Tous les ‘Toobz were abuzz this weekend over the massive Washington Post investigation into the January 6 insurrection. It is indeed a vast and impressive performance by the newspaper. It pretty much closes down dozens of alibis and soft explanations. No, this wasn’t a spontaneous event. Yes, it was carefully orchestrated by people close to the former president*. The only question is how close it all comes to El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago his own self, but the Post’s work leaves him only two possible options: either he was criminally negligent during the insurrection, or he was simply, you know, criminal. FBI Director Christopher Wray doesn’t come out of this smelling like a rose, either. The Bureau either missed, or failed to take seriously, a great number of flags that were spelling out, in semaphore, “DANGER IS COMING SOON” prior to the events of January 6.
Of course, the Post left no doubt where the breadcrumbs ultimately lead.
[Trump was] the driving force at every turn as he orchestrated what would become an attempted political coup in the months leading up to Jan. 6, calling his supporters to Washington, encouraging the mob to march on the Capitol and freezing in place key federal agencies whose job it was to investigate and stop threats to national security.
There also are dozens of delectable little side-tidbits. For example, John Eastman, the administration* lawyer whose boat presently is taking on water by the gallon, comes out blaming the bunkered-down Mike Pence for inciting the mob that came to the Capitol to hang him. Or there’s a terrified Senator Lindsey Graham, demanding that the Capitol Police re-stage the Odessa Steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin on the Capitol steps. (As we have seen, the senator has made peace with at least some of the rioters’ demands.) The series is too extensive and detailed to be adequately summarized here. Suffice it to say that any explanation downplaying the danger posed by the participants is inadequate. These were serious people with serious intent.
One of the most striking flares came when a tipster called the FBI on the afternoon of Dec. 20: Trump supporters were discussing online how to sneak guns into Washington to ‘overrun’ police and arrest members of Congress in January, according to internal bureau documents obtained by The Post. The tipster offered specifics: Those planning violence believed they had ‘orders from the President,’ used code words such as ‘pickaxe’ to describe guns and posted the times and locations of four spots around the country for caravans to meet the day before the joint session. On one site, a poster specifically mentioned Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) as a target.
