By Williams Kovacs
Last year, I speculated that the actions of the Democrats’ January 6th committee hearings (the “Monkey Trial”), the alleged Russian disinformation campaign against President Trump by the FBI and CIA, years of refusal by the DOJ and FBI to provide Congress with specifically demanded information on Biden’s money laundering activities and the Biden administration’s manipulation of Big Tech to shut down the truth in America, were setting in motion a coordinated plan to “Get Trump.” The groups involved in these actions are collectively termed “The Syndicate.” The Syndicate labels former President Trump an “insurrectionist” to block him from regaining the presidency.
Later members to join The Syndicate include prosecutors in DC, Florida, New York, and Georgia who indicted the former president in the middle of the presidential election season. They seek jail, fines, and the destruction of Trump and his businesses. Now, the prosecutors seek immediate trials based on the urgency of the situation, which is the need to put the former president in jail before the November election. This type of abuse of power should be terrifying to Americans.
More recently, several events pushed speculation of a coup into an evidence-based theory of a coup d’état. Colorado and Maine joined The Syndicate by removing the former president from their state presidential ballots. Eleven more states have cases pending to remove Trump from their ballots. The justification for this blitzkrieg of lawsuits is “apparently” a “law review” that asserts Section 3 of the 14th Amendment (“Section 3”), a Civil War Amendment, forbids President Trump from ever again holding office since he somehow participated in an undefined, not judicially established, insurrection.
The second event involves the Georgia and New York prosecutors spending hours at the White House on litigation strategy and the Georgia prosecutors getting legal counseling from the Monkey Trial Committee. These meetings are the essence of coordination.
The third act to carry out The Syndicate’s coup is when the Democrat House of Representatives’ January 6th Committee destroyed documents days before having to turn them over to the new Republican majority. First, the Democrats refused to archive many of the materials with the Clerk of the House. They then failed to turn over more than a terabyte of data (the equivalent of 250,000 documents) to the Republicans. More troubling, when the Democrats were caught in their obstruction of justice, they admitted many of the records were destroyed. The new Republican committee hired a forensic expert who was able to retrieve the data. When retrieved, the data could not be opened without the passwords. The Democrats refused to give the Republicans the passwords.
Since Sinclair Lewis wrote “It Can’t Happen Here” in 1935, many authors have raised the question: Is Democracy so fragile that the U.S. could become a dystopian nation? So far, the writers have been wrong. They have been right; however, Democracy is fragile. Unfortunately, Democracy may be so fragile the U.S. may be in the process of becoming the dystopian place writers fictionalize.
But for the political advantage to the Democrats, the events of January 6th would have been defined as a riot, “a violent disturbance of the peace by a group of people.” Unfortunately, The Syndicate, by deeming Trump’s action an insurrection, positions them to eliminate Trump and take control of the government. As part of its fantastic narrative, the federal government, which has a $944 billion annual military machine and describes its military as a fearsome and gargantuan beast, claims it was in existential fear of destruction by “several rioters having firearms and dozens more wielded knives, bats and other real makeshift weapons.” The Syndicate’s reaction to the January 6th riot is best characterized by the hilarious movie “The Mouse that Roared.”
The January 6th crowd so “paralyzed” the then Speaker of the House, the D.C. mayor, and the Capitol Police that they could not respond to President Trump’s offer to send in the National Guard. These political elites seemed confident the FBI infiltrators planted in the crowd to incite legal demonstrators to break the law would prove the truth of their insurrection narrative. Two thousand demonstrators entered the Capitol, and 1100 were arrested. A nationwide manhunt continues for many others. Many were sent to D.C. Gitmo without the right to counsel or a speedy trial. The DOJ/FBI’s dragnet is its largest in U.S. history, even larger than the search for the 9/11 terrorists.
If January 6th turns out to be a riot and not an insurrection, the systematic actions by The Syndicate would be what academics define as a self-coup d’état. It is a coup in which the nation’s power structure comes to power legally but seeks to stay in power through illegal means. Did The Syndicate label January 6th an insurrection as an excuse to prosecute Trump supporters and organize the entire political machinery of the nation to “Get Trump” and remain in power?
By using the 14th Amendment, they took action to complete the coup. The relevant parts of the 14th Amendment read:
Section 3. No person shall…hold any office…under the United States or any state, who having previously taken an oath…as an officer of the United States…to support the Constitution… [if such person] engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
The proponents for disqualifying Trump under Section 3 claim:
• Section 3 is not limited to the Civil War.
• It operates independently of criminal proceedings or an impeachment.
• It is self-executing by any state election official.
• It is an immediate disqualification from office.
• “…public officials don’t need special permission from lawmakers to disqualify Trump from the ballot: if they believe their argument valid, they can disqualify potential candidates on their own” and any ballot within their jurisdiction.
• Finally, “[T]he election officials are legally required to do so.”
Further, they argue to the extent Section 3 conflicts with prior constitutional protections, it repeals, supersedes, or satisfies them, including the constitutional protections against ex post facto laws and Trump’s Due Process and free speech rights. The authors believe eliminating all these constitutional rights can be implemented without involving Congress, the states, the process for amending the Constitution, or the need for judicial determinations of fact and law. The authors pronounce election officials are empowered to disqualify Trump. According to the National Council of State Legislators, there are more than 10,000 election administration jurisdictions in the U.S. There are likely thousands of election officials. Can each disqualify President Trump because they believe he is an insurrectionist?
The flaws in the proponents’ arguments are so vast as to establish bad faith. First, the proponents of “Get Trump” ignore section 5 altogether, i.e., that Congress has the power to enforce section 3 by legislation, and it has not. Moreover, the term “insurrection” is not defined in the 14th Amendment or anywhere in our Constitution or laws; as such, the 14th Amendment cannot be applied since it would be unconstitutionally vague and a denial of due process. The two federal cases addressing Section 3 rejected its use to disqualify government officials from holding office. In In re Griffin (1869), Justice Chase rejected the application of Section 3 as it would cause legal chaos. Most importantly, the application of Section 3, as claimed, denies defendants due process and several other constitutional guarantees. In U.S. v. Powell (1871), the court ruled there must be findings of fact before rendering any decision.
The foundation of a self- coup d’état theory rests on a set of actions to deny the American people the right to vote for the candidate of their choice:

1. Before Trump became president, there were systematic actions by The Syndicate to circulate false information to make the public believe the Russians compromised him.
2. The lies about Trump led to two impeachments in the House. While the Senate acquitted Trump, the actions of The Syndicate had the intended negative impact on the Trump presidency.
3. As far back as 2019, The Syndicate protected Biden by denying the evidence that Hunter’s “Laptop from Hell” was real. They also hid that there were 5400 Biden emails in which Joe Biden used the pseudonyms “Robert L. Peters” and “JRB Ware” to conceal the Biden money laundering activities with Ukraine, Russia, and Romania.
4. The Syndicate, in violation of federal law, tipped off Hunter Biden that his storage units were to be raided, thereby allowing Hunter to remove all incriminating evidence.
5. The circulation of false information about Trump by The Syndicate continued while he was in office, as evidenced by the Durham and Horowitz Reports.
6. As to the January 6th riots, The Syndicate still refuses to release the information requested by the Republicans in Congress.
7. The Monkey Trial committee formed by the House Democrats prohibited Republicans from naming their members to the Committee, thereby preventing the cross-examination of witnesses and a fair hearing on the day’s events.
8. After President Trump left office, The Syndicate waited until the 2024 primary election season started to indict him in four separate jurisdictions. The Syndicate, using public resources, is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to prevent Trump from winning the presidency. There is no record of such a massive use of public resources to prosecute one political opponent. Even the international Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals focused the government’s prosecution in one court.
9. All the prosecution trials are scheduled during campaign season to ensure Trump cannot campaign against Biden. The Syndicate appears to be interfering with the 2024 election under the pretense of saving the Constitution by disqualifying Trump from the presidential ballots in states controlled by Democrats.
10. The Syndicate seeks to disqualify Trump from holding office by advocating that any judge or election official in any state can disqualify the former president from office.
11. The meetings between the prosecutors, the White House, and the January 6th committee reveal the Syndicate’s coordination. Moreover, the Democrat-controlled committee destroyed a terabyte of evidence, likely evidence that exonerates the January 6th defendants and former president Trump.
12. Finally, the DOJ and FBI refuse to provide Congress with the information requested to establish a continuing coverup by the federal government.
    One hundred thirty-six federal emergency laws in the U.S. grant the Executive the power to be a dictator at the time of his choosing. These emergency powers were used during COVID. These emergency laws can be used again for countless purposes. Since Americans can vote for Congress every two years, they would be fools to believe a coup d’état can’t happen here. It may be happening and should be remembered on November 5, 2024.William L. Kovacs has served as senior vice president for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, chief counsel to a congressional committee, and a partner in law D.C. law firms. His book Reform the Kakistocracy received the 2021 Independent Press Award for Political/Social Change. He can be contacted at wlk@ReformTheKakistocracy.com