Recent reporting demonstrates how determined are the opponents of democracy to continue the fight. Most of these items involve things from the past that are just now coming out into the open--but they're consistent with what's going on right now.
Making the link between past and present is Steve Bannon. On his podcast yesterday Bannon basically confirmed reporting by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa to the effect that he participated in planning the January 6 insurrection as a means of cancelling the election. The reporters' book Peril relates that prior to January 6 Bannon advised:
People are going to go, "What the fuck is going on here?" We’re going to bury Biden on January 6th, fucking bury him. We’re going to kill it in the crib, kill the Biden presidency in the crib.
You might remember that on January 5 Bannon told his listeners that all hell would break loose the following day. Yesterday Bannon responded to the Peril reporting:
Yeah, because his legitimacy. Forty-two percent of the American people — 4-2 — think that Biden did not win the presidency legitimately. It killed itself. … Just let this go with what this illegitimate regime is doing. It killed itself. We told you from the very beginning. Just expose it. Just expose it. Never back down. Never give up. This thing will implode.
All this is consistent with Peril's reporting of a memo developed by John Eastman, "a conservative lawyer working with then-President Donald Trump's legal team." (Bannon interviewed Eastman for his podcast on January 6, right after the assault on Congress.) Eastman laid out a complicated set of steps Mike Pence could take to nullify election results in several states and hand the election to Trump. Basically, Pence would declare certain states contested, then announce Trump as the winner. Congress might object, but that would throw the election to the House of Representatives, where Trump would be elected anyway.
But they're still at it. Just yesterday the New York Times reported that Trump's campaign issued an internal memo that refuted allegations against Dominion voting that were being advanced by lawyers supporting Trump. Knowing the allegations were false, Trump refused to put a leash on his lawyers--and to this day he and his acolytes perpetuate the Big Lie that the election was stolen.
Meanwhile, Trumpists continue to align with authoritarians around the world. Bannon and others are supporting Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro. Up for reelection but trailing badly in the polls, Bolsonaro is doing exactly what Trump did in 2016 and 2020: announcing in advance that the election is being rigged. And today, following other Trump acolytes who have made pilgrimages to Hungary, Mike Pence is speaking to a "pro-family" event, the "Fourth Budapest Domestic Summit."
And Arizona Republicans are still conducting their bogus 2020 election audit after multiple delays, even deadlines for the submission of its report. Trump keeps pounding the drum, sending another letter to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to demand that he decertify last year's election. Trump is already under criminal investigation in Georgia for leaning on this guy.
The present continues the past. Trump's first National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, was yapping yesterday about a plan to put coronavirus vaccine in salad dressing. Salad dressing! Flynn, we recall, was convicted of lying to the FBI about his financial relationship with Turkey and resigned his position after lying about his conversations with Russia's ambassador to the US. He's still around. And this week Rand Paul campaign aide Jesse Benton, who was convicted of campaign finance violations in the 2016 election, only to be pardoned by Trump (!!!), received federal charges for funneling Russian money to the Trump campaign.
It never quit being about Russia.
