A headline in yesterday’s POLITICO piece about the accused January 6th pipe bomber nicely illustrates the challenges involved in covering, not to mention prosecuting, the case. The headline reads: “Justice Department says Jan. 6 pipe bomb suspect believed election conspiracy theories.”
A seemingly unexceptional headline, apart from the wild nature of the alleged facts of the case. Unexceptional, that is, until one remembers that “election conspiracy theories” are official regime policy. The premise that the 2020 election was “stolen” in a wide-ranging public-private conspiracy is neither lunacy nor speculation, according to this regime. It’s orthodoxy. It is axiomatic: treated as authoritatively true by the executive branch–and, by the regime’s own self-understanding, ultimately by anyone who still works in the executive branch.
This is not simply a matter of casual offhand assertions about the election by Donald Trump himself. We are well used to such remarks being tweeted out in the electronic glow that pierces the darkness of Mar-a-Lago from 10 p.m.-3 a.m. each night, like a sort of rheumy Eye of Sauron. Such statements, one might say, fall within the category of “things that ostensibly or formerly serious commentators, public officials, academics, ‘influencers,’ and ‘intellectuals’ who are still Trump apologists believe they should probably ignore and certainly aren’t obliged to address, unless they mention Rob Reiner.”*
Of course those statements should be taken seriously and, especially in a personalist regime that conflates a unitary executive structure with the very different question of the obligations of subordinate executive branch officials, it’s derelict to ignore them. But Trump’s delusions about 2020 are also the stuff of official executive branch documents. They serve as the basis not just for tweets, but for legally consequential actions against others. Most formally and prominently, there was the April “Get Krebs” memorandum, in which Trump directed his underlings to investigate and take action against Christopher Krebs, who committed the crime of administering-while-honest during the first Trump term. Krebs’s “misconduct,” that presidential memorandum says, included “falsely and baselessly den[ying] that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen.”
Then there is the ongoing grand jury investigation being conducted by US Attorney, poor-performance-review star, and ironic panelist Jason Reding Quiñones. He appears to be taking the approach advocated by his patron, the lawyer/grifter, 2020 fantasist, and internet troll Mike Davis: to avoid statute of limitations problems concerning the 2017 intelligence assessment by tying it into a “much longer conspiracy by federal officials to take away Trump’s rights,” including the 2020 election. It’s difficult to know more about the scope of that investigation yet, partly because of grand jury secrecy rules but mostly because the regime’s press operations are a cesspool of flagrant dishonesty. But certainly that is how the president understands the investigation. And of course one should recall that election denialists in positions of ostensible authority in the regime who have pledged to punish people on that basis include the FBI director; the de jure Attorney General; beacon of dignity, yawner-at-antisemitism, and DOJ Civil Rights Division chief Harmeet Dhillon; and whatever you want to call Ed Martin.
Maybe we could also spare a moment to remember that Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts made it crystal clear long ago that he is more than happy to treat the 2020 election as stolen, if you want him to and the money’s right. I was genuinely glad that further resignations from Heritage occurred last week; I’m more than happy to give credit where it’s due and hope that those who did so will live up to the moral logic of their resignations, which is hardly limited either to Heritage or to antisemitism. But Heritage had jettisoned the word “think” from the title “think tank” and substituted “in the” long before last month. Current presidential candidate J.D. Vance–whose views, statements, and patrons clearly foreclose any principled support from the Heritage resignees–has likewise taken the girlfriend-experience approach to 2020 election conspiracy claims; if it will please the client, he’s happy to pretend anything you want.
It will be interesting watching the DOJ finesse the status of the 2020 election as it proceeds to prosecute this case. It will have to advance the theory that the defendant was motivated to commit his alleged crimes on the basis of a shadowy-conspiracy theory. But it will also have to downplay the fact that the chief executive apparently believes it himself; that the grifters who curried favor with him all the way into high appointed office at least pretend to believe it too; and that such lowly regime apparatchiks as its press people and Secretary of State feel obligated not to contradict those beliefs publicly. It will be especially interesting watching the inevitable gap between what the line prosecutors say in their filings and what the DOJ press people say in their statements.
* It’s a subject for another post. But as we take stock of the last year, one of the most glaring and yet under-remarked facts about the Trump-Vance regime is that virtually all of the educated supporters of and apologists for Trump and “Trumpism,” in and out of the administration, view Trump with, at best, barely concealed contempt. If anything, the nature and volume of things they choose not to notice makes the contempt more rather than less apparent. Conspicuously ignoring things is cowardly, to be sure. But it’s also just a short-winded way of saying, “No way I’m putting my name on the line to defend that.”