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BY WHITNEY WEBB
\nUnlimited Hangout<\/p>\n
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A group of Democratic Party insiders and former Obama and Clinton era officials as well as a cadre of \u201cNever Trump\u201d neoconservative Republicans have spent the past few months conducting simulations and \u201cwar games\u201d regarding different 2020 election \u201cdoomsday\u201d scenarios.<\/p>\n
Per several media reports on the group, called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), they justify these exercises as specifically preparing for a scenario where President Trump loses the 2020 election and refuses to leave office, potentially resulting in a constitutional crisis. However, according to TIP\u2019s\u00a0own documents<\/a>, even their simulations involving a \u201cclear win\u201d for Trump in the upcoming election resulted in a constitutional crisis, as they predicted that the Biden campaign would make bold moves aimed at securing the presidency, regardless of the election result.<\/p>\n This is particularly troubling given that TIP has considerable ties to the Obama administration, where Biden served as Vice President, as well as several groups that are adamantly pro-Biden in addition to the Biden campaign itself. Indeed, the fact that a group of openly pro-Biden Washington insiders and former government officials have gamed out scenarios for possible election outcomes and their aftermath, all of which either ended with Biden becoming president or a constitutional crisis, suggest that powerful forces influencing the Biden campaign are pushing the former Vice President to refuse to concede the election even if he loses.<\/p>\n This, of course, gravely undercuts the TIP\u2019s claim to be ensuring \u201cintegrity\u201d in the presidential transition process and instead suggests that the group is openly planning on how to ensure that Trump leaves office regardless of the result or to manufacture the very constitutional crisis they claim to be preventing through their simulations.<\/p>\n Such concerns are only magnified by the recent claims made by the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State under Obama, Hillary Clinton, that Biden \u201cshould not concede under any circumstances.\u201d \u201cI think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don\u2019t give an inch, and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,\u201d Clinton continued\u00a0during an interview with\u00a0<\/a>Showtime<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0a little over a week ago. The results of the TIP\u2019s simulations notably echo Clinton\u2019s claims that Biden will \u201ceventually\u201d win if the process to determine the election outcome is \u201cdragged out.\u201d<\/p>\n Members of the TIP met in June to conduct four \u201cwar games\u201d that simulated\u00a0\u201ca dark 11 weeks between Election Day and Inauguration Day\u201d in which \u201cTrump and his Republican allies used every apparatus of government \u2014 the Postal Service, state lawmakers, the Justice Department, federal agents, and the military \u2014 to hold onto power, and Democrats took to the courts and the streets to try to stop it,\u201d according to a report from\u00a0<\/em>The Boston Globe<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>However, one of those simulations, which examined what would transpire between Election Day and Inauguration Day in the event of a \u201cclear Trump win,\u201d shows that the TIP simulated not only how Republicans could use every option at their disposal to \u201chold onto power\u201d, but also how Democrats could do so if the 2020 election result is not in their favor.<\/p>\n While some, mostly right-leaning media outlets, such as this article from\u00a0The National Pulse<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, did note that the TIP\u2019s simulations involved the Biden campaign refusing to concede, the actual document from TIP on the exercises revealed the specific moves the Biden campaign would take following a \u201cclear win\u201d for the Trump campaign. Unsurprisingly, these moves would greatly exacerbate current political tensions in the United States, an end result that the TIP claims they were created to avoid, gravely undercutting the official justification for their simulations as well as the group\u2019s official reason for existing.<\/p>\n In\u00a0the TIP\u2019s \u201cclear Trump win\u201d scenario<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(see page 17), Joe Biden \u2013 played in the war game by John Podesta, Hillary Clinton\u2019s 2016 campaign manager and chief of staff to former President Bill Clinton \u2013 retracted his election night concession and subsequently convinced \u201cthree states with Democratic governors \u2013 North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan \u2013 to ask for recounts.\u201d Then, the governors of Wisconsin and Michigan \u201csent separate slates of electors to counter those sent by the state legislature\u201d to the Electoral College, which Trump had won, in an attempt to undermine, if not prevent, that win.<\/p>\n Next, \u201cthe Biden campaign encouraged Western states, particularly California but also Oregon and Washington, and collectively known as \u201cCascadia,\u201d\u00a0to secede from the Union unless Congressional Republicans agreed to a set of structural reforms<\/strong>. (emphasis added)\u201d Subsequently, \u201cwith advice from [former] President Obama,\u201d the Biden campaign laid out those \u201creforms\u201d as the following:<\/p>\n In other words, these \u201cstructural reforms\u201d involve the creation of what essentially amounts to having the U.S. by composed 56 states, with the new states set to ensure a perpetual majority for Democrats, as only Democrat-majority areas (DC, Puerto Rico and California) are given statehood. Notably, in other scenarios where Biden won the Electoral College, Democrats did not support its elimination.<\/p>\n Also notable is the fact that, in this simulation, the TIP blamed the Trump campaign for the Democrats\u2019 decision to take the \u201cprovocative, unprecedented actions\u201d laid out above, asserting that Trump\u2019s campaign had \u201ccreated the conditions to force the Biden campaign\u201d into taking these actions by doing things like giving \u201can interview to\u00a0The Intercept<\/em>\u00a0in which he [Trump] stated that he would have lost the election if Bernie Sanders had been nominated\u201d instead of Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate.<\/p>\n The TIP also claimed that the Trump campaign would seek to paint these \u201cprovocative, unpredecented actions\u201d as \u201cthe Democrats attempting to orchestrate an illegal coup,\u201d despite the fact that that is essentially what those actions entail. Indeed, in other simulations where the Trump campaign behaved along these lines, the TIP\u2019s rhetoric about this category of extreme actions is decidedly different.<\/p>\n Yet, the simulated actions of the Biden campaign in this scenario did not end there, as the Biden campaign subsequently \u201cprovoked a breakdown in the joint session of Congress [on January 6th] by getting the House of Representatives to agree to award the presidency to Biden,\u201d adding that this was \u201cbased on the alternative pro-Biden submissions sent by pro-Biden governors.\u201d The Republican party obviously did not consent, noting that Trump had won the election through his Electoral College victory. The \u201cclear Trump win\u201d election simulation ended with no president-elect being inaugurated on January 20, with the TIP noting \u201cit was unclear what the military would do in this situation.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, some TIP members, including its co-founder Rosa Brooks \u2013 a former advisor to the Obama era Pentagon and currently a fellow at the \u201cNew America\u201d think tank, have their preference for \u201cwhat the military would do in this situation.\u201d For instance, Brooks, writing less than 2 weeks after Trump\u2019s inauguration in 2017, argued in\u00a0Foreign Policy<\/em><\/strong><\/a>that \u201ca military coup, or at least a refusal by military leaders to obey certain orders\u201d was one of four possibilities for removing Trump from office prior to the 2020 election.<\/p>\n The TIP was created in late 2019, allegedly \u201cout of concern that the Trump Administration may seek to manipulate, ignore, undermine or disrupt the 2020 presidential election and transition process.\u201d It was co-founded by Rosa Brooks and Nils Gilman and its current director is Zoe Hudson. Brooks, as previously mentioned, was\u00a0an advisor<\/a>\u00a0to the Pentagon and the Hillary Clinton-led State Department during the Obama administration. She was also previously\u00a0the general counsel<\/a>\u00a0to the President of the Open Society Institute, part of the Open Society Foundations (OSF), a controversial organization funded by billionaire George Soros. Zoe Hudson, who is TIP\u2019s director, is also a former top figure at OSF,\u00a0serving as<\/a>senior policy analyst and liaison between the foundations and the U.S. government for 11 years.<\/p>\n OSF ties to the TIP are a red flag for a number of reasons, namely due to the fact that OSF and other Soros-funded organizations played a critical role in fomenting so-called \u201ccolor revolutions\u201d to overthrow non-aligned governments, particularly during the Obama administration. Examples of OSF\u2019s ties to these manufactured \u201crevolutions\u201d include\u00a0Ukraine in 2014<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0the \u201cArab Spring,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0which began in 2011 and saw several governments in the Middle East and North Africa that were\u00a0troublesome to Western interests<\/a>\u00a0conveniently removed from power.<\/p>\n Subsequent leaked emails revealed the cozy ties between Soros and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, including\u00a0one email<\/a>\u00a0where Soros directed Clinton\u2019s policy with respect to unrest in Albania, telling her that\u00a0\u201c<\/strong>two things need to be done urgently,\u201d which were to\u00a0\u201c<\/strong>bring the full weight of the international community to bear on Prime Minister Berisha\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0\u201c<\/strong>appoint a senior European official as mediator.\u201d Both \u201curgent\u201d tasks were subsequently performed by Clinton, presumably at Soros\u2019 behest.<\/strong><\/p>\n In addition to her ties to the Obama administration and OSF, Brooks is currently a scholar at West Point\u2019s\u00a0Modern War Institute<\/a>, where she focuses on \u201cthe relationship between the military and domestic policing\u201d and also Georgetown\u2019s Innovative Policing Program. She is a currently a key player in the documented\u00a0OSF-led push<\/a>\u00a0to \u201ccapitalize\u201d off of legitimate calls for police reform to justify the creation of a federalized police force under the guise of defunding and\/or eliminating local police departments. Brooks\u2019 interest in the \u201cblurring line\u201d between military and police is notable given her past advocacy of a military coup to remove Trump from office and the TIP\u2019s subsequent conclusion that the military \u201cmay\u201d have to step in if Trump manages to win the 2020 election, per the group\u2019s \u201cwar games\u201d described above.<\/p>\n Brooks is also\u00a0a senior fellow<\/a>\u00a0at the think tank New America. New America\u2019s mission statement notes that the organization is focused on \u201chonestly confronting the challenges caused by rapid technological and social change, and seizing the opportunities those changes create.\u201d It is\u00a0largely funded by<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0Silicon Valley billionaires, including Bill Gates (Microsoft), Eric Schmidt (Google), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Jeffrey Skoll and Pierre Omidyar (eBay). In addition, it has received millions directly from the U.S. State Department to research \u201cranking digital rights.\u201d Notably, of these funders, Reid Hoffman was\u00a0caught \u201cmeddling\u201d<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0in the most recent Democratic primary to undercut Bernie Sanders\u2019 candidacy during the Iowa caucus and while others, such as\u00a0Eric Schmidt<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Pierre Omidyar<\/strong><\/a>, are known for their cozy ties to the Clinton family and even ties to\u00a0Hillary Clinton\u2019s 2016 campaign<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Aside from Brooks, the other co-founder of TIP is Nils Gilman, the current Vice President of Programs at the Berggruen Institute and, prior to that, worked for Salesforce,\u00a0a major tech company and government contractor<\/a>. Gilman is particularly focused on artificial intelligence and transhumanism, recently\u00a0telling the\u00a0New York Times<\/em><\/a>\u00a0that his work at the Berggruen Institute is focused on\u00a0\u201cbuilding [a] transnational networks of philosophers + technologists + policy-makers + artists who are thinking about how A.I. and gene-editing are transfiguring what it means to be human.\u201d Nicholas Berggruen, for whom the Berggruen Institute is named, is part of the billionaire-led faction, alongside Blackstone\u2019s\u00a0Steve Schwarzman<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Eric Schmidt<\/strong><\/a>, who seek to develop A.I. and the so-called \u201cFourth Industrial Revolution\u201d\u00a0in conjunction with<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0the political leaders and economic elite of China.<\/p>\n They are critics and rivals of those in the \u201cnationalist\u201d camp with respect to A.I. and China, who instead prefer to aggressively \u201cleapfrog\u201d China\u2019s A.I. capabilities in order to maintain U.S. global hegemony as opposed to a \u201cnew order\u201d promoted by Berggreun, Schmidt, Schwarzman and Henry Kissinger, another key member of the \u201ccooperation\u201d faction. The battle over the U.S.\u2019 future A.I. policy with respect to China appears to be\u00a0a major yet widely overlooked reason<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0for some of the antipathy towards Trump by those in the \u201ccooperation\u201d faction, including those who employ TIP\u2019s founders, given Trump\u2019s tendency to, at least publicly, support \u201cAmerica First\u201d policies and increased tensions with China. In contrast, the Biden family\u00a0is invested in Chinese A.I. companies<\/strong><\/a>, suggesting that Biden would be more willing to pursue the interests of the \u201ccooperation\u201d faction than Trump.<\/p>\n While the identities of the TIP\u2019s founders and current director have been made public, the full member list of the TIP has not. However, the TIP\u2019s \u201csister\u201d organization, called\u00a0The National Task Force on Election Crises<\/a>\u00a0(NTFEC), does have\u00a0a public membership list<\/a>\u00a0and several of its members are also known to be part of the TIP. Some of these overlapping members include Michael Chertoff, former head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Michael Steele, former chairman of the RNC and Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to former Secretary of State, Colin Powell. Chertoff, Steele and Wilkerson, though Republicans, are part of the so-called \u201cNever Trump\u201d Republican faction, as are the TIP\u2019s other known Republican members. Thus, while the \u201cbipartisan\u201d nature of TIP may be accurate in terms of party affiliation, all of known TIP\u2019s members \u2013 regardless of party \u2013 are united in their opposition to another term for the current president.<\/p>\n Other known members of the TIP include David Frum (the Atlantic<\/em>), William Kristol (Project for a New American Century,\u00a0The Bulwark<\/em>), Max Boot (the Washington Post<\/em>),\u00a0<\/em>Donna Brazile (ex-DNC), John Podesta (former campaign manager \u2013 Clinton 2016), Chuck Hagel (former Secretary of Defense), Reed Galen (co-founder of the Lincoln Project) and Norm Ornstein (American Enterprise Institute).<\/p>\n Of their known members, the most outspoken is Lawrence Wilkerson, who has fashioned himself the group\u2019s \u201cunofficial\u201d spokesperson, having done\u00a0the majority<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0media interviews<\/a>\u00a0promoting the group<\/a>\u00a0and its \u201cwar games.\u201d In\u00a0an interview<\/a>\u00a0in late June with journalist Paul Jay, Wilkerson notes that the TIP lacks transparency and that, aside from their \u201cwar games,\u201d their other activities are largely confidential.<\/p>\n He specifically stated that:<\/p>\n \u201cThere is some confidentiality about what we agreed to, and what we\u2019ve put out publicly, and who\u2019s responsible for that, and other aspects of our doing that. The Transition Integrity Project is to this point very, very close, whole, and confidential.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In that same interview, Wilkerson also noted that the current \u201ccombination of events\u201d involving the recent unrest in several U.S. cities, the coronavirus crisis, the national debate over the future of policing, the economic recession and the 2020 election was the foundation for a revolution in the U.S. He told Jay that:<\/p>\n \u201cI want to say this is how things like 1917 and Russia, like 1979 and Tehran, and like 1789 in France. This is how these sorts of things get started. So we\u2019ve got to be very careful about how we deal with these things. And that worries me because we don\u2019t have a very careful individual in the White House.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n While it certainly is possible that, in the event of a clear Biden win, President Trump could refuse to leave the White House or take other actions that would challenge the faith of many Americans in the national election system. However, while the TIP claims to be specifically concerned about this eventuality and about \u201csafe guarding\u201d democracy without favoring either candidate, that is clearly not the case, as their simulation of a clear Trump win shows that extreme, \u201cundemocratic\u201d behavior, in their view, is permissible if it prevents another four years of Trump. Yet, this clear double standard reveals that an influential group of \u201cbipartisan\u201d insiders are intent on creating a \u201cconstitutional crisis\u201d if Trump wins and are planning for such a crisis regardless of the 2020 election\u2019s results.<\/p>\n Well before the TIP or any of their affiliated groups emerged to conduct these doomsday election simulations, other groups were similarly engaged in \u201cwar games\u201d that predicted complete chaos in the U.S. on election day as well as the imposition of martial law in the U.S. following the emergence of unprecedented unrest and disarray in the country.<\/p>\n Several of these I detailed in a series earlier this year, which mainly focused on\u00a0the \u201cOperation Blackout\u201d simulations<\/strong><\/a>conducted by the U.S.-Israeli company, Cybereason. That company has considerable ties to the U.S. and Israeli intelligence and\u00a0its largest investor is Softbank<\/strong><\/a>. Notably, Softbank is named by the Eric Schmidt-led National Security Commission on AI (NSCAI) as\u00a0forming the \u201cbackbone\u201d<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0of a global framework of A.I.-driven companies favored by the \u201ccooperation\u201d faction as a means of enacting the \u201cFourth Industrial Revolution\u201d in cooperation with China\u2019s economic and political elite.<\/p>\n In addition to Cybereason, several mainstream media reports and a series of suspect \u201cpredictions\u201d from U.S. intelligence and other federal agencies released last year\u00a0had seeded the narrative<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0that the 2020 election would not only fail spectacularly, but that U.S. democracy \u201cwould never recover.\u201d Now, with the TIP\u2019s simulations added to the mix and the advent of the previously predicted chaos throughout the country with the 2020 election just two months away, it is clear that the November 3rd<\/sup>\u00a0election will not only be a complete disaster, but a pre-planned one.<\/p>\n The question then becomes, who benefits from complete chaos on and following the 2020 election? As the TIP suggested in several of their simulations, the post-election role of the military in terms of domestic policing, incidentally the exact expertise of the TIP\u2019s co-founder Rosa Brooks, looms large, as most of the aforementioned doomsday election simulations ended with the imposition of martial law or the military \u201cstepping in\u201d to resolve order and oversee the transition.<\/p>\n The domestic framework for imposing martial law in the U.S., via \u201ccontinuity of government\u201d protocols,\u00a0was activated earlier this year<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0under the guise of the coronavirus crisis and it remains in effect. Now, a series of groups deeply tied to the Washington establishment and domestic and foreign intelligence agencies have predicted the exact ways in which to engineer a failed election and manipulate its aftermath.<\/p>\n Who would stand to benefit the most from the imposition of martial law in the United States? I would argue that one need look no further than the battle within Washington power factions over the future of AI, which has been deemed of critical importance to national security by the public sector, the private sector and prominent think tanks. The Schmidt-led NSCAI and other bodies determining the country\u2019s AI policy\u00a0plan to implement a series of policies<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0that will be deeply resisted by most Americans \u2013 from the elimination of individual car ownership to the elimination of cash as well as the imposition of an Orwellian surveillance system, among other things.<\/p>\nThe Uniparty\u2019s \u201cwar games\u201d<\/h2>\n
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Who is behind the TIP?<\/h2>\n
The Never Trumpers<\/h2>\n
Pre-planned chaos \u2013 who benefits?<\/h2>\n