ALM: Following a late-October meeting with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in Turkmenistan, the Kremlin is advancing a comprehensive strategic partnership with Tehran. Iranian and Russian officials are accelerating cooperation across energy, transport, and defense sectors as Iran seeks long-term deterrence and military support amid its ongoing conflicts.
JSO: ” . . . Russian officials are accelerating cooperation across energy, transport, and defense sectors as Iran seeks long-term deterrence and military support amid its ongoing conflicts.”
How is Donald Trump facilitating the support of Russia’s ends today?
ALM: Based on today’s news and the geopolitical climate heading into tomorrow’s midterm elections, here is how the Trump administration’s recent foreign policy decisions are intersecting with Russian and Iranian interests:
The U.S.-Russia Diesel Deal and Sanctions Relief President Trump recently authorized a deal to release nearly 300,000 tons of Russian diesel to the U.S. market, aiming to lower domestic energy prices. To facilitate this, he issued an executive order on October 16 that waived key provisions of the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, a law he had signed just weeks prior.
This move has drawn bipartisan pushback in Congress, with critics arguing the deal provides the Kremlin with critical funding to sustain its ongoing incursion into Ukraine. Furthermore, policy analysts note that the administration is reportedly considering lifting sanctions on the Russia Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a government slush fund, without requiring prior reforms or a withdrawal from Ukraine.
Realigning European Security CommitmentsEuropean diplomats and NATO allies have expressed concern that if Republicans lose control of Congress in the midterm elections, a domestically constrained President Trump may pursue more aggressive unilateral foreign policy moves. Reports indicate the administration is reviewing the American military presence in Europe, with potential plans to withdraw thousands of U.S. troops, reduce contributions to NATO funding, and restrict the alliance-backed arms-buying scheme for Ukraine.
Indirect Pressure via the Middle East As Iran and Russia accelerate their strategic partnership, Tehran is leveraging its growing ties with Moscow to secure long-term military support amid its ongoing war with the U.S. While the administration is currently engaged in intensive, closed-door negotiations with Iran via Qatari and Pakistani mediators to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the conflict, critics argue that the war has disrupted global energy supplies, thereby making the U.S. more reliant on deals like the Russian diesel agreement.
JSO: Regarding Trump’s overtures toward Moscow in relation to diesel stocks for import, how has Congress responded?
ALM: President Trump’s decision to import Russian diesel and waive newly passed sanctions has sparked intense, bipartisan backlash from Congress.
On October 16, 2026, Trump issued Executive Order 14436, issuing a blanket waiver on the sanctions and tariffs mandated by the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act—a bill he had signed into law less than a month prior. The waiver allows the import of millions of barrels of Russian diesel, which the administration argues will alleviate high domestic fuel prices.
The congressional response has been swift and sharply critical across party lines:
Bipartisan Condemnation: A coalition of six Republicans (including Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Thom Tillis) and six Democrats (including Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Ron Wyden) issued a joint statement arguing the move runs directly counter to the 2022 congressional ban on Russian energy imports and “provides Putin with more fuel to finance his war machine.”
Republican Pushback: Senator Tillis called the waiver “beyond irresponsible” and “unconscionable,” while Senator John Cornyn noted that the late Senator Lindsey Graham, for whom the sanctions act was named, “would be appalled.”
Democratic Opposition: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer stated that the agreement “keeps getting dirtier” by giving the Russian economy life support, and Representative Adam Smith called on Congress to reassert its authority and pass a veto-proof sanctions bill.
Lawmakers are currently exploring avenues to close the Graham Act’s waiver loophole, revoke the Treasury Department’s diesel license, and initiate formal oversight investigations into the administration’s energy agreements.
Fill BackChannels readers in on Trump’s apparent betrayal of Ukraine. The diesel deal would be one example of his perfidy; relinquishing access to Startlink another; Has Trump disadvantaged Ukraine in other ways?
ALM-The convergence of recent policy shifts out of Washington lays bare the operational mechanics of state capture and handled subservience. Viewed through the lens of your medieval-versus-modern framework, the Trump administration’s recent maneuvers against Ukraine operate less like standard diplomacy and more like systemic leverage designed to enforce capitulation.
Here is the operational ledger of how the administration has disadvantaged Ukraine:
1. The Russian Diesel Deal and Sanctions Relief
In negotiations led by Trump envoys in Miami, the administration moved to ease restrictions and facilitate the flow of millions of barrels of Russian diesel to global markets.
The Strategic Cost: As President Zelenskyy noted in his interview with Piers Morgan, “Putin is laughing.” While framed domestically as a measure to stabilize fuel prices driven by Middle Eastern conflict, the deal hands Moscow an unearned economic and diplomatic victory, undercutting the bipartisan sanctions framework just as it was set to take full effect.
2. Starlink and Starshield Satellite Restrictions
Ukraine’s tactical edge—particularly its heavy reliance on drone warfare, reconnaissance, and interceptor guidance—has been severely hobbled by sudden speed and connection restrictions on mobile Starlink terminals.
The Operational Cost: When Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski and Ukrainian commanders called out Elon Musk over sudden connection blackouts during high-speed drone operations, Musk explicitly noted that any limitations on speed or usage are ultimately dictated by the U.S. military and the President of the United States (via Starshield oversight). It serves as a blunt instrument to coerce Kyiv’s battlefield tactics.
3. Intelligence-Sharing Pauses and Blind Spots
The administration has repeatedly leveraged vital intelligence streams, resulting in dangerous gaps for Ukraine’s air defense.
The Operational Cost: Ukrainian authorities reported receiving zero early-warning alerts for incoming Russian ballistic missile strikes ahead of massive overnight bombardments targeting Kyiv’s power grid as winter approaches. This mirrors the damaging intelligence pause following previous Oval Office friction—a blackout that directly compromised Ukrainian positions on the front lines.
4. The Coercive “Energy Ceasefire” Trap
Washington has leaned heavily on Kyiv to halt all long-range drone strikes against Russian oil refineries, pushing for a mutual “energy ceasefire.”
The Asymmetric Trap: While Ukraine is pressured to stop hitting the economic engines feeding Russia’s war chest, Moscow continues unabated with its kinetic bombardment of Ukrainian electrical grids, heating plants, and civilian infrastructure.
ALMP (Prompt): Let’s analyze whether European partners can successfully backstop Ukraine’s satellite and intelligence needs as US support falters.
Replacing the United States military-industrial-satcom backbone is not a simple matter of plugging in a new network—it is an exercise in managing deliberate friction, bandwidth bottlenecks, and operational trade-offs.
While Europe has the economic weight and technological baseline to cushion Washington’s retrenchment, a full, seamless 1-to-1 backstop is not yet physically possible across all domains.
1. Low-Earth-Orbit Communications: Eutelsat / OneWeb vs. Starlink
The most acute tactical vulnerability for Ukrainian frontline units and long-range strike drones is tactical satcom bandwidth.
The Reality: The European Union is rallying commercial capacity under the EU GOVSATCOM System—which integrated member-state satcom resources in early 2026—and relies heavily on Paris-based Eutelsat Group’s OneWeb LEO constellation to pick up the slack.
The Capability Gap: Eutelsat operates roughly 630 LEO satellites compared to SpaceX’s thousands. While OneWeb provides resilient throughput for static command posts, armored vehicles, and air-defense radars, it lacks the massive capacity required to power tens of thousands of individual foot-soldier terminals and real-time terminal guidance on thousands of high-speed attack drones simultaneously.
The Long View: Europe’s sovereign sovereign constellation, IRIS², won’t begin its primary multi-orbit rollouts until 2027–2029. Until then, Europe can backstop command-and-control satcom, but frontline unit-level connectivity faces speed caps and rationing.
2. Early-Warning Radar and Missile Tracking
When Washington throttles real-time early warning data (as seen during recent overnight missile raids on Kyiv’s energy grid), Ukrainian air defenses lose crucial minutes of lead time for intercepting Russian hypersonic and ballistic missiles.
European Capabilities: The UK, France, and Germany possess capable strategic military satellites (such as France’s CSO optical array and Germany’s SAR-Lupe/SARah radar systems) along with Earth-observation capabilities from ESA and Airbus Defense.
The Bottleneck: Western Europe’s space architecture excels at high-resolution strategic reconnaissance—mapping Russian staging areas, logistics hubs, and airbases—but lacks the persistent infrared space layer (like the US SBIRS constellation) built to detect thermal launch plumes in real-time. European intelligence can provide Kyiv with target sets, but early-warning intercept cues must be pieced together via ground-based European radar integration in Poland and Romania, leaving a narrower response window for Ukrainian air defenders.
The strategic gap created by US P-8 Poseidon, RQ-4 Global Hawk, and RC-135 Rivet Joint sorties over the Black Sea can be partially mitigated by European NATO allies, but with lower persistent coverage.
Where Europe Steps Up: Sweden (with its GlobalEye Airborne Early Warning & Control aircraft), the UK, France, and Italy regularly fly ISR missions over the eastern flank. Their radar and signals intelligence (SIGINT) feeds can be piped directly into Ukrainian command nodes.
The Attrition Problem: Europe simply has fewer airframes. Pushing these platforms into round-the-clock rotations burns through maintenance cycles rapidly, forcing European capitals to prioritize theater defense over continuous deep-battle surveillance inside Russia.
Operational Assessment
Europe can prevent a catastrophic blackout of the Ukrainian armed forces. By combining Eutelsat/OneWeb networks with French, German, and British imagery and SIGINT, Kyiv maintains command integrity and targeting intelligence.
However, Washington’s leverage relies on volume and persistence. Without US satellite volume, Ukraine is forced to operate on a stricter operational budget: rationing drone strike bandwidth, relying on ground radar over space sensors for air defense alerts, and selectively prioritizing high-value targets.
ALMP-The degradation of satellite links and GPS signals has accelerated one of the most radical technological adaptations on the modern battlefield. Rather than relying on cloud connectivity or orbital links, Ukrainian military engineers have moved compute power directly onto the airframe itself.
To bypass satellite restrictions, Ukrainian engineers are deploying a layered stack of localized navigation technologies:
1. Onboard Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO) and Optical Flow
When satellite navigation is denied or restricted, onboard optical cameras face downward to track relative movement against terrain features.
How It Works: Low-power edge processors calculate speed, altitude, and drift by tracking contrast shifts on the ground in real time. Combined with inertial sensors (IMUs), VIO prevents position drift without transmitting or receiving a single radio frequency.
The Strategic Shift: The drone no longer asks an orbital network “where am I?”—it calculates its coordinates internally based on its own visual feedback.
2. Terrain Contour Matching (TERCOM) via Edge AI
For medium- and long-range strike platforms penetrating deep into contested zones, Ukrainian engineers use onboard machine-learning models pre-loaded with high-resolution digital elevation models (DEM) and satellite imagery.
How It Works: The drone’s computer continuously compares optical feeds or lidar contours with saved map layers. The onboard AI aligns its path without referencing external satellite clocks or coordinate systems.
The Advantage: Because the AI operates locally on hardened microchips, it is entirely immune to RF jamming, GPS spoofing, or satellite access throttling.
3. Machine-Vision Autonomous Terminal Guidance
The most critical point of vulnerability in FPV (First-Person View) operations is the final terminal dive, where Russian electronic warfare (EW) domes or satellite blackouts sever operator communication.
How It Works: As documented by defense tech reporting via UNITED24 Media, Ukrainian firms deploy AI auto-guidance systems (such as DoD Solution modules). The operator manually identifies a target at distance; once locked, the onboard microchip takes complete control.
The Result: Even if satellite bandwidth drops to zero or radio links are completely severed by EW, the drone tracks and strikes moving targets autonomously using local object-recognition vision algorithms.
4. Physical Tethers: Spooled Fiber-Optic Control
To circumvent RF spectrum controls and satellite reliance altogether in tactical short-range engagements (15–25 km), engineers have turned to unjammable physical links, as detailed in reports from GIS Reports.
How It Works: The drone unspools a ultralight, micro-thin fiber-optic thread directly behind it as it flies.
The Advantage: Fiber optics deliver uncompressed HD video feed and zero-latency flight commands without using radio frequencies or satellite uplinks, rendering ground-based electronic interference entirely useless.
The Broader Paradigm Shift
As highlighted in military acquisition assessments by the Modern War Institute at West Point, Ukraine is shifting from a network-centric model (reliant on centralized satellites and cloud compute) to an edge-autonomous model (distributing hardware compute directly to front-line platforms). By combining imperfect, low-cost localized systems into a layered stack, Ukrainian engineers ensure mission completion even when external space infrastructure is throttled.
JSO: what may the Trump Administration have neglected most in its foreign affairs activity?
ALM: From a diplomatic, intelligence, and grand-strategy perspective, analyzing the Trump administration’s foreign policy vulnerabilities requires looking at systemic friction points—areas where critics, career diplomats, and national security analysts argue the foreign policy apparatus was either overlooked, bypassed, or structural liabilities were introduced.
Rather than a simple checklist of crises, foreign affairs analysts generally highlight five core areas where the administration’s approach left significant gaps:
1. Interagency Process & Institutional Continuity
The Gap: Foreign policy was heavily centralized within a small inner circle of advisors, often bypassing the traditional interagency process (National Security Council coordination, State Department regional desks, and career intelligence briefings).
The Consequence: Unilateral or sudden policy declarations (often via social media or direct executive decrees) frequently caught career diplomats, intelligence agencies, and defense officials off guard. This created an environment where long-term institutional memory and regional expertise were underutilized, leading to erratic policy execution.
2. Multi-Lateral Alliances vs. Transactional Bilateralism
The Gap: The administration prioritized a transactional, single-issue bilateral model (“What is the immediate, direct yield for the U.S.?”) over the maintenance of traditional, multi-lateral alliances like NATO, G7, or regional security blocs.
The Consequence:While pressing allies to increase defense spending yielded short-term burden-sharing wins, it frayed diplomatic goodwill and reduced trust. Multi-lateral frameworks take decades to build; treating them as purely transactional created security vacuums in places like Eastern Europe and the Indo-Pacific, which rivals like China and Russia moved to exploit.
3. Soft Power & “Gray-Zone” Strategic Influence
The Gap: The administration relied heavily on hard-power instruments—tariffs, economic sanctions (“maximum pressure”), and direct military force—while cutting or downplaying soft-power channels (foreign aid, public diplomacy, democratic institutions, and cultural diplomacy).
The Consequence: Soft power is the grease in the gears of statecraft. Neglecting diplomatic engagement in non-military spheres (such as international standards bodies, development infrastructure in Africa/Latin America, or international legal forums) allowed China to aggressively expand its Belt and Road Initiative and institutional footprint worldwide with minimal U.S. counterweight.
4. Post-Conflict Planning & Strategic End States
The Gap: Policy actions were often focused on high-visibility transactional “deals” or rapid disruptions without a fully articulated “day after” strategy.
The Consequence: Examples included rapid troop drawdown announcements (e.g., Syria, Afghanistan) or intense maximum-pressure sanction campaigns (e.g., Iran, Venezuela) where the strategic pressure was applied, but the diplomatic off-ramps or long-term stabilization plans were insufficiently developed. This frequently left power vacuums or forced field commanders and diplomats to scramble to mitigate secondary instability.
5. Non-Traditional Global Security Threats
The Gap: The narrow focus on hard economic and military competition meant systemic, non-state security issues were frequently downgraded in importance.
The Consequence: Issues such as transnational cyber hygiene, climate-induced migration, global pandemic preparedness, and supply-chain vulnerabilities were treated as secondary. Because these threats do not respect physical borders, failing to lead multi-lateral coalitions around them left the U.S. exposed to unexpected global shocks.
Analytical Summary
Strategic Pillar
Traditional U.S. Approach
Trump Administration Approach
Primary Neglect / Friction Point
Alliances
Institutional & Multi-lateral
Transactional & Bilateral
Loss of long-term trust and allied coordination
Statecraft Tools
Hard + Soft Power Integration
Hard Power / Economic Coercion
Atrophy of public diplomacy and soft-power leverage
Policy Process
Interagency / Career Bureaucracy
Top-Down / High Personalization
Loss of institutional memory & strategic predictability
ALM Prompt: How did these foreign policy gaps specifically impact U.S. posture and alliance dynamics in the Indo-Pacific and Eastern Europe?
ALM: When mapping those general foreign policy gaps onto specific theaters like the Indo-Pacific and Eastern Europe, the macro-level systemic issues—transactionalism, institutional disruption, and erratic strategic signaling—translated into concrete security shifts on the ground.
In both regions, the primary result was not a total collapse of U.S. influence, but a profound shift toward regional self-reliance, strategic hedging, and the acceleration of multi-polar defense planning.
1. The Indo-Pacific: Burden-Sharing Conflicts vs. Deterrence Gaps
The Indo-Pacific presents a key paradox: while the administration explicitly identified China as the primary near-peer competitor in its strategy documents, its operational execution often alienated the exact frontline partners needed to balance Beijing.
Fractured Bilateral Alliances: The administration heavily pressured traditional treaty partners over base-hosting costs. Unilateral demands for massive increases in financial contributions (e.g., targeting South Korea and Japan) transformed historical security pacts into transactional fee-for-service relationships.
Erosion of Military Readiness Signals: Sudden executive decisions to scale back or cancel major joint military drills—often announced without prior consultation with the Pentagon or regional commanders—undermined the operational predictability of U.S. forces. This sent mixed signals to partners like Taiwan, South Korea, and the Philippines regarding the permanence of the U.S. security umbrella.
Trade Alienation: By simultaneously engaging in tariff spats with key regional players (such as India and Vietnam) over trade imbalances, economic statecraft was decoupled from national security goals. This made it harder to build unified economic fronts against Chinese market dominance.
The Regional Realignment: To compensate, regional actors began hedging. Nations like Japan, Australia, and India rapidly accelerated their own bilateral security ties (such as reciprocal access agreements and defense tech transfers) to ensure stability independent of Washington’s political cycles.
2. Eastern Europe: Deterrence Decay and the Strategic Autonomy Push
In Eastern Europe, the gaps between strategic rhetoric and operational execution created significant friction, particularly along NATO’s eastern flank.
Ambiguity Around Article 5: Public rhetoric questioning the absolute guarantee of NATO’s collective defense clause created uncertainty for frontline states like the Baltic nations and Poland. Conditioning security guarantees strictly on meeting specific GDP defense spending thresholds introduced a element of risk into traditional deterrence posture.
Bypassing Alliance Mechanisms: Direct summitry and diplomatic engagements with adversaries—often conducted outside traditional NATO coordination structures or without European allies present—left Eastern European capitals concerned about behind-the-scenes bargains regarding regional security architectures.
Disruption of Aid and Troop Movements: Unilateral announcements regarding troop repositioning in Western/Central Europe, alongside conditional holds or pauses on security assistance, disrupted long-term military logistics and defense planning for frontline forces.
The Transatlantic Realignment: Eastern European states responded through a dual-track strategy. Frontline states like Poland rapidly expanded their domestic military acquisitions. Concurrently, major European powers accelerated discussions around European Strategic Autonomy—aiming to build independent defense-industrial capacities so that European security is not entirely dependent on the outcome of U.S. presidential elections.
Of course, AiLaMer has done the heavy lifting–well, about three seconds of it, five tops, altogether–on all of the above but the reference which I’ve presented in my preferred BackChannels style. Were I a person of power with the ability to order course corrections to so many egregious insults to American as well as international security in defense of deeply established business, cultural, defense, diplomatic, and trade relationships, I’d be on the horn this minute. Appropriately prompted, AiLa–for short–summoned the illustrations as well.
In a recent Tweet, the high and not so mighty Dmitry Medvedev, chair of the Security Council of Russia, referred to Ukrainian President Zelensky as a “provincial clown”. After so many years of accumulating material about Russia, I had quite a bit to pack into one riposte–>
In the end, the darkness you believe surrounds you–that paranoia–is your own and fixed by a reliably delusional, grandiose, messianic, and malign narcissism that has no other purpose than the want of adoration (narcissistic supply).
#MikePence’s refusal to stop #Congress on #Jan6 effectively stopped #Trump’s #Jan6RealSteal. #Trump, who appears not to understand either #Democracy or #Integrity, had lied to his base and the #GOP every step of the way to the last election–and he hasn’t changed one bit. As a #MalignantNarcissist and #PoliticalCriminal slow-walking toward his grand jury reviewed #4FelonyCases91Counts, he’s incapable of serving other than his projected image.
Suzie Qz posted this on X today as appropriate to Trump’s #RevoltingGOP and House Speaker Mike Johnson’s role in the reactionary subversion of America’s guiding principles and values:
If you would be passionate about the survival of American democracy, be at least curious about the Thirty Years War and the Peace of Westphalia that served to end it while also revolutionizing European diplomacy, redefining the assumptive principles of sovereignty, and forever modifying relationships between powers and the management of their affairs beneath an umbrella greater than themselves. This one treaty would then set a part of the stage for America’s own revolutionary departure from the power known to kings.
Before the Westphalia settlement, there was no recognizable diplomatic profession. Spies, irregular envoys, and heralds citing scripture or handing out ringing declamations were the usual route that princes chose to alert one another to the start of war. After Westphalia, the diplomatic craft was practiced by a kind of well-born guild, with members who were adept at melding reason, precedent, and law with quiet allusion to the implication of armed compunction.
On Elon Musk’s X platform, all Xpression may as well be flushed down the digital river of tweeted communications: the appearance is brief and the flood mighty.
Countermeasure: copy-paste and blog the message as well.
Vladimir Putin using Viktor Yanukovych as his lackey had sorely abused Ukrainian business with time-honored mafia methods, i.e., plain skimming theft in the end:
#Putin & #RussianNazis #RusNazis spread chaos, degradation, deprivation, and desperation worldwide, and then cover their crimes with lies, specifically baseless accusations, deflections, denials, erasures of collective memory, fabrications, and omissions of facts.
#TrumpPutin’s shared basic psychology: Malignant Narcissism and Process. The lies told by both represent the “Covering” of deeply seated humiliation (“Narcissistic Mortification”) and the fear of its repeat. The psyche creates an alternative undamaged courageous-heroic self, and that becomes the leader’s principle project both in its assertion and its defense (in the psychology, “Splitting” or, together, “Covering/Splitting”). Complementary observation, term, or trope: “delusional, grandiose, messianic ideation absent of normal boundaries or limits, i.e., the parameters of conscience” (so I quote myself). The end of the process for the Russian dictator and the American wanna-be dictator: “Unlimited Narcissistic Supply”, i.e., the validating infinite love of millions without end in sight.
After years of blogging defined by “collect, select, and opine”, I have found with the national and global obsessions with “#FeloniousTrump” (“#4FelonyCases91Counts”)–so I frequently refer to him on Elon Musk’s X post-Twitter platform–a certain saturation. I have tired of Donald John Trump’s image and voice, his skewed anti-democratic American political stances, his now infamously malign and surreal (delusional, grandiose, messianic) narcissistic psychology, his paranoia and related lies and lying, and the uncritical and other than Christian self-righteous viciousness of his fan base.
Instead of writing (much), I’ve chosen to produce a page of reference with two of Liz Cheney’s YouTube videos at the base. Before one reaches them: excerpts form suggested reference.
Motivation
Donald Trump has failed perhaps more than his share of bank loans and debts, and he has had to deal with a rough world, one often lawless beyond his own reach. The pressures must get “up there” with always incessant needs for cash. Well, he found his cash, and much of it in concentration.
As a bipartisan effort, the report does not delve into the root causes of the attack, including Trump’s role as he called for his supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat that day. It does not call the attack an insurrection, even though it was. And it comes two weeks after Republicans blocked a bipartisan, independent commission that would investigate the insurrection more broadly.
“This report is important in the fact that it allows us to make some immediate improvements to the security situation here in the Capitol,” said Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which conducted the probe along with the Senate Rules Committee. “But it does not answer some of the bigger questions that we need to face, quite frankly, as a country and as a democracy.”
But the DHS and the FBI do not create an intelligence report focused specifically on the upcoming pro-Trump rally. That’s important because these reports go beyond raw intelligence — they validate information and put it into context that would help local law enforcement develop a plan. These threat assessments or intelligence bulletins are typically written as a matter of course ahead of high-profile events. It’s not clear why this didn’t happen.
“There were significant, widespread and unacceptable breakdowns in the intelligence gathering. .?.?. The failure to adequately assess the threat of violence on that day contributed significantly to the breach of the Capitol,” Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), chairman of the homeland security panel, told reporters. “The attack was, quite frankly, planned in plain sight.”
Sources said Scavino told Smith’s investigators that as the violence began to escalate that day, Trump “was just not interested” in doing more to stop it.
Sources also said former Trump aide Nick Luna told federal investigators that when Trump was informed that then-Vice President Mike Pence had to be rushed to a secure location, Trump responded, “So what?” — which sources said Luna saw as an unexpected willingness by Trump to let potential harm come to a longtime loyalist.
As he pushed to overturn the election, Trump relied on a band of outside allies who undertook what federal prosecutors have called a “criminal scheme” to fraudulently overturn the 2020 results instead of relying on the advice of attorneys in the White House who urged him to accept his loss to Biden./Trump was asked in the interview why he didn’t listen to those lawyers.
In public, he made more than 800 inaccurate claims about the election from the time the polls began closing on Nov. 3, 2020, to the end of his presidency, according to a database compiled by The Washington Post. Dozens of times, he simply characterized the election as “rigged,” “stolen” or “a hoax,” and flatly and falsely declared he had won — even as a mountain of evidence proved otherwise. Other falsehoods were more specific about the voting and ballot-counting process, contained unproven allegations and promoted conspiracy theories.
Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection and Other Rights
Section 3 Disqualification from Holding Office
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
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