Senate Republicans Blocked Coup Investigations. Here’s Why That Matters and What Happens Next.
Matthew R. Bishop — May 28th, 2021
What Happened in January and May, 2021?
On May 28th, 2021, Senate Republicans used a procedure known as the filibuster to block an investigation into the causes, actors and events surrounding the terrorist attacks against the United States which occurred in Washington, D.C. on January 5th and 6th, 2021. This is a dereliction of duty and an act of felony sedition against the United States.
It is worth briefly revisiting the events of this 36-hour period in January, 2021 to understand why Republicans risked betraying their oaths and committing a crime to block this investigation just a few months later.
The evidence suggests broad high-level complicity among Senate Republicans, House Republicans, senior officials in the Pentagon, DoD and US Armed Forces, and former President Donald Trump himself to carry out a coup to overthrow the established government of the United States and to install Donald Trump as an unelected dictator by force.
Republican Senators themselves aided and abetted terrorists in a direct attack against the United States Congress which occurred on January 5th and 6th, 2021. This is why these same Senate Republicans blocked an investigation into the coup on May 28th, 2021.
The basic facts of these events strongly suggest high-level Republican involvement in the attempt to overthrow the United States government by force and to install an unelected authoritarian regime to replace it.
Against a well-known and widely publicized threat, which the whole world seemed to be aware of months in advance, and on a specific date set years in advance, at a precise location also known ahead of time, the United States government failed to deploy even the most basic security teams for its own survival and self-preservation. On January 5th-6th, 2021, the United States of America proved either incapable of or unwilling to defend itself against a direct terrorist attack. Evidence points towards the latter, and not the former.
Following this failure of world-historical proportions, the United States then continued refusing to defend itself for several hours while its own Congress remained under live terrorist attack at the US Capitol itself.
US Marines could have been ordered to defend the US Capitol at any time, and are capable of arriving at the US Capitol in under thirty minutes. They did not.
These successive security failures were intentional, deliberate, and pre-meditated. They occurred as one of several components necessary for a successful pro-Trump autocoup and the far-right fascist takeover of our republic.
This plan involved the execution and assassination of specific members of the United States Congress, including individuals in the Senate, the House, and even the White House. With a noose erected outside of the US Capitol and as rampaging terrorists shouted through the halls of Congress for the execution of leading political figures, Republican Representatives live-tweeted the specific locations of their rival politicians — not coincidentally, the same politicians whose assassinations the mob was calling for by name.
The intent of this coup was to overturn the results of the 2020 US Presidential elections and to keep Donald Trump in power as the executive head-of-state in a post-republic America. The coup conspirators — including senior Trump officials and Republicans in Congress — were willing to risk any price to accomplish their goal, including the risk of civil war.
The Pentagon and the Department of Defense were complicit in this attempted coup to overthrow the established and recognized government of the United States. That is why America’s most valuable civilian target — Congress itself — was left totally undefended, to fight and die on their own without any US military support. National Guard units were specifically prohibited from defending the US Capitol during the attack itself.
It is worth reminding readers that the United States Congress was left totally undefended by any US military forces throughout the entire coup attempt, hour after hour, despite more than a dozen requests for security, against an identified and well-publicized threat, on a specific date, at a specific location, all of which was widely known more than half a year in advance not only to the US intelligence community but also to the American public themselves.
That an attack would take place on this date and against this target was considered common knowledge for all who follow US politics, even among non-American international observers. That US security assets consistently refused to defend or respond both before and during that attack confirms all evidence of high-level military complicity.
That the President of the United States not only failed to intervene, but himself incited a mob to commit a direct terrorist attack against US civilian targets, renders that President a traitor, a conspiracist, a seditionist, and a terrorist. Any government capable of its own self-preservation would have immediately arrested such an individual, and today that individual would be locked inside a maximum-security federal prison. The date for his trial for his crimes against the nation would have already been set.
His allies, colleagues and accomplices would be under federal investigation. If those investigations found them to have taken any meaningful part in this coup, they would face similarly punishing criminal sentences.
That the United States of America has broadly failed to take even these most basic and necessary actions in response to these events suggests the nation’s complete inability to defend itself from existential security threats, and foreshadows the imminent collapse of the nation itself.
A nation which cannot provide for its own physical security or defend itself against clear and present dangers is a nation which has already effectively ceased to exist. It is a power vacuum waiting to be filled, and power-hungry authoritarians are already fighting as they line up to fill it. Only the illusion of such a nation still remains.
What Does This Mean and What Happens Next?
Senate Republicans have affirmed their support for a fascist insurgency opposed to the freely elected government of the United States. In doing so, they have chosen to sustain that insurgency, probably with the intention of weaponizing it at a future point in time to mount another coup attempt — a second attempt, that is, to overthrow the United States government and to install an unelected leader of their own choice by force.
One party, now openly fascist, has blocked any investigations into the events surrounding the deadly autocoup of January 6th. In doing so, they have declared their support for the terrorists who invaded and sacked the US Capitol itself, and who sought the execution of their very own colleagues inside the halls of Congress.
This party in its entirety presents an ongoing and imminent threat to the survival of the United States of America.
The fascist party wields such disproportionate power that it has evaded all accountability. If this evasion continues, this party will eventually succeed in its full takeover of the US government, whether elected or not — and likely not. There is no question of if. The only question is when.
They do not need to win any future elections to attempt another coup. They will be more likely to succeed the second time around.
Democrats, hampered by obstructionists like Joe Manchin and struggling against severely misrepresentative institutions like the Senate and Electoral College which have been deliberately designed to silence and minimize their power, have little effective means of fighting back. Unable to abolish the filibuster and pass the most vital reforms to keep the country alive in the short-term, they have nowhere near the power necessary to take on larger pro-democracy reforms like abolishing the Senate, abolishing the Electoral College, overturning Citizens United, ending gerrymandering, and extending US statehood to disenfranchised Americans living in D.C., Puerto Rico, and other US Territories. These measures would effectively negate the possibility of a fascist takeover in the United States.
Unfortunately, none of these victories are likely to occur. It is more likely that Democrats will fail to pass any meaningful reform. Democrats will then wither into meaningless obscurity as fascists, emboldened by the perceived weakness of their perceived enemies, scale up their attacks against the United States until the government collapses and their takeover is complete.
The republic will end and the next phase of American history, the post-republic, will begin. The date of this transition will have simply been moved back — it may be in 2025, for instance, instead of 2021. But without full criminal accountability and the criminal prosecution of former Presidents and current members of Congress, this transition will occur, regardless of whether or not the fascist party is elected, and it is likely to occur much sooner rather than later.
This new era will be defined by unelected authoritarian governments and a realignment of America on the international stage towards Axis/authoritarian-type powers and away from former allies in Europe. As these changes occur and as the fascist party cements its own domestic rule over the country, the probability of civil war in the United States will increase.
Violence against and persecution of journalists, academics, dissidents, and think tanks will escalate. These are always the first groups targeted by emerging authoritarian regimes.
It is worth noting that these trends have already begun, and that the United States has already recorded an alarming spike in violence against journalists and reporters during the Trump era. For the first time in its history, the United States dropped severely in global Freedom House ratings during 2016–2020. The trends themselves have already begun. What happens next is that, as fascists return to power, those trends will begin to accelerate at a faster pace over time.
Journalists, academics, dissidents, educators, civil society leaders, and other key figures should be prepared to flee the country on short or no notice, and should expect the need to do so suddenly in the years ahead. Do not wait until your travel is blocked or your arrest warrant is signed. Leave while you are still free. In Hong Kong, for example, pro-democracy politicians and writers only had a few hours to flee immediately after sweeping national security laws were passed and went into effect. Do not wait for this kind of legislation — by the time it passes, it is too late. Leave before these laws go into effect. Depending on how these next elections turn out, you should be prepared to do so as soon as early as 2023.
There remains a smaller possibility for Democrats to retain the reins of government through 2022 and 2024, abolish the Senate filibuster, and then pass the needed reforms to at least secure the survival of the American republic in the immediate short-term, namely the For the People Act, the most important proposed legislation currently being discussed and the only standard legislation which could theoretically prevent the above crisis from occurring. Looking at the historical distribution of power between both parties, this is unlikely to occur at all unless it happens right now, in the year 2021.
Matthew R. Bishop is an author and journalist specializing in U.S. crisis response and the identification and prevention of early-stage armed conflict.