I know this sounds like ancient history, but bear with me: Remember when Donald Trump tried to rig the 2020 election in advance by pressuring Ukraine to announce a phony investigation of Joe Biden? Remember that he was impeached by the House and cleared by the Senate? What’s truly memorable right now is that Adam Schiff warned what would happen if Trump was let off the hook: “He has betrayed our national security, and he will do so again. He has compromised our elections, and he will do so again. You will not change him. You cannot constrain him. He is who he is. Truth matters little to him. What’s right matters even less…What are the odds, if left in office, that he will continue trying to cheat? I will tell you: 100 percent. Not 5, not 10 or even 50, but 100 percent.”
Because that was Trump’s nature. Because, for gangsters, the con never stops.
And now we have the most vivid evidence of all. According to Justice Department notes of a Dec. 27, 2020 phone call (shared with the House Oversight Committee and released to the public), Trump tried to pressure DOJ to delegitimize Biden’s victory by simply announcing that the whole election was corrupt. As deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue wrote in his notes, Trump’s big mouth disgorged garbage that should be immortalized for all time: “Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R congressmen.”
And when Donoghue and his boss, acting AG Jeffrey Rosen, pointed out that the election was not corrupt, that there was no such evidence it was corrupt, and that “we can only act on actual evidence developed,” Trump was predictably undeterred. He then puked another classic, a memorable shout-out to ignoramuses everywhere: “You guys may not be following the Internet the way I do.”
None of this shocking, of course. But it’s further proof that Trump committed the worst of all crimes that any president would ever contemplate: seeking to destroy democracy from within by fomenting a fascist coup.
He wanted the DOJ to gin up his goons for the Jan. 6 insurrection; indeed, he’d already tweeted on Dec. 19 that insurrection day would be a blast (“Be there, will be wild!”). Well, guess what, folks: According to the federal criminal code, 18 US 2383, “Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned…and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”
Is anyone at the DOJ prepared to do anything about that? Just asking, on behalf of the 81 million Americans who threw Trump out of office.
We should not take comfort in the fact that Trump just had a very bad week. Granted, the DOJ’s notes outed him as a traitor (yet again), cops on Capitol Hill testified about the physical wounds they suffered because of his Big Lie, his endorsed candidate in a Texas congressional race went down to defeat, the feds announced that House investigators are entitled to see his tax returns, and President Biden forged a promising bipartisan infrastructure deal, the kind that Trump never came close to pulling off. Plus, the House’s Jan. 6 committee is well positioned to ferret out the conspiratorial ties between Trump and his fellow travelers in the Republican ranks – most notably Jim Jordan, the “fighter” (Trump’s description) who spoke with the traitor that day and now claims not to remember what was said.
That’s all good stuff, as far as it goes. But Trump’s congressional Republican lickspittles are more determined than ever to whitewash Jan. 6 and concoct mindless disinformation scenarios. As Laura Thornton, a pro-democracy scholar reportedly observes, “This is happening all over the place – it is so much linked to the democratic backsliding and rising of authoritarian movements. It’s about the same sort of post-truth world. You can just repeat a lie over and over and, because there’s so little trust, people will believe it.”
And the credulous MAGA minions are still prepared to absorb any number of speed bumps. Their push to abolish democracy remains relentless; the ’22 midterm election is their next pit stop on the road to perfidy. They’re hoping to exhaust us, because that’s how authoritarianism takes root and thrives. Either we show up on election day in ’22, with the same determination that prompted Trump’s ouster, or we throw up our hands and let freedom die.