David Corn's Blog

When Donald Trump announced the launch of his war on Iran in a videotaped message, he declared he was “eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.” If there were indications that Tehran was about to strike American targets, that would have been reflected in US intelligence reports. Yet a member of the House intelligence committee, Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), says that no such intelligence was shared with the committee and that the Trump administration for months had refused to provide intelligence on Iran to the committee. “We were kept in the dark,” he notes.

In an interview with Mother Jones, Gomez contends that there is no reason to believe Trump’s claim of an imminent threat, and maintains that Trump was just spinning the nation into a war of choice. He also notes that if the Democrats win control of the House in the coming midterm elections, the House intelligence committee is likely to mount an investigation of the pre-war intelligence, as well as Trump’s use and possible misrepresentation of intelligence regarding other national security matters, including the attack on Venezuela: “We not only have an obligation but we do have a right to conduct these investigations. We have to see if intelligence was politicized…We have to know what really happened….I’m looking forward to holding them accountable.”

Gomez adds, “There are things we have to look at that people don’t even know about, and they’ll never know about.” That sounds ominous.

The Trump administration, he says, “never came to show us the evidence there was an imminent threat to the United States.” The flow of intelligence was shut down after media reports noted intelligence assessments of Trump’s air strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June did not back up Trump’s claim the sites had been “obliterated.” And, according to Gomez, the Republicans on the House intelligence committee have not pushed for more access to Iran intelligence. “Now that they have a Republican president, the oversight is not as robust as it was during the Biden administration,” he says.

“There’s no way people should trust what the administration is saying,” he comments. “They’re trying to find facts on the ground to justify whatever goal they have.” Gomez points out that though Trump has said Tehran posed an immediate danger to the United States due to its ballistic missile program, the Defense Department has concluded they are ten years away from developing missiles that can strike America.

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, President Donald Trump announced he had launched a war against Iran. He insisted that Iran posed a direct threat to the United States. He detailed its past acts of aggression. He claimed he had tried to reach a deal with Tehran to end its nuclear program. He warned the public that American soldiers might die as a result of this attack. He noted that the aim of this war was to end the Iranian regime and urged the people of Iran to rise up and “take over your government.”

What Trump did not say was that he had a plan.

It’s easy for an American president to bomb a country. It’s much tougher to figure out what to do in the aftermath. Trump, who initiated this attack with Israel without seeking congressional authorization (as the Constitution requires), clearly engaged in little, if any, preparation for what comes following this “massive” operation, as he termed it.

Trump appears to be winging it, letting loose the dogs of war and then seeing what the hell happens.

For years, Trump has demonstrated that he often sees no need for plans. He vowed repeatedly during the 2024 campaign that he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. But he had no plan to do so. In his first term as president, he said he could deliver cheaper and better health care. But he proposed no plan for that. He also said he would rebuild American infrastructure and, again, put forward no plan. He tends to act impulsively, believing chaos and discord can be exploited by a masterful negotiator, as he sees himself.

Yet one of the most obvious lessons of the past 25 years is that warring requires planning—not just for the initial assault but for what occurs afterward. The best example is the Iraq War. George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld had no idea what to do after the invasion and the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical regime. In the violent chaos that ensued for years afterward, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians died, ISIS arose, regional instability reigned—and Iran consolidated power.

It’s not that the brighter bulbs of the Bush-Cheney administration did not see the need to prep for the post-invasion period. As Michael Isikoff and I reported in Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, in the months prior to the war—when it was evident Bush was committed to attacking Iraq—there were several well-executed projects focused on what would need to be done after Saddam was forcibly removed from power.

A small Pentagon unit examined this question, assuming a high level of violence would continue after Saddam was deposed. Its analysts concluded that an enormous number of US troops would be required to provide security throughout the country—a greater amount than those being sent to Iraq for the invasion.

Separately, the Army deputy chief of staff for operations and plans asked the War College’s Strategic Studies Institute to examine post-war questions, and it produced a report identifying numerous challenges for any occupation. The paper tallied 135 post-invasion tasks that would have to be accomplished to reestablish an Iraqi state. This included securing the borders, setting up local governments, protecting religious sites, maintaining power systems, opening hospitals, and disarming militias. A big concern was what to do about the Iraqi Army. This paper recommended not disbanding it. (The Bush-Cheney crowd did dismantle the army, a move that fueled vicious sectarian violence.) “Massive resources need to be focused on this [post-occupation] effort,” the report said.

The State Department, too, tried to do the responsible thing. A year before the invasion, it established the Future of Iraq project. This operation had 17 working groups, full of Iraqi exiles (lawyers, engineers, academics, and businesspeople), that considered all the steps necessary to remake a post-Saddam Iraq: reorganizing the military and police, creating a new legal system, restructuring the economy, and repairing the nation’s water and electric power system, among many other tasks.

The Bush-Cheney White House wasn’t interested in any of these exercises. In one pre-invasion meeting of the National Security Council, Bush asked Gen. Tommy Franks, the CENTCOM commander in charge of the invasion, about security in Iraq after Saddam’s ouster. Who would maintain law and order? he inquired. Franks said he had that covered: The US would keep the peace, and each major Iraqi town and village would have a “lord mayor”—an appointed US military officer who would be in charge of preserving civic order and administering basic services.

That was an idiotic concept. Worse, there was not even a true plan to designate and install these “lord mayors.” This seemed to be just Franks’ own fanciful notion. No such exercise was even attempted following the invasion. The lack of a post-Saddam game plan led to a debacle.

The Iraq War case illustrates both how much work it took to devise post-war plans and the disastrous results that came from the Bush-Cheney gang eschewing these preparations for the aftermath.

There’s no sign that the Trump administration has spent months—or even days— working out what should be done after this military operation. Instead, his Pentagon spent the hours leading up to the attack feuding with an American AI company, various “woke” universities, and Scouting America. Trump appears to be winging it, letting loose the dogs of war and then seeing what the hell happens.

There’s another Bush-related episode that casts a shadow on Trump’s actions. In his statement, Trump egged on the Iranian people to rebel against the mullahs, declaring: “America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force. Now is the time to seize control of your destiny and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach.”

This sounded familiar. At the end of the Persian Gulf War that President George H.W. Bush launched in 1991 to drive Saddam’s forces out of Kuwait, the elder Bush called for “the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands to force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.” Many Iraqis took this as a signal that the United States would support them if they mounted a revolution, and they did so. Bush did nothing to assist these rebels, and to quell this uprising Saddam slaughtered tens of thousands of Iraqis.

Trump appears to be following the bad examples of both Bushes. There are no preparations for what to do if he succeeds in driving the ayatollahs out of power and no strategy for protecting the opposition should it heed Trump’s call and face a further violent crackdown.

Trump has no plan for Iran. Just blow shit up, kill some people, and hope for the best. Tehran, for all its horrific transgressions (including its recent killing of thousands of protesters), did not pose an immediate threat to the United States. Perhaps military action against this regime could be justified. But there was ample time to seek congressional authorization and an international alliance for a regime-change war. Instead, Trump proceeded with an unconstitutional action without readying for what is to follow. It is the war of a Mad King.

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

Sometimes there’s no smoking gun, but there’s the smell of gunpowder.

That seems to be the case with Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. The Trump gang’s handling of the scandal looks as if it is purposefully designed to raise suspicions. Fighting the release of the Epstein files, declaring this whole subject ought to be dropped, and, of course, Trump’s contradictory statements about his relationship with Epstein—it all comes across as fishy and suggests guilt of…something. Last week, the news emerged that in 2006, when sex crime charges against Epstein in Palm Beach became public, Trump called the city’s police chief and said, “Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this.” Yet after Epstein was arrested on federal charges in 2019, Trump said he had known nothing of Epstein’s abuse of teenage girls: “I had no idea.”

Was he lying about what he knew back in the day? This—shall we say?—contradiction is hard to square. But it’s a good indication that nothing Trump claims about Epstein should be believed. Remember the birthday card? In July, the Wall Street Journal reported that a birthday album Ghislaine Maxwell prepared for Epstein in 2003 contained a greeting from Trump: A drawing of a naked female body with an imagined dialogue between “Jeffrey” and “Donald” that ended, “A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump’s signature mimicked pubic hair in the crotch of the figure.

Would Trump really sue? Perhaps he felt emboldened by the settlements he had wrung out of ABC News and CBS News for the bogus cases he filed against them.

Trump insisted this birthday message was a “fake thing.” He said, “I never wrote a picture in my life.” That was false; he had drawn sketches that were sold at auctions. And he said he was “gonna sue the Wall Street Journal just like I sued everyone else.”

That seemed like one of his many phony-baloney threats. After all, the Journal had found this Trump drawing in an album with well wishes from dozens of Epstein associates. It seemed legit. Would Trump really sue? Perhaps he felt emboldened by the settlements he had wrung out of ABC News and CBS News for the bogus cases he filed against them.

He indeed sued the Wall Street Journal, the reporters who wrote the story, and right-wing media titan Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corps owns the newspaper. He claimed the article had defamed him.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in southern Florida, contends that no such “authentic letter or drawing exists,” and it charges that the Wall Street Journal “concocted this story to malign President Trump’s character and integrity and deceptively portray him in a false light.” (This implies the birthday message was forged by someone, but the lawsuit presents no evidence of that.) Trump argues this article “resulted in overwhelming financial and reputational” harm for him. He demands at least $10 billion in damages.

The case proceeded with various motions—even after the House Government Oversight Committee released a full version of the Epstein birthday album it had received from the Epstein estate, which contained the Trump drawing. And Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal submitted a reply to Trump’s complaint with a motion to dismiss the case.

Murdoch says Trump is such a lout that an association with an affectionate note to a sex criminal cannot tarnish his public image.

This reply hasn’t received much attention. Yet it should, for in the filing, Murdoch et al. argue that Trump is too lewd a person to suffer reputational harm from this story. To prove this, Murdoch relies on the infamous Access Hollywood video in which Trump boasted that due to his celebrity status he could sexually assault women.

Yes, Murdoch, whose Fox News and New York Post provide the most prominent media platforms for slavish Trump worship, says Trump is such a lout that an association with an affectionate note to a sex criminal cannot tarnish his public image.

In this filing, Murdoch’s legal team offers several arguments to counter Trump’s claim. It notes first and foremost that the WSJ article was accurate and points to the release of the birthday album by the congressional committee as proof of that. The attorneys say there was “nothing defamatory about a person sending a bawdy note to a friend,” highlighting that three months before the birthday book was presented to Epstein, New York magazine quoted Trump saying he had known Epstein for 15 years and believed he was a “terrific” guy who was “a lot of fun to be with” and liked “beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” And the Murdoch retort states that there had been no malice—a prerequisite for winning a defamation case against a public figure—which only exists when a defendant has reason to believe the story is false.

“Bawdy” is doing a lot of work here. Murdoch’s lawyers could have gone with “sleazy” or “lecherous” or “misogynist.”

Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal’s response rips the hide off Trump’s case on many levels. For instance, it contends, rather reasonably, that reporting Trump was pals with Epstein before Epstein was busted is not defamatory. But the killer argument is that the WSJ article was “consistent with plaintiff’s reputation.” Trump, Murdoch’s lawyers maintain, “admitted to instances of using bawdy language when discussing women. Plaintiff thus cannot allege that the Article damaged his reputation.”

“Bawdy” is doing a lot of work here. Murdoch’s lawyers could have gone with “sleazy” or “lecherous” or “misogynist.” But they landed on a Benny Hill-ish description that’s less offensive in tone. 

Murdoch asks the court to “take judicial notice of both the extensive public reporting of [Trump’s] past comments” and notes that Trump “has a well-documented reputation for bawdiness based on his past statements about women.” The complaint serves up examples starting with Trump’s infamous remark: “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything…Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

It continues:

President Trump also has a well-documented history (over which he has never sued) of making bawdy comments in venues like The Howard Stern Show and elsewhere. In 1991, Plaintiff gave an interview with Esquire, in which he stated, “[I]t really doesn’t matter what [the media] write[s] as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.” In 2006, on Larry King Live, Plaintiff referred to actress Angelina Jolie as having “been with so many guys she makes me look like a baby[.]” Any allegation that President Trump wrote a bawdy birthday note is thus consistent with his public reputation—which he has himself acknowledged—for using “locker room” talk and does not plausibly state any harm.

The filing from Trump’s lawyer requests that the court toss out all the exhibits that chronicled Trump’s lewd and misogynistic remarks, asserting that these “random instances” did not render Trump “impervious to harm.”

The complaint includes as an exhibit a list of quotes from Trump assembled by Politico in 2015 that included a remark he made in 1992: “Women, you have to treat ’em like shit.” The Murdoch response further argues that there was no reason for the reporters and the newspaper to doubt the article’s accuracy—which would be necessary for proving malice—“because it was entirely consistent with President Trump’s reputation.”

Bottom line: Trump is precisely the kind of guy who would have hobnobbed with Epstein, not been put off or alarmed by Epstein’s interest in younger women, and sent him a message like this one.

Murdoch asked the court to kick the lawsuit to the curb:

This case calls out for dismissal. In an affront to the First Amendment, the President of the United States brought this lawsuit to silence a newspaper for publishing speech that was subsequently proven true by documents released by Congress to the American public. By its very nature, this meritless lawsuit threatens to chill the speech of those who dare to publish content that the President does not like.

In October, Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, replied. His filing requests that the court toss out all the exhibits that chronicled Trump’s lewd and misogynistic remarks, asserting that these “random instances” did not render Trump “impervious to harm.” It insists there was no evidence Trump “actually wrote and signed the letter or sent it” and claims the Journal article was “clearly calculated to subject President Trump to hatred, disgust, ridicule, contempt or disgrace.” The story, Trump’s mouthpiece maintains, was part of a “deliberate smear campaign.”

A hearing on the case was held in December. As of this week, Judge Darrin Gayles, an Obama appointee, had rendered no decision on Murdoch’s request for a dismissal.

This lawsuit could be seen as a sideshow to the ongoing Epstein mess. But it shows the length that Trump will go to in order to wipe away the Epstein stain. He might have said, “Yeah, as we all know, I did socialize with Epstein before his crimes were revealed and, like many others, contributed to an album compiled for his birthday—before I dumped him and kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago.” A stance like that would likely not have caused Trump that much trouble, given there’s already plenty of creepy images and videos of Trump hanging with Epstein at that time. Instead, Trump seems to be denying the undeniable.

His lawsuit is a case of Trump protesting too much, as well as a threat to the First Amendment. And it’s a tad ironic that Murdoch, whose media empire has done so much to elevate and protect Trump, now defends the Journal’s reporting by depicting Trump—accurately—as a vile misogynist. Or as his lawyers put it, “bawdy.”

There are still questions lingering about Trump and Epstein. What did Trump know and when did he know it? If this case isn’t derailed, there will be discovery. That means Trump will sit for a deposition, and, finally, he will have to answer those questions

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

With so much going on these days—ICE murders, Venezuela, Epstein documents, and Melania—one development has not gotten enough attention: Donald Trump’s plan to become king of the world.

Last month, Trump announced he was establishing a so-called Board of Peace to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza, and the chair of this august group would be…him. And the executive board would include Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, Trump Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Gabriel, and Trump donor and billionaire investment banker Marc Rowan, as well as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and World Bank head Ajay Banga.

Not a very independent board, is it? By the way, the latest release of Jeffrey Epstein documents shows that Rowan, the CEO of Apollo Global Management, according to the Financial Times, had “wide-ranging discussions” with Epstein, though Apollo previously insisted it had not done any business with the sex criminal. (Former Apollo chief Leon Black resigned his position in 2021 after an independent review showed he paid $158 million to Epstein for financial services.) And fun fact about Gabriel: During the January 6 riot, when he was a White House speechwriter, he sent a text message saying, “Potus im sure is loving this.”

Each member of the executive board, the White House said, will oversee “a defined portfolio critical to Gaza’s stabilization and long-term success,” and a Gaza Executive Board within the Board of Peace will also be set up, with Kushner, Witkoff, Blair, and Rowan as members, along with several others, including a Cypriot-Israeli billionaire, an Egyptian intelligence official, and a UN official. No Palestinians were recruited for either of these boards.

So it looked as if this Board of Peace would be a Trump-dominated, crony-ish operation deciding the fate of 2 million Gazans. Not surprising. But it’s turning out to be much more.

The opportunities for graft and grift are immense.

Shortly after the White House unveiled this outfit, it released the charter for the Board of Peace. Oddly, the document said nothing about Gaza. It proclaimed that the Board of Peace would seek to “promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict.” That is, anywhere in the world. Under the rules presented in the charter, Trump would be the chairman and the US representative to the Board of Peace…forever. That is, until he resigns or is booted due to “incapacity”—which would require a unanimous vote by the executive board. And, according to the charter, he decides who’s on the executive board. Each member serves entirely at his pleasure (and whim).

Even after he leaves the White House, Trump will rule this competitor to the United Nations (which now is in danger of financial collapse). And the charter gives him “exclusive authority” to “appropriate,” which seems to mean total control over the funds. Also, he determines what nations can join. Nations can only serve a three-year term, subject to renewal by, of course, Trump. But if a country ponies up $1 billion (in cash) to the Board of Peace, the three-year limit is waived.

Trump is essentially cooking up a global slush fund over which he will exert complete control. Countries that get in early—while he’s president—will certainly be in a strong position to request preferential treatment in state affairs. The opportunities for graft and grift are immense. He will probably ask Congress to kick in the $1 billion pay-to-play membership fee to guarantee he’ll have a pot of money to spend (or pocket) at his fancy.

What’s to prevent him from naming Ivanka Trump his successor? Or Don Jr.? Or Jared? (Talk about a succession battle!) Under this charter, Trump could establish an international monarchy of sorts. Hail King Barron!

That’s not all. How will Trump’s successor as chair be picked? Silly to ask, right? By Trump, naturally. Per the charter, he will designate a successor who “shall immediately assume the position” if Trump leaves or is—ha ha ha—pushed out because he cannot do the job. The charter, as I read it, doesn’t say how long the successor will reign—presumably, under the same terms as Trump. What’s to prevent him from naming Ivanka Trump his successor? Or Don Jr.? Or Jared? (Talk about a succession battle!) Under this charter, Trump could establish an international monarchy of sorts. Hail King Barron!

At the recent World Economic Forum shindig in Davos, Trump held a charter signing ceremony for the Board of Peace, with representatives from Argentina, Turkey, Hungary, Bulgaria, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Qatar, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Morocco, Paraguay, and Pakistan. Not to be condescending, but this is not the A-team, and many of these nations have assorted human rights problems—an issue absent from the charter. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who backs this Trump venture, couldn’t be there because he’s subject to an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in Gaza. He was present in spirit, no doubt. Conspicuously missing from the lineup were the United States’ most important allies.

To add to the absurdity, Trump has invited Russia and China to join. Offering a spot on the Board of Peace to Vladimir Putin while his invasion force is killing civilians in Ukraine is quite a bad joke—and an insult to those Ukrainians losing their lives and their loved ones to combat Russia’s aggression.

Trump’s Board of Peace is another Trump scam—though much grander than Trump Steaks or Trump’s meme coin (which has dropped about 90 percent in value since being launched a year ago).

In fact, the whole thing is a bit of a joke. As Charbel Antoun, a writer who specializes in foreign policy, points out, “The Board of Peace lacks the basic components of a functioning international institution: no defined legal status within existing international law; no enforcement tools or dispute resolution procedures; no accountability mechanisms; a mandate that drifts from Gaza reconstruction into a vague promise to ‘address global crises.’” It can’t really do anything. Except be a platform for you-know-who.

Meanwhile, it’s unclear what the Board of Peace will be doing about Gaza. At Davos, Kushner unveiled a Gaza development plan that called for glittering high-rises on the coastline and gigantic data centers and industrial parks inland. He had a nifty PowerPoint presentation but apparently had not consulted with any Palestinians. He arrogantly signaled this scheme was not open to discussion, remarking, “There is no Plan B.” Kushner did not say who would finance this makeover—or profit from it.  

Trump’s Board of Peace is another Trump scam—though much grander than Trump Steaks or Trump’s meme coin (which has dropped about 90 percent in value since being launched a year ago). Trump is looking to shake down nations that want to earn his favor—it’s only a billion bucks!—and set up an outfit he can exploit once he has wrung the Oval Office dry. The charter calls for an official seal for the organization—and the logo Trump approved shows only half the world—but it left out what Trump really wants: a crown.

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

Toward the end of 2024, several weeks before Donald Trump would regain power, I wrote an article headlined, “Donald Trump Will Need a Police State to Implement His Agenda.” In this piece, I observed, “Trump has many plans for his return engagement at the White House. Several will require police-state tactics”—foremost his vow to round up and deport 11 million or so undocumented immigrants. Peering into the future, I wrote:

Such a program would require deploying a paramilitary force—or even the National Guard or the military—to locate migrants, apprehend them, and guard them in a network of prisons and detention camps. (Executives at private prison, security, and surveillance software companies are already salivating.) This system would depend on Trump ramping up monitoring of workplaces and neighborhoods, and on anonymous tip lines susceptible to abuse and false leads. (Have a problem with a neighbor? Report ’em.) Perhaps the forces rounding up migrants will be afforded special powers to evade civil liberties protections. As in East Germany during the Cold War, an atmosphere of terror and intimidation will pervade.

I bring this up to make two points. First, what we are seeing in Minneapolis with the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti was entirely foreseeable. I’m no Nostradamus, and it was obvious to me this horror was coming. (By the way, Nostradamus was no Nostradamus.) No one should be surprised that Trump, Stephen Miller, JD Vance, Kristi Noem, Gregory Bovino, and others have unleashed a violent and unlawful wave of terror upon the nation. Any Trump supporter aghast at this has no excuse. (I’m looking at you, Joe Rogan.) Trump had a long history of encouraging and excusing violence. He praised authoritarians who resort to violence. He plainly spelled out his intention to remove over 10 million people. Such a profound disruption of American life could not be achieved without force and cruelty.

Barbarity on the ground requires malice in the highest offices of the land.

Second, even though I feared Trump would turn to police-state tactics, I and others who expected some of this did not fully envision the lawlessness, savagery, and viciousness that now infuses Trump’s regime. But we should have known. Barbarity on the ground requires malice in the highest offices of the land. Troops that are sadistic and ruthless follow the lead of those directing them.

It’s a sign of the Trump crew’s depravity that we now are not shocked that following the extrajudicial execution of Pretti, an ICU nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital, the men and women in charge of our government immediately branded him a “terrorist” and falsely claimed he had tried to kill ICE and CBP agents. Stephen Miller, the Minister of Hate, was one of the first out of the gate with this deplorable gaslighting. In response to a tweet from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who urged Trump and his henchmen to watch the “horrific video” of the lethal attack on Pretti, Miller posted on X: “A domestic terrorist tried to assassinate federal law enforcement and this is your response.”

There was no evidence of any of that. In fact, multiple videos that became publicly available right after the killing clearly demonstrated that Pretti had not attempted to “assassinate” the agents. He was trying to help a woman being assaulted by them and in doing so became a target of their wrath. Without an ounce of humanity, humility, or sympathy, other Trumpers joined in, as they did with the murder of Good, to demonize the victim of a summary execution. (Days later, Miller engaged in a partial pullback, noting that the CBP team that killed Pretti “may not” have been following protocol. But he did not retract his foul description of Pretti or apologize for defaming him.)

On CNN, the Border Patrol’s Bovino huffed, “The victims are the Border Patrol agent. The suspect put himself in that situation.” On ABC News’ This Week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent justified the killing by saying that Pretti had been armed. When host Jon Karl pointed out Pretti had not brandished the gun, Bessent smugly and disingenuously replied, “I’ve been to a protest—guess what? I didn’t bring a gun. I brought a billboard.” So now the Trump administration is in favor of killing people who carry weapons to protests?

The message is obvious: Oppose us and we will kill you—and then lie about you. For Trump’s brownshirts, there is no accountability.

Kash Patel added to this dissembling chorus. “You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want,” he said. “It’s that simple. You don’t have a right to break the law and incite violence.” Actually, you can. In many places, the law—thanks to conservatives like Patel—allows people to bring a gun to a rally or anywhere else. (This month, the Supreme Court heard a challenge to a law in Hawaii banning gun owners from bringing their weapons onto private property open to the public without approval from the property owner. The Trump administration filed a brief supporting the challenge.)

Patel’s claim that Pretti had incited violence was slanderous. In a menacing manner, he added, “You do not get to attack law enforcement officials in this country without any repercussions…We not messing around.”

Here was the FBI director essentially saying federal agents have the right to shoot you dead if you get in the way. In law enforcement agencies across the land, that is not justification for the use of lethal force. But the message is obvious: Oppose us and we will kill you—and then lie about you. For Trump’s brownshirts, there is no accountability.

What was going on was no mystery. A standard play of authoritarian and fascist governments is to brand critics and opponents “terrorists.” Vladimir Putin does this. He recently labeled the anti-corruption organization founded by Alexei Navalny a “terrorist” outfit. And terrorists obviously are legitimate targets of extreme measures. Anyone who cooperates with Navalny’s group can now be imprisoned for life.

All this follows Trump’s routine use of hate-fueled divisive rhetoric. He regularly denigrates his political opponents as “the enemy within” and asserts that Democrats, liberals, and the media are in league with “lunatic radicals,” communists, and antifa to destroy the United States. For years, he has been vilifying his foes and detractors as direct threats to the nation, frequently saying they pose more of a risk to the country than Russia or China. It is a small step from that to decrying Pretti and other protesters as “terrorists.” Once you do, it’s open season on these Americans.

Those who challenge the administration cannot be patriotic Americans. They must be that enemy within— subversives and terrorists.

As part of this phony and dangerous demagogic narrative, Vance and other Trump lieutenants are suggesting a nefarious force is behind the anti-ICE protests. “The level of engineered chaos is unique to Minneapolis,” the vice president posted on X. “It’s the direct consequence of far left agitators, working with local authorities.” And Bessent exclaimed, “There are a lot of paid agitators who are ginning things up.”

This is the sort of accusation J. Edgar Hoover and others hurled in the 1960s: The antiwar movement was funded and controlled by communists; the civil rights movement was funded and controlled by communists. President Ronald Reagan said the same about the nuclear freeze movement in the 1980s. Those who challenge the administration cannot be patriotic Americans. They must be that enemy within—subversives and terrorists. They deserve no quarter and no protection of the law. They must be crushed. They must be eradicated.

That is the police-state mentality. I suppose you can’t run a police state without it. If you deploy a paramilitary force to terrorize the public—which certainly was the goal of flooding ICE and CBP agents into the Twin Cities—you must support your thugs and back up the narrative that the people they brutalize and perhaps kill had it coming. You can’t enforce rules and regs for this force. That will reveal contradictions and undermine your Manichean tale of good (us) and evil (them). This is about power and decidedly not about the rule of law. The aim is to obliterate the rule of law.

What will the majority do to stop Trump and his gangsters? Can it yield a resistance fierce enough—in the courts, at polling places, on the streets, online, and elsewhere—to beat back Trump’s hostile takeover of the nation?

So are we now in a police state? Not quite. As thousands of kind-hearted and brave Minnesotans have shown us, the right to protest and challenge Trump’s reign of violence remains, even if his masked goons have made it perilous to do so. Police states don’t allow such demonstrations. But Trump, Miller, and the rest are attempting to smother opposition to the point they’re justifying and whitewashing the brazen murders of American citizens. They are hellbent on establishing an environment of fear and terror. They don’t mind a Kent State every week. The chaos, the disorder, the violence—these are their tools and their ends.

They have not yet won. They are ferociously employing the strategies and tactics of a police state. Most Americans, though, oppose this. Even some Republicans have expressed concern or anger about the killing of Pretti. The question is, what will the majority do to stop Trump and his gangsters? Can it yield a resistance fierce enough—in the courts, at polling places, on the streets, online, and elsewhere—to beat back Trump’s hostile takeover of the nation?

Trump has transformed the national political discourse from skirmishes over his assorted harebrained ideas and extreme actions (Venezuela, Greenland, vengeful criminal prosecutions, mass deportations, the destruction of the public health establishment, his war on universities, tax cuts for the rich, and so on) into a debate over the fundamental nature of the United States. Will it become a full-fledged authoritarian-led police state? That’s the fight at hand. Trump and his miscreants are eager for it. They may attain their fascistic fantasy—unless enough Americans say no.

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

On July 27, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon. One accused him of obstructing justice and mounting a cover-up to impede the investigation of the Watergate break-in. Another charged him with defying congressional subpoenas requesting documents for the Watergate investigation. A third alleged he had abused his executive power by interfering with and misusing the FBI, the Justice Department, and other federal agencies. All three articles were approved on bipartisan votes. The article on abuse of power received the most votes.

When it comes to using government agencies for corrupt purposes, Donald Trump outdoes Nixon. He has turned the Justice Department and the FBI into his personal revenge police. It’s tough to keep track of the many ways Trump has sicced the bureau and the DOJ on his foes and critics. The targets include former FBI Director Jim Comey; Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell; Fed governor Lisa Cook; Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.); New York Attorney General Letitia James; Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.); Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.); Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-N.H.); Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Penn.); Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Penn.); Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.); Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat; Christopher Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; and John Bolton, who was national security adviser during Trump’s first term.

Using a grand jury in Florida—under the supervision of US District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, a total Trump lackey—a Trump-appointed US attorney is trying to mount a criminal conspiracy case against former CIA director John Brennan that could rope in other past Obama and Biden officials, as well as former special counsel Jack Smith. The goal reportedly is to prove there was a never-ending Deep State conspiracy waged by government officials to destroy Trump, stretching from the Russia investigation to Smith’s investigations of Trump’s alleged theft of White House documents and his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Brennan’s lawyer has accused the Justice Department of engaging in “irregular activity” to kickstart this criminal inquiry.

Nixon could not have dreamed of such a revenge-fest.

Trump and his aides have identified other targets for possible federal prosecution, including Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.); Andrew Weissmann, who was a prosecutor for special counsel Robert Mueller; and Lisa Monaco, who was deputy attorney general in the Biden administration. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) is being investigated by the Defense Department.

This is some rundown. Nixon could not have dreamed of such a revenge-fest. All these cases are bullshit—except perhaps for Bolton, who is accused of mishandling classified information. Trump has turned the Justice Department and the FBI into his private retribution squads, ordering investigations of his foes in a manner unprecedented in American history. As those Watergate-era legislators noted, this is impeachable conduct.

Trump is running the government like a mafioso, utilizing its power to intimidate and, if possible, take out his perceived enemies. There’s been some resistance with US attorneys refusing to handle some of these cases. But those folks have been shoved aside, as Attorney General Pam Bondi has been delighted to serve as both Trump’s consigliere and lawfare hitman. (Hit-woman?)

Trump’s use of the Justice Department and FBI might even be criminal. It’s a federal felony to “defraud the United States or any agency thereof.” (Look up 18 U.S.C. § 371.) Usually fraud involves conning someone out of money or property. But the Justice Department website helpfully informs us that fraud extends beyond pocketing ill-gotten gains. It cites Hammerschmidt v. United States, a 1924 Supreme Court case in which Chief Justice William Taft defined “defraud” this way:

To conspire to defraud the United States means primarily to cheat the Government out of property or money, but it also means to interfere with or obstruct one of its lawful governmental functions by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest. It is not necessary that the Government shall be subjected to property or pecuniary loss by the fraud, but only that its legitimate official action and purpose shall be defeated by misrepresentation, chicane or the overreaching of those charged with carrying out the governmental intention.

Interfere with…one of [government’s] lawful governmental functions. I’m no constitutional (or criminal) lawyer, but ordering up phony or baseless criminal investigations might fit that description.

Of course, Trump is beyond federal prosecution. Justice Department policy is that a sitting president cannot be federally indicted. And two years ago, Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative comrades granted Trump (and future presidents) broad immunity for official actions. Moreover, let’s be real: How could a corrupt Justice Department investigate the guy who’s corrupting it?

Trump is crime-ing 24/7—a-griftin’ and a-graftin’.

But Trump’s perversion of the Justice Department ought to be near the top of a (metaphorical) bill of indictment—and a possible line of inquiry for any future impeachment proceedings.

That is, admittedly, a crowded category. Trump is crime-ing 24/7—a-griftin’ and a-graftin’. One example: He and his crew are clearly selling pardons—which might also be considered a defrauding of the government. One of the most recent outrageous pardons went to Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-Italian banker, facing felony charges for allegedly bribing the governor of Puerto Rico. His daughter donated $3.5 million to MAGA Inc., a Trump super-PAC, and—presto!—Trump hands daddy a get-out-of-jail-free card.

On his last day in office, President Bill Clinton pardoned fugitive financier Marc Rich, a sleazebag who owed $48 million in taxes. Rich’s ex-wife had made hefty donations to the Clinton library and the Democratic National Committee. The Rich pardon triggered outrage; even some of the Clintons’ most prominent supporters denounced it. A federal investigation was launched, but it yielded no charges. Trump is doing the equivalent of this over and over—and spurring much less of an uproar.

And he has violated international and US law with his attacks on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and his assault on Venezuela. He and his Pentagon even stand accused of a war crime called “perfidy”—using civilian-looking aircraft as bombers.

Words have no meaning for the Trump crew. Let me rephrase that: Laws and the Constitution have no meaning for them.

You can’t swing a dead cat in the White House without hitting an illegal action. Take the Mad King’s absurd but dangerous threat to impose tariffs on European countries if Denmark doesn’t hand him Greenland. The Constitution clearly states that the power to impose tariffs resides with Congress, not the president. Trump claims the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 allows him in emergency situations to slap other nations with tariffs. But that legislation doesn’t mention tariffs, and no president before has sought to use it to justify tariffs. Besides, what was the emergency that demanded his earlier tariffs or these new ones?

Trump’s authority to apply tariffs is now before the Supreme Court, and a decision could come any day—maybe even before you read this. But one thing seems rather obvious: The acquisition of Greenland is not an emergency. When Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was asked about this by Kristen Welker on Meet the Press on Sunday, he said, “the national emergency is avoiding a national emergency.” This was ridiculous. A national emergency usually means an imminent threat or danger. Under Bessent’s definition, anything can be a national emergency. Words have no meaning for the Trump crew. Let me rephrase that: Laws and the Constitution have no meaning for them.

Trump is a crime boss, and this is a lawless regime. With his purposefully cruel deportation crusade, he has turned ICE into a violent secret police. In recent weeks, he has been trying to rally his base for the midterms, declaring that he expects to be impeached if the Democrats win control of the House. Let’s hope someone is keeping a list. It gets longer every day.

One of the oddest occurrences in the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein imbroglio was the trip that Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, took in July to Tallahassee, Florida, to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell, who’s serving a 20-year sentence for procuring underage girls, some as young as 14, for Epstein to sexually abuse. Prior to being nominated by Trump to the No. 2 position in the Justice Department, Blanche was Trump’s criminal attorney in the porn-star-hush-money-forged-business-records case in New York, in which Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts.

Blanche never provided a compelling explanation for this unprecedented act. Why was Trump’s former personal lawyer and a top Justice Department official meeting with a sex offender whom the US government had previously assailed for her “willingness to lie brazenly under oath about her conduct”? Legal observers scratched their heads over this. Months later, Blanche said, “The point of the interview was to allow her to speak, which nobody had done before.” That didn’t make much sense. How often does the deputy attorney general fly 900 miles to afford a convicted sex offender a chance to chat? It was as if Blanche was trying to create fodder for conspiracy theorists.

What made all this even stranger is that after their tete-a-tete, Maxwell was transferred to a minimum-security, women-only, federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, that houses mainly nonviolent offenders and white collar crooks. This facility—home to disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star and fraduster Jen Shah—is a much cushier facility than the co-ed Tallahassee prison.

When the transfer was first reported in August, the Bureau of Prisons refused to explain the reason for the move, which Epstein abuse survivors protested. So I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the BOP asking for information related to this relocation. Specifically:

all records mentioning or referencing Maxwell’s transfer to Federal Prison Camp Byran. This includes emails, memoranda, transfer orders, phone messages, texts, electronic chats, and any other communications, whether internal to BOP or between BOP personnel and any other governmental or nongovernmental personnel

Guess what? The BOP did not jump to and provide the information. After a months-long delay, the agency noted it would take up to nine months to fulfill this request.

We are suing. That is, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a nonprofit that provides pro bono legal assistance to journalists, today filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Washington, DC, on behalf of the Center for Investigative Reporting (which publishes Mother Jones), to compel the BOP to provide the relevant records. The filing notes that the BOP violated the Freedom of Information Act by initially failing to respond in a timely manner.

We’re not the only ones after this information. In August, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) sent a letter to William Marshall III, the BOP director, requesting similar material. “Against the backdrop of the political scandal arising from President Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, Ms.Maxwell’s abrupt transfer raises questions about whether she has been given special treatment in exchange for political favors,” he wrote. Whitehouse asked for a response within three weeks. He received no reply—and, along with Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), filed a FOIA request.

In November, a whistleblower notified Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee that at Camp Bryan Maxwell was receiving preferential treatment that included customized meals brought to her cell, private meetings with visitors (who were permitted to bring in computers), email services through the warden’s office, after-hours use of the prison gym, and access to a puppy (that was being trained as a service dog). That month, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the senior Democrat on the committee, wrote Trump requesting that Blanche appear before the committee to answer questions about Maxwell’s treatment. That has not happened.

Given the intense public interest in the Epstein case—and the scrutiny it deserves—there ought to be no need to go to court to obtain this information about Maxwell. But with Trump’s Justice Department brazenly violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which mandated a release of the federal government’s Epstein records by December 19 (by which time only 1 percent of the cache had been made public), it’s no shocker that the Bureau of Prisons has not been more forthcoming regarding Maxwell’s prison upgrade.

Our in-house counsel, Victoria Baranetsky, says, “At a time when public trust in institutions is fragile, FOIA remains essential. Our lawsuit seeks to enforce the public’s right to know and to ensure that the government lives up to its obligation of transparency.” And Gunita Singh, a staff attorney for RCFP notes, “We’re proud to represent CIR and look forward to enforcing FOIA’s transparency mandate with respect to the actions of law enforcement in this matter.”

When might we get anything out of BOP? No idea. But we’ll keep you posted, and you can keep track of the case at this page.

The military assault on Venezuela, the shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an ICE agent, the launch of the White House’s new revisionist website about January 6—these three events convey a powerful and unsettling message from Donald Trump and his crew: Violence is ours to use, at home and abroad, to get what we want.

In each episode, the Trump administration has employed or embraced violence that seemingly violates the law and extends beyond ordinary state powers. The US military attack on Caracas and kidnapping of its repressive and fraudulently elected president, Nicolás Maduro, violated the Constitution and international law. Absent an imminent threat from Venezuela—and none existed—Trump did not have the constitutional authority to unilaterally launch an act of war against the country. Yet he deployed the tremendous force of the United States’ war machine to dethrone and abduct Maduro, contending that he was some sort of drug lord. But that’s not a legitimate justification for a military attack.

This was more than a hint: Mess with ICE, and this could happen to you.

The horrific killing in Minneapolis of 37-year-old Renée Nicole Good was unwarranted and arguably criminal. The initial videos make it look like murder. Yet the Department of Homeland Security, before it could investigate, quickly defended and justified the officer’s actions. It claimed that Good was one of a group of “violent rioters” who “weaponized her vehicle” and attempted to “run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them.” The department called this “an act of domestic terrorism” and maintained the ICE officer, “fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots.” In other words, this was right thing to do.

On those videos, though, it did not seem like Good was aiming to mow down ICE officers with her car. She was trying to flee the ICE agents. When the officer shot at her, the car was moving away from him. Initial reporting indicated the officer did not follow ICE protocol. Still, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem praised the officer for acting so fast and stated, “This goes to show the assaults that our ICE officers and law enforcement are under every single day.” That is, well done, sir.

Trump affirmed the sentiment in a social media post in which he falsely stated the victim was “a professional agitator” who “viciously ran over the ICE officer” and blamed the shooting on the “Radical Left.”

Neither Noem nor Trump expressed any concern or any sympathy for Good. They were saying that ICE had the authority and justification to use lethal force in this situation. It was more than a hint: Mess with ICE, and this could happen to you.

The day before the ICE shooting, the Trump White House honored—yes, honored—the January 6 rioters. It unveiled an official White House website that ranks as one of the most excessive acts of government gaslighting in modern American history. The site hails Trump for issuing “sweeping blanket pardons and commutations for nearly 1,600 patriotic Americans” who were in the mob that assaulted the Capitol to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory. The site denounces Rep. Nancy Pelosi and the House select committee that investigated the riot for having fabricated “an ‘insurrection’ narrative” and pinning “all blame” on Trump.

This site is loaded with absurd falsehoods about January 6. It maintains that the “Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6, branding peaceful patriotic protesters as ‘insurrectionists’ and framing the event as a violent coup attempt orchestrated by Trump…In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election.” And it presents an utterly phony timeline of the day, asserting that when peaceful “patriots” marched to the Capitol, police officers responded with “provocative tactics” and “violent force” that “turned a peaceful demonstration into chaos”—and that Trump repeatedly called for calm. None of that is true. In fact, once the melee began, 187 minutes passed before Trump urged his supporters to withdraw from the Capitol.

The website is a laughable fraud. But it’s troubling beyond being an Orwellian assault on the truth. This site signals that Trump and his team not only accept the violence of that day; they celebrate the domestic terrorists who were part of the marauding horde. These are our people, the White House is declaring. These violent thugs are with us—and we’re with them.

The Trump gang’s embrace of violence is not subtle. On Monday night, Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, spelled it out on CNN. Asked by host Jake Tapper if the Trump administration might use military force to seize Greenland, he refused to rule it out, and remarked, “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.”

He then shared what might be called the Trump Doctrine: “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

In short, might makes right. This was a not-too-veiled threat against…well, everyone, including foreign governments and all people within the United States. If the Trump administration has the power to do something, it will. Implied in this stance is the exercise of violence. Either in Greenland or in the homeland. Those who do not bend to Trump’s will—or Miller’s—can expect to feel their violent wrath.

In those two sentences, Miller was saying that there is no rule of law. The world, instead, is governed only by force. That means violence. This ugly and dark stance is an attack on the fundamental concept of rules-based civilization. It is profoundly anti-democratic. It ignores such niggling matters as rights, societal order, and the public good. All that counts is who has the bigger or better club to swing.

An essential element of a police state is the excessive use and threat of violence, and in the past few days the nation has seen such displays. As Trump reaches the end of the first year of his return to power, he and his lieutenants are demonstrating their willingness to deploy force beyond its legitimate use to achieve their aims. The warning is clear and intentional: We are violent. Beware.

If you appreciated this article, please check out David Corn’s Our Land newsletter at davidcorn.com.

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

In 1984, George Orwell observed that a fascist state relies upon its ability to control—or obliterate—memory. As Winston Smith, the ill-fated protagonist, ponders the Party’s ability to manipulate reality and history, Orwell writes, “Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” Another passage in the novel describes the Party’s relentless effort to construct the dominant narrative: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

Sound familiar?

It’s been five years since a mob of thousands of Donald Trump supporters—which included Christian nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Confederate flag wavers, militia members, and other extremists—assaulted the US Capitol to try to halt the peaceful transfer of power from an outgoing president to an incoming president. The basic facts are well established: Trump refused to accept legitimate election results. He falsely claimed he had won the 2020 contest and spread baseless lies and conspiracy theories about the election. He spent weeks scheming to overturn the election and remain in power. Promoting these falsehoods, he incited that insurrectionist attack on Congress in which more than 140 law enforcement officers were injured. While the melee was occurring, he abandoned his duty to defend the Constitution and waited 187 minutes before calling on his brownshirts to leave the Capitol.

Like the Party in Orwell’s dystopia, Trump and the Republicans have sought to rewrite history and erase the stain of Trump’s profound betrayal of America.

This is all undeniable. Yet Trump and his cult refuse to accept these fundamentals. Like the Party in Orwell’s dystopia, Trump and the Republicans have sought to rewrite history and erase the stain of Trump’s profound betrayal of America. He pardoned the violent marauders, and his henchmen in charge of the FBI and Justice Department have fired agents and prosecutors who participated in the investigation and prosecution of these thugs. And Trump’s MAGA legions mounted a disinformation campaign that advanced various conspiracy theories—the FBI did it! Antifa did it!—to absolve Trump and his thugs.

More important, an entire political party and tens of millions of American voters memory-holed Trump’s war on American democracy and his embrace of political violence. What is perhaps the gravest transgression ever committed by a US president has been airbrushed out of the picture and the perp allowed (by a majority of voters) to return to the scene of the crime. This is one of the most worrisome turns in American history. If our democracy cannot protect itself from such peril and repel such a dangerous threat, can it survive?

Trump’s triumph over reality was made clear this past week. On New Year’s Eve—one of the deadest times for the news cycle—the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee released the closed-doors testimony it had recently received from Jack Smith, the special counsel who led the investigations that indicted Trump for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election and for allegedly swiping highly sensitive White House documents. Both cases ended after Trump won the election in November. (Under Justice Department policy, a sitting president cannot be prosecuted for federal crimes.)

Smith insisted on a public appearance, apparently knowing he had the goods on Trump. The Republicans said no and questioned him in a private session—all the better for controlling the narrative.

Smith, as you know, has been repeatedly denounced by Trump as a lunatic who waged witch hunts and investigated hoaxes generated by his fellow Deep Staters, the Democrats, and the media. And Republicans hauled Smith in as part of their never-ending crusade to find (or concoct) evidence to bolster Trump’s paranoid fantasies and conspiracy theories—and to buttress their hyperbolic charge that Trump and Republicans have been the victims of what they call the “weaponization of government.”

Smith insisted on a public appearance, apparently knowing he had the goods on Trump. The Republicans said no and questioned him in a private session—all the better for controlling the narrative. The fact that they made public the transcript on a holiday night tells you what you need to know about who got the best of whom.

The 255-page transcript is an important document that every citizen should read. (I know, I’m being fanciful.) Smith ran circles around the GOP committee members and their staff. “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power,” Smith said at the start. He added, “Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.”

Trump tried to take advantage of this spasm of cop-beating violence to illegally remain in office. That foul deed should have disqualified him from ever holding any position of authority. Yet…

Smith patiently explained how Trump’s (alleged) crime related to January 6: “January 6th was an attack on the structure of our democracy in which over 140 heroic law enforcement officers were assaulted. Over 160 individuals later pled guilty to assaulting police that day. Exploiting that violence, President Trump and his associates tried to call Members of Congress in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification of the 2020 election.”

This is an accusation that sums up Trump’s perfidy: He tried to take advantage of this spasm of cop-beating violence to illegally remain in office. That foul deed should have disqualified Trump from ever holding any position of authority. Yet…

A key exchange occurred when a Republican staffer (whose name is redacted in the transcript) asked, “The President’s statements that he believed the election was rife with fraud, those certainly are statements that are protected by the First Amendment, correct?” This has been a central contention of the Trump cult: You cannot prosecute Trump for stating his opinion that the election was rigged against him. But Smith fired back: “Absolutely not. If [these false statements] are made to target a lawful government function and they are made with knowing falsity, no, they are not.” Statements made to promote a fraud are not protected by the First Amendment.

Later on in his testimony, Smith remarked that the elections case against Trump was much like an “affinity fraud”—that’s when, he said, “you try to gain someone’s trust, get them to trust you as a general matter, and then you rip them off, you defraud them.” Trump, he told the committee, “had people…who had built up trust in him, including people in his own party, and he preyed on that.” And once again, Smith reiterated, fraud is not covered by the First Amendment.

This Republican staffer took another shot at it and said, “There’s a long history of candidates speaking out about they believe there’s been fraud [in an election]…I think you would agree that those types of statements are sort of at the core of the First Amendment rights of a Presidential candidate, right?”

Not at all, Smith replied: “There is no historical analog for what President Trump did in this case. As we said in the indictment, he was free to say that he thought he won the election. He was even free to say falsely that he won the election. But what he was not free to do was violate federal law and use knowing—knowingly false statements about election fraud to target a lawful government function. That he was not allowed to do. And that differentiates this case from any past history.”

The Republicans kept trying to mount a theoretical defense for Trump. This staffer pointed out that during the hullabaloo over the 2020 election, Trump was receiving information on supposed election fraud from Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, and Sidney Powell, and he asked, wasn’t Trump just “regurgitating what these people have told him?”

Smith had a sharp retort:

No. And, in fact, one of the strengths of our case and why we felt we had such strong proof is all witnesses were not going to be political enemies of the President. They were going to be political allies. We had numerous witnesses who would say, “I voted for President Trump. I campaigned for President Trump. I wanted him to win.” The speaker of the house in Arizona. The speaker of the house in Michigan. We had an elector in Pennsylvania who is a former congressman who was going to be an elector for President Trump who said that what they were trying to do was an attempt to overthrow the government and illegal. Our case was built on, frankly, Republicans who put their allegiance to the country before the party.

Call 911. There was a murder in this Capitol Hill office, as Smith decimated the various lines of defense Trump’s handmaids hurled at him. He forcibly denied Trump’s indictments were political acts or that his office had been “weaponized.” In an exchange with Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), he explained the importance of his investigation.

Jayapal: What happens if there is election interference and the people who are responsible for that are not held accountable?

Smith: It becomes the new norm, and that becomes how we—how we conduct elections.

Jayapal: And so the toll on our democracy, if you had to describe that, what would that be?

Smith: Catastrophic.

The Smith transcript generated headlines…for a day. Like most everything else in our information hypersphere, this story did not have much staying power. Trump’s attempt to blow up the constitutional order has become old news. Ho-hum. He got away with this allegedly criminal act because he won the election. His pardons of the violent criminals who attacked hundreds of cops is just one item on a long list of outrages that quickly come and go.

Many Americans, it seems, couldn’t hold on to a clear memory of January 6 for even a few years—or couldn’t be bothered to.

A high-profile public appearance in which Smith vigorously presented the case against Trump might not at this point change the overall public perception of Trump’s attempted power grab and the violent raid he triggered. But that would have drawn more attention and served the truth. Which is why Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the chair of the committee, and his fellow Republicans made damn sure that did not happen.

Today is the fifth anniversary of January 6—a shameful day in American history. And in the last election, the nation—or about half of its voters—welcomed back into the house the arsonist who tried to burn it down. The past 10 years have sadly showed us that a wannabe authoritarian in the United States can succeed in denying reality and wiping away history. Trump did that with the Russian attack on the 2016 election, which he aided and abetted by echoing Vladimir Putin’s false claims that Moscow had not intervened and by insisting ad nauseum that it was a hoax. And he has done the same with January 6, hailing it a “day of love” and “a beautiful day” and calling the rioters “great patriots.”

Many Americans, it seems, couldn’t hold on to a clear memory of January 6 for even a few years—or couldn’t be bothered to. This demonstrates how susceptible people can be to what the Party did in 1984: Erase the past (even the most recent past) and then erase the erasure.

Trump is back in the White House, pushing his agenda of authoritarianism far beyond what he could only dream of during his first term. Future historians—if there is history in the future—will wonder about much in this era. But what might puzzle them the most is how the man who nearly annihilated our constitutional republic was able to worm his way back into the presidency. Gore Vidal once referred to the nation as the “United States of Amnesia.” On this dark anniversary, it’s good to remember that Trump is in power today because there’s been too much forgetting.

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

Every school shooting is horrific—a reminder of the worst form of American exceptionalism and one more infuriating occasion to question why so many of our neighbors and citizens accept this perverse violence and choose not to cry out for measures that might counter or diminish the mass murders that plague our land. When Donald Trump responds with the usual tut-tutting—“It’s a shame; just pray”—it’s a sign that doing nothing is just fine. Which is especially aggravating when gun violence devastates your own community.

I am a graduate of Brown University. As an alum, I have organized and held panels there. I know professors, administrators, and recent students. And many times, I have walked past or near the site of the Barus and Holley building where a gunman on Saturday burst into a lecture hall and shot 11 students, killing two of them. I mourn the lives lost, ache for the families of the dead, hope the best for the survivors, and grieve for the community, concerned for how this will impact the university’s students, teachers, and workers, and the people of Providence. We have all become too accustomed to such tragedies. They can seem faraway occurrences; that’s obviously a survival mechanism. It’s different when it’s close.

As my blood boiled in the aftermath of this horror, the usual context kicked in: In this level of gun violence, the United States stands alone among Western democracies. And the math is simple: We have more guns than other nations—500 million total firearms or so, by some estimates—and few restrictions on guns. Thus, more gun deaths. There’s nothing incomprehensible here.

One of the most aggravating elements of the so-called debate over gun violence is the despicable falsehood pushed by Republicans and conservatives: They are coming to confiscate your guns.

Nor are the politics difficult to understand. In the 1970s, as Republicans searched for cultural wedge issues with which they could coax white working class and ethnic voters from the Democrats, they landed on abortion, race, religion, and guns. Democrats might be fighting for workers’ rights and protections, better pay, the expansion of civil rights and personal liberties, and fewer handouts to the wealthy—but, hey, the Ds favor gun control. So they must be defeated. And for the Republicans—backed by the NRA—this strategy worked.

Shootings like this one are political inconveniences for them. They prompt the usual denunciations of Republicans’ do-nothingism and scorn for their hollow thoughts-and-prayers offerings. Republicans, though, only need to wait out the storm, and then they can get back to blocking and thwarting gun safety measures, deploying their silly arguments against any and all gun control. And one of the most aggravating elements of the so-called debate over gun violence is the despicable falsehood pushed by Republicans and conservatives: They are coming to confiscate your guns.

For years, this has been the mantra for the GOP: It’s not that Democrats merely champion restrictions on guns and assorted safeguards; they also want the government to forcibly take your weapons away. Certainly, gun safety advocates have proposed numerous ideas that would impose limitations and regulations, such as licensing guns, banning specific weapons and ammo, implementing waiting periods for buying a gun, tracking gun sales, passing red flag laws, restricting certain types of purchases, and so on. Yet right-wing and Republican foes of gun safety measures routinely claim that all of this is a prelude to total confiscation—that the ultimate objective is prying all guns from your cold live hands.

During a 2019 speech to a NRA gathering, Trump said, “Far-left radicals in Congress want to take away your voice, your jobs, your rights, and they especially want to take away your guns. You know that. They want to take away your guns.”

This has been the Big Lie of the NRA and the Republican Party for decades. In a 1975 commentary in Guns & Ammo, Ronald Reagan warned against handing government “the power to confiscate our arms.” Half a century later, during last year’s election, Trump repeatedly assailed Vice President Kamala Harris with this charge. “She supports mandatory gun confiscation,” he declared at a campaign rally in Atlanta on August 3. He added sarcastically, “Would anybody mind if they came into your house and took away your gun?…She’s for taking away all of your guns.” Five days later, at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump exclaimed, “She wants to take away your guns.” Later in the campaign, during a speech, Trump bellowed, “They’re going to take away your guns, you saw that, they’re going to take away your guns. She’s going to take away your guns.” Fact-checkers noted these were false assertions.

This was not new rhetoric for Trump. During a 2019 speech to a NRA gathering, he said, “Far-left radicals in Congress want to take away your voice, your jobs, your rights, and they especially want to take away your guns. You know that. They want to take away your guns.”

Confiscation has become the standard line for the Republican Party and the right. Some examples:

Marco Rubio, then a senator running for president, in 2016: “I am convinced that if [President Obama] could confiscate every gun in America, he would.”

Ben Shapiro, right-wing commentator, in 2016: “Of course Hillary Clinton is coming after our guns. There’s a reason she has consistently over and over again cited gun confiscation in England and Australia as her.”

Sen. Josh Hawley in 2021: “[Gun control] is really about confiscating weapons…ultimately to take away firearms from law-abiding citizens.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene, then a congressional candidate, in 2020: “All this talk about gun confiscation has me thinking…no one is taking my guns away!”

Cars are registered. Can they be confiscated by the government?

Then–NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre in a 2023 fundraising email: “NOTICE OF GUN CONFISCATION…You’ll soon face the threat of having your guns confiscated with your right to self-defense.”

I’m sure there are some Democrats who, if they could snap their fingers and make all guns disappear, would do so. But confiscation is not on the agenda. This notion that gun restrictions are a steep slippery slope to confiscation is paranoid bunk. Cars are registered. Can they be confiscated by the government?

The goal of the pro-gunners is to discredit all discussion of gun safety proposals. And with this rhetoric, they sidestep any serious policy debates (does limiting the sale of assault weapons make us safer?) and delegitimize their political foes. As Trump presents it, his opponents are not only radical, communist lunatics; they are also gun grabbers who want to round up all guns so they can impose tyranny on the American people.

During the nightmare at Brown, a student texted her mother: “Mom, there’s a live shooting on campus. I’m going to run. I love you.” It’s stunning—or maybe the better word is “disgusting”— that an entire political party is willing to live with this.

As I write this, there are no details publicly known about the Brown University shooter. There’s no telling what, if any, possible gun laws might have prevented this terrible crime. But the passage of gun safety laws—and reforms in mental health care—would likely decrease the number of such horrors. And the fewer school shootings there are, the less encouragement there’ll be for the next one.

During the nightmare at Brown, a student texted her mother: “Mom, there’s a live shooting on campus. I’m going to run. I love you.” It’s stunning—or maybe the better word is “disgusting”— that an entire political party is willing to live with this and, worse, exploits sincere efforts to prevent gun violence in order to demonize political rivals and hang on to power. They fuel their political campaigns with the blood of innocents and disregard the fear created by our guns-over-all culture, including, most troubling, that experienced by our children.

The reasonable among us know the thoughts-and-prayer routine is bullshit. But the Big Lie—gun safety means confiscation—ought to also be deflated. The cynical deployment of this canard protects a status quo of violence and death. And that’s the goal of Republicans and MAGA. They will tolerate the killing of our fellow citizens and our children. For them, it’s good politics. And power is more important than blood.