The Man Who Would be Dictator Part 5: Never Forget the Italian Satellites

 Now we're talking.

No more cajoling, conning, and bullying two bit state officials. No more terrorizing common vote counters. By the middle and end of December of 2020 Donald Trump was ready to move on to none other than the United States Department of Justice and a full blown, federally sanctioned, election coup.

After all, unlike locally elected yahoos, the president could actually fire these fuckers if they didn't do what he wanted. And what he wanted was them to come up with something, anything, that would put the DOJ's official stamp on his accusations of voter fraud, or theft, or electronic chicanery. Even if no trace of evidence was found, in the documented words of Donald Trump to Assistant Acting Attorney General, Richard Donoghue, "Just say the election was corrupt, and leave the rest to me and the republicans in congress."

Both Donoghue and his boss, Acting Attorney General, Jeffrey Rosen were, let's say, not in the mood to do so.

The Big Orange Guy had another card to play though. Deep in the bowels of the DOJ dwelled a man named Jeffrey Clark who had ambitions of his own. He wanted to run the place and he was willing to do whatever it took to do so. 

Clark had already been called on the carpet after it was found he was meeting with White House staff and the president without going through the proper chain of command. He continued to do so on the sly even after being admonished. He drafted a letter to the governor of Georgia. It claimed the DOJ had found enough evidence of malfeasance during the election a special session of the Georgia legislature should be called. Their aim should be to reverse the results there. The plan was he, along with Rosen and Donoghue would all sign it. 

The contents of the letter were prima facie bullshit. Rosen and Donoghue refused to sign it. Clark called the president, then walked into Rosen's office to announce he was the new Acting Attorney General. He asked Rosen if he would stay on as his assistant. Jeff Rosen immediately called Trump's Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows and demanded a meeting with the president. After Meadows set it up Mr. Rosen began making other calls to assistant AGs all over the place.

Clark had good reason to think his skullduggery would work. By that afternoon who ever types up the White House call log was already referring to him as the Acting Attorney General. The title didn't last long.

The way the oval office gathering was described brings to mind a surreal version of the Apprentice, Trump's old TV show. Clark was there as was Rosen, Donoghue, and third in line at the DOJ, Steve Engel among others. The gist of the meeting was, why shouldn't the president fire Jeff Rosen and replace him with Jeff Clark. 

Rosen went right to the heart of the matter.. Clark wasn't qualified to head the DOJ. He had no experience in trial law and criminal investigations. He had never even been in front of a jury. On top of that if Clark was named the Acting AG every assistant AG there would quit on the spot, including Donoghue and Engel. In Engel's words, Clark would be running a graveyard.

None of that might have mattered to Donald Trump because he desperately needed that letter to go out. Engel finally carried the day when he told the president if Clark became Acting AG the big story wouldn't be about the letter, it would be that the president had to gut the entire senior staff of the DOJ to find someone to send it. The warning struck a chord. Better than anyone, Don Trump knows perception outweighs reality..

Clark was done and the letter was never sent.

However, as Mac Davis once said in a movie, "Wait, then comes the weird part." After the attempted one man mutiny failed, Rosen got a call from Meadows. He wanted the Acting Attorney General to check out a YouTube video that purportedly showed evidence of yet another conspiracy to steal the election. Rosen referred the video to Donoghue who took a look at it. 

According to the video the CIA, MI6, and other intelligence agencies worked with someone at the U.S. embassy in Rome to upload special software into Italian satellites. This software was used to change Trump votes into Biden votes in machines across the land on election night and in the days after.

Meadows told Rosen, none other than Rudy Giuliani wanted to speak with him about the plot. Mr. Meadows was told, in no uncertain terms, to go waste someone else's time. So he did. Meadows chased down the Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense, Christopher Miller, who presumably had more important things to do. To no one's surprise Miller found there was nothing to the accusations except deranged fantasies.

The findings of Chris Miller might have debunked the vote switch conspiracy, however, the next day, after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, a strange new rumor began drifting out of northeastern Oklahoma. Those Italian satellites couldn't change ballots, it said, but they did emit some sort of brain damaging Gamma waves that caused the justices to rule the way they did. There was no other explanation for their cruel and unusual behavior. 

Hey, as the QAnon people everywhere say, prove it didn't happen.

Yes, these are weird times. The question remains, how did we get here? Tragically, most of us know the answer to that, but we'd rather not admit it, at least not out loud.

sic vita est.

6-27-22