The Democrats Efforts To Overturn The 2020 Election - Stopping The Inauguration

In my last post on the topic of the Democrat's attempts to keep Trump from taking office in 2016, I focused on the various attempts to subvert the Electoral College vote, from trying to convince (or intimidate) Electors to switch votes from Trump to Clinton or even a more palatable (to the Left) RINO candidate, to challenges to the votes in Congress. The latter was more symbolic--intended to embarrass or virtue signal--because even if a challenge to the counting of the votes was successful in the Senate, it would not have made any difference. As USA Today noted at the time:

Even if a bicameral objection to Trump’s election were considered, it would have stood no chance of passing a Republican Congress. It would have only delayed the certification of his 304 electoral votes. The joint session would have been required to break to allow each chamber to debate the objection and vote on whether to count the votes in question.

Thus, the next step was to call out the protesters and rioters. 

    Although largely forgotten today, January 20, 2017--the day Trump was sworn in as president--and the following day--the date of the so-called "Women's March"--saw what Time Magazine termed "perhaps the largest protest in U.S. history." And like most protests organized by Democrats it was, in the Orwellian phrase coined by CNN, "mostly peaceful." The Washington Post's headline that days sums it up pretty well: "Inauguration protesters vandalize, set fires, try to disrupt Trump’s oath, as police arrest more than 200." (See also this NBC report and this 1/20/2017 report from CNN and a follow up CNN report from 1/21/2017). 

    The Washington Post relates:

As people poured into the city to watch Trump sworn in as the 45th president, they encountered protesters across the area throughout the day. Many of the demonstrations were nonviolent, with people holding signs that spoke to their causes and concerns. One protest even took on a carnival atmosphere, with puppets, stilt walkers and a giant inflatable elephant wearing a sign that read “racism.” But other groups tried to disrupt the day’s events by burning flags, throwing bricks and rioting en masse, leading to injuries and 217 arrests by Friday evening.

The article describes how a few protesters were able to get close to where Trump was being sworn in before being removed by police. But that didn't stop others, including Antifa:

    After the swearing in, protesters arrived at the Franklin Square area and clashed with police. The protesters were throwing rocks, bricks and chunks of concrete and taking newspaper boxes and barriers and putting them on the streets. Meanwhile police appeared to be using a flurry of flash-bang grenades and chemical spray to hold the protesters back, pushing them block-by-block west along K Street, from 12th Street toward 14th Street.

    During the afternoon clash, the protesters started a fire in the middle of the street using garbage bins and newspaper boxes, and some climbed trees and light poles. About 100 officers in riot gear, carrying shields, stood in a line blocking off K Street.

And:

    When one police SUV tried to drive through the crowd, several protesters dressed in all black tried to block it; when the SUV sped up, pushing the protesters aside, one picked up a rock, threw it, and smashed the vehicle’s rear window. At about 4:15 p.m., as the inaugural parade took place blocks away, protesters set a car on fire along K Street, sending plumes of dark smoke through downtown.

    Trump supporters and protesters clashed throughout the day at several locations, and it sometimes turned violent. Three officers were injured during an earlier protest along the K Street corridor, including an officer who was struck by an object that had been thrown, said Doug Buchanan, a spokesman for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services. A fourth officer was struck by a thrown object on K Street in the late afternoon and was taken to a hospital.

    During the morning protest, a large group of black-clad protesters — self-described as anti-capitalist and antifascist — made their way south on 13th Street near K Street, throwing newspaper boxes and garbage cans into the street and trying to set them on fire, leaving them smoldering. They also threw fireworks and broke glass at bus stops, businesses and on the windows of a limousine.

    Police cleaned up behind them as they marched, and authorities used chemical spray in an attempt to disrupt the vandalism. They ultimately herded the group away from the inauguration parade route with a large number of police vehicles and officers in riot gear, and they used concussion grenades — which make a loud noise — to break up the crowd.

    D.C. Interim Police Chief Peter Newsham said officers arrested 217 people in connection with protests that turned violent and caused “significant damage to a number of blocks in our city.” He said the department is investigating whether officers handling the protests deployed either flash-bang or percussion grenades — used to disorient people in crowds — and he said that protesters had their own. Numerous Washington Post reporters saw officers use such grenades.

    Newsham said a “a very small percentage” of the thousands who came to demonstrate the inauguration resorted to violence. Police said those arrested were charged with rioting.

* * *

    Protesters jammed city streets and also aimed to jam checkpoints to the inauguration, at times successfully.

    “Shut it down!” protesters shouted at the checkpoint at John Marshall Park early Friday morning. There, five black men stood at the front of the crowd, chained together, blocking the path.

    Hailing from different parts of the country, the men were protesting on behalf of the Black Lives Matter movement. As they stood together, they shouted that by demonstrating, “all we have to lose is our chains.”

    Police began redirecting people to other entrances at about 8:30 a.m. As protesters there shouted, “This is what democracy looks like,” a Trump supporter countered. He pointed to the other side of the fence and said, “This is what democracy looks like, but I can’t get to it because of you!”

* * *

    In the days leading up to the inauguration, protests started with one group shutting down K Street in downtown Washington and gay rights advocates holding a dance party near the temporary home of Vice President-elect Mike Pence in Chevy Chase, complete with biodegradable glitter and the hashtags #WeAreQueer #WeAreHere #WeWillDance.

    Thursday night, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the National Press Club in downtown Washington, where the "DeploraBall" was being held. They shouted obscenities and insults such as "racist" and Nazi" at those attending the celebratory ball on the eve of Trump's inauguration, and at one point someone threw an object that hit a counter protester in the head. Officers directed chemical spray at the crowd multiple times after protesters began throwing trash at Trump supporters who were leaving the building.

* * *

    But at least one organization had vowed to try to shut down the city. Organized under activist collective Disrupt J20, that group arranged to have different organizations gather at each of the dozen checkpoints that inauguration ticket holders had to pass through to view the ceremony. Each aimed to speak to a different cause, organized under names that include: Future is Feminist, Movement for Black Lives, Standing Rock for Native Lives, Economic Justice and Communities under Attack.

* * *

    Disrupt J20 describes its plans online as “a series of massive direct actions that will shut down the Inauguration ceremonies and any related celebrations — the Inaugural parade, the Inaugural balls, you name it. We’re also planning to paralyze the city itself, using blockades and marches to stop traffic and even public transit.”

     The protests coincided with the Women's March and, according to the Time Magazine article cited earlier, were intended to use the Women's March as a cover and misdirect: "Protest organizers actually calculated that framing the march as pro-women rather than anti-Trump would work wonders," the article reported. It adds:

... After the election, as interest in the Women’s March swelled online, it became clear that a pro-women’s-rights event that also convened an array of marginalized populations was getting far more traction than protests billed as just anti-Trump. By the look of the demonstrations, the Access Hollywood tape also became a uniquely unifying factor. What Trump dismissed as “locker-room banter”–“I moved on her like a bitch … Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything”–gave Jan. 21 its palette (pink), its signature attire (the pussy hat) and its rules of engagement.

    Of course, the various Democrat and Leftist groups were no embarrassed by the violence. As CNN reported:

    Liberal groups praised the work of protesters, many of whom traveled from around the country to rail against a president they called “illegitimate” in thousands of signs and songs.

    “The only source of light on this miserable day is the massive, multi-racial, multi-generational progressive resistance movement led by women and people of color that’s already emerging to confront Donald Trump’s agenda of hate and growing stronger every single day,” Democracy for America Executive Director Charles Chamberlain said in a statement following the inaugural ceremony.

The violence inherent in the Leftism wasn't confined to the Washington D.C. riots either. CNN's reporting adds:

    In New York, nine people were arrested for disorderly conduct, according to the New York Police Department. Authorities said five people were arrested at a protest in Dallas, six in Chicago.

    In Portland, Oregon, protesters were armed with clubs, sticks and throwing unknown liquid at officers, according to the Portland Police Department. Six people were arrested in Portland Friday, Portland Police Sgt. Pete Simpson tells CNN.

    In Seattle, people threw bricks and other items at officers during a demonstration on the the University of Washington campus, city police said. Harborview Medical Center in Seattle confirmed it was treating a man who was shot at the protest and is in critical condition. Seattle police said a man turned himself in to campus police and was being questioned.

     Although the Time Magazine piece attempts to paint the protests as organic and in response to the election, it wasn't, at least not on the whole. The Time article slipped a bit on this point when it mentioned that the organizers wanted to frame the protests as "pro-women" rather than "anti-Trump" to boost numbers. But the references to a group called "Disrupt J20" buried deep in the Washington Post article is even more telling. That group, according to its Wikipedia page, "was founded in July 2016 and publicly launched on November 11 after Trump won the 2016 United States presidential election." (bold added). In other words, it wasn't a grass roots reaction to Trump's election, but a contingency plan. 

    And what was the purpose of the group? Again from Wikipedia:

DisruptJ20 (also Disrupt J20) was an organization that protested and attempted to disrupt events of the presidential inauguration of the 45th U.S. President, Donald Trump, which occurred on January 20, 2017. ... DisruptJ20's inauguration protests were a part of a wider array of protests organized both locally and nationally from a more extensive initial plan. The protests included efforts to blockade one bridge and to shut down security checkpoints.

And some more details (footnotes omitted):

    DisruptJ20 was founded around July 2016, about six months before Trump's inauguration. "J20" was chosen to stand for January 20, the scheduled day of the 2017 inauguration. DisruptJ20 was publicly launched on November 11, 2016, with a YouTube video and social media accounts. It and its aims were described in an interview with Legba Carrefour, "an organizer with DisruptJ20", as

an umbrella coalition of groups with a core of local organizers who have a lot of activist experience. Washington, D.C. organizers ... most of whom are anarchists. ... The idea ... is we want to undermine Trump's presidency from the get-go. There has been a lot of talk of peaceful transition of power as being a core element in a democracy and we want to reject that entirely and really undermine the peaceful transition.

According to Nelson of the U.S. News & World Report, the DisruptJ20s website in December 2016 associated the organisation with the "DC Welcoming Committee [DCWC] collective" (describing it as "being assisted by" the DCWC) and Nelson reports that DisruptJ20, at this time, involved individuals from an array of progressive groups (as individuals, rather than representing their groups). Nelson quotes Carrefour, who he describes as "a local anarchist handling press" for DisruptJ20, as indicating that "more than 200 people attended an organizing meeting at a local church ... on short notice" and that photographs "show[ed] supporters representing a range of ages and interests." Regarding intent, Carrefour stated to Nelson,

We are planning to shut down the inauguration, that's the short of it ... We're pretty literal about that, we are trying to create citywide paralysis on a level that I don't think has been seen in D.C. before. We're trying to shut down pretty much every ingress into the city as well as every checkpoint around the actual inauguration parade route.

On January 14, 2017, about a hundred demonstrators met at the American University to plan and prepare their protests.[7][12] Carrefour described their plans for inauguration week, beginning the weekend of January 14–15, 2017 ("MLK weekend"), indicating that DisruptJ20 was:

• holding "an Action Camp ... doing a lot of non-violent direct action trainings" on that weekend;
• sponsoring a "queer dance party" at the residence of Vice President Mike Pence, on Wednesday, January 18;
• arranging an "action" for the DeploraBall—described as an "Alt-Right Trump inaugural ball"—on Thursday, January 19, with the aim of "trying to shut that down";
• having, on the 20th, inauguration day, "blockades ... at all the checkpoints around the inauguration parade route and to get into the viewing area ... transit blockades all day ... several unpermitted marches, an especially big one at Logan Circle" at 10 A.M., and a permitted march at 12 P.M., as well as events going on throughout inauguration evening."

After the January 14 meetings, James O'Keefe of Project Veritas posted a video shot at pizzeria Comet Ping Pong in the capital showing members of the DC Antifascist Coalition, a part of DisruptJ20, planning to disrupt the DeploraBall at the National Press Building on January 19—through use of stink bombs (of butyric acid) and activation of the building's sprinkler system. DisruptJ20 countered that it had caught on to the Veritas operation and had thus fed its operative a false plot; however, based on the video, the DC police arrested a man associated with the group[clarification needed] on January 19, 2017 for his alleged planning to disrupt the DeploraBall. Veritas released a second part to the video showing DisruptJ20 participants discussing their plans to create blockades for bridges and trains; as a result of the latter video, a DisruptJ20 organizer announced that the group would scale back on their blockade efforts, and only shut down one bridge.

Now, you might remember from the news reports above that the blockades and other actions were presented as being from disparate groups such as Antifa (although it was not yet being named that in the news reports), BLM, and LGBT and feminist groups (meeting at a restaurant associated with pedophiles, to boot), yet they were actually part of a larger conspiracy to, according to their own description, shut down the inauguration and prevent the peaceful transfer of power. If that doesn't meet the definition of insurrection, I don't know what would.

    And what about all those rioters that were arrested? The Wikipedia article goes on to note that the Justice Department began an investigation into Disrupt J20 for its role. But, eventually, the investigations were terminated and charges were dropped against all of the Washington D.C. rioters that were arrested.