Honestly, I didn’t expect the revelations and insights that have come to me personally by virtue of witnessing the Trump presidency in its totality and especially by its exclamation point, the January 6 sacking of the nation’s Capitol building by thousands of domestic terror cultists.

It can’t be stressed too much that in the history of how coups against legal governments have occurred in the modern history, the Jan. 6 siege by domestic rightwing paramilitary groups had all the ingredients for success. It was only due to the heroic actions of brave forces, uniformed and otherwise, that the nation’s democracy was saved that day, a degree of heroism unanticipated by its architects, including Trump himself. We will forever be in our debt to those persons.

The scenario was designed by all accounts to include an horrific broadcasted execution of the vice president and numerous members of Congress, the hostage taking and threatened assassination of many more members of Congress, the termination of the certification process of the Electoral College vote, and the declaration of martial law by Trump, who would declare himself the winner of the November 2020 election and extend his term by another four years, with a rubber stamp approval from the Repulicans in Congress.

With this being the anticipated scenario, its being foiled and the Congress’ ability to reconvene that night to complete the certification of the Electoral College vote marked the most emotionally moving moment of the day. Up against far more than we even knew at the time, we had won.

It has been the purpose of this series to show how Putin was behind this coup attempt. U.S. covert intelligence may continue to be unwilling to reveal to the public the extent of its knowledge of all this out of concern for exposing too much of their own intelligence gathering methods and means. It explains the regrettable decision this week by the Justice Department to oppose the release of most of a critical 2019 Barr memo on why Trump should not be charged with obstruction of justice.

But it is really all there in black and white for the attentive observer, beginning with the findings in the Mueller Report that were so badly misrepresented by Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr. The Mueller Report, including the contents of the Steele dossier, devoted over 200 pages on the direct connections between the Trump administration and Moscow.

Exploring the history of Russian meddling in U.S. politics dating back to the early 1970s, I am amazed to find how, in light of Trump and the Jan. 9 coup attempt, the picture suddenly has become clearer in such dramatic ways.

After a rocky period following my graduation with honors from a San Francisco-area theological seminary that drew me into the radical counterculture, I was recruited into what I thought was a thoughtful, progressive political alternative to what had seemingly become of the Democratic Party after the 1972 McGovern presidential election fiasco.

It was an organization called the National Caucus of Labor Committees. Under the leadership of aging self-proclaimed socialist Lyn Marcus (aka Lyndon LaRouche), it soon turned violent, attacking and neutering an array of leftish fringe groups in what was called Operation Mop-Up. In 1976, it then relentlessly assailed Jimmy Carter in his presidential bid and propped up Ronald Reagan, then a radical marginal figure in the GOP.

Boosting the fortunes of rightwing fringe groups, it contributed to a radicalized Reagan’s presidential win in 1980, relentlessly assailed the Atantic Alliance (including Britain’s royal family), raised money off homophobia amid the AIDS crisis, and in 2008 and onward brutally opposed Obama with a campaign showing him wearing a Hitler mustache (which it now uses aganst Biden).

That movement, while a shadow of its former self (I broke away 35 years ago) has backed Trump and Putin with all its energy to this day.

I experienced first hand the impact of a cult’s conditioning ploys and how they work, and was so caught up in the daily weeds I did not see the big picture that placed the whole operation so totally in the hands of America’s sworn enemy, Moscow.

(To be continued).

 Nicholas Benton may be emailed at nfbenton@fcnp.com.