Former United States President Donald Trump was hit with a sweeping fourth set of criminal charges on Monday when a Georgia grand jury issued an indictment accusing him of efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

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The charges, brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, add to the legal woes facing Trump, the front-runner in the race for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.

Video: Georgia court charges Trump, former advisers in 2020 election case/Credit: Reuters

The sprawling 98-page indictment listed 19 defendants and 41 criminal counts in all. All of the defendants were charged with racketeering, which is used to target members of organized crime groups and carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.

Among the other defendants were Mark Meadows, Trump's former White House chief of staff, and lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman.

"Trump and the other defendants charged in this indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump," the indictment said.

Lawyers for those named either declined to comment or did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The case stems from a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call in which Trump urged Georgia's top election official, Brad Raffensperger, to "find" enough votes to reverse his narrow loss in the state. Raffensperger declined to do so.

Trump's supporters stormed the US Capitol four days later in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent lawmakers from certifying Biden's victory.

The indictment cites a number of crimes that Trump or his associates allegedly committed, including falsely testifying to lawmakers that election fraud had occurred and urging state officials to violate their oaths of office by altering the election results.

Prosecutors also cited the breach of a voting system in a rural Georgia county and the harassment of an election worker who became the focus of conspiracy theories.

It also mentions an alleged scheme to subvert the US electoral process by submitting false slates of electors, people who make up the Electoral College that elects the president and vice president.

The indictment reaches across state lines, saying that Trump advisers, including Giuliani and Meadows, advanced the conspiracy by calling officials in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere seeking to change the outcome in those states.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing, and accuses Willis, an elected Democrat, of being politically motivated.

Trump has already pleaded not guilty in three criminal cases.

He faces a New York state trial beginning on March 25, 2024, involving a hush money payment to a porn star, and a Florida trial beginning on May 20 in a federal classified documents case. In both cases, Trump pleaded not guilty.

A third indictment, in Washington federal court, accuses him of illegally seeking to overturn his 2020 election defeat. Trump denies wrongdoing in this case as well, and a trial date has yet to be set.

Georgia, once reliably Republican, has emerged as one of a handful of politically competitive states that can determine the outcome of presidential elections.

Trump persists in falsely claiming he won the November 2020 election although dozens of court cases and state probes have found no evidence to support his claim.

Not hurting his campaign

Strategists said that while the indictments could bolster Republican support for Trump, they may hurt him in next year's general election when he will have to win over more independent-minded voters.

His lead over Republican presidential rivals has widened since the New York charges were filed in April, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling.

But in a July Reuters/Ipsos poll, 37% of independents said the criminal cases made them less likely to vote for him, compared to 8% who said they were more likely to do so.

Willis's investigation drew on testimony from Trump advisers including Giuliani, who urged state lawmakers in December 2020 not to certify the election, and Republican state officials like Raffensperger and Governor Brian Kemp, who refused to echo Trump's false election claims.

While many Republican officials have echoed Trump's false election claims, Kemp and Raffensperger have refused to do so.

Raffensperger has said there was no factual basis for Trump's objections, while Kemp certified the election results despite pressure from within his party.

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Trump has been mired in legal trouble since leaving office.

Apart from the criminal cases, a New York jury in May found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million in a civil case. A trial is scheduled for Jan. 15 on a second defamation lawsuit seeking $10 million in damages. Trump denies wrongdoing.

Trump is due to face trial in October in a civil case in New York that accuses him and his family business of fraud to obtain better terms from lenders and insurers.

Trump's company was fined $1.6 million after being convicted of tax fraud in a New York court in December.

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A data scientist who was revealed Sunday as the Facebook whistleblower says that whenever there was a conflict between the public good and what benefited the company, the social media giant would choose its own interests.

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Frances Haugen was identified in a "60 Minutes" interview on Sunday as the woman who anonymously filed complaints with federal law enforcement that the company's own research shows how it magnifies hate and misinformation.

Haugen, who worked at Google and Pinterest before joining Facebook in 2019, said she had asked to work in an area of the company that fights misinformation, since she lost a friend to online conspiracy theories.

"Facebook, over and over again, has shown it chooses profit over safety," she said. Haugen, who will testify before Congress this week, said she hopes that by coming forward the government will put regulations in place to govern the company's activities.

She said Facebook prematurely turned off safeguards designed to thwart misinformation and rabble rousing after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump last year, alleging that contributed to the deadly Jan. 6 invasion of the US Capitol.

Post-election, the company dissolved a unit on civic integrity where she had been working, which Haugen said was the moment she realized "I don't trust that they're willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous."

At issue are algorithms that govern what shows up on users' news feeds, and how they favor hateful content. Haugen said a 2018 change to the content flow contributed to more divisiveness and ill will in a network ostensibly created to bring people closer together.

Despite the enmity that the new algorithms were feeding, Facebook found that they helped keep people coming back ─  a pattern that helped the Menlo Park, California, social media giant sell more of the digital ads that generate most of its advertising.

Facebook's annual revenue has more than doubled from $56 billion in 2018 to a projected $119 billion this year, based on the estimates of analysts surveyed by FactSet. Meanwhile, the company's market value has soared from $375 billion at the end of 2018 to nearly $1 trillion now.

Even before the full interview came out on Sunday, a top Facebook executive was deriding the whistleblower's allegations as "misleading."

"Social media has had a big impact on society in recent years, and Facebook is often a place where much of this debate plays out," Nick Clegg, the company's vice president of policy and public affairs wrote to Facebook employees in a memo sent on Friday. "But what evidence there is simply does not support the idea that Facebook, or social media more generally, is the primary cause of polarization."

The "60 Minutes" interview intensifies the spotlight already glaring on Facebook as lawmakers and regulators around the world scrutinize the social networking's immense power to shape opinions and its polarizing effects on society.

The backlash has been intensifying since The Wall Street Journal's mid-September publication of an expose that revealed Facebook's internal research had concluded the social network's attention-seeking algorithms had helped foster political dissent and contributed to mental health and emotional problems among teens, especially girls. After copying thousands of pages of Facebook's internal research, Haugen leaked them to the Journal to provide the foundation for a succession of stories packaged as the "Facebook Files."

Although Facebook asserted the Journal had cherry picked the most damaging information in the internal documents to cast the company in the worst possible light, the revelations prompted an indefinite delay in the rollout of a kids' version of its popular photo- and video-sharing app, Instagram. Facebook currently requires people to be at least 13 years old to open an Instagram account.

Clegg appeared on CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday in another pre-emptive attempt to soften the blow of Haugen's interview.

"Even with the most sophisticated technology, which I believe we deploy, even with the tens of thousands of people that we employ to try and maintain safety and integrity on our platform," Clegg told CNN, "we're never going to be absolutely on top of this 100% of the time."

He said that's because of the "instantaneous and spontaneous form of communication" on Facebook, adding, "I think we do more than any reasonable person can expect to."

By choosing to reveal herself on "60 Minutes," Haugen selected television's most popular news program, on an evening its viewership is likely to be inflated because, in many parts of the country, it directly followed an NFL matchup between Green Bay and Pittsburgh.

Haugen, 37, is from Iowa and has a degree in computer engineering and a Master's degree in business from Harvard University ─ the same school that Facebook founder and leader Mark Zuckerberg attended.

Haugen, has filed at least eight complaints with US securities regulators alleging Facebook has violated the law by withholding information about the risks posed by its social network, according to "60 Minutes." Facebook in turn could take legal action against her if it asserts she stole confidential information from the company.

"No one at Facebook is malevolent," Haugen said during the interview. "But the incentives are misaligned, right? Like, Facebook makes more money when you consume more content. People enjoy engaging with things that elicit an emotional reaction. And the more anger that they get exposed to, the more they interact and the more they consume."

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During his Senate confirmation hearing, Defense Secretary General Lloyd Austin gave an ominous description of how he viewed the Pentagon's mission. He began his statement blandly enough.

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"The job of the Defense Department is to keep America safe from our enemies," he said.

He immediately added however, "But we can't do that if some of those enemies live within our ranks."

Upon entering the Pentagon a week later, Austin issued a 60-day stand-down order to all units in the US Armed Forces to enable commanders to deal with "the enemies within our ranks."

Those were the days of hysteria that followed the so-called "insurrection" or "occupation" of the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump on Jan. 6. The protesters were castigated as "domestic terrorists" who pose an "existential threat" to America as a constitutional republic. Thousands of National Guard troops were mobilized to protect the Capitol. And America's "People's House" took on the appearance of a military base or a prison as barbed wire fencing went up to protect it from the people.

The protesters who entered Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 were hunted down and arrested by federal authorities. Most of those arrested remain incarcerated to this day despite the fact that they haven't been tried, many haven't been indicted, none are accused of serious violent crimes and most have no criminal record.

The only person who died a violent death on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 was a protester. Air Force veteran Ashli Babbit was shot to death by an undercover Capitol Police officer. The officer's identity has never been revealed. The investigation of his actions was closed without any disciplinary or legal action against him.

Although all of these facts lend to the sense that the rantings about an "insurrection" were entirely wrong, Austin and his generals insist that the events of Jan. 6 were every bit as terrible and dangerous as they were touted to have been by the media and Nancy Pelosi.

Although no evidence has been presented indicating the protesters were at the Capitol to advance a white supremacist agenda, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley intimated in Congressional testimony that the Capitol Hill protest was informed by white supremacy.

Austin, Milley and their colleagues are using the misrepresented events of that day as an ongoing justification of their efforts to purge the US military of the "enemies within the ranks."

A key component of the purge is indoctrination. Officers and enlisted soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines are now compelled to study and internalize progressive texts and other materials that are aligned with Critical Race Theory. As army veteran Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.), defined the term in an article in National Review, "Critical race theory repudiates the principle of equality under the law that is articulated in the Declaration of Independence and that has motivated civil-rights reformers for generations. It claims that this American ideal is a sham used by the white majority to oppress racial minorities, and consequently that America is racist to its core. The theory concludes that the only way to end perceived discrimination against racial minorities is to systematically discriminate on their behalf."

Amidst the public outcry following the Joint Chiefs' decision to compel servicemen and women to undergo CRT training, Cotton and Rep. Dan Crenshaw set up a "whistleblower hotline," for service members who feel assaulted by the indoctrination.

In a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee last month, Cotton presented some of their findings to Austin. The hundreds of complaints the two lawmakers and veterans have received read like testimony from Stalin's purges or Mao's Cultural Revolution.

Required "anti-extremism" training includes segregating soldiers and officers by their skin colors and genders. White men are required to apologize for their physical attributes to those of different races and genders. Senior officers instruct their soldiers that "the US Army is a racist institution."

Soldiers are taught that police forces are systemically racist and violently inclined against minorities. They are taught that whites enjoy "privilege" by dint of their pigmentation and as a consequence, they must take a back seat to non-whites and willingly accept discrimination against them in the interests of "equity."

The indoctrination isn't limited to training sessions. It extends as well to reading lists for service members. Admiral Michael Gilday, the Chief of Naval Operations, distributed a reading list to all naval personnel that includes books calling for the eradication of capitalism and the prohibition of interracial adoption, among other things. The books on Gilday's list castigate the United States as inherently and irredeemably racist and evil. Required reading lists for or cadets at military academies include similar texts.

Cotton told Austin that as a result of the widescale political indoctrination, "We're hearing reports of plummeting morale, growing mistrust between the races and the sexes where none existed just six months ago, and unexpected separations and retirements based on these trainings alone."

Unfortunately, nothing happens in a vacuum. While the Joint Chiefs wage their war against their political enemies within their ranks, America's actual enemies are becoming increasingly aggressive, and emboldened.

This week a Chinese government-controlled magazine published a three-stage plan for invading and conquering Taiwan. This was the second war plan for invading Taiwan published by a Chinese government publication in the past year. Even though US power in the Pacific is predicated in large part on America's commitment to an independent Taiwan, the Pentagon has no clear strategy for defending the island democracy. It also lacks a strategy for enabling Taiwan to defend itself.

America's allies in Asia are increasingly open in expressing their concern about America's lassitude. In a stunning address before the Hudson Institute last month, Japan's Deputy Defense Minister Yasuhide Nakayama warned his audience that the hour is late and that the US must work with Japan to develop a strategy to defend Taiwan. He concluded his remarks by half begging, "Wake up. We must wake up."

Precisely what is it that the US needs to wake up to notice? Among other things, the Chinese navy. Earlier this week, Democrat Congresswoman Elaine Luria, a retired naval commander noted in the Wall Street Journal that whereas in 2010, the US Navy had more ships that China, today, the Chinese navy is larger than the US Navy. Rather than bridge and surpass the divide, the navy continues to retire ships far faster than it procures them. Luria warned that there is no correlation between the Pentagon's procurement plans for the Air Force and Navy and their strategic mission of defending the US from China.

Luria criticized Milley's efforts to downplay the seriousness of China's offensive plans in relation to Taiwan noting that Adm. John Aquilino, the Pacific combatant commander views the situation with much greater urgency than Milley.

Last month Milley told Congress, "I think the probability [of a Chinese assault on Taiwan] is probably low, in the immediate, near-term future."

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Aquilino in contrast said China could be prepared to attack Taiwan in the next six years. "We've seen things that I don't think we expected, and that's why I continue to talk about a sense of urgency," he said.

China is not the only US enemy the Pentagon is not taking seriously. This week, Austin and Milley withdrew all US forces form Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Bagram has been the most important US base throughout the long US war in that country. While secrecy may have been called for to protect the retreating troops, the Americans didn't inform their Afghan counterparts of their plans. The Afghan commander had no opportunity to organize to take control of the base – and the massive amount of military equipment the Americans left behind. As a result, as soon as word got out that the US forces had abandoned the post, mobs of looters descended on Bagram and stole everything in sight.

From a strategic standpoint, the US withdrawal from Bagram left Afghan forces without support, without the requisite training or capacity to defend either the base or themselves. Unsurprisingly the Taliban took the move as a sign that they have won. And they wasted no time running to the real boss in Afghanistan for instructions.

After word broke of the US withdrawal from Bagram, Taliban leaders flew to Tehran to meet with the commanders of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The US's deterrent posture in the Middle East has sunk to new lows since Joe Biden entered office. In response to attacks on US forces in Iraq by Iranian-controlled militias, Biden ordered airstrikes along the Iraqi-Syrian border on two supply bases that serve the militias. As Dalia al-Aqidi noted in Arab News, the faraway bases have little impact on the militias' operational readiness or capabilities. Bombing them was little different from bombing empty buildings.

Iran and its proxies wasted no time demonstrating that the US airstrike left them undaunted This week has seen a cascade of attacks against US forces, allies and installations in Iraq and Syria. Missile and drone strikes on US forces in Erbil were followed by similar attacks against the US Embassy in Baghdad. On Tuesday, US forces guarding the oil fields in northeastern Syria and US forces in Basra were attacked on Wednesday and Thursday. The suspected perpetrator of the bombing of the tanker in the port of Dubai that rocked the city Wednesday evening is Iran's Yemeni Houthi proxy.

All this points to the conclusion that Iran is certain that the US will not lift a finger to defend itself fearing that doing so will jeopardize its efforts to realign its policies towards Iran.

The day after he ordered the bombing of the militia bases along the Iraqi-Syrian border, Biden met with Israel's outgoing President Reuven Rivlin for a farewell visit. In their joint Oval Office appearance, Biden read all of his talking points from cue cards he held in his hand, including the greeting, "I want to thank the President for being here."

Biden also read, "Iran will never get a nuclear weapon on my watch."

A few days after Rivlin's visit, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken withdrew economic sanctions the Trump administration placed on three Iranian nationals involved in the regime's ballistic missile program. The administration also acknowledged to reporters that it is considering removing the sanctions the Trump administration placed on Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei following the Iranian downing of a US drone in the Persian Gulf.

As for Israel, whereas a couple weeks ago, Blinken was telling Foreign Minister Yair Lapid that the administration would account for Israeli concerns about the nuclear deal in its nuclear talks with the Iranians, on Wednesday Haaretz reported that a senior US official admitted Israel has no influence on US negotiating positions in relation to Iran and its nuclear program.

The Bennett-Lapid government's assumption that it can trust the US to defend Israel's strategic interests in relation to Iran and other regional issues is the anchor of its strategic calculations. Given the Pentagon's current priorities and its strategic disarray in the region, the government would be well advised to revisit that assumption.

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Former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley slammed former President Donald Trump for his conduct after the 2020 presidential elections.

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"We need to acknowledge he let us down," Haley told Politico in an interview published Friday.

"He went down a path he shouldn't have, and we shouldn't have followed him, and we shouldn't have listened to him. And we can't let that ever happen again," she said, referring to the deadly riot at the US Capitol on Jan. 6.

While Trump has managed to obtain support within the Republican Party, to the point where scores of ex-Republicans reportedly weigh forming an alternative center-right party, the former South Carolina governor asserted that Trump had no future in the GOP.

"He's not going to run for federal office again. I don't think he's going to be in the picture," Haley stressed.

Haley, a popular figure within Republican quarters, and who is considered a strong candidate for the 2024 presidential race, has voiced a slightly different tune on Jan. 25 when speaking to Fox News, saying the former president should have "absolutely not" been impeached.

Trump, who has repeatedly claimed election fraud during the 2020 November elections, was facing an unprecedented second impeachment trial – despite ending his term at the White House – for allegedly "inciting insurrection" that led to the Capitol Hill events.

This article was first published by i24NEWS.

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As the 76th anniversary on Wednesday of the liberation of Auschwitz draws closer, Bill Harvey, who survived the concentration camp, said he was shocked by displays of anti-Semitism during the US Capitol riot.

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Some of the supporters of former President Donald Trump who broke into and ransacked the seat of Congress on Jan. 6 wore clothes bearing anti-Semitic messages, or displayed Nazi symbols.

"I never thought I was going to live in this country and witness something like that," Harvey, 96, said, calling it "very, very sad."

Harvey, interviewed by Zoom from his Los Angeles home on Monday, expressed concern that the lessons that should have been learned from World War II's Nazi Holocaust are fading.

The Nazis and their allies murdered around 6 million Jews, as well as others, in German-occupied Europe.

At Auschwitz alone, more than a million people, the vast majority Jews, were killed, mostly in gas chambers. The camp was liberated by Soviet troops on Jan. 27, 1945.

Harvey said he lost 37 members of his family at Auschwitz, including his mother and his father.

"It's unbelievable how much hatred we experience right now, so I'm very sad and disappointed," he added.

He said the attack on the Capitol in Washington reminded him of the misinformation and propaganda that accompanied the rise of the Nazis in Germany before the war.

The images also shocked people like Michele Gold, who runs the Holocaust Museum L.A. and whose mother was a Holocaust survivor.

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"When we reflect back on Jan. 6th ... it was horrific," Gold said in an interview on Monday.

"It wasn't the tipping point, but I think it was a very strong reminder of what can happen if education and memory and history goes unchecked."

Gold took particular notice of a sweatshirt saying "Camp Auschwitz" on the front and "staff" on the back, worn by one rioter.

After the war, Harvey said, he never expected to see a swastika again.

"None of those symbols truly portray what we went through every single day," added Harvey, who has spent recent years lecturing at high schools, prisons and museums about his wartime experiences.

"We never want the history of the Holocaust to be a footnote in the history books," said Gold. "We need to talk about the Holocaust, we need to teach about the Holocaust because it is the most effective way to combat anti-Semitism and racism in all its forms ... and it's never been as important as it is today."

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US President Joe Biden and the small crowd assembled on the Washington Mall for his inauguration Wednesday celebrated the event as "democracy's day." But in truth, the state of democracy in America today is nothing to celebrate.

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The talking heads on TV, Democrats and a smattering of anti-Trump Republicans insist that the fault for all of America's political woes lies with former president Donald Trump and the senators and congressmen who joined him in questioning the results of the election in several swing states. For refusing to set aside evidence of widespread election fraud, they stand accused of inciting an insurrection and so endangering the foundations of American democracy. Trump was impeached for his statements at the Jan. 6 rally. And Democrat lawmakers are calling for Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to be expelled from the Senate for questioning the electoral college votes from states with widespread allegations of election fraud.

The accusers forget conveniently that Democrat leaders from Nancy Pelosi to Hillary Clinton have insisted since November 2016 that Trump's electoral victory was "illegitimate" and the job of good Americans was to "resist" his "regime."

They forget as well that Democrat lawmakers objected to the certification of the electoral college ballots in 2016. And when their objections failed to overturn the election results, a protest broke out in the visitors' gallery of the Capitol. Several protesters were arrested.

No one in the media or in the coastal elite ever accused Pelosi and Clinton of inciting an insurrection even as hundreds of thousands of protesters filled the streets demanding that Trump be overthrown.

Republicans still unafraid of being called domestic terrorists and insurrectionists insist that if the violent protesters in the Capitol on Jan. 6 were insurrectionists, their "insurrection" was but a pale glimmer of the insurrection mounted in the streets of America's cities throughout the spring and summer, with the enthusiastic support and financial backing of Democrat leaders and their corporate sponsors. 700 police officers were injured, dozens of citizens were killed, tens of thousands of businesses were destroyed and vandalized during the Antifa and BlackLivesMatter riots. Property damage and losses were assessed at $2 billion. Government buildings were besieged, burned to the ground and vandalized.

The truth is that both Democrats and Republicans are wrong. Politicians from all sides and at all levels of government have long questioned election results. And no matter how strident their rejection of the results may have been, their actions never undermined America's democratic foundations.

Likewise, America has been the site of mass protests since before the Revolution. The right to protest is considered so sacred that it is protected in the First Amendment of the Constitution. There are laws governing where the line between protests and lawbreaking lies. And policing protests is as American as the protests themselves. Protests do not threaten American democracy.

The great danger to American democracy is not to be found in the streets. It is certainly not to be found in politicians debating how votes were counted and collected.

The grave danger to American democracy emanates from the unprecedented fusion between the Democratic Party and corporate America. Political philosopher Angelo Codevilla referred to this unity of forces as a ruling "oligarchy" that is replacing the American Republic.

The emerging "oligarchy" is currently enacting something that can rightly be dubbed, "The Great Purge."

The Great Purge, an event without precedent in American history, isn't about one side seizing the levers of power for itself. It is about one side denying the other side the right to even vie for power.

The purpose of The Great Purge is not to replace Trump loyalists with Biden loyalists in positions of power in government. Such replacement happens as a matter of course every time a new administration comes into office. The purpose of the Great Purge is to "cancel" the Republican Party and its voters as a legitimate political force and so transform the United States into something approaching a one-party system. To achieve this goal, the Democrats in government and their partners in the corporate and big tech media are using their power to repress, silence, ruin and criminalize tens of millions of private citizens for the "crime" of supporting Trump and the Republican Party.

The Big Tech giants' coordinated cancellation of all of Trump's social media accounts almost simultaneously was the opening gambit. It was rapidly followed by Congress's light speed impeachment of Trump for his alleged role in fomenting the violent protest at the Capitol. Like the social media ban, the impeachment flew through with no debate, no due process, no evidence through the good offices of Democrat lawmakers and their Republican allies who wish to make an example out of Trump. There is every reason to believe that in the coming months and years, the members of the ruling class will continue to abuse their power to destroy Trump whether by bankrupting him or prosecuting him. They must continue to pursue him. For if he perseveres, then they will have failed.

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At some point in the near future, Trump will face a Senate trial. As he left the White House on Wednesday morning, Trump had yet to secure legal counsel for the trial. The reason he has no lawyers doesn't owe to sudden shortage of good defense attorneys in Washington. It owes to fear of the purge. Qualified lawyers are afraid to represent him.

And they should be.

Cleta Mitchell has long been a fixture in Washington legal circles. A senior partner at Foley and Lardner law firm, Mitchell was a member of Trump's legal team in his electoral challenges in Georgia. When word got out that she was representing him, Democrat operatives from the Lincoln Project began threatening her firm with a client walkout.

The day after the Lincoln Project began threatening the firm's business, Mitchell announced her resignation. Within an hour of her announcement, all mention of Mitchell was scrubbed from the firm's website. One of Washington's top attorneys had been "cancelled."

Weeks before, the Lincoln Project did the same thing to two other law firms whose partners were representing Trump's legal challenges to the Pennsylvania election results. The attorneys saved themselves from immediate cancellation by immediately cancelling their representation of the President of the United States.

Since January 6, petitions of lawyers and law students demanding that Senators Cruz and Hawley be disbarred for lawfully challenging the electoral college votes of disputed states have garnered thousands of signatures. Harvard students are demanding the university withdraw the degrees of Trump advisors and political allies.

Regular Americans who participated in the protests – outside and inside the Capitol – are also being purged. Doctors, lawyers, state lawmakers, policemen and others whose only "crime" was being present have lost their jobs after being "outed."

Therese Duke, a nurse's assistant from Massachusetts was one of those "purged." Duke participated in a protest on Jan. 5 – the night before the Capitol siege -- at Freedom Plaza in Washington. She was videoed as she wept, with blood flowing down her face after being punched by a policewoman. Duke's daughter, a member of the "woke" revolution, outed her mother in a leering post on Twitter. The next day, Duke was fired from her job at University of Massachusetts Memorial Health Care. She told a local newspaper that she doesn't believe she will be able to get another job.

As bad as things are becoming in the private sector, the smoke signals being sent out from Washington are even more alarming. Since Jan. 6, Democrat lawmakers have been preparing legislation that would apply counter-terror laws passed to fight foreign terror groups abroad to investigating and fighting Americans suspected of membership in "domestic terror groups." Former military, law enforcement and intelligence leaders are pushing for such a move. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who commanded US forces in Afghanistan spent the past year campaigning against Trump.

Last week McChrystal told Yahoo News, "I see a similar dynamic in the evolution of al-Qaida in Iraq, where a whole generation of angry Arab youth with very poor prospects followed a powerful leader who promised to take them back in time to a better place, and he led them to embrace an ideology that justified their violence. This is now happening in America."

Former CIA director John Brennan then detailed who the enemy is. Aside from Trump and "lawmakers," Brennan said the new enemy is comprised of "an unholy alliance of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists and even libertarians."

Former FBI director James Comey made the goal of the purge explicit. "The Republican Party needs to be burned down or changed," he told The Guardian.

He figures people would be happy to go along with that.

"Who would want to be part of an organization that at its core is built on lies and racism and know-nothingism? It's just not a healthy political organization."

Unfortunately for Israelis, this isn't just America's problem. Thanks to New Hope Party Chairman Gideon Sa'ar, Israel is now importing some of the instigators of the purge. Sa'ar has reportedly hired four founders of the Lincoln Project to run his campaign against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud ahead of the March elections.

The Lincoln Project is run by former Republicans who have devoted the last four years of their lives to helping Democrats by demonizing Trump, Republicans and Republican voters. Their efforts met with negligible success in the 2020 elections. Trump increased his vote total by 11 million over 2016.

Trump didn't lose because Republicans stopped supporting him. He lost because the Democrats massively increased their voter base. The Lincoln Project's performance was so dismal that Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demanded that it give its outstanding funds – raised from Democrat donors – to Democrat organs that had actually won the election.

But since its election failure, the Lincoln Project as come into its own. When Ocasio-Cortez said Democrats should make a database of Trump administration officials to prepare a blacklist, she was pilloried as a totalitarian. But when the "former Republicans" from the Lincoln Project said they were compiling such a list, it went over without protest. And ever since, the Lincoln Project has led the way in blacklisting and cancelling everyone from Trump's attorneys to hotels and vacation websites that served Trump supporters who came to Washington on Jan. 6. It is now calling for the firing of everyone from a county election board chairwoman in Georgia to Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

For four years, Israelis have gasped at the similarities between the Israeli left's unrelenting efforts to destroy Prime Minister Netanyahu, in partnership with the media and the legal fraternity, and the efforts of their American counterparts to destroy Donald Trump.

Sa'ar decision to integrate the instigators of America's great purge – a purge that is already endangering the democratic order of the most powerful democracy on earth – into Israel's political bloodstream bodes ill for Israel's future. And it most certainly tells us something alarming about the direction Sa'ar is interested in taking the country, if his campaign to become the next prime minister succeeds.

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Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Friday that the storming of the US Capitol by supporters of US President Donald Trump on Jan. 6 had revealed the "true identity" of the American democracy.

In a televised speech aired on multiple channels, including Lebanon's Palestine Today, Nasrallah said Americans have now witnessed at home a small sample of what Trump has been doing from Yemen to Venezuela.

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"We have been warning for a long time against the policies of this murderer. What the Americans and the world have witnessed is a small sample of what Trump has been perpetrating for four years in many countries – in Yemen, in Iraq and in Syria, as well as his siege on Iran, Venezuela and other countries, in addition to his support for the Zionist crimes against the Palestinian people," he added.

The Hezbollah also accused the world of "remaining silent" in the face of the assassination by the United States of head of Iran's elite Quds Force Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani and Jamal Ja'far Muhammad Ali al-Ibrahim, the commander of the Al-Hashd Al-Sha'abi militia, in Iraq on Jan. 3, 2020, which Nasrallah called a "crime."

"Today, the truth about his criminality has been revealed to his people. Trump is a disastrous sample of American political and military arrogance, which for a long while has been casting its hegemony over nations, plundering their resources and undermining their sovereignty.

"What has happened in recent days is an example. … See how futile and disastrous American democracy is. It lacks the necessary checks and this is how people like Trump get to power. How can elections give rise to a person so arrogant, criminal, crazy, and stupid, and let him run not only America, but the whole world, and control the fate of the world? This exposes the truth about American democracy, which they have tried to spread all over the world."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org

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"This is a sad day for America, regardless of how we got there … The Chinese are looking at this with glee and that's a tragedy," Florida's Republican Senator Marco Rubio said on Wednesday in the wake of the riots on Capitol Hill.

"We look like a third-world country. This cannot happen."

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Even though Rubio was supportive of the efforts to scrutinize the voting procedures to find out if the November 2020 election produced fraudulent results, the fact that throngs of protesters stormed Congress as if it were the Bastille was just too much.

"We can't do it this way. We can't have half of America that is happy and half of it unhappy; the America that we know marches in unison," he said.

The year 2020 was tough, but now 2021 is off to a terrible start. I visited the US just two months ago to cover the election, held under the difficult conditions set by the pandemic and after a campaign like no other. I have witnessed and covered many things in life but on Wednesday, as I was walking in Washington, I could not believe that I was actually in the beating heart of the world's most powerful democracy, the leader of the free world. I could believe the America we have come to admire so much had devolved to this state of affairs.

The events on Wednesday actually got off to a good start. I arrived just before the storm, when a peaceful rally began outside the White House. It was a celebration of democracy, demanding the elections get proper scrutiny. Then the protesters began marching toward Capitol Hill. I saw families, parents and children. They had come to see their president, who addressed them from the rally's podium. They were convinced that their vote was stolen. But that did not stop the energy from infusing the event and the loud cheering of Trump fans.

And then, out of nowhere, things went haywire. Trump supporters stormed the barricades and even damaged the tribunes set up for the upcoming inauguration. Some breached the perimeter and entered the actual legislative chambers. It was true pandemonium.

"The door was knocked down, so I just entered," a woman told me. She came with her friend from Florida. "We covered the statues with Trump 2020 flags and then we were asked to vacate the premises, and we left." But some of her friends refused to follow this order.

Not a uniter-in-chief

This was a bad day for Republicans, but in all the chaos one should not lose sight of the hypocritical conduct of CNN and other networks that defended the rioters in the George Floyd protests that swept the country and refused to condemn those who were trying to damage federal buildings in Portland. CNN has also forgotten the major protests that erupted on the very day of Trump inauguration in 2017, and Hillary Clinton's insistence that Trump is not a legitimate president.

But in our world, there are some instances that just look bad, no matter what you do. This was the case with Trump this time. He enthused the crowd to the point that could have triggered a chain of chaotic events. It's hard to believe that this was his direct fault, but a president is supposed to be a uniter, and Trump has refused to embrace that idea all through his term. As far as he is concerned, his goal is to cater to his base and nothing more, but that doesn't mean he is responsible for its conduct. The last time the building was breached in such a manner was in 1812, when the UK attacked the American capital. The images this week were truly historic. Daniel, who arrived in DC from North Carolina this week, told me just outside my hotel during the curfew on Wednesday that "today America saw that the people cannot be defrauded. We entered the Holy of Holies of American democracy. Why can the Left carry out destruction, but we can't do the same?"

John, from Ohio, was less convinced. He told me the protesters made the wrong call by storming the Capitol. He told me that the events make it impossible for Trump to launch another bid for president in four years. As Rubio said, these were third-world country images.

"The people here don't want to see the election being stolen by socialists and the fake media," Trump said during his rally, just before the storm. Later, when he realized that things were truly out of control, he turned to his supporters on Twitter and implored on them to "go home" and "remain peaceful by showing respect for the men and women in blue."

Trump may have called for calm, but for Twitter that was not enough and it suspended his account for 12 hours, citing his alleged efforts to overturn the elections.

The Democrats' sweep

Ironically, the pace of events made the political drama that had unfolded a day earlier seem like ancient history: The Democrats won Georgia's two Senate seats in the special runoff. For the first time since 2014 they are now (starting Jan. 20) going to be in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. The donkeys have conquered the capital, albeit with a razor-thin majority.

Incumbent Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who lost one of the Georgia runoff races, conceded on Thursday that now that the Electoral College's vote has been certified by Congress, the country must unite behind Joe Biden. Even Trump's ally Sean Hannity from Fox News went out of his way to condemn the violence and called for the arrest and prosecution of all the rioters.

It was a sad fact that during a day celebrating one of the oldest democratic traditions in America – the certification of an election – the National Guard had to be called up to protect the people's legislative chamber and one of the symbols of the capital from an angry mob.

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But for all the drama on Wednesday, the American people, already exhausted by the pandemic and economic recession, are more focused on vaccinations and want to know why they are not being distributed fast enough. The Right, which was also shocked by events, apportions blame on the media for ignoring the Left's radical groups, such as Antifa. It wants to know why the security forces and the Left were not as determined to prevent the riots during the George Floyd protests six months ago. But above all, Americans want to go back to normalcy.

The Democrats must also do some soul-searching. When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is seen on television shredding the president's speech right after he delivers the State of the Union Address, this sends a message that is not lost on Trump's base. Of course, this does make violence justifiable, but it creates unnecessary antagonism. That said, in light of Thursday's events, there was widespread agreement on both sides of the political divide that it was time for Trump to abandon his efforts to overturn the election and let Biden prepare for taking office. And late Thursday, Trump did just that by addressing the nation and officially conceding the election. A few hours earlier he even vowed to engage in an "orderly" transition.

One of the people I met outside the Capitol was from Texas. As you would expect from someone who grew up in the Lone Star State, the violence he saw barely made had an impact on him. He told me I should look at the grand scheme of things.

"It's a good day because I think we will see some justice hopefully be done, it's going to be sad if we don't see justice. So we're really at a critical turning point in American history," he said.

I asked him whether he approved of the riots, to which he replied, "I don't like it that they went in that far. I think that's kind of sad. I think that is always the case when you get a group of people. There are a few idiots, but for the most part, just coming out around the Capitol building there are not people destroying the Capitol."

Finally, I asked him if Biden was his President-elect. His response could not be more forceful: "Oh hell no. Never."

I saw another Texan, Brad Comes. He was waving his state's flag and donning a cowboy hat. He told me that "today was a peaceful show of numbers and force." As far as he was concerned, the events spiraled out control but this should not come as a surprise. "These are people who are dedicated enough to drive all the way across the country to show up on the same spot on the same day for their president. And anyone who understands statistics knows there is no way he lost this election. If they are just going to steal our vote and take our money then we are just tax slaves."

When I asked him if it was a mistake to ransack the place, he said: "God knows on that one. It's his world, I just do my little part in it. If they had listened to peaceful protests we wouldn't have to resort to such things. Black Lives Matter get their way because they violence in destruction. We have been watching it for a year. What were we supposed to do? Allow them to take over our country because we are not willing to stand up for ourselves?"

When I asked him who his president was going to be on Jan. 20, his response was immediate. "It's Donald J. Trump," he said.

Back to Georgia. The two runoff elections on Tuesday produced historic results, even though they were all but forgotten after the hectic events that unfolded in Washington a day later. The Democrats don't usually win in that southern conservative state. In fact, Republicans had won every Senate race there since 2000. They have so far won every election in the state for governor since 1998 and for attorney general since 2006. But over the past two decades, the Left has gradually managed to paint the red state in blue, until a critical mass was reached in November, when Georgians chose Biden over Trump. Then, on Tuesday, they decided to send two Democrats to serve as their senators in Washington. This is nothing short of a political earthquake, but it was reduced to a footnote in a news cycle dominated by violence.

Georgians who were traveling to Washington could be easily spotted at Atlanta's airport this week by their Trump 2020 flags and masks. Quite a few of them were on my flight to Washington, just hours after the results in the two runoffs were announced. They could not be more depressed and shocked, feeling that more salt had been placed on the wounds of the conservative camp in America, while the Democrats were on cloud nine.

In the two months between the first round in November and the runoffs on Tuesday, the Democrats worked hard to register more voters, while the Republicans were too busy challenging the Electoral College vote, with the encouragement of Trump (who had every right to believe that he had been denied a fair election, considering that he increased his electoral showing compared to 2016 by some 15 million votes). But the Democrats wasted no time and won because of former Democratic candidate for Governor Stacey Abrams, who worked tirelessly to get more African American voters involved. Democrats are now optimistic that more states will follow Georgia's path and become blue or at the very least purple, including Texas.

Media outlets in the US have described the two runoffs as the most important Senate races in history. Some $500 million were spent on ads over the past two months, and the GOP could not be more disappointed, especially because they were so close to winning in November. Republican candidate (and then still incumbent senator) David Perdue almost crossed the 50% threshold in the first round against 33-year-old Jewish candidate Jon Ossoff. Had Perdue won, the Republicans would have guaranteed a continued hold on the Senate for the next two years, but since neither he nor the other Republican candidate, Loeffler, could win an outright majority of the vote, a runoff was declared in both seats, ending on Tuesday with stunning losses. Perdue lost to Ossoff, and Loeffler lost to Democratic pastor Raphael Warnock, who leads Dr. Martin Luther King's church. But unlike Dr. King, he is no Israel ally.

For Georgians, there is finally some rest, after being bombarded with ads over the past two months. It appears that they were not too keen on having everyone make them the focus of attention. Even in the Trump rally I attended just north of Atlanta just before the vote, it was clear that they were eager to put this election behind them, unlike the voters I saw in rallies in Pennsylvania and Arizona during the November presidential race.

"He was an amazing president, and had he been more careful in his rhetoric and been less reluctant to wear masks, he would have been elected for another four years in the White House and we would have also held on to the Senate," Jeff, a businessman from Atlanta, told me.

Murphy, who lives in neighboring Alabama told me that he has "only one America, and I won't let the Democrats ruin it for me." He was also on the plane to Washington, and he brought a flag along with him. "They are ashamed of being Americans, they are ashamed of our history and our heritage; but proud people like me celebrate America. I am truly concerned about the fate of my flag." This reminded me of an African American man I met in Atlanta, who explained to me that "With the Republicans, life is better in America."

But for all the drama in Washington and in Georgia, the real focus for most Americans is the pandemic. We may no longer be in 2020, but the virus is spreading fast, creating scary headlines in practically every front page. The vaccination drive, despite being launched in December, is stalling. This time, for a change, the Trump administration is not being blamed. It appears that the local officials and drug companies are moving too slow to make sure the vaccines reach as many arms as possible.

US Vice President Mike Pence was probably the most important political figure this week. He chose to follow his conscience by not playing along with the effort to overturn the election during the crucial joint meeting of Congress, despite presiding over the event. He reportedly told Trump the constitution makes his role in the certification of the vote mostly ceremonial and thus he had no choice but certify his loss.

Some would probably say this has more to do with Pence's possible 2024 presidential bid and that any effort to sabotage the certification process would have killed his prospects. As for Trump, it is unclear whether the events of this week adversely affect his apparent wish to launch another run in 2024. Looking back, this week could be seen as the first event of his future campaign.

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