LinkedIn just removed this post as "hate speech." WTH? January 6th, Pearl Harbor, Firing on Fort Sumter and 9-11, the days that will live infamy

To be clear, those who voted for Trump voted to condone an armed insurrection against our nation, whether that they believe it or not.

Dear TAT readers,

First and foremost, regarding today’s essay, I will level certain charges that may appear to the uninformed to be politically motivated, but all are well-grounded in clear, concise detail from the best and most credible of sources. Those who voted for Trump or rather any sitting Republican in Congress, voted to forgive an attack on our nation, equivalent to Pearl Harbor, 9-11 and the Civil War.

On today’s date and four years ago today, the sitting US president who knowingly had lost the 2020 election, led and supported an actual armed insurrection against our constitutional republic. Only three dates in American history rival an event so infamous, the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, 9-11 and the 1861 firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina that was the opening battle of our Civil War.

Now, sporting ideology remarkably similar to the Confederate ideology of the Civil War, that same, serial sexual predator, Putin sycophant and felonious citizen, has been reelected to the very Oval Office that he attempted to retain by force on January 6th, 2021. He has now been voted back into that office by those under the collaborative spell of Russian and far-right extremist influence operations. In the national security world, the incoming Trump administration should be considered a severe, “insider threat.” In the case of Trump, the MAGA GOP and the hand-picked oligarchs, they are the ultimate insider threat to our nation and even worse, our constitution.

What is an insider threat?

It is a threat posed to U.S. national security by someone who misuses or betrays, wittingly or unwittingly, their authorized access to any U.S. Government resource. This threat can include damage through espionage, terrorism, unauthorized disclosure of national security information, or through the loss or degradation of departmental resources or capabilities.

- NATIONAL INSIDER THREAT TASK FORCE,   MISSION FACT SHEET
- National Counterintelligence and Security Center

Like most Americans, I have friends and family that voted for Trump, and I gave them a “mulligan” for their 2016 vote, but not afterwards. Those who voted for Trump or their GOP members of Congress in 2024, don’t get a pass this time around, nor if they voted for him in 2020. As adults, they have the responsibility of voting as our founders expected of citizens, to be well and accurately informed. They intentionally voted for what I described above, a serial sexual predator, traitor, insurrectionist, felon, conman, thief and mafioso wannabe, based on pure propaganda, intimidation, suppression of truth and RedState penchants for overt dishonesty in support of unconstitutional agendas. My home state of Texas is as they say, “exhibit A.”

Not one sitting GOP representative or senator has applied effort to telling the truth about January 6th, Trump nor the armed insurrection that killed and maimed many, largely law enforcement officers defending our Capital and constitutional requirement to do as was done today by VP Harris, certify the 2024 election results. In fact, nearly all GOP members of Congress will not even discuss their spineless support for Trump, and his unconstitutional agenda called the 2024 GOP Platform based exclusively on Project 2025. This includes my Veteran Congressman Tony Gonzalez of Texas #23.

To make matters worse, there are in the 119th Congress, 72 GOP congressmen who are Veterans. They essentially swear the same oath as do all US servicemembers, “to protect and defend the constitution from all enemies both foreign and domestic.” Where the hell are the voices and moral spines of these veterans? To be more to the point regarding January 6th’s armed insurrection, the only Republicans (not conservatives) to speak out in support of the constitution over Trump’s coup attempt, was Rep. Adam Kinzinger. Kinzinger resigned due to the shameful silence of his Republican congressional colleagues but did assist courageously in the House of Representatives investigation of January 6th alongside fellow conservative representative, Liz Cheney. Quite nobly, President Biden honored Liz Cheney with the Presidential Citizens Medal last week.

Let’s see what our family and friends voted to ignore with their Trump and MAGA/ GOP votes. The following is taken directly from the DOJ website that regularly updates the following data.

Arrests

• Approximately 1,583 defendants have been federally charged with crimes associated with the attack of the U.S. Capitol, which includes:[1]

  • Approximately 608 charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement agents or officers or obstructing those officers during a civil disorder, including approximately 174 defendants charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer;

  • 180 defendants charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon;

• As proven in Court, the weapons used and carried on Capitol grounds include firearms; OC spray; tasers; edged weapons, including a sword, axes, hatchets, and knives; and makeshift weapons, such as destroyed office furniture, fencing, bike racks, stolen riot shields, baseball bats, hockey sticks, flagpoles, PVC piping, and reinforced knuckle gloves;

• Approximately 18 defendants charged with seditious conspiracy;

  • Approximately 91 defendants charged with destruction of government property; and

• Approximately 68 charged with theft of government property.

• All defendants charged in the January 6 prosecution have been charged with some form of trespass or disorderly conduct, in violation of federal criminal codes.

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  Case Resolutions:

  Pleas:

Approximately 1,009 individuals have pleaded guilty, which includes approximately 327 defendants who have pleaded guilty to felonies and 682 who have pleaded guilty only to misdemeanors.

• Of those who pled guilty to felonies, 172 pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement; 130 pleaded guilty to obstructing law enforcement during a civil disorder (riot); 69 pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement with a dangerous or deadly weapon; and 4 pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy– conspiring to use force against the United States. Some of these defendants pled guilty to one or multiple felony charges related to their conduct.

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Trials:

• 221 individuals have been found guilty at contested trials in U.S. District Court, including 10 who were found guilty of seditious conspiracy.

• Another 40 individuals have been convicted following an agreed-upon set of facts presented to and accepted by the Court.

Sentencings:

• Approximately 1,100 defendants have had their cases fully adjudicated and received sentences for their criminal activity on Jan. 6, including 667 sentenced to periods of incarceration and an additional 145 defendants sentenced to periods of incarceration where they were allowed to serve the entirety of their sentence in home detention.

  

Supreme Court Decision – Fischer v. United States:

As a result of Fischer v. United States, 23-5572, the government continues to review the cases of the approximately 259 defendants who, at the time Fischer was decided, were charged with or convicted of violating 18 U.S.C. § 1512 to determine whether the charge should continue to be prosecuted.

• There are zero cases where a defendant was charged only for violating 18 U.S.C. § 1512. In other words, even if the government foregoes this charge, every charged defendant will continue to face exposure to other criminal charges.

• Of those 259 defendants, at the time that Fischer was decided, approximately 126 defendants had cases still pending in the U.S. District Court, and 133 defendants had their cases fully adjudicated.

• Of the 126 defendants with pending cases at the time that Fischer was decided, the government subsequently decided to forgo the Section 1512(c)(2) charge for approximately 119 defendants and will continue to pursue the charge for approximately 7 defendants.

• For the 133 defendants whose cases had been adjudicated by the time Fischer was decided (i.e., post-sentencing), the government has taken the position, in response to defense motions, that it does not oppose dismissal or vacatur of the charge in approximately 65 cases. The government similarly continues to assess the remaining cases when appropriate.

• To date, 6 defendants have received a sentencing reduction because of Fischer.

  

• Add to the official data above, a massive weapons cache prepared and stored in a nearby hotel room to be available to Oath Keepers designated as a QRF/ Quick Reaction Force and the evidence is overwhelming regarding an “armed insurrection.”

• Then, there is this link to the official transcript of the January 6th committee that details sworn testimony from mostly Republican witnesses, the planning, support and execution of the coup attempt which includes the participation of the “Stop the Steal” efforts by GOP Congressman and Senators. Shamefully here in Texas, we had Ted Cruz and disgraced AG Ken Paxton involved in this effort in high profile speeches and planning, that any honest, non-lawyer, American citizen would consider “Seditious.”

  • Gov. Greg Abbott has never abided by a Freedom of Information Act or FOIA request to show that our Texas tax dollars, were not used to send Paxton to Washington for January 6th efforts. Several of Texas’ largest Newspapers demanded Ted Cruz’s resignation but hey, Cruz is shameless and of course, refused.

    

    Final Report of the Select Committee | January 6th-benniethompson

    Of course, there is also the complicity of FOX News who stoked the insurrectionist fires by repeating ad nauseum, Trump’s knowingly fraudulent claims about the election. Such dishonesty cost FOX nearly a billion dollars in a settlement, after being sued by one of the victims of their wanton dishonesty, Dominion Voting Machines.

This last bullet point regarding FOX News is the perfect segue to my final discussion regarding January 6th’s insurrection. This is professionally complex so I will only hit the highlights. In lay terms, FOX and other far right or for that matter, any extreme political position’s alleged news services, are mere propaganda machines, nothing more, nothing less. Since my core specialty of influence in support of national security is NW/ Narrative Warfare or in lay terms, influence warfare, I know precisely what FOX, MSNBC, OAN, NewsMax and the rest are up to. FOX though is the OG or original gangster and most pernicious threat and has been for three decades.

In NW, the key factors are the identity layers of an audience. In my professional opinion, there are only two surefire ways to understand an audience “identity,” know how to analyze it or to build it. FOX has been “building” today’s Republican identity for three decades bit by bit in what many social scientists would see as “conditioning.” Conditioning is basically what we all learned about in high school science classes when we were taught about Pavlov’s dog experiments. In short, Pavlov conditioned his dog to respond in a particular way by incrementally altering his interaction with it. When finished, his dog would behave precisely and reliably in the manner that Pavlov had designed. FOX has done the same with Republican voters for thirty years.

Now, conservatism has become far-right extremism due to this conditioning. There is nothing conservative about today’s GOP and as I demonstrated in excruciating detail in one of my most popular essays, Being a Republican today, doesn’t make you a Conservative. In the essay I laid out the platform of President Eisenhower’s 1956 campaign platform (which is largely Joe Biden’s), comparing and contrasting it with the 2022 Texas GOP platform. There was no national GOP platform between 2016 and this year’s election. Those two platforms were largely diametrically opposed to each other. The 2024 GOP Platform which is based on Project 2025 is not only un-American, but also unconstitutional. In short, what is accepted as “conservative today” by the GOP is really, far-right extremism. The facts are quite clear.

So, this talk about platforms really is about the control over an audience and the product of collaboration between Trump, his campaigns, illicit and immoral “influencers” working in conjunction with American oligarchy and Russian, state-sponsored influence operators. This is also fact and not open to interpretation. The early layers of Russian collaboration extends back to prior to the 2016 election. In 2016, 2020, 2022 and especially our most recent election, Russia has played a significant role.

• Publications | Intelligence Committee, Russia Reports, volumes 1 - 5

• Sanctions in Response to Attempted Iranian and Russian Interference in U.S. General Election - United States Department of State

• How Russia is using artificial intelligence to interfere in elections | PBS News

• Russia and Iran ramping up influence campaigns targeting U.S. voters, federal agencies say | PBS News

• Office of Public Affairs | Justice Department Disrupts Covert Russian Government-Sponsored Foreign Malign Influence Operation Targeting Audiences in the United States and Elsewhere | United States Department of Justice

• Russian Meddling in the United States: The Historical Context of the Mueller Report

Now, with FOX News and Russian influence operations tacitly cooperating in triggering the identities US voters, the fact that FOX has conditioned their audiences to exclusively believe only the false narratives streaming from their programming, Republican viewers will predictably and in zombie-like fashion, vote as they are “influenced,” no matter what. Most far-right outlets piggy-back on the same false narratives of FOX, which are in fact, dictated to them by Trump and his team, which with Russian support at a variety of levels is cooperative. There is no mechanism to alter identity quickly enough to stop the Trump tragedy at this point and the US national security community is virtually impotent and dedicated to feathering the pocketbooks of their nepotistic, failed defense contractors rather than protecting our nation.

In my upcoming book, “Conned” I will delve into all of this in detail, tragic as it is. What matters to today’s January 6th perspective is that, it was these types of influence operations that led to tens of thousands supporting trump and FOX news lies about the 2020 election that made his armed insurrection possible. Those conned are essentially the proverbial lemmings, who committed violence against the nation, law enforcement and all of us four years ago today.

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Summary

Well, today’s essay has been remarkably long and detailed. It may require waiting for the weekend to read thoroughly but may also require an adult beverage or two, due to its dangerously disturbing assessment. As for now and on a deeply personal level, January 6th is permanently etched into my own identity and in the worst possible way. Raised in a family of service to the greater good and with a firm, well-developed sense of history and government from my educator father, the armed insurrection is a painful memory. This is especially true when friends and family are the ones who put the traitor and his henchmen back into office. In a couple of weeks, we will again be ruled by foreign interests in support of The Four Horsemen of the MAGA Apocalypse, Autocracy, Oligarchy, White Christian Nationalism and Political Violence.

If we want to save our republic and while nearly half of American voters are under the influence of frauds, traitors, conmen and despots, it will be up to all of us to speak up and demand adherence to our constitution, not the unconstitutional alterations intended by today’s lemming GOP voters. I understand fully just how difficult that this can be among family and friends, but I am yet to hear of a better or more effective solution. The US national security community has demonstrated that they are incapable of protecting us from such influence. We are the cavalry and no one else is going to come to our rescue.

We must all venture out from our private groups on social media platforms and engage the tyrants and extremists. Sadly and as we discussed earlier, GOP ideology is now extremist, not conservative. Writing these essays has cost me plenty of friends and even a family member or two but, I and my brothers and sisters-in-arms all swear a sacred oath to, “protect and defend the constitution from all enemies, both foreign and domestic.” Family and friends, I am working on forgiving, but I can never forget those who would overthrow the republic that our founders willed into being for us and at great risk. I won’t forget those who gave their lives throughout our history to maintain our constitutional republic, some personal friends. I owe them and the nation, my very best efforts to maintain all that they shed blood over. I will not fail in my efforts. I truly believe that most Americans feel the same way.

Supporting this effort is my primary New Year’s resolution. Never forget January 6th, is my heartfelt plea to all of you fine folks.

My very best for your new year,

Paul