakes, Frazee, Kandiyohi — are located in an entirely different “M” state, Minnesota.
“This is a catastrophic error, the kind of thing that causes a legal position to crash and burn,” wrote John H. Hinderaker, a veteran litigator who believes any incidences of fraud are not on the scale Mr. Trump’s team is claiming.
Mr. Hinderaker surmised the error was the result of mixing up the abbreviations for the two states, “MI” for “MN.”
On Thursday, a federal judge in Georgia rejected Mr. Wood’s attempt to halt certification of Mr. Biden’s victory in the state. On Thursday, Mr. Giuliani said Mr. Trump’s team planned to plow on with its legal challenges in Georgia, even as it withdrew from cases in Michigan and Arizona.
Mr. Wood, Mr. Ramsland and Ms. Powell did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
-- Minnesota or Michigan? Trump lawyers mix up ‘M’ states in an affidavit intended to prove vote fraud, by Joshua Rashaad McFadden for the New York Times, 1/20/20
An affidavit President Donald Trump’s legal team has hailed as proving fraud in the 2020 presidential election has a problem—the fraud it claims to show in Michigan used precinct listings that were actually in the state of Minnesota, in the latest legal gaffe involving the continually failing effort by Trump and his allies to show rampant voter fraud in the presidential election.
KEY FACTS
• The affidavit claimed to use data from the Michigan Secretary of State to show “a statistical anomaly so far outside of every statistical norm as to be virtually impossible.”
• Directly below that claim came statistics showing that the Benville Township precinct had a 350% turnout compared with the number of registered voters.
• But Benville Township is not in Michigan—it is in Minnesota, and only has an estimated population of 82 people, meaning that if even a handful of voters registered on Election Day itself, which is allowed in Minnesota, that could easily result in a much higher turnout than what was previously on the voter rolls.
• The affidavit goes on to list several other tiny townships in Minnesota, some even smaller than Benville.
• Trump’s legal team, particularly Sidney Powell, had promoted the affidavit as showing major evidence of voter fraud.
• Details of the document were first widely reported Friday by the pro-Trump Powerline Blog, which called the mix-up a “catastrophic error.”
KEY BACKGROUND
The affidavit was filed as part of a lawsuit that was neither in Minnesota nor Michigan, but in federal court in Georgia. That suit, brought by pro-Trump attorney Lin Wood, sought to discredit the state’s election results by claiming there were problems with the voting system. Like Michigan, Georgia uses the private company Dominion Voting Systems to tabulate election results—a system Trump and his supporters have continued to baselessly claim led to widespread fraud. The affidavit was filed Tuesday, and a judge threw out the case on Thursday, saying that the challenge came too late and “does not have merit.” Georgia also completed a hand recount and audit of its votes on Thursday, confirming President-elect Joe Biden won the state.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
Efforts challenging election results have been plagued by what seem to be sloppy errors. Wood’s lawsuit, for example, mentioned voting problems in Mercer County, Georgia, which does not exist. Another suit challenging vote counts in Wayne County, Michigan, was filed in a court that had no jurisdiction over the matter. Meanwhile, Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani has continued to go off on rants in front of the press, making unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, and seeming to forget basic legal concepts during a Pennsylvania hearing.
-- Trump Ally Confuses Michigan And Minnesota In Affidavit Claiming Voter Fraud, by Nicholas Reimann, Forbes Staff, 11/20/20
WASHINGTON – An affidavit from President Donald Trump’s legal team that claimed to prove widespread voter fraud confused two "M" states: Michigan and Minnesota.
The affidavit was as part of a larger lawsuit actually filed in Georgia by pro-Trump and conservative attorney L. Lin Wood that sought to discredit that state's election results by pointing to alleged discrepancies and problems with Dominion Voting Systems.
Trump, his legal team, and his supporters have continued to tout unsubstantiated claims that Dominion Voting Systems has led to widespread fraud in several states.
To point out the supposed problems with Dominion Voting Systems in Georgia, the affidavit, filed as analysis from Texas resident and cybersecurity expert Russell Ramsland, was intended to show supposed errors in Michigan, as both states use Dominion Voting Systems to tabulate election results.
However, the Ramsland affidavit appeared to confuse townships in Minnesota for Michigan.
Ramsland highlighted a number of "statistical anomalies and red flags" he claimed proved "that election results have been manipulated within the Dominion/Premier system in Michigan."
He specifically highlighted several precincts in Michigan where the number of votes cast appeared to exceed the number of registered voters in the county.
Many of the municipalities cited in the Michigan (MI) document, such as Albertville, Houston, Monticello, Runeberg, Lake Lillian, Brownsville, Wolf Lake, Height of Land, Detroit Lakes, Frazee, and Kandiyohi, are located in Minnesota (MN).
The affidavit was filed Tuesday. A federal judge dismissed Wood's lawsuit on Thursday, which sought to halt the certification of Georgia's election, saying it came too late and lacked merit.
Georgia completed a hand recount and audit of votes on Thursday, confirming President-elect Joe Biden won the state.
The "risk-limiting audit" found Biden won Georgia by 12,284 votes, a narrower margin than the 14,196-vote lead he held immediately following the election. Local election administrators identified uncounted ballots in four counties. Each was the result of human error.
On Friday, saying "numbers don't lie," Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger certified those election results.
Trump’s legal team had promoted the affidavit as proof of widespread evidence of voter fraud.
Ramsland had claimed in the affidavit that "excess ballots" were allegedly processed, but it is unclear where the data listed came from.
According to actual data from the Minnesota Secretary of State, there were 4,202 registered voters in Monticello P-2, but only 3,776 votes were cast in the presidential election.
USA TODAY has reached out to Wood for comment.
This Georgia lawsuit that mixed-up Michigan and Minnesota is just one of several filed by Trump's legal team that have been dismissed.
-- Trump lawsuit confuses Michigan and Minnesota locations in affidavit claiming voter fraud, by Savannah Behrmann, USA TODAY, 11/20/20
Michigan’s secretary of state, meanwhile, released an exhaustive report rebutting election conspiracy theories and concluding that none of the “known anomalies” in Antrim County’s November 2020 election were the result of any security breach.
"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."
The draft remarks
The draft document labeled “Remarks on National Healing,” also now in the select panel’s possession, provides a first look at the remarks Trump would deliver the next day, which stand in jarring contrast to other rhetoric Trump employed at the time and continues to use when discussing the insurrection.
“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.”
Practically, the [79 Days to Inauguration] report is an instruction manual for how Trump partisans at all levels of government—aided by citizen “posses” of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers—could, quite literally, round up opposition activists, kill their leaders, and install Donald Trump for a second term in office.
The scenario begins late on Election Night. The networks have declared Joe Biden the winner, his campaign having upset Trump in the state of Texas. The call is withdrawn moments later, following reports of a cyberattack involving the state’s tabulation system. As it becomes clear there will be no definitive winner on Election Night, attention shifts to a few battleground states with large numbers of outstanding ballots.Riots break out in more than a dozen major cities . . . 14 law enforcement officers are known to have been shot, with one confirmed death. There are unconfirmed reports of a car bombing of a police precinct building in Philadelphia.
The violence, as imagined by Claremont and TPPF, overwhelms police and fire officials.Police recede to a defensive posture around their precincts, it is unsafe to maneuver police vehicles down the streets and responding to calls for service, even emergency calls, is suspended. Fire departments are unable to approach buildings on fire without police escorts, which are not happening.
The next day, the federal government announces Operation Spearfish, targetingLeaders and agitators within the groups associated with BLM, Antifa, Boogaloo, and NFAC . . . with over one thousand arrest warrants issued using federal and state statutes from RICO to disorderly conduct… The decision to obtain arrest warrants even for the barest minimum of probable cause on the lowest of charges is meant to remove the players from the picture, at least temporarily. Social media sources and other intelligence sources were used to find any instances of incitement to violence, threats, or other criminal activity that met federal or local statutes and act on them.
Remember, this narrative is the result of a role-playing exercise in which the participants imagined themselves as key decision-makers in the federal government. The actions described, therefore, might be best understood as a combination of group therapy and suggestions for how they believe the federal government and law enforcement should behave in a moment of constitutional crisis.
Some of the report is revealing. Some of it is sad. Some of it is darkly funny. For instance, the authors’ recommendation for mass, politically motivated arrests “to remove the players from the picture” sits oddly next to the right’s outraged reaction to the prosecution of Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
There’s more irony in how the task force imagines right-wing gangs would operate during such a period: with quiet discipline and in cooperation with law enforcement.A lack of social media activity and overt action by the rioting by members of the Proud Boys draws the attention of law enforcement officials suspecting they may be operating covertly on the ground in several major urban rioting areas, but their exact involvement is unknown. Reports of militias moving into suburban areas is being monitored. Several groups affiliated with the Three Percenters and Oath Keepers have openly offered to assist law enforcement in putting down the violence via social media, touting significant current and retired law enforcement and military membership....
In reading the report, it becomes clear that task force participants see law enforcement as a critical adjunct to the more traditional political actors and that they believe law enforcement could act with greater impunity and force, independent from—and at times in defiance of—elected leaders.There are rumors that several sheriffs in conservative counties throughout the country are hinting that they may deputize regular citizens into posses should the lawlessness come to their counties. Social media is ablaze with volunteers from Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and Oath Keepers and other Posse Comitatus groups to form posses.
This isn’t an innocent game of “what if?”
Earlier this year the Claremont Institute created a Sheriffs Fellowship program. Claremont claims that this program will offer “training of unparalleled depth and excellence in American political thought and institutions.” But then, this is the same group that produced a report hoping that “several sheriffs in conservative counties” would give groups like the Proud Boys actual legal authority.
Which is it?
Law enforcement plays an openly insurrectionist role throughout the “79 Days” exercise, defying civilian leaders, refusing to offer them protection, and threatening them with arrest.
For example, the report imagines Chicago police (with vocal backing from their union) abandoning Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s residential block, permitting protesters to set up camp on her front lawn.
In imagined dialogue, the wargame quotes the city’s Fraternal Order of Police president as saying “We have officers risking their lives by not shooting people they should be shooting, or waiting too long because Lightfoot and her Soros-funded prosecutor Kim Foxx seem more interested in arresting cops than criminals.”
The union leader goes on to defend a police sickout (“Foxx and Lightfoot use this department and its officers as political scapegoats all the time, maybe they will enjoy not having us around”) and “excessive force” against rioters (“Take a look out the window there, you tell me, what the hell is excessive right now?”).
The authors use an imaginary appearance by former Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke on Fox News to issue an open threat to elected leaders of the political opposition, which is imagined as going “viral”:“The police are here to protect people and preserve the peace. They will do that. Politicians might get in the way for a while like they’re doing right now, but at some point, cops will remember their oath and will take back their communities for the good, law-abiding people in those communities. You won’t want to be on the other side of that once they have had enough of this nonsense.”
The National Fraternal Order of Police issues a partisan statement attacking Joe Biden’s “irresponsible” call for peaceful protests, “calling on President Trump to assist our men and women in blue in putting an end to the violence and anarchy and to restore law and order.”
At which point the “79 Days” report moves into truly authoritarian wishcasting:
• Federal and local law enforcement officials “entered into meetings with Google, Facebook, and Twitter to discuss tracking phones and electronic communication devices that have been traveling together to various cities” to track various “agitator groups.”
• Checkpoints are established “along major corridors entering Michigan, Texas, and Florida [to] stop and detain any suspicious caravans or large transport vehicles and to identify passengers for verification in the state fusion centers as members of Antifa and BLM are expected to descend on the capitol buildings in those states.”
• The FBI’s elite counterterrorist Hostage Rescue Team is sent to “execute search warrants for weapons in and around Washington, DC… Seven Antifa members are killed by gunfire” during the simultaneous raids with “no injuries to the agents.”
A barely concealed bloodlust runs through the report. During a battle with rioters at a Portland police precinct building, a:SWAT sniper conducting overwatch shot and killed one of the arsonists as he drew his arm back to throw his device (captured on police surveillance video and released immediately: warning graphic). The Molotov Cocktail exploded when he dropped the bottle and covered several rioters in flames, three injured severely and one dead at the scene.
At a confrontation near the White House, a non-lethal directed-energy weapon called the “Active Denial System” is used against protesters “to great effect with limited, precise application to specific threats. Social media erupts with claims of abuse through military weaponry.”
The body count grows with “officer-involved shootings” related to the RICO-authorized Operation Spearfish, resulting in “at least three suspects dead.” However, “none of the agencies is releasing information on the circumstances or identities of the officers or suspects involved, citing the ongoing investigation.”
These raids, which operate with all the impunity of a death squad, “are executed in middle to upper class neighborhoods where the Antifa and BLM activists/leadership tend to reside.”
The exercise ends with crude myth-making: the noble and sacrificial decision by a “Republican member from an at-large delegation” suffering from “life-threatening wounds” who, “understanding what is at stake, demands to be transported to the House for the state delegation vote and arrives in a heavily guarded convoy.”
This isn’t a serious wargame or a policy study so much as a bowdlerized retelling of The Turner Diaries.The Turner Diaries is a 1978 novel by William Luther Pierce, published under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald. It depicts a violent revolution in the United States which leads to the overthrow of the federal government, a nuclear war, and, ultimately, a race war which leads to the systematic extermination of non-whites. All groups opposed by the novel's protagonist, Earl Turner—including Jews, non-whites, "liberal actors", and politicians—are exterminated.
-- The Turner Diaries, by Wikipedia
-- The Trump Coup: Notes on an Authoritarian Conspiracy: Inside the Claremont Institute’s “79 Days to Inauguration” Report. Claremont’s post-election war game provides a window into the group’s ambitions, by Christian Vanderbrouk
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.
“We have to have peace,” Trump said then. “So go home. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens, you see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel.”
The day after the attack, facing a torrent of criticism and public discussion about invoking the 25th Amendment in order to remove him from office, Trump delivered an Oval Office address similar to the draft remarks. In that address, Trump also condemned the violence at the Capitol and called for perpetrators to be held accountable.
A Trump spokesperson declined to comment for this story.
Draft vs. reality
The draft remarks go on to describe emotions running high after an intense election. “But now, tempers must be cooled and calm restored.”
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.”
In the year since the riot, Trump’s recent characterization of the attack has veered wildly from that sentiment in the draft remarks. The former president has described the 2020 election as “the insurrection” and Jan. 6, 2021, as “the Protest.” He has also praised Ashli Babbitt, a rioter who entered the Capitol and was shot and killed there by a police officer.
The remarks go on to strike a unifying tone in discussing the coronavirus.
“The pandemic isolated millions in their homes, damaged the economy, and claimed countless victims,” the document continues. “Ending the pandemic and rebuilding the economy,” it adds, “will require all of us working together,” along with renewed emphasis on patriotism, faith and community.
“We must renew the sacred bonds of love and loyalty that bind us together as one national family,” it adds.
While Trump has courted the disapproval of some in his own base by publicly sharing that he’s received a booster shot against Covid, he has chiefly emphasized the success of vaccines against the virus as his own personal victory.
“I came up with a vaccine, with three vaccines,” Trump told conservative pundit Candace Owens last month. “All are very, very good.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misstated how the draft remarks were used. Former President Donald Trump delivered a speech the day following the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection that was substantially similar to the document obtained by the select committee.