Editor,
The already-convicted felon for 2016 election interference, Donald Trump, faces several score legal charges for attempting to overthrow the last election of 2020 that are still pending against him. The Supreme Court’s recent ruling on mystical immunities does not preclude most of the evidence for trials. He has a strong motive to overthrow the 2024 elections – if he loses again, he faces jail and ruin.
He knows that he has never won a majority of the popular vote in either 2016 or 2020. But he has a plan similar to his previous 2020 attempt to delay and refuse to certify electoral votes. This time he is trying to go earlier, to try to delay or prevent the constitutionally mandated certification on Dec. 14, even before January 6th Congressional certification. He has already planted pro-Trump election officials in key states and rural counties. He plans to use new voter suppression and counting laws to delay and to cause chaos to exacerbate the ongoing constitutional crisis.
Trump has openly threatened “blood in the streets” while the electoral vote certification by the states is delayed or prevented before the Electoral College can even meet on Dec. 14. He is again planning to declare electoral victory no matter what the voters decide, and try to seize power again through political violence – another coup attempt to usurp power. Trump says openly that he intends to defeat the Democrats “once and for all.” President Biden has alarmingly stated that he has “no confidence” that there will be a peaceful transfer of power. Will the Democrats finally realize the seriousness of the continued insurrectionist threat? Insurrectionists already control Congress’s House of Representatives, a Supreme Court majority and almost half of the Senate. The 2024 election is only part of the ongoing battle.
The cancer of elections-denying insurrectionists will still infect our political system no matter what happens in the 2024 election process. Can the Constitution survive in the chaotic context of election denying insurrectionists, the multiple crises of two US-supported foreign wars and a threatened governmental funding shut-down in December?
David S. Sullivan, Lt. Col. USMCR retired, Oak Harbor
John MacNamee, Col. USMCR retired, Coupeville