The Left’s Plan for Election Violence

With Donald Trump out of the hospital, the presidential race takes a final turn into the home stretch. Judicial Watch has been highlighting one largely overlooked aspect of the race: the Left’s plan to violently challenge election results. The plan was detailed in a document from a magically appearing new group, the Transition Integrity Project. They released an ostensibly bi-partisan report, “Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election.”

I wrote about the TIP report in August. In September, our investigative team followed up with a detailed deep dive, “The Militant Left’s Plan to Disrupt the 2020 Presidential Election.” It is disturbing reading.

The main takeaway from the Judicial Watch special report? This is not simply the thinking of a group of nutty left-wing academics and activists, but a document straight from the center of the Democratic Party.

The figure at the heart of the Transition Integrity Project is John Podesta, the senior strategist for the Democratic Party. Podesta was a top aide to presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, founder of the influential liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress, and chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. For the electoral “war games” mapped out in the TIP report, Podesta played Joe Biden.

TIP “is a collection of professional Democratic operatives and Republican ‘Never Trumpers,’” the Judicial Watch report notes. “Organizers and leaders include Georgetown law professor Rosa Brooks, Nils Gilman of the ‘independent’ Berggruen Institute in California,” and Podesta. Anti-Trump Republicans in the group include Michael Steele, David Frum, and Bill Kristol.

Judicial Watch’s disturbing conclusion? The publication of the TIP report “is an information warfare strategy employed for revolutionary political purposes.” It’s a sophisticated action plan that includes cultivating an anti-Trump electoral consensus in the media; planning for “a street fight, not a legal battle;” leveling a vast array of criminal accusations against the president and his team; co-opting an already sympathetic federal bureaucracy into the anti-Trump effort; and pressuring the military, law enforcement, and state-level civil servants.

The TIP call to violence is subtle at times but the smell of gunpowder is unmistakable. The Judicial Watch report cites numerous outrageous scenarios advanced by TIP: the president will commit elections crimes; he will rob the federal till; encourage chaos and violence; use the military to advance his electoral aims; initiate a crisis for his own benefit; refuse to leave the White House. Trump is “ruthless,” but Biden is “constrained.”

The media is already getting the message. To halt Trump corruption, one New York Times columnist wrote, people “may have to put their bodies on the line in a way that few living Americans have experienced.”

Read the full Judicial Watch special report here.

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Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. Follow him on Twitter @micah_morrison. Tips: mmorrison@judicialwatch.org

Investigative Bulletin is published by Judicial Watch. Reprints and media inquiries: jfarrell@judicialwatch.org