When the attempted coup of August 21, 1991 against the Soviet government of Mikhail Gorbachev failed, some observers were amazed at the incompetence of the coup plotters, and noted that the hardline Communist Party officials who led it had failed to even cut the telephone lines of Gorbachev’s office, and that oversight had allowed him and his aides to notify others of the attempt to gain power and individuals such as Boris Yeltsin, who would have been detained in a better planned coup attempt, were able to mobilized public opinion against it. But it was pointed out that the Soviet Union, unlike some nations in South America and the Arab world and Africa, did not have a history of coups against civilian authority, and did not have the informal playbook of traditions and past experiences to draw on when they launched their aborted seizure of power. The recent indictments in Michigan and Arizona of those who were part of the fake electors that sought to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election that followed the other indictments in Georgia may have reflected a somewhat similar lack of knowledge of how to successfully overthrow election results, but it seems that former President Trump and his allies are working diligently to prepare similar challenges to the election results that will be decided by the American electorate in November.
It has been reported that Oklahoma native Cleta Deatherage Mitchell, who was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the RICO charges returned by the Fulton County grand jury, is currently overseeing the planning of legal challenges to results in states that Biden carries. In the recently published “Find Me The Votes,” by journalists Daniel Klaidman and Michael Isikoff, the one time personable liberal Oklahoma icon and Democratic elected official Mitchell is described as being a “gruff hard right GOP campaign lawyer” who descended upon Atlanta and began to order lower level attorney staffers to file lawsuits questioning the legality of Biden’s victory in the Peach Tree State and falsely told the authors of that work in an email that “more fraudulent votes were cast than the margin of victory” in that contest. It is noteworthy that those involved in Trump’s efforts to retain power referenced in emails that are now part of the evidence against them discussed such legal actions as constituting a basis for the creation of panels of alternate electors. Some of those who were indicted in the Arizona criminal proceeding are members in good standing in the Republican Party there, and their status does not have been affected by their being criminally charged by the attorney general of that state. “What is past is prologue,” Shakespeare told us, and the GOP, who’s voter base has not been expanding, may attempt to thwart future elections at both the state and national level.
Against the Grain 