A Clarion Call

We have arrived at the brink of the constitutional crisis we had feared.  With Trump’s move to use the Justice Department and the FBI to discredit the Mueller Probe, we have crossed the final line separating us from the Rule of Law.  The President is demanding to investigate and discredit the investigation into his own criminal activity.  There is no precedent for that action.

In James Clapper’s newly released analysis of what happened in the 2016 election cycle, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence , Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, comes to the conclusion that Russia did successfully influence the election.  In fact it influenced it so well that Trump won the election.  Clapper is convinced that if they had not interfered with our process, Clinton would be President.  There is no ambiguity in his conclusion.

Apparently there was a joint task force formed in early 2016 by the CIA and FBI to investigate what was happening.  They saw the Russian interference unfolding and used an informer’s information to learn how it originated and was proceeding.  That informer (who was not spying as Trump falsely insists) was the early warning we had as to the onset of the attack by the Russians.

However, the Russian attack was enough to swing 88,000 votes in three states to give Trump the electoral victory.  Both the Russian effort and the coordinated Trump Campaign effort, working together, hijacked our election in 2016.  That is the consensus of all our intelligence agencies.

This interference is not a new phenomena.  In 1960, Mikhail Menshikov, the Russian ambassador, approached Adlai Stevenson offering to help him attain the nomination  for President because the Kremlin believed he would be the ‘right’ kind of President to foster peace with Nikita Krushchev.  Stevenson rejected Menshikov's offer and then turned to the Republican incumbent Dwight Eisenhower and informed him of the attempt to influence our election.  The same thing happened in 1964 when Lyndon Johnson was President and was running for re-election.  He also rejected the attempt, made by then ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to ‘assist’ with the election.  All the Russians needed was a willing collusionist, and it looks like they finally found one in Trump.  They successfully spread chaos in our politics and are seriously damaging our democracy.

In the meantime, we have a President who has done more to destroy our fundamental institutions than any past President.  He is at war with the Judiciary and the Rule of Law; he accuses the FBI and the DOJ of malfeasance and conspiracy to remove him.  He lies constantly and sows seed of doubt in the body politic by attacking anyone who criticizes him.  He calls the Press the ‘enemy of the people’.

He incessantly calls the Mueller probe a ‘witch hunt and fraud’ even though, unlike any previous investigations conducted by Republicans over the last decade or two, Mueller has had a fruitful harvest of indictments from people all around Trump who have repeatedly lied to investigators and the Press about their meetings and collusion with a foreign government. Trump’s entourage during the campaign were criminals:  Flynn, Page, Papadapolous, Manafort, Gates, Pinedo, Van der Zwaan, and 13 Russian nationals.  That is not a witch hunt!  And there are more indictments  coming: probably Michael Cohen, Roger Stone, Wikileaks, Kuschner, Trump Jr., maybe others.

Trump has now ‘demanded’ that the DOJ share confidential information about the investigation into his collusion with the Russians with him and his allies in the Congress.  That is unheard of and probably illegal.  And yet no one stands up to him.  The Republicans in Congress are mute.  They have sold their souls to the devil and are complicit in the abuse and destruction of the Constitution.

Trump has no respect or allegiance to the Rule of Law, one of the fundamental tenets of our democracy.  He is intent on persecuting and prosecuting anyone or anything that opposes him.  His legions of lackeys are sycophants to his motives and actions.

Consequently we now have a Constitutional crisis on our hands that pits the branches of our government against each other.  Led by a racist, narcissistic, mendacious, foul-mouthed excuse for a human being, the United States of America is in jeopardy of becoming an autocracy with a demagogue at the helm.  Unless we get rid of all these bums, you can look forward to more stringent immigration regulations, more relaxation of protective regulations for the common middle class citizen, and false accusations and intimidation to anyone appearing to oppose the administration.

I am doing my best to alert you to what is going on and to try to make you aware of what we are losing.

What are YOU going to do to stop this assault on our democracy?