![]() That may suggest that they engaged in sufficient affirmative plotting even before Wednesday’s events. And yet Trump seems to believe these men - including the guy with close ties to far right Congressmen, the white nationalist, the guy who remade several agencies to ensure that only loyalists remained in key positions, and the guy who tweets out Trump’s barely-coded dogwhistles - need a pardon. I like to think I’ve got a pretty good sense of potential legal exposure Trump’s flunkies have, yet I know of nothing (aside, perhaps, from McEntee’s gambling problems) that these men have clear criminal liability in. Preemptive pardons are under discussion for top White House officials who have not been charged with crimes, including Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, senior adviser Stephen Miller, personnel chief John McEntee, and social media director Dan Scavino. Trump plans to pardon those in the bunkerįirst, as I noted here, according to Bloomberg, Trump has talked about pardoning the four men who’ve been in the bunker with Trump plotting recent events, along with Rudy Giuliani, who is also likely to be pardoned. That said, I want to look at a few data points that may provide useful background. We won’t know which of these possible explanations it is (likely, there are a range of explanations), and won’t know for many months. ![]() Or, even worse, a plan to exploit these past events to create the opportunity for a coup to succeed. Both are barely distinguishable from a deliberate attempt to punish the President’s opponents - including Muriel Bowser and Nancy Pelosi - for their past criticism of Trump’s militarization of the police and an overt politicization of law enforcement. Those are just the most charitable explanations I can think of, though. In addition, in both DOJ and FBI under the Trump Administration, job security and career advancement depended on reinforcing the President’s false claims that his political supporters had been unfairly spied on, which undoubtedly created a predictable reluctance to treat those political supporters as the urgent national security threat they are and have always been. First, in the wake of criticism over the deployment of military resources and tear gas against peaceful protestors to protect Donald Trump in June, those who had been criticized were reluctant to repeat such a display of force to protect Congress (and Mike Pence). ![]() I can think of two charitable explanations for the lapses. The core issue, thus far, concerns DOD’s delays before sending in the National Guard - something that they happened to incorporate into a timeline not long after the attack, before the Capitol Police or City of DC had put their own together (the timeline has some gaps). The NYT and WaPo both have stories beginning to explain the failures to protect the Capitol ( ProPublica had a really good one days ago). ![]()
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