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14 July 22
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In the tradition of the Clintonometer, the Trump Apocalypse Watch, and the Impeach-O-Meter, the Is It a Crime-O-Meter is a wildly subjective and speculative estimate of whether the Jan. 6 select committee’s work will convince enough individuals of relevance (prosecutors, juries, voters) that Donald Trump committed insurrection-related crimes that he will be, in some fashion, held accountable for them.
“I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump,” the president said, naming groups who shared in common a predilection for being armed. “I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough—until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”
As I wrote at the time, implicit in those comments was the notion that if those armed supporters should ever feel his presidency was threatened, they would come to his rescue and bring their weapons. Trump famously nodded again to this sentiment during his lone televised debate with Joe Biden when he told the Proud Boys to “stand by” should he face defeat in the election.
Donald Trump did face defeat in the election—and the Proud Boys were central to the mob attack unleashed on the Capitol on Jan. 6.
That Trump knew his supporters would defend him with violence if necessary—as they did on Jan. 6—has been a running theme of the Jan. 6 committee’s summer hearings. Last month, Cassidy Hutchinson testified that she heard Trump demand that his armed supporters be let into the rally at the ellipse because “they’re not here to hurt me.” On Tuesday, the committee pressed this case that Trump knew—or certainly should have known—what his supporters might be capable of on Jan. 6. The committee is laying out the case that the violence unleashed on the Capitol that day was always part of the plan.
The biggest revelations of the day surrounded details of an “unhinged” Oval Office meeting between Trump, Gen. Michael Flynn, lawyer Sidney Powell, and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick M. Byrne, in which Trump may or may not have appointed Powell special counsel and reportedly considered a pitch for declaring martial law. My colleague Ben Mathis-Lilley wrote about Powell’s testimony—she described what was obviously a slightly unprecedented meeting incredibly casually as she coolly polished off a Diet Dr. Pepper in between answers.
But the outlandish theatrics of Trumpworld aside, what’s more interesting to today’s crime-o-meter is what came after that meeting: Lots of evidence that the risk of bloodshed was obvious at that point to seemingly everyone in a position of power in Washington D.C. Immediately following that reportedly alcohol-fueled midnight meeting, close to 2 a.m. on Dec. 19, Trump tweeted his now infamous call for supporters to come to the Capitol on Jan. 6 for a protest that “will be wild.”
The committee then laid out how a Voltron of violent right-wing radicals almost immediately came together, first with testimony from an anonymous former Twitter employee who was tasked with tracking it all. The Twitter employee noted that the call and response of Trump was quickly met:
It felt as if a mob was being organized and they were gathering together their weaponry and their logic and their reasoning behind why they were prepared to fight prior to Dec. 19. … Very clear that individuals were ready willing and able to take up arms. After this Tweet on Dec. 19, again it became clear not only were these individuals ready and willing, but the leader of their cause was asking them to join him.
The former Twitter employee also said he had seen a similar spike in dangerous responses on the platform after Trump’s 2020 debate call for the Proud Boys to “stand by.”
Also following Trump’s tweet, a Jan. 6 rally organizer immediately launched a web site with the url wildprotest.com. Many of President Trump’s other supporters online responded in other ways—some calling for mass executions and for protesters to bring “body armor, knuckles, shields, bats, pepper spray,” all of which were eventually brought to the Capitol and used against police that day.
Donell Harvin, chief of homeland security and intelligence for D.C., testified that disparate groups immediately came together to create a single deadly force descending on D.C.
“We got derogatory information from [open source intelligence] suggesting that some very, very violent individuals were organizing to come to D.C. But not only were they organizing to come to D.C.—these non-aligned groups were aligning,” Harvin said. “When you have armed militia collaborating with white supremacy groups collaborating with conspiracy theory groups online all towards a common goal, you start seeing what we call in terrorism a blended ideology and that’s a very, very bad sign.”
Indeed, central to these efforts were people like Ali Alexander and Alex Jones, whose rhetoric regularly became violent, on top of the militia groups of the Oathkeepers and Proud Boys that started organizing right away and whose leaders have since been charged with seditious conspiracy for their role in the Capitol invasion. So troubled by the presence of these sorts of elements was former Trump spokesperson and Jan. 6 rally organizer, Katrina Pierson, that she attempted to warn White House chief of staff Mark Meadows via text about how bad she expected things to get. On Jan. 2, she requested a call with Meadows, saying that with regards to the Jan. 6 planning: “Things have gotten crazy and I desperately need some direction. Please.” During the following call, she outlined her concerns to Meadows that Jones and Alexander were involved with a previous invasion of a state capitol in Georgia. This was the same day that Hutchinson testified that Meadows warned her that things might get “real, real bad on Jan. 6.”
It was also around this time that rally organizers were texting each other about secret plans for Trump to instruct rallygoers to march to the Capitol after his speech. The committee unveiled an undated draft Trump tweet in which he was set to let his supporters know that there would be a “March to the Capitol after” the ellipse rally. The tweet was never sent, but leaders of the rally were clearly given advance notice of the instruction, with the committee producing multiple text and email exchanges from different rallygoers describing how the president was going to instruct them to “unexpectedly” march to the Capitol. Notably, Trump also called and spoke with advisor Steve Bannon—who is about to go on trial for contempt of Congress following his refusal to cooperate with the committee—on the morning of Jan. 5, right before Bannon went on the air to tell his podcast listeners that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow.” Bannon continued: “it’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen, it’s going to be quite extraordinarily different, and all I can say is strap in.” Oh, and also, on the eve of Jan. 6, Trump-supporting Rep. Debbie Lesko was recorded requesting a “safety plan for members” of Congress, because she knew “Trump supporters” were “going to go nuts” in the likely event that Congress did not “overturn the election.”
In sum: More than a year before Jan. 6 happened, Trump warned America that he could summon a mob of armed “tough people” at will to “go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.” Then, in the midst of the 2020 campaign, he told a specific group of tough guys to “stand by” should he lose the election. Then, after all of his legal challenges collapsed and his White House counsel shut down the proposals of a bunch of loons that would involve Powell becoming special counsel and potentially martial law, Trump immediately called on those supporters to come to Washington for a “wild” protest. Then, militia groups that were body guards for two of Trump’s top former advisors—Michael Flynn and Roger Stone—began organizing for a descent on D.C. as internet chatter exploded with the potential for violence. At the same time, nearly everybody in Washington D.C. was fearful, or perhaps, expectant that this violence would erupt. Oh, and Trump was secretly planning at the time to send his supporters to the Capitol, and when they got to his rally, he wanted as many of them who were armed in attendance as possible because he knew he would not be the target of their violence.
I don’t know, seems pretty crime-y to me! The Diet Dr. Pepper can is pointing directly to a meter of FULL CRIME.
President Biden is on a Middle East trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia. (photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times)
With the war in Ukraine sending energy prices higher and China cementing more alliances in the Middle East, Mr. Biden is traveling thousands of miles to attempt to repair a relationship that has reached a nadir in its 80-year history — arguably even worse than after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Mr. Biden sought to justify his visit to Saudi Arabia this week in a Washington Post opinion essay, saying his aim was to “reorient,” not “rupture,” relations. Yet no justification for his visit to the kingdom this week can erase the truth: It is a defeat for Mr. Biden and a personal and political triumph for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or M.B.S., as he is popularly known. But it does not have to be a defeat for the U.S.-Saudi relationship.
A change in Mr. Biden’s attitude toward Prince Mohammed will undoubtedly generate some good will with the Saudi leadership. The question is: What will Mr. Biden choose to make of this renewed opportunity to reset the relationship?
The United States needs Saudi Arabia: The kingdom remains the oil market’s major swing producer and is the main buyer of U.S. arms globally. By virtue of geopolitics and economics, Saudi Arabia’s cooperation with the United States is consequential when it comes to Washington’s efforts to counter Iran, end the war in Yemen and normalize Israel’s relations with the Arab world, as well as limit Russia’s and China’s influence in the region. All of this was true before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine upended global oil markets and sent gasoline prices skyrocketing in the United States and Europe.
Mr. Biden’s posture — turning a tense relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia into a personal duel with Prince Mohammed — was always going to be short-lived, especially as world events intervened. This became evident over the past six months as the Biden administration suffered snub after snub, culminating in Prince Mohammed’s rebuffing U.S. demands to explicitly and actively side with the United States after Russia invaded Ukraine.
So the Biden administration had to come up with a solution to its Saudi problem, especially in a critical election year, as Mr. Biden’s job approval ratings have dropped and gas prices have soared.
The Biden administration has shied away from previewing desired results for this meeting. But returning home with only vague pledges on oil and Israel — and no concrete concessions from Saudi Arabia on human rights — would be a defeat not just for Mr. Biden but for the United States. Realpolitik policymakers like to wave away human rights as having any place in pragmatic policymaking, but there is an opportunity for Mr. Biden to make human rights part of a revamped strategy with Saudi Arabia that the kingdom could accept, even if not enthusiastically.
Saudi Arabia will not become a democracy soon. But the United States can still engage with the monarchy constructively to make some gains on human rights, defend against authoritarianism and promote regional integration.
The United States needs to demonstrate consistency in support of its values alongside its strategic goals. It is easy for Saudi leaders to dismiss Mr. Biden’s human rights rhetoric if the killing of the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, which the State Department said was likely caused by gunfire from Israel Defense Forces positions, generates nothing like the official outrage over the killing of Mr. Khashoggi. The absence of a smoking gun didn’t stop the United States from investigating Saudi conduct and publicly announcing its findings to demonstrate a commitment to freedom of the press. Failing to raise the issue of Ms. Abu Akleh’s death during Mr. Biden’s visit to Israel would strengthen Saudi charges that U.S. commitment to its values is entirely conditional.
The United States should push for normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia only if it can guarantee that the Saudi government won’t suppress Saudi voices opposed to normalization. And the United States must voice its support for Palestinians’ rights as much as it supports the Israelis’. If and when normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel happens, it shouldn’t be used to erase the human rights violations of both governments.
Saudi Arabia is substantially investing in the transformation of its digital infrastructure, which has become essential to the success of Vision 2030, Prince Mohammed’s plan to overhaul the economy — and his legacy. At the same time, the country has become a case study in digital authoritarianism. The government benefits from its citizens’ exceptionally high connectivity to promote disinformation and propaganda, collect data on and deploy spyware against dissidents, and hack and trace its enemies.
The United States is already blacklisting firms that provide digital repression tools to Saudi Arabia, such as the Israeli NSO Group. But it should also find ways to collaborate with Saudi Arabia on the institutional and legal frameworks that regulate the technological environment in the kingdom. For instance, the United States can capitalize on Saudi Arabia’s craving for U.S. technology by linking U.S. digital support and investments to the adoption of safeguards that protect digital human rights and privacy.
The Biden administration also needs to continue targeting Saudi enablers of authoritarian behavior through coercive diplomacy. The Khashoggi ban, a visa restriction policy instituted by the State Department in response to the murder of Mr. Khashoggi, is a good start that should continue. Individuals acting on behalf of the Saudi government who are involved in the repression of Saudi nationals at home and abroad must pay a price.
Similarly, the regulation of relevant Saudi intelligence and paramilitary training must continue. In 2019, The Washington Post revealed that the State Department had refused a proposal to train the Saudi intelligence service because of insufficient safeguards by the Saudis to prevent lawless operations against political dissidents. To go further, the United States could apply more scrutiny to training that former military and law enforcement officials offer the kingdom privately.
By making space for values in the bilateral relationship, Saudi leaders would be helping themselves. Without an improved values record, Saudi Arabia will continue to face obstacles from Congress and the U.S. government that prevent it from obtaining the technology and military systems it wants and needs.
The same goes for business. Even if Mr. Khashoggi’s killing hadn’t driven American investors away, the Saudi government isn’t reaching the foreign direct investment levels that it needs to meet Vision 2030’s objectives. Despite progress, the weakness of the rule of law and lack of participatory decision making in the kingdom require investors to think twice and have complicated existing relationships.
For the United States, Saudi business is crucial if it wants to outcompete China in the Middle East. It also gives the United States leverage in the success of Vision 2030.
None of these paths are easy to take. They require both Saudi and American leaders to plan strategically and not according to election dates and oil prices. They also require Mr. Biden to deliver a clear message: For a long time, Saudi leaders counted on U.S. values always coming second to U.S. interests. But they should also realize that having a minimum of shared values builds more consequential relationships than oil and arms.
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