coup against Trump – USA Gov Policy

This article was written by the distinguished retired judge, John H. Wilson

Like any author seeking to generate interest in his new book, former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe is making the rounds of talk shows. Famously fired from the FBI for a “lack of candor,” Mr. McCabe has claimed in a recent interview with 60 Minutes that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was “recruiting Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove President Donald Trump from office.”

Deputy AG Rosenstein has repeatedly denied these allegations. However, as far back as last September, it was alleged that Mr. Rosenstein offered to “wear a wire” and record his conversations with President Trump while at the same time, recruiting Cabinet Members to support a move to have the President declared unfit for office. In his most recent comments to 60 Minutes, Mr. McCabe states that Mr. Rosenstein had the support of both the then-Attorney General and the then-Director of Homeland Security.

These allegations have been described as an attempt at a “coup d’etat,” most notably by renowned attorney Alan Dershowitz. But before we get too excited about this evidence for the existence of a “deep state,” it would be beneficial to examine the language of the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The idea of presidential succession in the event of the incapacity of the President is actually a relatively recent development in American history. Under Article II, Section 1, clause 6 of the US Constitution, “in case of removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President.” In 1967, after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, there arose a concern that the Constitution did not provide for any method to be followed in the event that the President was deemed to be incapacitated. The 25th Amendment was ratified to answer this concern.

Under Article 1 of the Amendment, “In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.” Section 2 gives the President the authority to nominate a Vice President, subject to a majority vote of both houses of the Congress. Section 3 allows the President to notify both the President Pro Temp of the Senate and the Speaker of the House that he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” and provides for the Vice President to serve as an “Acting President” Your doctor will be able to advise you order cheap cialis out of your problem once and for all. We all know that sales cialis one aspect impact of medications is sleeplessness. Drugs used for the treatment cost of viagra pills include: Benzodiazepine-based sedatives Non-benzodiazepine medications like eszopiclone (Lunesta), zaleplon (Sonata), and zolpidem (Ambien) Melatonin supplements if it is caused by different factors that include heart disease, obesity, etc. Slipping might be the result of go now cialis prescription over oiling. until such time as the President is recovered. https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxxv

Section 3 of the 25th Amendment was invoked “on July 13, 1985, when President Ronald Reagan sent a letter directing then-Vice President George H.W. Bush to perform his duties while the president underwent a surgery to remove cancerous polyps from his colon. Bush was acting president from 11:28 a.m. when Reagan was given general anesthesia to 7:22 p.m. when Reagan sent another letter to members of the Senate and resumed his powers.”

Section 4 of the 25th Amendment is the one Mr. Rosenstein is alleged to have sought to invoke. It reads “Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”

There then follows a complicated series of steps and countermoves to be taken after the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet stage their coup. The President is entitled to contradict the assertion that he is unfit for office, but the Vice President and his accomplices may repeat their position that the President is unable to discharge his duties, at which point, Congress must decide the issue by a two-thirds vote of both houses.

Despite the serious nature of Mr. McCabe’s allegations, there is one crucial factor missing from the “Rosenstein plot” – the participation of Vice President Mike Pence. At all pertinent points, Section 4 of the 25th Amendment states that “the Vice President AND a majority” of the Cabinet may act. In a recent interview with the Vice President, not only does he deny any talks about the 25th Amendment with anyone, he asked the interviewer “why would we be?”

Thus, even if we are to believe that the Deputy Director of the FBI had discussed invoking the 25th Amendment with two Cabinet members, both of whom agreed with the idea, unless Mr. Rosenstein had the support of Vice President Mike Pence, this nascent coup d’etat was nothing more than a stillbirth, living only in the imagination of President Trump’s enemies and detractors.

Photo: Andrew McCabe (FBI official photo)

For eight years, the Obama Administration ignored Constitutional checks on its power and ran roughshod on those with differing views. The IRS harassment of the Tea Party, Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s consideration of criminally prosecuting those that disagreed with the President’s climate change views, and the unlawful surveillance of an opposition campaign are just a few examples. National security protocols for communications were violated without penalty. Major treaties, including the Paris Climate Accord and the Iran nuclear deal were unconstitutionally adopted without the consent of the Senate. Extraordinary conflicts of interests, including Clinton’s approval of the sale of the basic ingredient of nuclear weapons to the Russians followed by contributions to her foundation, abounded.

There was little fear of having to legally account for these and other misdeeds because a sure-thing successor waited in the wings. The perpetrators, both elected and appointed, would not be held to account by a friendly successor Administration.

The surprising results of the 2016 Presidential campaign terrified the perpetrators, who were suddenly vulnerable to exposure and prosecution. In all other instances when an administration was replaced by one from a different party or ideology the retired leader and his appointees quietly moved on, and their party looked forward to the next election.

That wouldn’t work for the Obama Administration. The legal exposure was vast and deadly serious. It wasn’t just political embarrassment or job loss that would result. For some, penalties including jail time could be their fate. When Trump won, that left one alternative for those whose lives were on the line: to somehow delegitimize the new government.

Doing so would be a very hard sell, and besides, even if both the President and Vice President were somehow tossed from office, the Speaker of the House, another Republican, would become the new president. The GOP itself had to be delegitimized, so that they would lose the 2018 midterms and a Democrat would be the new speaker. Ginning up false and overblown controversies, including the Russian Collusion and other artificial charges, was the path chosen.

Democrats and their media allies term it a “Resistance,” a much more palatable term than what it really is—an attempt at a coup.
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The key wrongdoers eagerly push the concept. Obama tossed aside all precedent and remained active in public affairs. Hillary Clinton touts the idea of Trump being unqualified. The former heads of the FBI and the CIA, as well as their key underlings, many of whom were the most legally vulnerable, desperately worked the talk show and press circuit. A sympathetic media ignores astounding acts, such as former CIA chief John Brennan’s admonition to federal employees to ignore Presidential directives. Some elected officials fail to condemn violent riots and outright talk of assassination by misguided celebrities.

No one is asking what the “Resistance” is resisting. Simply disagreeing with the policies of the elected government is not “resistance;” it’s the consequence of losing at the ballot box.

In the two years since the 2016 election, we have seen, in addition to the antics of partisan current and former members of the FBI, CIA, and the Department of Justice, a former Secretary of State, John Kerry, roam the globe telling allies and adversaries to ignore the current U.S. government, and the radical 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals seek (unsuccessfully) to overturn legitimate presidential power. Coordinated efforts by Democrat-friendly media and entertainment outlets have sought to create a wholly unsubstantiated sense of crisis.

This is not the vigorous policy fights and harsh campaign rhetoric that are the business as usual of politics. They are the desperate measures of those seeking to overturn an election in order to avoid exposure of their wrongdoing and the consequences that would follow.

Illustration: Pixabay

Quick Analysis

Putin’s Saber Rattling

Earlier this week, President Biden reversed his 2022 decision, authorizing the provision of antipersonnel land mines to the Ukrainian government. It follows an earlier Administration authorization to allow the use of an advanced American missile system capable of striking as deep as 100 miles inside Russian territory. The US election season may be ending, but both Russia and the West show no indication of stepping down the conflict. Russian propaganda continues to swell as the Kremlin increases its threats to use nuclear weapons against the West. Last week Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the pro-Kremlin think tank Valdai Discussion Club (VDC), published an article on growing nuclear tensions in the region. Official Russian language in the last few years has been threatening. Since the US election, rhetoric like that in the Sushentsov article, has approached the level of nuclear blackmail. The VDC article’s main theme centers on Russia’s intent to directly confront the West militarily if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) becomes involved in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. “On the one hand, these threats are intended to frighten the West, but on the other, Russian propagandists themselves are starting to believe in the inevitability of escalation,” according to Ksenia Kirillova of the Jamestown Foundation. On November 11, Sushentsov wrote that “The conflict will reach a completely new level, with unpredictable consequences for Europe and the entire world.” Kirillova points out that Putin’s distorted image of the world is divorced from reality and is causing the Kremlin to issue demands that are impossible to fulfill. Financial and other Russian resources needed to support Putin’s war are growing scarcer at the same time. This week the Kremlin announced a reduction of payments to its soldiers. Recently North Korea acknowledged it was sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine as Putin is running out of bodies to use as cannon fire. The war is not going well for Russia. One question floating around the Washington intelligence community is whether Putin will act out of desperation before President-elect Trump assumes office. In recent months the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out materials from fairly reputable analytical platforms inside the country. Kirillova says that “Kremlin ‘experts’ do not conceal that such threats are only intended to break the West psychologically, as they themselves are not prepared for full-scale nuclear war.” Despite Russia’s lack of preparation for an all-out war with the West, the expanding nuclear rhetoric carries with it an increase in the threat of a full-scale war in multiple theaters of operation. In June 2023 a founder of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Sergey Karaganov, called for “delivering a pre-emptive strike of retaliation” on Poland to force the West to surrender. In the previous month, Dmitry Suslov, a direct of research programs at the policy center proposed organizing “a demonstration nuclear explosion” aimed at intimidating the West. In September, President Putin announced a reappraisal of Russian nuclear doctrine after speaking earlier in the year at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and jokingly calling Suslov a “scary person.” Pavel Baev, writing in the European Daily Monitor, says “Putin intends his announcement to mark an escalation of nuclear brinkmanship and influence the proceedings of future Ukrainian peace efforts.” Putin is expanding the list of environmental conditions that are acceptable for using a nuclear weapon and incorporating it into Russian military doctrine. Baev adds that “The ups and downs of Russian brinkmanship are disconnected from the kinetic battles of the war, correlating instead with Ukrainian peace offensives, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first peace summit in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.” Despite the increase in vitriolic language, in a You Tube video published a week before the US presidential election, Karaganov openly assured the West the primary goal of the escalation is to break the American spirit and that of the West, not outright nuclear war. By Election Day in the US, with political prognosticators predicting a win for former president Trump, Karaganov changed his tune and called for an increased role in nuclear deterrence. Kirillova points out that Western concessions to Russia are unlikely to reduce the risk of nuclear escalation. The distorted reality inside the Kremlin continues to push that President-elect Trump is an adherent of “world government,” that Ukraine will create a nuclear weapon, and Russia must prepare for a nuclear conflagration to achieve its ambitions for a new world order. President-elect Trump has indicated he will not agree to concessions that destabilize Europe, the Middle East or other regions. Going forward a strong US foreign policy may be the most stabilizing course the West can count on to restrain Putin and his intent to rebuild the Russian empire. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay

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