Bosnia prosecutors to investigate origin of icon gifted to Russia's Lavrov

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Bosnian prosecutors said on Friday they would investigate whether a 300-year-old icon presented as a gift by the Bosnian Serb leader to Russia’s visiting foreign minister may have been illegally smuggled out of war-torn eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine’s embassy in Sarajevo has raised concerns over the artefact after the Bosnian Serb news agency Srna published a photograph of the icon and its seal of authenticity, which suggest it may originate in the city of Lugansk, where pro-Russian separatists have been battling Kiev’s forces.

Dozens of Bosnian Serbs have fought alongside the rebels in the war in eastern Ukraine, which started in 2014. Serbia and Bosnia’s Serbs have close ties with Russia, with which they share the Eastern Orthodox faith.

Milorad Dodik, the Bosnian Serb representative in Bosnia’s three-member presidency, gave the gilded icon to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during his visit to Sarajevo this week.

The Croatian and Bosniak presidency members refused to meet Lavrov over what they labelled his “disrespect” for Bosnia’s state symbols and institutions.

Dodik has so far declined to comment on the matter.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry confirmed on Friday that its embassy in Sarajevo had asked Bosnian authorities to provide “clarification and full information on the circumstances of this case”, and said it would hold talks on the issue in coming days.

In a letter published by Bosnian media, Ukraine’s embassy said failure to provide information about the icon would be viewed as indicating support for “the aggressive policies and military actions of the Russian Federation in Ukraine”.

The embassy declined to provide a copy of the letter or further details to Reuters on Friday.

Bosnian Serb Leader Angers Ukraine, Donating Icon to Lavrov


Danijel Kovacevic
Banja Luka
BIRN December 17, 2020

The Ukrainian embassy in Sarajevo is demanding to know how Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik got hold of an ancient Orthdox icon that he presented to Sergei Lavrov, Russia's Foreign Minister, on Monday.



Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister (L) attends a press conference with Milorad Dodik, Chairman of the Bosnian Presidency, Photo: EPA/Fehim Demir

Ukraine’s embassy in Sarajevo has asked Bosnia’s Foreign Ministry for detailded information about an icon that it says is part of Ukrainian heritage, which the Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik on Monday presented to Russia’s Foreign Minister.

The embassy claims the 300-year-old gilded icon originates from Lugansk in eastern Ukraine, near the border with Russia in the disputed, separatist-held Donbas region.

It wants to know how the icon ended up in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the hands of the Serbian member of the Bosnian Presidency.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov paid a two-day visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina earlier this week, marked by an incident in which the two other members of the Bosnian presidency, Komsic and Bosniak member Sefik Dzaferovic, refused to meet him.

Lugansk is currently capital and administrative centre of the Lugansk People’s Republic, an unrecognised breakaway state established in 2014 by pro-Russian separatists.

The Bosnian Serb news agency SRNA published a photo of the icon and a stamp confirming its authenticity, which clearly shows that its origin was in Ukraine.

The Ukrainians say if they do not get the information they seek, they will see that as a show of support for Russia’s aggressive military actions in Ukraine.

The Foreign Ministry has forwarded the note to the presidency, from which it expects answers, Bisera Turkovic, the Foreign Minister, told the media, adding that she expects the state prosecutor’s office to be involved.

“It would be normal to have a very urgent reaction because it is a very serious inquiry, not to say an accusation. Enormous damage is done to Bosnia when a high-ranking official is accused of donating something that has been stolen and is someone’s cultural treasure,” Turkovic said.

Dodik has not commented yet on the allegations but his counterpart, Zeljko Komsic, Croatian member of the presidency, on Thursday said that if Ukraine’s allegations were proven, someone should go to jail.

“Dodik must say where he got it from, who gave it to him or who planted it on him. This can’t be over without any results because it’s international theft … This must end up in court, someone must answer for this,” Komsic said.

Igor Crnadak, a former foreign minister, also said the affair should be clarified as soon as possible.

“This is a very ugly event that leaves a stain on our institutions. What needs to happen as soon as possible is for … the Serbian member of the Presidency to provide clear information about the origin of the gift and all other details related to it,” Crnadak told media.

Komsic and Dzaferovic boycotted Lavrov saying he had expressed disrespect for Bosnia and also first met with Bosnian Serb officials in Istocno Sarajevo, on Monday, where no Bosnian state flag could seen on display.

Breakingviews -

 Big Pharma’s vaccine immunity will be fleeting

By Aimee Donnellan

BREAKINGVIEWS CORONAVIRUS
DECEMBER 18, 2020




LONDON (Reuters Breakingviews) - Big Pharma’s vaccine victory lap may be cut short. The industry’s triumph in dispensing inoculations less than a year after the discovery of the deadly coronavirus has partially vindicated the business models of groups like Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca. But as governments took on much of the risk, pharma groups’ pricing will remain a target after the pandemic.

Riding to the world’s rescue is a welcome corrective for the battered pharmaceutical industry. In recent years the sector has grappled with bribery scandals and accusations of aggressive pricing, exemplified by Mylan’s decision to hike the price of anti-allergy injection EpiPen by 400%.

Drug firms have long defended their prices as the necessary reward for funding expensive and risky research. The value of global scale, meanwhile, was evident in their ability to quickly test vaccines and manufacture enough doses to inoculate a third of the world’s population next year. The promise by Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca to sell their treatments at cost price for the duration of the pandemic further enhances their claims to benefit society. The warm feelings extended to the stock market, where share prices of vaccine makers Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Pfizer have outperformed the MSCI World Pharma index by an average of 5% since the beginning of the year. Moderna shares are up nearly 700% in the same period.

However, the vaccines are more than just an endorsement of Big Pharma. Academic centres like the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute and small firms such as Germany’s BioNTech played a critical role in pioneering the medical breakthroughs, helped by a mixture of public and private funding. Governments, meanwhile, helped to finance the cost of testing and manufacturing, and pre-ordered hundreds of millions of doses without knowing whether the vaccines would be effective.

Such public support has emboldened campaigners who argue governments should take a greater slice of pharma companies’ earnings, perhaps by claiming a share of new drug patents. The glow of their vaccine triumph may allow Big Pharma companies to shrug off such demands for a while. But U.S. drug prices rose 60% in the 10 years to 2018, according to the American Medical Association. Pressure to bring them down will soon return.

BREAKINGVIEWS

Reuters Breakingviews is the world's leading source of agenda-setting financial insight. As the Reuters brand for financial commentary, we dissect the big business and economic stories as they break around the world every day. A global team of about 30 correspondents in New York, London, Hong Kong and other major cities provides expert analysis in real time.

Sign up for a free trial of our full service at https://www.breakingviews.com/trial and follow us on Twitter @Breakingviews and at www.breakingviews.com. All opinions expressed are those of the authors.

 ESG AMELIORATING CAPITALISM

Putting the green in greenback? 

#ESG investors target corporate accounts

ON THE ROAD TO SOCIALISM

By Simon Jessop, Matthew Green
DECEMBER 17, 2020

LONDON (Reuters) - Five years ago, many investors and executives would have politely told 

Jill Atkins to buzz off.



Professor Jill Atkins of the University of Sheffield poses 

in her garden in Brecon, Wales, Britain December 14, 2020. 

REUTERS/Rebecca Naden

Now they listen keenly when the British academic presents her work, known as “extinction accounting”, which shows how companies are contributing to the demise of honeybees, as well as other species - and how that could come back to sting them.

“I think people are beginning to get it now,” Atkins, chair in financial management at the University of Sheffield, told Reuters. “The capital markets have contributed to this mess, and they have a responsibility for sorting it out.”

But Atkins is appealing to wallets, not consciences. Her method is one of a series of projects seeking ways to assess a company’s impact on climate change and the natural world in financial and accounting terms, and thus better price risk for the likes of pension funds, banks and insurers.

These initiatives differ widely in methods and scope. But they share a common goal: giving the growing numbers of investors pledging to rebalance their portfolios the insight they need to sort the most sustainable companies from the most destructive.

While groups such as MSCI or Sustainalytics already offer to guide investors by creating ratings systems to rank companies’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials, these approaches take a different tack: aiming to change the way companies report to their shareholders.

Options range from Atkins’ research to encourage companies to provide scientific assessments of their impact on plants and animals, to publishing a “carbon-adjusted earnings per share” figure or putting a monetary value on impacts so misdeeds like plastic pollution can directly affect a company’s valuation.

Given the scale of today’s environmental crisis, some investors and campaigners compare the depth of change needed in corporate reporting with the kind of fundamental reform of accounting seen in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash.

“In 1929 there was no transparency on profit; companies could pick their own accounting principles and there were no auditors to verify the numbers,” said Ronald Cohen, co-founder of London-based Bridges Fund Management and chairman of the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment advocacy group.

“Today, you could argue we’re at a similar crossroads.”

Change won’t be easy. With so many ideas and tools in play, it will take time for investors, companies and the bodies that set accounting standards to settle on consistent global rules.

And if companies do begin to introduce more sophisticated metrics to assess their impact on nature and society, some investors fear these new numbers will simply present opportunities to game the system in whole new ways.

‘CHANGE THE PLUMBING’

Atkins, who is collaborating with academics at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, believes that requiring companies to introduce “extinction accounting” into annual reports could trigger rapid change.

Companies would have to assess the populations of threatened species living near their operations; work out whether their business puts them at risk; come up with plans to protect them; and explain them to investors.

“This would give investors an entirely new level of insight into the connections between corporate profitability and risks to the natural world,” said Martina Macpherson, president of the Network for Sustainable Financial Markets.

Other projects take a different approach, helping investors build new models to assess companies’ environmental and social footprints.

A team at Harvard Business School, for example, aims to generate a dollar value for companies’ positive and negative impacts across a range of domains to enable easy comparison.

“We have to change the plumbing of the system,” said George Serafeim, a lead researcher. “It’s not a sufficient condition to change corporate behaviour and resource allocation, but it’s a necessary condition.”

Professor Jill Atkins of the University of Sheffield 

Brecon, Wales, Britain December 14, 2020. 

REUTERS/Rebecca Naden

This year, for example, the team published an analysis of two companies selling consumer packaged goods, aiming to calculate the value or cost of their impacts in areas from nutrition to greenhouse gas emissions and plastic waste.

The study drew on datasets that would not normally figure in a corporate annual report, including consumer-purchase data from 40,000 U.S. households and nutritional information from the Department of Agriculture.

New York-based BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, joined a pilot in October to test the evolving system, known as the “Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative”, researchers said. BlackRock declined to comment.

Other participants include Calvert Research and Management, a Washington-based ethical investment firm and part of Eaton Vance, which manages $26 billion.

Calvert CEO John Streur said the project could radically change how investors calculate value. For example, if the system revealed that an apparently profitable company was causing vast amounts of plastic pollution, its valuation would suffer.

“We think of this as an entirely new chassis, if you will, to really understand value creation or destruction by a management team,” Streur said.

Calvert’s analysts are reviewing the project’s various models with the Harvard team. It will use the findings to immediately engage with company management, and to influence investment decisions within the next two years, Streur said.

‘WOOD FOR THE TREES’

Some are sceptical, though, arguing the quest to boil down vastly different forms of impact into dollar equivalents could obscure the most fundamental questions: if, when and how a company plans to adopt a more sustainable business model.

“If people find it useful, then great. But there’s a risk of being overly precise and not seeing the wood for the trees,” said Paul Fisher, a former Bank of England policymaker now at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.

Sudhir Roc-Sennett, head of ESG at Vontobel Asset Management, is concerned about the potential for companies to manipulate the numbers, making comparisons even harder to make.

“The massaging ... is already bad enough, imagine what it would be like if you start adding more layers to the picture.”

Nonetheless, some companies are experimenting.

Some groups, including consultants KPMG and S&P Global Trucost, are already working with individual corporations to value the environmental and social effects of their operations and supply chains.

Arjan de Draaijer, managing partner at KPMG Sustainability Netherlands, said the consultancy was helping hundreds of companies put a value on their impact, although mostly at the project or product level.

One early adopter of company-wide analysis was French luxury goods company Kering, which measures its carbon emissions, water use, water pollution, land use, air pollution and waste, and converts the impact into a monetary value to help measure its progress in becoming more sustainable.

The company’s 2019 annual report estimated its negative environmental impact at 524 million euros ($638 million), stable from the prior year, but falling in relation to group revenue.

French food group Danone, meanwhile, issued a carbon-adjusted earnings per share figure alongside the more traditional number this year, taking into account the cost of emissions.

Based on a carbon cost estimate of $35 a ton, the company said its carbon-adjusted EPS had risen 12% in 2019 from the prior year, compared with 8% for its normal EPS, reflecting its efforts to reduce emissions.

FLYING FOXES

Critics argue that such initiatives may help companies appear greener, but won’t fundamentally change their behaviour until their impact on the environment is factored into their core balance sheets and profit statements.

“So long as the impact does not hit the bottom line, then it’s always going to be secondary,” said Richard Murphy, a chartered accountant and political economist at City University in London.

Nevertheless, Atkins of the University of Sheffield argues that investors would leave destructive sectors faster if they had a clearer grasp of how quickly the collapse of ecosystems can sink a seemingly profitable business.

Take the Malayan flying fox, Atkins says. With growing Chinese demand boosting an $18 billion market for the durian fruit, plantations have been expanding into the Malaysian rainforest, endangering the large bat species - the fruit’s chief pollinator.

By revealing the risks posed by such unintended consequences, Atkins hopes “extinction accounting” could help save at least some of the many life forms now on the brink.

“What we are trying to show is the financial markets have an immense potential to save species,” she added.

($1 = 0.8207 euros)


Reporting by Simon Jessop and Matthew Green; Editing by Pravin Char

Exclusive: For years, the Pentagon sits on racial discrimination survey data

By Phil Stewart
DECEMBER 18, 2020

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Army Sergeant Major Das’Chara Champ couldn’t have known that the answer to her question about racial discrimination survey data was sitting in an office somewhere in the vast Defense Department bureaucracy.



Few people do.

"Has there been any kind of survey done on the perceived level of racism or racial discrimination in the Army," Champ, who is Black, asked in a video played at a Pentagon town hall on Sept. 24. here

On the other end of the question were some of the most senior leaders in the U.S. military: Then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Army General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Milley’s senior enlisted advisor, Ramon Colon-Lopez.

Virtual town halls like this have been a way for the Pentagon’s top brass to address concerns in 2020 about racial discrimination in a military - America’s largest employer - which is diverse in lower ranks but largely white and male at the top.

Apparently unbeknownst to Colon-Lopez, who responded only indirectly to Champ, the Defense Department not only carries out granular surveys about discrimination but has been legally-required to do so since the 1990s here. The last survey of the active duty force, conducted every four years, was for fiscal year 2017.

However, the Defense Department denied repeated requests from Reuters to release the 2017 survey data, including through a Freedom of Information Act request. It has also not released a separate report about the 2017 survey data or clearly explained why the data has been withheld for so long.

Maryland Rep. Anthony Brown, a retired Army Reserve colonel and the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus on the House Armed Services Committee, said the failure to release the data was troubling.

“It concerns me tremendously,” Brown said, adding Congress had established a clear reporting requirement and the public had a right to know.

Champ declined to be interviewed for this article, the Army said. Colon-Lopez did not respond for a request for comment.

In its final response to Reuters this month, rejecting the Freedom of Information Act request, the Department of Defense said the survey data constituted “information of a pre-decisional, deliberative nature.”

If released, the Pentagon asserted it could “reasonably be expected to interfere with the government’s deliberative process.”

Still, the data is already so old that the Pentagon is now in the awkward position of having to start planning for another survey in the ongoing 2021 fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30.

MAKES THEM LOOK BAD

A Pentagon spokeswoman said the Defense Department was nearing completion of its report on the fiscal year 2017 survey data and would provide it to Congress in the coming weeks. The spokeswoman did not explain the years-long delay.

Don Christensen, a retired chief prosecutor for the Air Force who leads the advocacy group Protect Our Defenders, was skeptical of the Pentagon’s motives when denying requests for the data’s release over a period of months.

“What it really means is that whatever you’re asking makes them look bad. And if it made them look good, they’d release it,” said Christensen, whose research has drawn attention to racial discrimination in the military.

A Reuters investigation this year here found servicemembers are far less likely than civilian Defense Department employees to bring forward their concerns about discrimination through formal channels. Equal Opportunity complaints, current and former servicemembers say, is often a dead end, resulting in little action, or worse, backfiring on the complainant. []

The Pentagon survey, known as the Workplace and Equal Opportunity Survey of Active Duty Members, examines such issues directly.

In the most recent publicly available survey, back in 2013, the data showed that some 16% of minorities in the active duty force experienced harassment, discrimination or both because of their race or ethnicity.

President-elect Joe Biden underscored the importance of diversity at the Pentagon when he announced his pick earlier this month to lead it: retired Army general Lloyd Austin, who would be the first Black U.S. defense secretary, if approved by Congress.

“More than 40% of our active duty forces are people of color. It’s long past time that the department’s leadership reflects that diversity,” Biden said.

Rep. Brown, who strongly supports Biden’s pick of Austin, said he believed that the retired U.S. general would prioritize diversity in the Pentagon - including when addressing the issue to Congress and the public.

“I think with Lloyd Austin, we’re going to get greater transparency than we’ve had in the past,” Brown said.

Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Shri Navaratnam

U.S. weapons exports rise 2.8% to $175 billion in fiscal 2020

By Mike Stone 
DECEMBER 4, 2020

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sales of U.S. military equipment to foreign governments rose 2.8% to $175 billion in the latest fiscal year, officials said on Friday, with looser restrictions under President Donald Trump boosting purchases during his time in office.

The U.S. State Department disclosed military sales figures for the 2020 fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30. Sales of U.S. military equipment in the prior fiscal year had totaled $170 billion.

Sales of fighter jets and guided missiles have risen in the past year as U.S. allies sought to gain access to the latest technology from companies including Lockheed Martin Co and and Raytheon Technologies. Major deals in fiscal 2020 included Japan’s purchase of 63 F-35 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin for as much as $23 billion.

There are two major ways foreign governments purchase arms from U.S. companies: direct commercial sales negotiated between a government and a company; and foreign military sales in which a foreign government typically contacts a Defense Department official at the U.S. embassy in its capital. Both require U.S. government approval.




The direct military sales by U.S. companies jumped 8.4% to $124.3 billion in fiscal 2020 from $114.7 billion in fiscal 2019, while sales arranged through the U.S. government fell 8.3% to $50.78 billion in 2020 from $55.39 billion the prior year, the State Department said.

On average, foreign military sales under Trump amounted to $57.5 billion per year, versus an average of $53.9 billion per year for the eight years under his predecessor Barack Obama, in 2020 dollars, according to Bill Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy think tank. Sales averaged about 6% more per year under Trump, Hartung said.

Trump's administration in 2018 rolled out a new "Buy American" program that relaxed restrictions here on military sales while encouraging U.S. officials to take a bigger role in increasing business overseas for the U.S. weapons industry. Trump is due to leave office on Jan. 20.

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY (plawiuk.blogspot.com)

Massive iceberg pivots, breaks near south Atlantic penguin colony island

By Cassandra Garrison

(Reuters) - Strong currents have taken hold of a massive Antarctic iceberg that is on a collision course towards South Georgia Island, causing it to shift direction and lose a major chunk of mass, a scientist tracking its journey said on Friday.

As the iceberg, dubbed A68a, approached the western shelf edge of the south Atlantic island this week, it encountered strong currents, causing it to pivot nearly 180 degrees, according to Geraint Tarling, a biological oceanographer with the British Antarctic Survey.

“You can almost imagine it as a handbrake turn for the iceberg because the currents were so strong,” Tarling said.

That’s when the berg appeared to clip the shelf edge, and caused a large piece to break apart. That new piece is an iceberg in its own right and already has a name - A68d.

Scientists have been watching for weeks the massive iceberg, last measured at 4,200-square-kilometers, as it rode a fast-track current towards the island.

Researchers feared that, as the berg closed in on the wildlife-rich island, it could grind into the seabed, disrupting underwater ecosystems. They were also worried that the berg might block penguins making their way into the sea for food.

As of Friday, the original A68a iceberg was about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the island’s west coast. It appeared, however, to be heading southeast towards another current that would likely carry it away from the shelf edge before sweeping it back around toward the island’s eastern shelf area.

That means the berg could still cause an environmental disaster for local wildlife, but along the island’s eastern coast rather than the southwest.

“All of those things can still happen, nothing has changed in that regard,” Tarling said.

The new smaller berg, A68d, is moving further away from the original berg. Scientists don’t yet know if it will follow the same path, or become lodged somewhere else on the shelf. An estimate of A68d’s size was not yet available.

Scientists had predicted some chunks could break away from A68a as it approached the island, and more breakage is possible.

A68a broke off from the Antarctic peninsula in 2017.

The battle against ‘authoritarian’ Trumpism may not end with Trump’s presidency

December 18, 2020 By Alex Henderson, AlterNet

Proud Boys rally in Washington, DC (screengrab).

The Lincoln Project and other Never Trump conservatives were hoping that the 2020 election would bring a blue tsunami so massive that Trumpism would be repudiated across the board, but it didn’t work out that way. Although President-elect Joe Biden enjoyed a decisive victory — winning 306 electoral votes and defeating Trump by more than 7 million in the popular vote — the Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives will be smaller in 2021. And it remains to be seen whether Democrats or Republicans will be the majority in the U.S. Senate in 2021. Moreover, Trump’s MAGA base is still fired up. Reed Galen, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, discusses the future of Trumpism in an op-ed published by the Washington Post this week — and he warns that the battle against Trumpism will not end when Trump leaves the White House on January 20.

“While President Trump will leave office as a failed, one-term president, the fight against Trumpism is just beginning,” Galen explains. “A year ago, The Lincoln Project launched with two stated goals. First, Defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box. Second, ensure Trumpism failed alongside him. We are proud to have been a part of the broad and deep coalition that helped elect Joe Biden and Kamala D. Harris to the White House. Trumpism, however, is far from extinction.”

Galen adds that since the election, “much of the Republican Party” has decided to “turn fully against American democracy” and keep Trump in the White House even though he clearly lost the election.

“Trump’s allies and abettors, including more than 100 lawmakers and 18 Republican state attorneys general, tried to poison our political system in the service of a personality cult,” Galen writes. “Theirs is a veneration driven not by high ideals but by fear, resentment and a transparent desire to maintain power for its own sake. Even now, many Republicans in Congress continue to try, by ludicrous and quixotic means, to overturn the will of more than 80 million voters. This week, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) privately warned Republicans not to disrupt the official opening of electoral votes on January 6.”

Trumpism, Galen laments, is alive and well “despite Biden’s clear and overwhelming victory”—and that was evident when the Proud Boys recently “rampaged in Downtown Washington, reminding us that violence is their next iteration.”

“Trump’s camp followers, such as Stephen K. Bannon, Alex Jones, Fox News, OAN, Newsmax and many others, will not stop actively injecting disinformation into the country’s air supply,” Galen stresses. “They are highly skilled, and we must not underestimate their ability to pull us apart and keep us divided. Trump’s helpmates have called for honorable public officials to be beheaded, drawn and quartered and taken outside to be shot. They are living proof of what former President Ronald Reagan said: ‘Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

A wide variety of Trump critics rallied around Biden this year, from veteran conservatives like George Will, Carly Fiorina, Bill Kristol, Mona Charen and Cindy McCain to self-described “democratic socialists” like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — all of whom agreed that Trump’s presidency has been a disaster. And Galen wraps up his op-ed by emphasizing that in 2021, Democrats and Never Trumpers will need to join forces and remain vigilant against Trumpism, policy differences and all.

“Those of us who voted for Biden and Harris must remember that our coalition is our best offense and defense,” Galen writes. “Though we will not agree on everything, we must march forward together against the forces of authoritarianism.”

MAGA leaders call for the troops to keep Trump in office

A growing call to invoke the Insurrection Act shows how hard-edged MAGA ideology has become in the wake of Trump’s election loss.



The Insurrection Act has gained popularity among the far-right fringes, mainly as a way for President Donald Trump to solve all their problems. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images


By TINA NGUYEN

12/18/2020

An 1807 law invoked only in the most violent circumstances is now a rallying cry for the MAGA-ites most committed to the fantasy that Donald Trump will never leave office.

The law, the Insurrection Act, allows the president to deploy troops to suppress domestic uprisings — not to overturn elections.

But that hasn’t stopped the act from becoming a buzzword and cure-all for prominent MAGA figures like Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, two prominent pro-Trump attorneys leading efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and even one North Carolina state lawmaker. Others like Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser who was recently pardoned for lying to the FBI, have made adjacent calls for Trump to impose martial law. The ideas have circulated in pro-Trump outlets and were being discussed over the weekend among the thousands of MAGA protesters who descended on state capitols and the Supreme Court to falsely claim Trump had won the election.

At its core, the Insurrection Act gives the president authority to send military and National Guard troops to quell local rebellions and violence, offering an exemption to prohibitions against using military personnel to enforce domestic laws. Historically, it has been used in moments of extreme national strife — the Civil War, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, violent labor disputes, desegregation battles, rioting following Martin Luther King Jr.’s death.

Only once, however, has it been used in the wake of an election — and that was to stop a literal militia from seizing the Louisiana government on behalf of John McEnery, a former Confederate officer who had lost the 1872 governor’s race.

Nonetheless, in the minds of some authoritarian-leaning and conspiracy-minded Trump supporters, the Insurrection Act has become a needed step to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from assuming the presidency. Their evidence-deficient reasoning: Democrats illegally rigged the election and are attempting a coup, and Trump must send in the troops to undo this conspiracy.

The conviction shows how hard-edged MAGA ideology has become in the wake of Trump’s election loss. While scattered theories about a “deep state” arrayed against Trump have long circulated in MAGA circles, calls for troops to stop a democratically elected president from taking office have taken those ideas to a more conspiratorial and militaristic level. It also displays the exalted level to which Trump has been elevated among his most zealous fans as his departure looms.

MAGA-world may resist the vaccine, but it still wants Trump to get credit

“The central theme here is that there supposedly exists a network of nefarious actors trying to undermine Trump and destroy the United States, and that this is a tool that Trump could use to save the day,” said Jared Holt, a research fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, who focuses on far-right extremism


The Insurrection Act has been rarely invoked since the civil unrest of the 1960s — the last time was to quell violence during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. And when it has been used over that period, it was always at the request of a state governor.

But over the past several years, it has gained popularity among the far-right fringes, mainly as a way for Trump to solve all their problems, from expelling undocumented migrants, to arresting generals and other “deep state” actors for allegedly plotting coups against Trump.

The idea has also become intertwined with the QAnon movement, the far-reaching and baseless conspiracy that Trump is secretly working to disrupt a cabal of pedophiliac, sex trafficking Democrats and global elite.

In May, a Q-drop — the name for the mysterious missives allegedly from a person at the center of the QAnon movement — floated the Insurrection Act for the first time as a way to solve “growing unrest” after George Floyd was killed by Minnesota police. “Call the ball,” Q said mysteriously.

Then, in June, GOP Sen. Tom Cotton brought the idea of the Insurrection Act into the national dialogue with a New York Times op-ed that called on Trump to invoke the law in response to rioting that was occurring amid largely peaceful protests over racial justice. Trump himself leaned into the idea, suggesting to a rally audience that he would use the act to put down “leftist thugs” protesting that summer.

From there, the Insurrection Act became a quick fix to everything among the more extreme MAGA figures.

Trump ally and convicted political operative Roger Stone brought it up on Infowars as a way for Trump to combat anything from coups to protests to election fraud.

“The president's authority is the Insurrection Act and his ability to declare martial law,” he told host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Stone added that Trump could also use the law to arrest anyone from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for election interference, to Democratic power couple Bill and Hillary Clinton — an interpretation that legal experts say strains credulity.

Jimmy Gurulé, a former Justice Department prosecutor now teaching at Notre Dame Law School, called the argument tenuous. While the Insurrection Act can be legally invoked as a response to a “conspiracy” that hinders people’s rights, there must actually be a conspiracy to justify sending in federal troops over the objection of local and state officials.

“I think that the key here is, 'Well, what the hell is that conspiracy?’” he said. “No one can articulate the participants in the conspiracy, the scope of the conspiracy, the object of the conspiracy. It’s all over the place.”

Still, Trump himself seemed keen to the idea, telling Fox News host Jeanine Pirro that he would “put down [anti-Trump protests] very quickly” if they broke out after the election: “Look, it's called insurrection. We just send in and we do it very easy.”

Further out on the MAGA fringe, Trump supporters suggested the president jump the gun and simply arrest everyone — before the election.

And now, with the Electoral College confirming Biden’s win, recounts failing to change the results and courts at every level swatting down lawsuits challenging the outcome, some MAGA figures have latched on to the specific Insurrection Act clause granting the president authority to use the military to quash a “rebellion against the authority of the United States.” In their strained interpretation, the clause gives Trump the power to go after the Democrats and deep state actors conspiring to remove him from office. It’s a reading of the law experts immediately rejected.

“When you're talking about a group of conspiracy theorists, and others who lack any kind of legal knowledge, they'll just pull that arrow out of their quiver when the rest don’t work,” said Brian Levin, executive director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

It seems nearly impossible Trump would actually invoke the law in this manner. But that hasn’t stopped prominent Trump supporters like Wood, one of the lawyers pushing unsubstantiated lawsuits through the courts, from suggesting Trump send the military into Georgia to break up a meeting of electors

And over the weekend, after the Supreme Court rejected a Trump-boosted lawsuit from Texas asking to overturn the election results in four other swing states, MAGA supporters took to the streets to demand, among other things, that Trump use the Insurrection Act to force an election do-over, or at the very least, stop Biden from taking office.

The Epoch Times itself ran an editorial on Monday arguing that it was time for Trump to invoke the act and send in the military to seize thousands of voting machines in order to find fraud: “Our system is in crisis. Trump would act to restore the rule of law.”

Gurulé, the former DOJ prosecutor, pointed out that even if Trump tried to invoke the Insurrection Act, there really is nothing for the military to suppress.

“I guess it’d be a voting fraud conspiracy, but how is the military going to suppress that?” he said. “By what, seizing all the ballots? By seizing all the voting machines? By then, what are they going to do, conduct the votes? It just doesn't make sense.”

The point, however, might just be to have the Insurrection Act as a talking point to keep the MAGA movement motivated. And Levin, the extremism researcher, feared a darker path if Trump — a man who already speaks in militaristic terms on a regular basis — continued to goad his base into thinking a Biden presidency is an insurrection.

“What is the heart of the Second Amendment, pro-militia, anti-government patriot movement? It's the insurrectionist theory of the Second Amendment,” he said. “It says people can rise up against a tyrannical government. To me, this looks like the last exit on the Jersey Turnpike before we get to that spot.”

‘Sadistic and amoral’: Mental health expert performs postmortem on the ‘pathological’ Trump presidency



 December 18, 2020 By Seth D. Norrholm


Unprecedented. Unhinged. Unbelievable. All of these terms have been used to describe the publicly observed and documented behavior of the 45th President of the United States, most notably over the 5 weeks since he lost the election to Joe Biden. After many of us have had time to process and digest the immediate reactions, thoughts, and feelings to Trump’s loss, there will be decades spent in classrooms, lecture halls, conference centers, books, OpEds, Zoom calls, and documentaries to unpack what we all just witnessed and experienced.

Casually, Trump has been given the usual labels that are associated with his oftentimes bizarre behavior – pundits routinely referred to the sitting U.S. President as “crazy,” “nuts,” or “out of his mind.” There has been much debate and discussion about Trump’s possible psychiatric diagnoses as they relate to the Goldwater Rule and the Duty to Warn placed upon mental health providers whose clients reveal harmful, malicious, or violent intentions. Diagnoses are labels often used to facilitate discussion between mental health researchers and clinicians and for billing purposes. A specific diagnostic category is the result of hours of meetings and discussions among mental health experts who then publish their classifications in the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, or DSM.

We do not need to pin a label or diagnosis on Donald Trump.

We can be clear, Donald Trump likely meets criteria for multiple psychopathologies and disordered personality types.

Experts and laymen alike can argue over which ones specifically and the degree to which his abnormal behavior is psychological, neurological/medical, or intentional in origin.

What we all can agree on is that he is out of touch with reality and dangerous.

Trump’s behavior since he lost to Biden has placed his psychopathology and disordered personality at center stage nearly every day since Election Day.

There are several main themes of Trump’s behavior that are consistent with, and likely reflections of, antisocial personality, narcissistic personality, psychopathy, Machiavellianism (see Dark Triad literature), sociopathy, sadism, and authoritarianism.

General Impressions – Trump is a 74-year old man who, based on thousands of pieces of audio, video, and written evidence, is not a complex individual. His thought process, written and speaking skills, and vocabulary are limited, immature, and concrete in nature. He often uses terms like “powerful” and “beautiful” for items and ideas that are abstract and not physically present. The content of his hundreds of rallies did not change substantively and were quite repetitive to the point of becoming overly trite. His emotional range is limited and largely “flat” with excitations seen in the form of anger, rage, and combativeness with positive emotions, as evidenced by laughing or smiling, in situations in which it is not appropriate (incongruent), sadistic, or as a result of narcissistic supply (i.e., someone has paid him a compliment or he is on a rally stage). In fact, it is in response to crowd chants such as “We love you!,” “Four more years,” and “Fight for Trump” that we see the biggest grins on Trump – in a manner very much akin to taking a drug “hit.”

Grandiosity – Trump has routinely and chronically displayed grandiosity or the sense that he is superior, special, and without equal. His most commonly used phrases show this grandiosity: “the likes of which you’ve never seen,” “[never/for the first time] in history,” “more than anyone thought possible.” Trump uses this type of language so often that it becomes meaningless and it lacks any specificity or substance. The claims are so vague that they are, as many reporters have noted, exceedingly difficult to debate.

Mendacity/Lying – Donald Trump has told over 20,000 lies since taking office in January of 2017 with PolitiFact recently naming the President’s lies about the deadly coronavirus (e.g., “we are rounding the corner on pandemic”) as the “lie of the year.” The sheer volume of lies, from little white lies to those with deadly consequences, shared by this President is enough to disorient and confuse the public. But, in general, these lies serve the purpose of creating and maintaining Trump’s narcissistic fantasyland. To be clear, while some are strategic and some are pathological, they are uttered in an in-the-moment-effort by Trump to “win” the moment, escape being cornered or exposed. As to whether he believes them or not, it depends on the circumstances. He only needs the slightest possibility of truth (i.e., that he was the victim of a deep state conspiracy) for the lie to soothe his fragile and often injured ego. Terrifyingly, most of the lies are not only untrue but the exact opposite of the truth. For example, we have had a 9/11’s worth of deaths daily for over a week; a statistic nowhere near “rounding the corner.”

Ego Protection/Delusion/False Narrative/Alternate Reality – The inability to admit mistakes or flaws is not mutually exclusive from the aforementioned lying as the two behaviors are interrelated. In this disordered personality, there can be no flaws and, as such, one’s followers, colleagues, and the public should never see flaws, ever. This strict “code” explains why Trump will add the word “and” or “or” in between a misspoken word or phrase and the correct one. During his first State of the Union, for example, Trump referred to a member of our Homeland Security force as “DJ” before adding “He goes by DJ. And CJ. He said call me either one.” In recent rallies, Trump has referred to new missiles that are both “hydrosonic and hypersonic.”

Appearing as without flaw also underlies Trump’s curtailing of any legal or public process that would expose him as a fraud. This has manifested itself in the form of hush money payments, non-disclosure agreements, ignored subpoenas, repeated civil litigation, and even a Sharpie-altered weather map to change the course of a hurricane.

One mechanism to appear flawless is to seek and obtain constant adulation and reinforcement. Sycophantic enablers will often bring laudatory news clippings or severely skewed statistics to shine a positive light on this President. For example, after the election of Joe Biden, Trump and his team relied on GOP primary numbers (during which he ran unopposed) and record-breaking voter numbers (“74,000,000;” “More votes than any sitting President in history”) without mentioning the other guy got 81,000,000+ votes.

In other words, somebody in his orbit puts together statistics, not matter how meaningless, to soothe him.

Trump will also “self-soothe” when he perceives ego injury. If you noticed during one of his post-Election speeches, he repeated some form of the phrase “can’t let it happen” “can’t accept it” at one point saying “you’ll never be able to look yourself in the mirror.” All of these statements were made to his audience members, but it doesn’t take an advanced degree in psychology to know to whom he was speaking.

This President has also used merging or conflation to protect his ego from injury. He repeatedly synonymized himself with America, patriotism, and the flag. By attaching himself to these terms and objects (in some cases actually hugging the flag), Trump can use attacks or criticisms of him the person as attacks on America, its flag, or its heroes. In a recent rally, he said that two Georgia Senate seats were “the last line of defense for America” but in many ways those seats represented a last defense for him.

Lastly, he will immerse himself in echo chambers, yes-men, and “safe zones” such as on for Fox News (as long as they are pro-Trump), OAN, or Newsmax with help from “friends” Hannity, Ingraham, Carlson, Pirro, Watters, Hesgeth, and others.

Projection – this is one of the most commonly discussed ego defense mechanism in psychology and psychodynamics and it is, simply put, accusing others of that which you are guilty. In the five weeks since Election Day, Trump has called Democrats “radical” when he was in fact pushing an illegal, extra-Constitutional overturning of an election adding that Democrats will “do anything to win,” “they’ll do anything to beat you. They don’t care. These people are sick. In addition, he recently claimed that “Democrats are vicious,” “Republicans are too nice,” and “the Democrats cheat at elections.”

Lack of Blame, Responsibility, Accountability – Again, the appearance of existing without flaw also requires Trump to deny any direct responsibility or accountability for the negative aspects of his behavior. In short, he takes no responsibility for failures (“Election was rigged”) and all responsibility for successes (“we got vaccine done in record time”). After initially claiming that the virus was a “Democrat hoax,” Trump went on to deflect responsibility for its raging outbreak and massive death in America by referring to it as a “freak” event that “should never have happened” as if it was an unexpected weather event with Pearl Harbor element of surprise. Trump’s own discussions with Bob Woodward show a completely different story.

Lack of Empathy/Cruelty/Sadism/Sociopathy – Trump is the first President in decades to intentionally place others in harm’s way with no remorse or foresight. This was seen in his stalwart belief that cities and states “should open up” despite spiraling infections and deaths; a policy recently revealed by one his appointees as “We want them infected.” This President consistently showed himself to be the President for his supporters and not for all Americans. He demonized others and used racism as a “currency” with which to engage his base. He mocked non-English speaking voters, the disabled, and those who showed public emotion (“Cryin’ Chuck Schumer”). In a combination of moves, he called COVID-19 the “China virus,” and something “that hit from China,” and, as such, shifting blame and using racist currency.

As an antisocial individual with no empathy for others nor a moral compass, Trump expected those loyal to him to break laws, ethics, norms, and precedent FOR him. For example, in his failed attempt to perpetrate a coup, Trump called on the Governor and Secretary of State of Georgia to have “courage to do what they have to do” which in this case was break the law and overturn the will of the voters. For Trump, laws don’t apply to him, checks and balances don’t apply to him, the U.S. system of government that has existed for 2 centuries doesn’t apply to him.

His antisocial, sadistic, and amoral ways were not limited to the living. Trump routinely spoke of the dead as criminals (e.g., dead people who allegedly voted for Democrats) but not as victims of a modern-day plague (e.g., those lost to COVID). Bizarrely, Trump also spoke for the dead – on different occasions he described a recently deceased person as looking down (presumably from heaven) to talk about him (e.g., a campaign staffer killed in car accident was “looking down and is pleased.” The late SEAL Ryan Owens and the murdered George Floyd were also included in Trump’s “heavenly praise.” In other words, Trump’s solipsistic manner (i.e., only Trump’s mind exists), has hijacked the eternal fate of the dead to serve his own ego-driven purposes.

Lastly, all of his relationships with other people are transactional. He uses you until you are no longer of use (for recent examples see William Barr and Georgia Governor Kemp who “should be ashamed of himself” for not overturning the election to Trump; a feat in Trump’s eyes that could be done “very easily if [Kemp] knew what the hell he was doing.”
And, of course, the Ridiculous:

The themes described above fall into general categories that underlie psychopathologies and disordered personality types that share common features and etiology. But this was not the case for all things Trump. In some cases, there were fantastical utterances whose origins and logic lay beyond our understanding. People were accused of wanting “to build buildings with no windows,” to “win back Christmas,” and to save animals and humans alike from the dangers of windmills. There is much to be written. I will stop here.

About the Author: Seth D. Norrholm, PhD (Twitter: @SethN12) is the Scientific Director of the Neuroscience Center for Anxiety, Stress, and Trauma and an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Wayne State School of Medicine in Detroit. Dr. Norrholm has spent 20 years studying trauma-, stressor-, anxiety-, depressive-, and substance use-related disorders and has published over 110 peer-reviewed research articles and book chapters. The primary objective of his work is to develop “bench-to-bedside” clinical research methods to inform therapeutic interventions for fear and anxiety-related disorders and how they relate to human factors such as personality, genetics, and environmental influences. Dr. Norrholm has been. featured on NBC, ABC, PBS, CNN.com, Politico.com, The Atlantic, Salon.com, The Huffington Post, Yahoo.com, USA Today, WebMD, The History Channel, and Scientific American. In 2019, Dr. Norrholm was recognized as an Expertscape world expert in Fear and Posttraumatic Stress Disorders

Bush ethics lawyer: Trump is an ‘incompetent dictator’ — but a ‘shrewder’ plot might have worked



Published on December 18, 2020
By Chauncey Devega, Salon

Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election was (once again) confirmed by the Electoral College on Monday. Congress will meet in early January to certify Biden’s victory, and on Jan. 20 he will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States.

Donald Trump has been vanquished — but unfortunately, either does not believe that or refuses to admit it. As some general, somewhere, once observed in a war long forgotten, it is hard to truly defeat an enemy who does not know he has been beaten.

Trump’s coup attempt is on-going. Despite being rejected by state officials and the country’s highest courts, Trump and his agents are continuing their seditious and treasonous attempts to overthrow the results of the 2020 election — and, in effect, overthrow American democracy. These efforts to stop Biden from becoming president have extended to the use of stochastic terrorism and other provocations, to murmurs about martial law, political violence and a second civil war.

Because Trump yearns to be a neofascist strongman, his campaign to remain in power indefinitely will not stop. Michael D’Antonio, a CNN contributor and author of “The Truth About Trump”, warned Salon about this during a recent phone conversation:

There is no quit in him…. This is the reality that we’re going to face until he becomes disabled or deceased…. The storyline is going to be that there is a pretender in the White House and that Washington is more corrupt than it was when Trump arrived there, and that there needs to be a crusade to restore the leader. This is far from over.

Even after he is forced from office in January, Donald Trump will likely continue to claim that he is America’s “real president” and try to rule in “exile,” ginning up violence and other social upheaval by his political cult leaders and other deplorables. The power of this group of dead-enders to cause mayhem is not to be underestimated: Trump received 74 million votes in this election, 11 million more than in 2016.

The professional centrists and others desperate for a return to “normalcy” in the mainstream news media and the political class continue to downplay the damage already done by Donald Trump’s fascist and authoritarian regime and by the reality of his coup attempt.

Why is that happening? Because the hope-peddlers, stenographers of current events, and other members of the Church of the Savvy are emotionally, financially, cognitively and professionally committed to the fictions of American folk democracy. These include the disproved belief that the American people are fundamentally good, and that fascism is something that only happens “over there.” They are applying an outmoded and obsolete framework that fails to grasp how fascism and authoritarianism have evolved to fit 21st-century society.

Writing at the Atlantic, sociologist Zeynep Tufekci explores the problematic terminology of this moment:

Coup may not quite capture what we’re witnessing in the United States right now, but there’s also a danger here: Punditry can tend to focus too much on decorum and terminology, like the overachieving students so many of us once were, conflating the ridiculous with the unserious. The incoherence and incompetence of the attempt do not change its nature, however, nor do those traits allow us to dismiss it or ignore it until it finally fails on account of that incompetence.

Our focus, she continues, should not be “a debate about the proper terminology,” but rather “the frightening substance of what we’re facing”:

If the Republican Party, itself entrenching minority rule on many levels, won’t stand up to Trump’s attempt to steal an election through lying and intimidation with the fury the situation demands; if the Democratic Party’s leadership remains solely focused on preparing for the presidency of Joe Biden rather than talking openly about what’s happening; and if ordinary citizens feel bewildered and disempowered, we may settle the terminological debate in the worst possible way: by accruing enough experience with illegitimate power grabs to evolve a more fine-grained vocabulary.

Act like this is your first coup, if you want to be sure that it’s also your last.

What will the long-term impact of Trump’s coup attempt be on American democracy and the rule of law? Is this attempted coup and abuse of the legal and political system a trial run for more effective and efficient efforts to overturn future elections? Are Trump and his allies guilty of sedition and treason as defined by the Constitution and the law? How should Joe Biden’s administration proceed in terms of investigating or prosecuting Trump and members of his administration?

In an effort to answer these questions I recently spoke with Richard Painter, a longtime Republican lawyer who was White House chief ethics counsel under George W. Bush. Painter’s new book, co-authored with Peter Golenbock, is “American Nero: The History of the Destruction of the Rule of Law, and Why Trump is the Worst Offender.”

Painter is a frequent political commentator and analyst on CNN, MSNBC and other news networks. He is also a professor of corporate law at the University of Minnesota

This conversation has been edited, as usual, for clarity and length.

Donald Trump has no respect the rule of law and has engaged in a coup attempt against democracy by trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Even if he fails, the precedent is a threat to the United States and a type of victory for fascism in this country. As an expert on constitutional law, how are you making sense of these events?

The jig is up. Trump is not going to try a real coup. But the message, the warning to the United States, is that we better get our act together pretty damn fast. The next person who follows Trump’s example is going to be much smarter. He’s an incompetent dictator. On Twitter, for example, he is always talking about himself well over half the time. Whereas a real dictator is always talking about “the people.” The next person who has Trump’s aspirations to power may be a lot shrewder, more manipulative and therefore more effective.

Trump is also transparent as a self-centered crybaby. As a country we have to figure out: Do we believe in facts? We can have ideological differences. We can have different preferences and different views on public policy. But we should be able to look at facts and then have an opinion based on roughly the same reality. Of course, there will be some differences of opinion. But are we going to have wild deviations from the truth? If we do, I believe that the United States is going to be very vulnerable to a dictatorship or a successful coup.

There’s all this celebration of the courts and the law and the country’s “institutions” because even Republican judges have dismissed Trump and his allies’ scheme to overturn the 2020 election. That is premature and misguided. They made those decisions not out of principle but out of pragmatism, because Biden won by such a large margin. If the election were closer, I have no doubt that Republican judges from the Supreme Court on down would have sided with Trump against Joe Biden.

What Trump and his attorneys have been trying is so ridiculous that I do not think even the most conservative court would have gone for it. What we are seeing is not a Bush v. Gore situation — and I do not agree with what the court did in Bush v. Gore. The Supreme Court should have left it alone. But what Trump is trying with the 2020 election is so far out that you would have had to have Supreme Court justices who were subject to removal by the president, or in fear of the president, for it to have worked.

In a close-call election, however? Yes, they probably would have given the election to Trump and the Republicans. But they were not going to give him the 2020 election. If the country keeps going in this direction, we are going to have someone in the future who is much shrewder than Donald Trump, who gets more respect from the military and the like, who could engineer a coup quite easily. That is my ultimate concern.

Trump’s coup attempt is an effort to overthrow the people’s will in the context of a decades-long extremist push by the Republicans to take total control by ending democracy and replacing it with one-party rule. The Republican Party knows that they cannot win if they allow everyone to vote.

We’re either committed to democracy or we are not. We are committed to one person, one vote, or we are not. But what is happening now is that Trump and the Republicans are just trying to further polarize our society.

There are legal scholars, historians and other political observers who are warning that Trump’s coup attempt, however ridiculous it may look to some people, is a test run, a prototype for the future. Republicans and other elements of the right wing see what works now and then perfect it for later. What is your assessment?

What is happening is a test of how much can one get away with in the courts. Moreover, how much can one get away with in the court of public opinion by distorting facts and reality?

Donald Trump and his Republican Party’s coup attempt has been described by some people as sedition or treason. What does the law actually say on these matters?

I don’t think you can prosecute him. If you ask, “What is treason, in the broader sense of the word?” Donald Trump is betraying his country. He has held the highest office in the land for four years. If he were smart, Trump would consider that an honor. I think he wasted those four years. He is a narcissist with an obsession about himself and his own ego.

He tried to undermine and attack the government. I am not a big fan of using sedition statutes and so forth, because that is what Joe McCarthy did. The problem with Trump and the Republicans now is that we are dealing with people who really do believe that there is this “deep state.” They want to completely transform the United States government and country to make it conform to their ideology. This is all very dangerous, because through Trump they have power at the highest levels of the government.

Are Trump and his agents engaging in sedition as defined by the Constitution?

I would not use that kind of criminal statute. But I would certainly use obstruction of justice and the false statements statutes. I think there are crimes which are yet to be prosecuted. If you want to talk about what sedition is, in a broader sense, it is a repudiation of our republican form of government and of the country’s Constitution and history of constitutional rule.

Many House Republicans have participated in Trump’s coup attempt. Should Speaker Nancy Pelosi not allow them to be seated, under the 14th Amendment?

I would not do it. I would just go ahead and let them be seated and shoot their mouths off. The Republicans are trying to use the power that you have as president, and in other high government positions, to suppress dissent by the Democrats and others. This is what the Republican Party wants to stand for? Filing crazy lawsuits, writing crazy letters, and saying things that are completely false? We have had people in the Congress who have said crazy things in the past. Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of them now.

Joe Biden wants there to be “healing.” He wants us to put this dark episode behind us. I fundamentally disagree. I am of the thinking that Trump and his administration, as well as their supporters and allies, should be investigated, and if merited, punished for their crimes. What advice would you give Biden on that question?

If Joe Biden wants to pardon Trump, he can pardon Trump. The only discretion the president has is a pardon. Otherwise, the Justice Department should prosecute anyone who committed a crime. I don’t care if it’s Donald Trump or if it’s the guy next door. We’re all equal. The mandate for the attorney general is that we prosecute anyone who committed crimes.

I think if there are accusations made against high-ranking people in the Trump administration, or high-ranking people in the Biden administration, or any members of the president’s family, have an independent counsel investigate it and make the professional decision with professional prosecutors. It should never be a political decision as to whether someone gets prosecuted or not.

Trump and his administration are actively trying to sabotage Biden’s presidency by putting key Trump agents in positions at the highest levels throughout the United States government. What can be done by Biden to remove them?

Many of these people are presidential appointees. Biden can remove an awful lot of people. Trump and his people are trying various games by putting people into career slots. It is called “burrowing,” where you take a political appointee and stick them into career slots. It is hard to get rid of them.

Why are the Republican attorneys general, members of Congress and others going along with Trump’s coup attempt? Especially since it appears doomed to fail in the short term.

It is money. Trump has raised a lot of money for them. It is all about ideology and appealing to the right wing and getting airtime on right-wing talk radio. They are going along to not be targeted by other right-wingers. Now Republicans will do one of two things. They’ll lay low and try to have nothing to do with it — those are the smart ones. There are other Republicans, such as Ted Cruz, who will play along and go for the ride. Cruz is trying to get Trump’s supporters to love him so he can be the leading candidate in 2024.

Should the attorneys general who tried to overturn the election be disbarred?

They may want to run for Senate. Texas Attorney General [Ken] Paxton, he probably wants to run for senator. State attorneys general always have political ambitions. It’s a steppingstone to the next and more powerful job. These attorneys general want attention. They know that they are not going to be disbarred. They probably should be, but the Texas bar is not going to disbar Paxton.

How do you think this coup attempt, and Trump’s authoritarian behavior more generally, has impacted the United States?

It is polarizing our country. We have got much work to do to bring the United States back together. I trust Joe Biden is going to be able to do that. I’m a political independent: Biden was never my favorite candidate in the primaries, but he is a good guy. We as Americans need to realize that we have so much more to benefit from being together in this country. We may disagree on some things, but our political system has worked for over 200 years.

Yes, we had the Civil War. Yes, we have been through great challenges. But we do have a system that works. I was never a big fan of Ronald Reagan, I was a moderate Republican. But the one thing I liked about Reagan was his optimism and how much he believed in America. Reagan never had the cynicism that underlies Trumpism with this idea of the “deep state” and that somehow “the establishment” is evil. With Trumpism, I see too many similarities with the fascist movements in Europe in the 1930s.