​President Biden is quite rightly focusing attention on the growing threat of domestic terrorism. It’s about time. The Trump administration spent four years downplaying and largely ignoring what the FBI and Department of Homeland Security had identified as the greatest national security menace this nation faces.
 
However, Biden’s approach does not go far enough. He is asking a multitude of federal agencies to assess the threat, a worthwhile first step, but one that is only a half-measure. The lead agencies with respect to this project—the FBI, Homeland Security and the National Security Council—are ill-equipped to carry out this new responsibility. They do not have the resources required to give it the attention it deserves. They are not intelligence collection agencies in the same sophisticated sense as the CIA. Moreover, they have spent the last two decades focusing on external threats. To a great extent, their orientation has been framed and delimited by 9/11, improving intelligence coordination and warnings to prevent another mass terrorist attack by foreign non-state actors. Along the way, they have largely been blind to planning by domestic terrorists, as the events of January 6 demonstrated. The attack on the Capitol was a glaring manifestation of an intelligence failure.
 
David Manuel, who spent 15 years in CIA counterintelligence analysis studying other countries’ domestic intelligence agencies, proposes a solution to this intelligence gap that merits serious consideration: a U.S. domestic intelligence agency that can alert both policymakers and law enforcement to impending threats in the hope of averting catastrophic attacks.
 
Manuel says: “We cannot expect law enforcement agencies to be effective at intelligence gathering. Critics of previous efforts to establish a domestic intelligence agency correctly expressed concern that a law enforcement agency empowered to monitor communications of domestic groups would approach creating a ‘secret police,’ something antithetical to our values. A domestic intelligence agency charged simply with collecting information and providing warning to policy-makers and law enforcement for planning purposes, would allow enhanced capabilities to protect our form of government while still respecting the rights of American citizens.”
 
Manuel argues that “collecting this type of intelligence need not be controversial. A great deal of it is posted by actors of concern on social media. Monitoring chat groups, social media platforms, and message forums like Reddit can provide a wealth of intelligence. Organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League and Vice News already do this. But these outside groups are not created to provide warnings within the U.S. government. A domestic intelligence agency could actually draw on and enhance work done by these private, non-governmental organizations. But they do not obviate the need for an organized intelligence agency with a cadre of analysts collating and assessing such information.”
 
A domestic intelligence agency would require significant professional independence coupled with strong legislative oversight. Independence is necessary to prevent corruption of intelligence analysis that some members of government may find objectionable: sadly, we have learned that government officials may occasionally see seditionist groups as their “constituents.” A domestic intelligence agency must be able to “speak truth to power.” Simultaneously, such an agency, which will almost certainly be housed in the executive branch, must be strictly answerable to Congress to avoid any appearance of being an authoritarian enforcement agency. Care establishing such an agency can prevent problems encountered in the creation of many of our intelligence agencies in the past.
 
Setting up a domestic intelligence capability will be neither easy nor quick. This is all the more reason our country needs to get started on this endeavor immediately. Fortunately, there are a large number of dedicated Americans with the expertise to guide such an endeavor, including former intelligence officers like Manuel, currently serving intelligence and law enforcement officers, and members of the academic community and private sector who have been studying domestic terrorism for decades.
 
Collection of this kind of intelligence is critical in an environment where the FBI has warned for years that right-wing groups have leap-frogged Islamic terrorism as our gravest threat.
 
Dick Hermann
January 29, 2021

​“Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred; fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”
--Fintan O’Toole, Irish Times (April 25, 2020)
 
It began in June 2015 with a racist screed about Mexican rapists and criminals and a vow to upend an immigration policy that made America great and prosperous. It ended with a return to his anti-immigration comfort zone, a trip to tout his obscenely expensive and pointless border wall for which he had falsely promised Mexico would write us a multi-billion dollar check.
 
It began at the U.S. Capitol with the darkest inaugural address in American history, referencing a mythical “American carnage” he vowed to end. It ended at the U.S. Capitol with actual horrific American carnage he caused.
 
It began on January 21, 2017 with the first Big Lie, a relatively harmless one that elicited universal ridicule—that the modest-size crowd at his inauguration the day before was the largest ever. It ended after more than 30,000 additional lies, many of them no laughing matter.
 
It began with a meeting in the Oval Office in which he shared top secret classified intelligence with senior Russian officials, an unprecedented national security breach that no prior president would have dared do. It ended with Russians (per the FBI) as part of the mob he incited to attack the Capitol trying to execute his attempt at a coup d’état.
 
It began with a barrage of tweets designed to arouse and incite his supporters to anger and hate. It ended with his way-too-late ban from social media, long after he transformed his supporters into domestic terrorists intent on destroying America.
 
It began with him exploiting the fears of white Americans that they are going to be left behind by demography. It ended with many of them morphing into a white supremacist cult.
 
It began with a president inheriting a booming economy. It ended with an economy devastated by his inattention to the pandemic.
 
It began with a functioning federal government with strong employee morale. It ended with a dysfunctional government and employee morale so low as to defy measurement.
 
It began with the pardon of a racist sheriff who was criminally convicted after herding Latinos into concentration camps. It ended with pardons for criminals who did not flip on him in return for promised clemency.
 
It began with a cruel family separation policy that ripped children from their mothers’ arms and confined them in cages. It ended with more than 500 children unable to reunite with their parents.
 
It began with 784 right-wing hate groups (per the Southern Poverty Law Center) when he announced his hate-inspired—and hate-inspiring—presidential campaign in 2015. It ended with an estimated 1,200 such organizations upon his departure.
 
It began with a legacy of 228 years of constitutional democracy strong enough to survive Andrew Jackson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, a Civil War, Andrew Johnson, Warren G. Harding, a Great Depression and Richard Nixon.  It ended with serious questions whether this democracy can survive Donald Trump and the fascist forces his evil has unleashed.
 
It began with Trump’s eliminating three offices designed to combat a pandemic. It ended with more than 400,000 Americans dead, the vast majority dying due to the absence of these safeguards, presidential ineptitude and disinterest.
 
It began in 2017 with presidential praise for “fine people” who just happened to be neo-Nazis. It ended in 2021 with white supremacists carrying out a president-prompted insurrection intent on overthrowing our democratic republic.
 
It began with mayhem. It ended with chaos, destruction and death.
 
We survived, but barely.
 
Dick Hermann
January 22, 2021

​Congress has the power to bar the president and its members who supported the insurrection from continuing in public office and ever holding office again.
 
While Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution outlines the steps to expel a member of Congress, it requires a two-thirds vote, which is a pretty high bar and unrealistic in the current environment. But there is another Constitutional provision that clearly provides an alternative:
 
Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment states in pertinent part: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, 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,…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.”
 
Section 3 was originally directed at those who supported the Confederacy in the Civil War. It provides an alternative expulsion mechanism for ridding the federal government of seditionists and insurrectionists. It can be invoked to dump Trump immediately and forever. It can also bar Senators Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, their Senate colleagues and the 137 Representatives who joined in the attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s legitimate election, from serving in Congress now and in the future. All it takes for each chamber to rid itself of these traitors is a House or Senate resolution passed by a simple majority vote.
 
Allowing these anti-Americans to continue in office is an unacceptable stain on America. They need to be removed from the privileged positions and institutions they have irretrievably tarnished. Moving forward requires that their treasonous behavior is officially denounced as being beyond the pale, and that a clear precedent be established that such conduct will not be tolerated.
 
Losing their positions is a necessary first step to cleanse America of these political pariahs. They violated their oaths to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, whereby they swore to "…support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;…” They not only failed to do that; they actively thumbed their noses at it.
 
Some members of this loathsome crew are asserting that they were merely exercising their first amendment rights. No. They incited and abetted an attempt to take down the U.S. government. As Justice Brandeis stated in delivering the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court in Sugarman v. United States (1919): “…`freedom of speech' does not mean that a man may say whatever he pleases without the possibility of being called to account for it.” it is not only the right, but the constitutional duty of the Congress to banish them.
 
But their punishment should not end with expulsion. Along the way, their nefarious doings also violated numerous federal criminal laws. It can begin with 23 U.S. Code §2384, “Seditious Conspiracy,” that explicitly covers their illegal conduct. The wheels of justice need to grind them all into the political and judicial dust.
 
Dick Hermann
January 12, 2021

​Sedition
 
I never contemplated that “checks and balances” would take the form of the President of the United States inciting a fascist mob to storm the legislative branch. That’s quite a “check” on Congress. However, not a whole lot of “balance.”
 
The tyrant-president did not do this alone. He had plenty of co-conspirators whose words, like those of aspiring autocrat Trump, mattered: Rudy Giuliani, who urged the fanatic rabble to initiate “trial by combat;” Donald Trump, Jr. who revved up the barbarian hordes, warning members of Congress inclined to follow the Constitution and not object to Joe Biden’s electoral vote count that “we’re coming for you;” Rep. Mo Brooks telling the mob it was time to “kick ass;” Sen. Josh Hawley, whose fist pumping on his way into the Capitol was intended to get Trump supporters’ pulses racing; and Sen. Ted Cruz, the oleaginous Trump bootlicker whose lies leading up to the attempted coup aroused the passions of the great unwashed. More on these two craven congressional Quislings below.
 
All of these democracy destroyers merit the full punishments that the law allows. They must be held to account. For the conspirators who fomented insurrection—Trump, Giuliani and Junior, that means indictments and ultimately prison for the many U.S. criminal code provisions they transgressed: seditious conspiracy, insurrection, knowingly and willfully advocating and abetting overthrowing the government by force or violence, inciting a riot, treason and perhaps felony murder. For their congressional colleagues, it should mean expulsion from office under Article I, Section 5, Clause 2 of the Constitution.
 
Shakedown
 
Another “perfect” phone call? Reprising his attempted telephone shakedown of Ukraine’s president in which he threatened to withhold desperately needed military equipment unless the foreign leader manufactured evidence against Joe Biden, Donald Trump attempted the same strong-arm tactic on Georgia election officials. This brazen attempt to commit election theft was accompanied by threats of prosecution if the Georgia officials did not illegally flip the Georgia results to Trump. Fortunately for American democracy, they refused.
 
Trump’s Kool-Aid-besotted base probably has not listened to the president’s 62-minute, feverish phone call or read the shocking transcript. Consequently, they will continue to believe that their cult leader is not the criminal mob boss that the rest of America and the world know all too well.
 
Trump must also be held accountable for this seditious act. While the Biden Justice Department will hopefully have its hands full bringing him to justice for inciting his followers to storm Congress, the Georgia Attorney General has no such distraction. Georgia Criminal Code §21-2-604(a)(1) states: “A person commits the offense of criminal solicitation to commit election fraud in the first degree when, with intent that another person engage in conduct constituting a felony under this article, he or she solicits, requests, commands, importunes, or otherwise attempts to cause the other person to engage in such conduct.” The penalty is 1-3 years in prison. Another section of the Georgia Criminal Code makes it a felony to conspire to commit election fraud. Our resident despot can’t self-pardon himself out of a state crime.
 
Sherman
 
It’s been 157 years since General William Tecumseh Sherman left Atlanta a charred ruin while burning his way to the sea. Donald Trump left Atlanta intact but charbroiled the Republican Party, losing it both the two Georgia runoffs and the U.S. Senate by his scorched earth demolition trek through Georgia. His lies and bombast about rigged elections and attacks on state Republicans for doing their constitutional duty confused and deterred thousands of Republicans from voting. At the same time, as in 2018, he once again energized Democrats disgusted with his boorish behavior and wicked ways to come out and vote in droves. Malevolence, self-absorption, villainy and ineptitude are never a great combination.
 
Shame
 
The 150 or so congressional Republicans who, even after the Capitol insurrection, continued to deny the will of the American people and opted for fascist autocracy over republican democracy deserve to have their treachery and cowardice memorialized in a Hall of Shame. Come the next several election cycles, these seditious traitors should be marked for a pull-out-all-the-stops effort to defeat them and send them back to the ignominious futures they so richly deserve. Deterring the next autocrat wannabe—Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Kevin McCarthy (a worthy heir of his 1950s namesake), Stephen Scalise and their disgraceful ilk—from attempting a similar coup d’état in the extremely unfortunate event that one of them comes to power down the road, is crucial. Sadly, we will likely have to wait at least two years to begin the process of cleansing Congress and America of these execrable proto-Fascists.
 
Dick Hermann
January 8, 2021

​Many respectable law firms and individual attorneys declined to represent Donald Trump and his allies in their futile quest to reverse the results of the 2020 election. That left more dubious members of the profession as the only lawyers willing to take on not only a lost cause, but also one reeking of falsehoods. While lost causes are perfectly within the parameters of legitimate legal representation, knowingly advocating lies is not. Doing so prompts sanctions that can, and in this case absolutely should, be applied to the likes of Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and the rest.
 
One of the first things drummed into a budding attorney’s head is that s/he is an “officer of the court.” What that means, among other things, is that the attorney has an obligation to promote justice, including an absolute ethical duty to tell judges the truth. As an officer of the court, a lawyer’s duty is to serve the interests of justice, not just those of the client. In the 60-plus Trump attempts to deny the will of the people, truth was not high on these attorneys’ lists.
 
In addition, Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, mandates that an attorney represents to the court that the action s/he is bringing is not frivolous and is supported by evidence. These standards were knowingly and serially abused by Trump’s lawyers. The federal courts may impose “an appropriate sanction” on Rule 11 violators. Here’s hoping that they will and that it will be harsh.
 
Most states have similar rules in place for ridiculous lawsuits filed in their courts.
 
Finally, there are the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which have been adopted or adapted by all fifty states and the District of Columbia. A number of the Model Rules apply to the Trump legal team’s attempt to subvert the electoral decision and make a mockery of the judicial process:
 
Rule 3.1: Meritorious Claims & Contentions. A lawyer shall not bring or defend a proceeding, or assert or controvert an issue therein, unless there is a basis in law and fact for doing so that is not frivolous,….
 
Rule 3.3: Candor Toward the Tribunal. (a) A lawyer shall not knowingly: (1) make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal or fail to correct a false statement of material fact or law previously made to the tribunal by the lawyer; or…(3) offer evidence that the lawyer knows to be false.
 
Rule 4.1: Truthfulness in Statements to Others (such as the media and public). In the course of representing a client a lawyer shall not knowingly: (a) make a false statement of material fact or law to a third person;
 
Rule 8.4: Misconduct: Maintaining The Integrity Of The Profession. It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to: (a) violate or attempt to violate the Rules of Professional Conduct,…(c) engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation; (d) engage in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice;
 
Either Rudy et al. never read the Model Rules or thought they could get away with ignoring them. They cannot, nor should they. At this writing, complaints have been filed with at least five state bar disciplinary agencies – in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New York and Pennsylvania – accusing as many as 23 different Trump attorneys of either filing “frivolous” lawsuits or engaging in other professional misconduct. Discipline can range up to disbarment, which any Trump attorney who participated in this contemptible attempt at a coup d’etat richly deserves.
 
The vast majority of lawyers are principled individuals who take their responsibilities to society seriously. Unfortunately, a few bad apples like the Trump legal team give the profession a black eye. The way to redemption is to excise them permanently from the ranks of practitioners.
 
Dick Hermann
January 1, 2021