Democracy and Civil Rights on the Ropes

by Thomas Coffin

The events of 1/6/2021 are fresh in our minds, as is the refusal of the Senate to hold the chief insurrectionist accountable for the armed attack on our Capitol. The anti-democracy faction, as always, is in Big Lie mode, as if middle school code messaging can claim the battlefield. The People are to swallow the poison elixir —to wit, the rejected president’s inflammatory speech was not at all meant to incite the violence that immediately followed, but was mere metaphoric poetry designed to evoke peaceful participation in the mechanics of democratic government. Cicero misunderstood by his audience is the theme. That our Constitution and Democracy suffered its closest brush with death in centuries is nothing to be alarmed about, or even to pay the slightest attention to, judging by the non-existent interest of the Trump Party senators sleep-walking through the impeachment proceedings which followed.

But the People are not drinking the elixir. Those of us with at least half a wit and a dose of our parents’ old-fashioned common sense, who watched, listened, and now recall the context of this historical episode of a defeated candidate’s attempt to overthrow an election and remain in power, had no problem navigating the thicket of lies to arrive at the sobering truth—America came perilously close to totalitarianism. And we are still far from being out of the woods.

Let me put the evidence in the record for the readers. First, a little background. I was a federal prosecutor for 21 years of my 45 years of government service in the criminal justice system. During that part of my career, half of which was spent in the very busy Southern District of California, I tried hundreds of jury cases, many of which involved complex fraud crimes where the intent of the defendant was a critical element of the offense—e.g., intent to deceive—as well as cases involving violent crimes, likewise involving proof of specific intent—e.g., premeditated intent to kill. Intent is rarely susceptible to direct proof without a confession from the defendant. Lacking such proof, the evidence must be supplied through indirect, or circumstantial, proof—such as similar acts showing a pattern of deceit or violence. Keep these concepts in mind as I endeavor to articulate just some of the actions and statements of Donald Trump which put the activity and speech of 1/6/21 in context.

I begin with his first campaign for president. In August, 2016, he gave a speech at a rally of his supporters in which he told them that if Hillary Clinton won she would abolish the Second Amendment and there was “nothing you can do folks...although the Second Amendment people—-maybe there is, I don’t know...” The term “Second Amendment solutions” is a euphemism associated with political assassination, and has been regularly employed by right wing militias to legitimize the supposed right to engage in armed insurrection against the government. Of course, Trump would later deny any such connotation.

Forwarding to March of 2019, when talk of impeachment was in the air, Trump boasted in an interview with Breitbart that if he were to be removed from office (through impeachment), “I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump—I have the tough people—it would be very bad.”

On 9/30/2019, Trump tweeted that “if the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office...it will cause a Civil War fracture in the Nation from which our Country will never heal.”

In September of 2020, during the first and only presidential debate, Trump was asked by the moderator whether he condemned the violence of white supremacy extremists and he not only failed to do so, he exhorted the “Proud Boys” (a violent and extremist white supremacy gang) to “Stand By”—a slogan that the Proud Boys subsequently stitched to their clothing.

On April 17, 2020, Trump tweeted “Liberate Michigan” in a series of tweets critical of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer for her Covid-19 shutdown measures in the State. Then in early October of 2020, the FBI and Michigan State Police foiled an imminent plot by 13 members of a paramilitary group, the Michigan Watchmen, to kidnap and murder Governor Whitmer and other State officials. After being fully briefed by federal law enforcement about the plot, Trump tweeted, “I do not tolerate ANY extreme violence” and added, “Governor Whitmer—open up your state...”

Months before the November 2020 election, Trump began broadcasting that he could only lose the election if it was rigged and there was fraud. To put these remarks in context, the readers need to keep in mind that Trump’s advisers had long been informing him that the Democratic candidate most likely to beat him was Joe Biden, which had fueled his pressuring the Ukraine President to announce a criminal investigation of Biden (to no avail).

What followed was the foreseen catalyst to the 1/6/21 insurrection—Trump lost the election by a large margin and initiated his claim of “fraud”, filing and losing some 60 lawsuits because his lawyers could not prove fraud despite the numerous opportunities to do so. That spurred his attempt to pressure election officials to change the vote tally to appear as if he had been the winner (e.g. the notorious recorded call to the Georgia Secretary of State in which he demanded that 11,000 votes be switched from Biden to him). He engaged in serial attacks on election officials in swing states, who endured death threats from his supporters for validating the election results as accurate after numerous recounts. Finally, Trump was left with one desperate move—preventing the ceremonial opening of the Electoral College ballots officially confirming Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States by the Vice-President before Congress on 1/6/21.

That was the setting for the summoning of his “tough people” for a rally that very day of the very certification of the votes of the People which would terminate his term and install Joe Biden in the White House. The attendees not coincidentally included “Proud Boys”, militia members, police, military officers, and other such supporters he previously bragged would make it “very bad.”

In his usual thinly veiled coded messaging, Trump’s remarks included exhorting the crowd not to let the emboldened radical left Democrats take away his and his supporters’ election victory, and not to concede when there was theft involved. He encouraged them by saying, “We will not take it anymore,” and reminded them that was what this was all about. He targeted Vice-President Mike Pence by stating he had the power to do the right thing and if he did so, “…we win the election.” He further prepped them by saying, “…you’ll never take back our country with weakness,” and that they had to “…fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore.”

The mob easily got the message. They stormed the Capitol causing 5 fatalities, looked for the Speaker of the House and other members of Congress to execute, and sought out Vice-President Pence as well once they learned he had not complied with Trump’s demand to reject the Electoral ballots. All during the hours this assault on Congress was unfolding, Trump was reported by aides to have been watching on monitors from the Oval office and being exuberant in his approval.

Only much later, when strongly encouraged by staff, did Trump videotape a message to the rioters to go home, adding that “We love you very much.”

This is some of the totality of context in which to judge the intent of the main orator at the 1/6/21 rally, moments before the crowd attempted to overthrow our government. The crowd got the message—many of them have since affirmed they believed they were following the then-President’s orders. When the bottom-feeders can so easily connect the dots, so can the rest of us.

In the aftermath of the sedition, America is hardly out of danger in the threat against our Constitution and Democracy. Had Trump succeeded in overturning the election results, we would soon be like all totalitarian governments with pretext elections that count only for show and must always favor the dictator to be considered legitimate. Otherwise, without any proof but the decree of the ruler, the election would be invalidated.

Our Senate has now encouraged armed conflict and sedition in election cycles by passing on any meaningful response to the 1/6 events, the attack on the very seat of our government, and thus feeding the evolving narrative that such may become the new normal of politics in America.

Look around America—the so-called “fraud” at the heart of the Trump “stolen election” narrative is at its core the African-American vote. The Trump Party has embraced fully the white supremacy/nationalist agenda, which has never acknowledged the legitimacy of the African-American vote. That demographic was pivotal in Biden’s victory and Trump’s loss at the polls. As we speak, his Party is feverishly working to enact voter suppression measures with the aid of the disastrous anti-democracy holding in Shelby County v. Holder, striking down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These measures would make it harder, not easier, to vote in future elections—the exact opposite of what a free democracy is all about. These budding voter suppression measures, along with gerrymandering (also endorsed by the Supreme Court in Rucho v Common Cause) would tilt heavily in favor of decades of white minority rule going forward. Research our Nation’s history—for decades after the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War, white supremacists employed voting suppression tactics and violence to prevent and deny the Constitutional right to vote to African-Americans. Attached is a link to a recent article that references the concerted efforts of that era to suppress the African-American vote. I am afraid MAGA is a call to return to that terribly unjust and discriminatory period of Jim Crow laws.

The John Lewis Voting Rights Act must be enacted. Voting must be facilitated, not impeded. Gerrymandering must be prohibited, not allowed through specious pretexts which disavow its true purpose and motive—racial discrimination.

Challenges to Black voting rights hark back to Jim Crow era

John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act

Posted 3.7.2020