The hunt is on to uncover the identity of the author of the “sleeper-cell” “Resistance” op-ed in the New York Times.
Cabinet members deny having anything to do with the subversive attack on the chief executive, while the last president felt the need to once more take a political stance and attack his lawful successor, President Trump.
{mosads}The piece itself falls into the category of “pseudo-event,” an artificial occurrence around which the media and political elite spin that is aptly described by Daniel J. Boorstin in his seminal book, The Image. Nevertheless, it is important for two reasons.
First, it proves that the so-called deep state is not an invention of the president’s imagination.
Second, it proves we have criminals actively subverting the American government from the inside.
To the first point, if you read the screed carefully, you can deduce that the author may be a government official but not a senior political appointee working in the White House. The article provides no exclusive information that would indicate its author has spent any extended time in the West Wing, and he or she has to quote others who have attended meetings in the Oval Office.
This is telling and speaks to the individual being a lower-level government employee, not one of the 50 or so assistants or deputy assistants to the president who actually work at the top of the American system. (My sources tell me it is a female from within a certain part of the intelligence community who was in government service under President Obama.)
There is a reason that the Times described the cowardly, anonymous conspirator as a “senior official in the Trump administration” and not a “White House official.” But we will know his or her identity soon enough, given that a four-star Marine Corps legend named John Kelly — who takes loyalty and duty very seriously — surely is on the war path.
To the issue of criminality, let there be no doubt: Even a layman’s familiarity of the simplest variety leaves you with the certitude that the author committed sedition; any decent dictionary will define that crime as resistance to a lawful authority. And, yes, at noon on Jan. 20, 2017, Donald J, Trump became the highest executive authority in America. Former military intelligence officer Chris Farrell has provided the clearest legal analysis to date of just how treasonous the author is.
What does this person confess to? He or she admits to working with other government officials “diligently from within to frustrate” the president’s agenda. The agenda he was elected to execute by 63 million Americans, following the constitutional mandate of the nation’s Electoral College.
He or she confesses to “working to insulate their [department’s] operations from the Commander-in-Chief” and to “keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing.” Bad decisions? As defined by who? By a GS-15 or SIS senior intelligence official who has been part of the Washington Swamp and “permanent state” for 38 years? Based upon what authority beyond a unilaterally defined mission?
The author boasts of how, in the last 18 months as part of a messianic crusade, these individuals have established a “two-track presidency,” one of which Trump is the subverted head and the other which is run by bureaucrats who know better.
The problem here is that our Constitution does not allow for two parallel presidents. And no one in America voted for this person, or his or her cabal; therefore, they have foresworn their oaths of office just by creating a system that we can call a “permanent coup.”
What is the putative justification for such arrogance and treachery? For such a willful sabotaging of our form of government?
According to the anonymous author, these unelected plotters do what they do because Trump has attacked “free minds, free markets and free people.” But how he has done so is not substantiated.
This, even though the last president actually is guilty of committing transgressions in all these categories and more — starting with spying on and prosecuting more journalists than all other presidents combined, just because they were doing their jobs.
The last administration so overburdened our economy and over-regulated businesses that, in the first year of the Trump agenda, the market grew more than it had since the end of World War II in response to being freed of the Obama years’ fetters. And the Obama White House was fine with using the IRS to persecute “political undesirables,” or imprisoning a filmmaker when a patsy was needed to cover for the Benghazi scandal.
It should surprise no one when this “resister in chief” is unmasked and we find out that he or she is not a cabinet member or senior White House official but, in all likelihood, an Obama-era holdover.
At that point, the question should be: How do lovers of the republic, those who believe in elections and their peaceful consequences, identify and deal with those who have broken the sacred compact between Americans and the government that is there to serve them.
Sebastian Gorka (@SebGorka), Ph.D., is national security strategist with Fox News and former deputy assistant and strategist to President Donald Trump. He is the author of the new book, “Why We Fight: Recovering America’s Will to Win.”