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... a French police official responsible for public security in a key section of central Paris, and two intelligence officials from NATO countries who directly work in counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations... said the circumstantial evidence available pointed to what would be openly called a coup attempt in any other nation.
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One NATO source set the stage, using terms more commonly used to describe unrest in developing countries.
“The defeated president gives a speech to a group of supporters where he tells them he was robbed of the election, denounces his own administration’s members and party as traitors, and tells his supporters to storm the building where the voting is being held,” the NATO intelligence official said.
“The supporters, many dressed in military attire and waving revolutionary-style flags, then storm the building where the federal law-enforcement agencies controlled by the current president do not establish a security cordon, and the protesters quickly overwhelm the last line of police.
“The president then makes a public statement to the supporters attacking the Capitol that he loves them but doesn’t really tell them to stop,” the official said. “Today I am briefing my government that we believe with a reasonable level of certainty that Donald Trump attempted a coup that failed when the system did not buckle.
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The French police official said they believed that an investigation would find that someone interfered with the deployment of additional federal law-enforcement officials on the perimeter of the Capitol complex; the official has direct knowledge of the proper procedures for security of the facility.
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It is routine for the Capitol Police to coordinate with the federal Secret Service and the Park Police and local police in Washington, DC, before large demonstrations. The National Guard, commanded by the Department of Defence, is often on standby too.On Wednesday, however, that coordination was late or absent.
“You cannot tell me I don’t know what they should have done. I can fly to Washington tomorrow and do that job, just as any police official in Washington can fly to Paris and do mine,” the official said. The official directs public security in a central Paris police district filled with government buildings and tourist sites.
“These are not subtle principles” for managing demonstrations, “and they transfer to every situation,” the official said. “This is why we train alongside the US federal law enforcement to handle these very matters, and it’s obvious that large parts of any successful plan were just ignored.”
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The third official, who works in counterintelligence for a NATO member, agreed that the situation could only be seen as a coup attempt, no matter how poorly considered and likely to fail, and said its implications might be too huge to immediately fathom.
“Thank God it didn’t work, because I can’t imagine how hard it would be to sanction the US financial system,” the official said. By sanctions, he means the imposition of the diplomatic, military, and trade blockages that democratic nations usually reserve for dictatorships.
“The broader damage around the world will be extensive in terms of reputation, and that’s why Putin doesn’t mind at all that Trump lost. He’s got to be happy to take his chips and count his winnings, which from the Trump era will be a shockingly quick decline in American prestige and moral high ground.
“Every moment the Americans spend on their own self-inflicted chaos helps China, it helps Putin, and, to a lesser extent, it helps the mini-dictators like [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan and [Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orban, who breathe cynicism about politics, human rights, and democracy as their air,” the official said. “They won’t miss Trump; they will be glad to see his drama leave so they can enjoy the poisoned political climate.”
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 14 2021, @05:56AM
The main reason there was a minimal security presence at DC was specifically because requests for heightened security were repeatedly rejected [washingtonpost.com] by the house leaders. Those leaders are Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell. Ostensibly the reason they gave is that they didn't like the optics of having Biden's vote certified while a military presence protected it. A more cynical perspective is that they wanted to enable protesters relatively simple access to the chambers as a pretext for the coming authoritarian purge, political circus including another impeachment, and passing laws that will likely go down in history as the Patriot Act 2.0
Oh another fun thing. Trump did tell the protesters to go home. Twitter deleted his post posted January 6th at 4:17pm ET. It was a brief video. Here [factba.se] is what it said:
Seemingly unaware his Tweets were being deleted, about an hour and a half later he against reemphasized:
Twitter deleted every post he made telling the protesters to stop and/or go home. It's almost like "they" (by which I am not referring to Twitter alone) did want the protesters to stop or go home. Go figure.