ANALYSIS | Trump's $ 100 Million Threat to Democracy

What do handwritten notes reveal about pressure from Trump?

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(CNN) -

Donald Trump now has a $ 100 million weapon to wield against American democracy.

The defeated and disgraced former president's huge war spoils, nearly all of it accumulated in the six months after leaving office, was based on his voracious calls for cash from supporters bought with his delusional lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

It's the latest sign, along with the trips to win over Republican candidates and his party's relentless efforts to erase the history of his crimes against the Constitution, that Trump's threat to basic political freedoms is far from over. .

Little imagination is needed to know what Trump will do with his funds, which are likely to grow significantly in the coming months. Hardly a day goes by without him spinning more outrageous lies about electoral fraud. New revelations last week about his efforts to pressure the Justice Department over the election it lost and more disturbing details of the Jan.6 attack that emerged at the first hearing of the House Select Committee clarified the issue. history of Trump's attempt to destroy the American political system.

It is now clear that, first in Georgia, and then by trying to exercise presidential power to force the Justice Department to declare elections tainted with fraud where none existed, the former president sought to incite a coup to stay in office. When that failed, he called a mob to Washington, incited them with false claims of election fraud, and then invaded Congress, wiping out a peaceful transfer of power.

Trump's assault on the values ​​that underpin the Constitution did not end when he left the White House.

Since then, he has made the acceptance of his huge confidence trick the entry point for many Republican candidates seeking his valuable endorsement in next year's midterm elections.

The Republican Party in the House of Representatives has become a vassal of its extremism, even with its ludicrous and covert claim that President Nancy Pelosi, rather than Trump, was responsible for the worst attack on the United States Capitol in 200 years.

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And while his undemocratic conspiracy may alienate millions of Americans in a general election, and some Republicans may eventually yearn for change, Trump is already the prohibitive front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination, after convincing a large minority that he was ousted. unfairly.

Republican-led states have hastily rewritten election laws in a way that penalizes Democrats and would make it easier to reverse the result the next time if Trump were the candidate and were again rejected by the majority of voters.

• ANALYSIS |

  The commission's opening on January 6 is a crucial opportunity to correct Trump's lies

This record of misconduct, and Trump's enduring appeal to Republican voters, is why it is not possible to walk away from the former president and just move on.

Early in his presidency, the Trump spectacle, with its crazed antics on the west wing and its hunger for attention, was exhausting and distracting, but ultimately not a threat to the republic.

But while many Americans wish he no longer dominated the headlines, it is now clear that there are warning signs everywhere about Trump's future intent.

If anything, the danger it poses to democracy has increased in the past six months, as much of the Republican Party itself has turned against valuable core political values.

A spoils of war built on a lie

Trump's political organization's $ 102 million cash reserves represent unprecedented spoils of war for a former president at this stage of the election cycle, CNN's Fredreka Schouten reported Saturday when Trump's team announced their totals. fundraising for the first half of the year. His 3.2 million contributions to two political action committees mean that Trump may be a dominant kingmaker in the midterm elections and has more than enough money to fund his own demagogic rallies.

It does not necessarily follow that Trump candidates always win. He failed, for example, to elect Texas Republican Susan Wright in a special second round of elections for a House seat last week. But his fundraising muscle gives him the ability to try and remake the party in his own fraudulent image. You can organize primary opposition to Republicans like Representatives Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who challenged Republican leaders to participate in the Jan. 6 select commission. Trump's influence can also help shape lower levels of leadership in the states, at the political epicenter where elections are administered and decided.

The size of his loot, which his team says includes nearly $ 82 million raised in the first six months of this year and some funds donated in 2020 and transferred this year, is a commentary on the nation's political state and character. You are raising funds with the power of a lie that millions of Americans want to be true and that is fundamentally altering politics.

Justice Department Disclosures Complete Chain of Bad Behavior

Trump's continuing strength underscores why it is so important to thwart House Republicans in their attempts to rewrite history on his past outrages. Friday's release of documents showing how Trump tried to coerce the Justice Department into conspiring in his effort to steal the election was just the latest evidence of his attempts to pressure the Department, and one of the most shocking revelations yet about their undemocratic behavior.

In a call on December 27, 2020, Trump pressured Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Deputy Secretary Richard Donoghue to falsely declare the elections "illegal" and "corrupt" even after the Department it had uncovered no evidence of widespread electoral fraud.

"Just say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and Congressmen R," Trump said on the call, according to Donoghue's contemporaneous notes provided to the House Oversight Committee.

• Trump's message to the Justice Department revealed: "Say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me"

As with the former president's attempt to get local Republican officials to find new votes to overcome President Joe Biden's election victory in Georgia, Trump's attempt only failed because officials fulfilled their own oaths to the Constitution. But the release of these notes shows how Trump was happy to use the vast powers of the presidency. If he ever made it to the Oval Office again, the ex-commander-in-chief, with two political trials for abuse of power, is likely to feel even more justification to exercise presidential authority in the service of his own personal and autocratic goals. And even if it remains in the political desert,Trump's well-funded claims of voter fraud will continue to corrode the political system and damage faith in democracy in multiple, and possibly even violent, ways among his millions of supporters.

A new Trump presidential bid, based on claims that previous elections were tainted by widespread fraud, would infect another election with mistrust and further weaken faith in the country's democratic system of government.

One of the keys to the former president's call to his supporters and a central facet of his political method is his relentless assault on the truth day after day.

His expulsion from social media hasn't stopped his exhaustive efforts to get his message across.

On Sunday afternoon, for example, Trump issued a furious statement through his PAC Save America, filled with his usual parade of blatant election lies.

"Even the Justice Department has no interest in the crooked and corrupt 2020 presidential election. They are only interested in hurting those who want to reveal how totally dishonest they were," Trump wrote.

'No one off limits' investigation

As the delta variant of the novel coronavirus plunges the United States into a long battle against the pandemic, the Justice Department notes may not have received the attention they deserved on Friday.

But in many ways, the disclosure represents a missing piece of evidence that completes the chain of events dating back to Trump's immediate post-election attempts to claim electoral fraud, through his pressure on states to change the results and the uprising. violent against Biden's certification of victory, on January 6. The fact that this aspect of Trump's behavior was previously unknown reinforces the argument that, despite the success of the Republican Party in derailing an independent bipartisan commission in the mob attack and the reason why it occurred, the commission Pelosi-designated select is very important.

While evidence from the Justice Department fills in the blanks about what the former president was doing before the insurrection, the commission's powerful opening hearing last week with its heartbreaking testimony from police officers about the beatings and abuses by Trump supporters, the idea that the mob was involved in a peaceful protest, was a "loving" crowd, as Trump has claimed, or that its members were simply acting like "tourists", in the words of Trump, was widely discredited. a pro-Trump House Republican.

• "January 6 is not over for me": Cops testify about his mental health and lingering wounds from the Capitol attack

New details of what was happening behind the scenes in the Trump administration also appear to amplify the case from extensive testimony from political figures and key officials, including Trump's allies on Capitol Hill.

Democratic select committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi told CNN's Jeff Zeleny on Saturday that subpoenas and testimony documents could begin to be released before the end of August.

"There is no one outside the bounds of this investigation," Thompson said.

The president also appeared to indicate that commission members are taking Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn's request that they find the "hit man" who ordered the assault on Congress almost as an unofficial mission statement.

"I think the members of the commission, when they heard it, you know, it was one of those moments," Thompson said.

Amid mounting speculation that Trump's key allies in the House of Representatives, such as Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, could be called upon to testify about their conversations with Trump in the run-up to the insurrection and, on the same day, Kinzinger promised that the commission would follow the truth.

"If that's the leader, that's the leader," Kinzinger said on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, raising the possibility of a subpoena to the Republican head of the House of Representatives, who has anchored his hopes of winning the speech. Trump and from whom the Illinois Republican is now estranged.

"If someone spoke to the president, they could provide us with that information. I want to know what the president was doing at every moment of that day," Kinzinger said.

With each new evidence that emerges, it becomes increasingly clear that January 6, the day of the most gruesome attack on American democracy in generations, did not mark the end of Trump's conspiracies.

There are more than 100 million reasons why the foundations of the republic are still in jeopardy.

Donald trump