Patrick Byrne: How Trump Lost the White House: Agitation & Chaos. The seventh excerpt from Patrick Byrne’s fascinating account of what was happening on the inside of the effort to appeal the 2020 election. Earlier excerpts here, here, here, here, here, and here. Next post here.
There are two ways to look at what happened on that fateful afternoon at the Capitol. I think they are both true, though which is more true is, at the moment, anyone’s guess.
The Party Line Explanation is this: splinter elements (200-400 people) of the millions of protesters decided to storm the Capitol and ransack it. Given that this Party Line explanation has been repeated ad nauseum by a supine and obedient press, and is currently the object of an impeachment of a man who is no longer an officeholder (go figure), I will not spend time developing this interpretation. But I do not mean to discount it, either.
The Alternative Explanation is more subtle, and runs along the lines of my story about Moldova [see here]… This explanation holds that the events were engineered as part of a psyop to discredit those skeptical of the election result, and to justify a police-state-style crackdown by the Goon-Left on the rest of America.
What evidence is there to support this Alternative Explanation, that the ransacking of the Capitol was deliberately invited by those who would make hay from it politically? Let us review the evidence:
On January 12, an article from the Independent Sentinel …, appeared describing a Washington Post article from the previous day.
The Washington Post reported late Sunday night that the outgoing Capitol Police Chief, Steve Sund, believes his efforts to secure the premises were undermined by a lack of concern from House and Senate security officials who answer directly to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate leader Mitch McConnell.
Then quoting from the WaPo:
Two days before Congress was set to formalize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund was growing increasingly worried about the size of the pro-Trump crowds expected to stream into Washington in protest.
To be on the safe side, Sund asked House and Senate security officials for permission to request that the D.C. National Guard be placed on standby in case he needed quick backup.
But, Sund said Sunday, they turned him down…
It was the first of six times Sund’s request for help was rejected or delayed, he said. Two days later on Wednesday afternoon, his forces already in the midst of crisis, Sund said he pleaded for help five more times as a scene far more dire than he had ever imagined unfolded on the historic Capitol grounds.
Besides the higher-ups preventing the police protecting the Capitol to increase their presence when asked, is there other evidence that suggests the occupation of the Capitol was to some degree invited?
In this clip (“Capitol Police Allow Protesters to Reach the Capitol”) police can, in fact, be seen inviting protesters past the barricades:
Then police stand aside and let the Capitol be assaulted (while patriotic bystanders ask them to stop it):
Here are patriots catching on to what is going on and trying to stop the Antifa/BLM agitators themselves:
Here one can clearly see someone inside the Capitol handing weapons to those outside the Capitol so they will be able to break their way in:
Then in this clip (“Capitol police open doors for the protestors. They stand aside and invite them inside”) police do… exactly what the title claims:
And this one (“Police open the doors of the capital and invite everyone in”):
… Here is a policeman being “overwhelmed” with invaders. Does anything look staged about this?
And here is the famous Q Shaman with eight photojournalists. Anything here looked staged?
… If one looks carefully in that crowd of protesters in the hallway when the female was shot, one spots this individual:
His name is John Sullivan, and he is a Utah-based Antifa/BLM activist (“Utah Man with a History of Organizing Violent Antifa, BLM Protests, Was Inside the Capitol”). He was arrested for his actions in the Capitol that day, then released without charges once his Lefty political preferences were discovered.
Does that seem odd? Not anymore. …
So was the storming of the Capitol a disgrace? Yes. Was it also engineered and/or to some degree staged?
Put me down as, “Undecided”. lol
Too late, Rudy:
On the evening of January 7 I got a phone call at 10:30 PM, telling me that Mayor Giuliani was requesting my presence at his hotel. The intermediary said, “We are just about ready to hang up our gloves on this, but we want to talk to you about your ideas.” I put my shoes on and walked over to Rudy’s hotel. When I got there, I found 8 people waiting in a suite. Rudy was there, along with the Commish, Mediocrity, a smart lawyer, and a handful of others. I sat down before Rudy and they repeated the request: they were ready to stop, but wanted to see if I had any ideas.
As I started to answer Rudy began checking his phones again, literally fumbling with two or three of them again, reading his texts, etc. For the first time I did what I should have done two months earlier: I simply stopped talking. He said, “No no, go ahead.” I stayed silent and just stared at him. He said, “I can’t turn these off, I might get a call from the President.”
“Then give them to” Mediocrity, I said, indicating the person to his left, and surprising myself at my rudeness. Then to Mediocrity: “Keep an eye on them and let Mayor Giuliani know if the President calls.”
Rudy put the phones down and slid them to Mediocrity. Just as I began again to speak, Mediocrity turned and began having a side conversation with someone in the next seat, and again I folded my hands, stared at Mediocrity, and kept my mouth shut. I had reached the point where I was preparing to say, “Who do you assholes think you are? You call me at 10:30 PM, tell me to come to your hotel to share my thoughts, then don’t even have the courtesy to pay attention?” But as I opened my mouth, Mediocrity cut off the side conversation and faced me quietly. Everyone else in the room went quiet as well, and looked at me.
In two months of dealing with that group, it was the first moment that they conducted themselves in a manner that normal business people (or even, “normal adults”) would conduct themselves. I realized that for the first time I had Rudy’s full attention, and not only that, I could see that it was the first time I had been with him when he was the Rudy Giuliani I remember from 30 years ago, prepared to take on the Mob, in command, focused. The silence stretched on as I thought, then said:
“These machines were sold to the public with a promise: as a fail-safe there would always be a paper ballots to use as a backup. If there was ever a time, now is the time. The FBI and CISA have both opined that our election came under foreign attack. We provided evidence of that as well. President Trump should find that there has been foreign interference, and on that basis send a federal force of US Marshalls, or National Guard, or DHS, or FBI, to examine paper ballots in the problematic six counties, and count them on livestream TV. If there are no gross irregularities, he should concede. But if he finds discrepancies of hundreds of thousands of ballots, as we think he may, he then has choices. He can recount the six states, or order the federal force to rerun the election in those 6 states. He might even still have it all done by January 20.”
There was silence. After a few seconds the Commish stirred to speak. I turned to face him as he slid his hand away from his mouth, and stroked his chin. He nodded slowly, and grunted, “Yeah. Makes sense.” Mediocrity lit up, and the new lawyer on the scene, on my left, spoke up and began exploring the advantages of it aloud. Rudy chimed in, and within minutes they had it all worked out: it was narrow so it was not too objectionable, it generated an answer, and depending upon the outcome, it gave a route to Trump. I stayed another 30 minutes as they bounced the idea around with a spark of excitement growing. Finally they said they would be working on details and maybe even calling the President, and I took that as my cue to leave. I said goodbye to them, and put my coat on.
As I turned to leave the Mayor came and shook my hand. Then he tapped my chest with his finger and said quietly, regretfully: “If only we had another month.”
Truly. I had watched two months slide by Mayor Giuliani and his team displaying no organization or progress. Watching them trying to get anything done was like watching half-a-dozen monkeys trying to fuck a football. But now I was hearing, “If only we had another month.” They could have had another decade and it would not have made a difference. They were the wrong people. Rudy, because he should likely no longer be handling complex litigation, he certainly should not be handling complex litigation regarding cyber, and because he’d rather spend his days drinking whiskey and doing podcasts. A former government employee who was so Mediocre we all came to suspect may have been sent as an agent of disruption, and others with their focus on a pot of cash that (at last report) was $300 million and growing. …
Too late, Donald:
On January 20, on the day that Biden was sworn in as President, I got two phone calls from two different Trump White House staffers. They wanted to tell me a story before they left the White House for the last time. The story they told me overlapped and precisely matched in all details. I will relate it here.
On January 18, some loyal staffers had been visiting with Trump in his office for what was supposed to be a 10 minute goodbye. But the discussion had turned to the election, and before long Trump was rehashing the decisions he had made, wondering where he had made mistakes. The subject turned to Sidney, Mike, and me, and the plan we had brought the White House. Trump walked through it with these staffers for 20 minutes, I was told, before it clicked for him.
“That’s it?” He asked angrily. “That’s all Byrne wanted to do? Count paper ballots in six counties?”
Trump excitedly explored the idea, saw how simple it would be, and even brought up the possibility that it might not be too late, with his last 48 hours in office, to cause it to happen. The meeting dragged on well over an hour, the two sources told me, and they left with Trump fired up about the idea, with instructions given to them that they should figure out that afternoon a way that it could be executed in the last two days he had as President.
But an hour later their office got a phone call: the President had had further consultations with senior staff, had been dissuaded, and the younger staffers were instructed to drop the idea.
Trump had been misinformed by his lawyers.
