Purge on the Potomac

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by Roberts, David Thomas;


  “In a case of national security, sir, I don’t think you will need to get the standard warrants. I can get the FISA court to approve any level of surveillance needed. I’ll get the FBI director on this today,” Herron stated.

  “Yes, that’s right. This is definitely a case of national security. Of course. Do it. I’ll give Justice a heads-up to provide you whatever cooperation you need,” ordered Weingold.

  “As I’m sure you’re aware, sir, FISA court documents are sealed. There’s no danger of a leak on this,” Herron said.

  “Look, before any of you are squeamish for one second about what we are doing here, this is a case of national security. We are operating under the premise that there are domestic terrorists that have infiltrated and control this ridiculous Texas independence movement that lead to the crisis resulting in the deaths of federal agents. These agents were law-abiding, career agents. Good men, every last one of them,” Weingold claimed with surprising emotion for a normally stoic personality. “Right now, this president has manufactured a truce with their state government. If that referendum gets back on the legislative docket, this dust-up will start all over again. If it gets to a vote, we are to make sure it’s defeated soundly, never to be brought up again.”

  “Sir, what if the referendum passes?” asked Herron.

  “This president will do what Lincoln did when the South seceded. She will squash it with overwhelming force and punish them for years to come,” said a resolute Weingold, whose face suddenly became red. “You must understand the end game here, folks. It is to avoid bloodshed, keep Texas in check, and continue this president’s popularity so her agenda can be achieved. This meeting is over. Thank you for coming in.”

  Chapter 31

  “To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

  - Thomas Jefferson

  3rd US President, Delegate to Continental Congress,

  Author of The Declaration of Independence, Founding Father

  Six state legislators sat in a conference room next to Governor Brahman’s office in Austin, patiently awaiting a meeting they requested the day before. The governor knew most of them well, as some of the legislators had been in office for twenty-plus years.

  “Gentlemen, Senator Perez has agreed to join us by conference call. Let me patch him through.” The governor reached across the conference table and pressed a button on the speaker phone.

  “Good morning, gentlemen. Glad to be with you this morning,” Senator Perez answered.

  “Good morning, Senator,” the governor replied, then immediately went into short introductions of each legislator in attendance.

  “Senator Perez and Governor Brahman, every one of us has been harassed by the Internal Revenue Service in the last three months, some worse than others. We have had levies assessed without any audits or notices, and a few of us have had bank accounts frozen, including some of our businesses,” said Harry Del Conte, a sixty-one-year-old veteran Republican legislator from Abilene.

  “In fact, Governor, my business accounts were frozen, causing the employees’ paychecks to bounce. Try explaining that to the employees whose own checks bounced when they paid their bills!” stated a legislator from Midland.

  “Gentlemen, I’m right there with you. I have had the same problem, along with Pops Younger, the lieutenant governor, and other members of my staff,” announced Brahman.

  “As have I,” echoed Senator Perez.

  “What in the hell is going on? How can this be happening in America?” asked one legislator.

  “There appears to be a common theme here. Either you were involved in the crisis or supported the referendum,” said Perez.

  “Well, we’re not sure about that, Senator. Two of us in here did not vote for the referendum,” stated a legislator from Galveston, referring to himself and another legislator from San Antonio.

  “But you both indicated you would reconsider a second referendum?” asked the governor.

  “Well, of course we would. An armed incursion by federal troops to stop a free election on a non-binding referendum resolution is overreach at its worst. It definitely changed our constituents’ opinions on this whole matter, which means it changed ours,” said the Galveston legislator.

  “There you go,” Senator Perez replied.

  “So are you saying the federal government is targeting us for our position on the crisis, or for our position on a future referendum?” asked the Galveston legislator.

  “Yes,” stated Perez bluntly.

  “So they are either punishing us, or trying to influence the next vote?”

  “Bingo. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put the pieces together. We know the carry-overs in the Bartlett administration are essentially the same folks we dealt with in manager positions in the Johnson administration. The Deep State is alive and well,” the senator admitted. “I have taken this information to the Senate Oversight Committee and to the Senate Judiciary Committee. I’ve also tried to arrange a meeting with the Inspector General’s office, but so far to no avail.”

  “Senator, what are the two committees’ actions on your information”?” asked Governor Brahman.

  “Well, as you all are well aware, the Senate majority leader and I are not on each other’s Christmas card list!” Perez chuckled. “He is on a mission to make me completely ineffective in any committee assignments, and the ranking members who do listen to me admit that taking any action on bills or investigations I ask them to take up get quashed due to reprisals on their political careers from McCray.”

  “What about Simpson? What can he do?” asked another legislator, referring to the senior senator from Texas.

  “He’s not a friend of this office, nor of Texas, that’s for sure,” the governor stated.

  “We’ve called his office repeatedly but never hear back from him. From what we understand, he isn’t talking to any of us who supported the referendum,” revealed Del Conte. “Washington changed him. He’s not the same guy. This is really a shame, especially since he sits on Oversight.”

  “Can we use the press?” asked another legislator.

  “We could, but I think this needs to be a multi-layered approach,” Brahman remarked. “We need to have Senator Perez work whatever angles he can through the Inspector General’s office, but we need each of your local congressmen to assist the senator. There is strength in numbers.”

  “Governor Brahman is correct; we need your congressmen to get on board,” affirmed Perez.

  “Next, we should align our tax and legal experts so they are all on the same page. It seems like there are several common actions the IRS is taking. Have any of you met with anyone from the IRS yet, or have your legal and tax folks been working through this?” asked the governor.

  “I have,” said a legislator from East Texas. “Strangest meeting. They actually sent a revenue officer who carried a sidearm to my district office. During the course of our conversation, he asked for a list of donors, and wanted to talk about upcoming legislation. I asked why he couldn’t get the donor list through the Texas Election Commission from our quarterly election finance filings, but he said they weren’t current enough, so we produced them for him.”

  “Wow, seriously? Did he specifically ask how you would vote in a new independence referendum?” asked the governor.

  “Actually, he did. I told him I would have to see the legislation before I could comment, but he continued to press. I would say only a quarter of the meeting dealt with my finances. It was strange as hell.”

  “Did he offer any deal or agree to make the audit or levies go away?” asked Perez.

  “No, but he did say we could revisit it after our next legislative session, which we all know is months away. Instead, he indicated the governor was going to likely call a special session, and we could continue to discuss my case after that session was over,” revealed the legislator.

  “There you go! They aren’t really trying to hi
de the fact that they’re attempting to extort us,” exclaimed Del Conte.

  “Amazing. This is banana republic kind of stuff,” said the legislator from Galveston.

  “It is. As long as we have an IRS that can punish political enemies, it will remain effective. How much time has each of you had dealing with this crap over the last few weeks?” asked Perez.

  Most agreed it had occupied almost one hundred percent of their days and led to sleepless nights and undue hardships.

  “I would advise that nobody meet them without legal representation but, if you can avoid meeting with them altogether, that would be better,” suggested Perez. “Expect your largest donors to be hit, too, and those you have personal relationships with I would call immediately. If some of these folks are influential business owners or community leaders, we’ll need their help to bring pressure to bear. I have already done this with mine. I have regulators of every kind all over my top twenty supporters.”

  The group agreed to start having weekly conference calls and include their tax and legal advisors for parts of those calls. They also agreed to bring their largest donors into the loop.

  “This is another sad day for America,” lamented the Midland legislator. “Turning the IRS loose on what the administration perceives as political enemies is beyond the pale.”

  The governor and senator said their good-byes, and Brahman reached over the table to disconnect the call. The call wouldn’t hang up, and it took him several tries before the line disconnected.

  At the same time, two analysts with the NSA who had been listening in to the conversation realized they were the reason Brahman couldn’t disconnect the call and disconnected it from their end.

  The NSA had wiretaps on Senator Perez’ and Governor Brahman’s offices, homes and cell phones, granted to them from the FISA court.

  Chapter 32

  “As long as it served his purpose, Mr. Lincoln boldly advocated the right of Secession.”

  - Belle Boyd (1844-1900)

  Actress & Confederate Spy

  Recipient of the “Southern Cross of Honor”

  Nils Ottosson strolled down the main hallway of the Hart Senate Office Building near the Capitol in Washington, D.C. with various Senate interns and CIS staff in tow.

  Ottosson, in his official capacity as the chief lobbyist for CIS, had just concluded meetings with senators from Missouri, Indiana, Minnesota and Kentucky. These four states represented CIS’ newest state customers for CIS’ election balloting system, and Ottosson was there to brief the four senators on its implementation plan. CIS now had its election balloting systems in forty-six states, with two more states likely to ink new contracts in Nevada and Montana. Texas and Oklahoma were the only two states that had not approved implementing the CIS systems.

  Two years before, President Johnson had threatened to federalize the election systems by executive order in all fifty states, primarily using the 1965 Voting Rights Act for justification. The left had used the initiatives by the GOP in dozens of states for voter ID laws to threaten the centralization of election laws and take over what had primarily been under the control of each individual state.

  President Johnson, knowing that his executive order would be challenged in the courts and likely land in the Supreme Court with its conservative majority in the hands of Chief Justice Noyner, pulled it back just before implementing it. Several bills introduced in Congress to federalize the state election systems were being championed by proponents’ racism accusations against voter ID laws, largely being implemented in traditionally red states. Some of those bills had made it out of committee. The handwriting was on the wall.

  The Texas Crisis only added to the push by the left to federalize the election balloting process. The referendum vote would likely have never materialized under federal control. The left and government officials always claimed the original referendum vote was rigged to benefit the Texas nationalist agenda. Under this new executive order, the election results were required to be certified by the Federal Election Commission. The feds maintained that the CIS balloting system was the only way to assure such certification.

  Now that the Court was firmly in the control of progressives, and with newly confirmed, Bartlett-handpicked Supreme Court Justice Sally Ferguson-Haverton as chief justice, any fear of an executive order being overturned at the Supreme Court level evaporated.

  Later in the same afternoon, the White House Press Secretary issued this press release:

  “In line with the best practices that have been identified by the Federal Election Commission, and with these latest four state governments that have signed on to use the same balloting systems as forty-two other states, President Bartlett is announcing an executive order that will bring the outlying states into alignment, thereby insuring equality, fairness and accuracy in all of our democratic elections.”

  The states of Texas and Oklahoma were quick to respond. Within two hours, the attorneys general of both states issued a joint response:

  “The attempt to federalize our states’ election apparatus and thereby control the free elections in each of our states is unconstitutional and both Texas and Oklahoma will initiate immediate lawsuits to place a temporary restraining order on this incomprehensible federal overreach.”

  With elections only months away, political analysts and legal experts fully expected this legal battle to be fast-tracked, meaning the Supreme Court could get the case before all of the lower courts chimed in with their opinions, thus likely cutting two years or more out of the process.

  If Texas and Oklahoma prevailed, it would not invalidate the individual states’ decision to contract the balloting systems with CIS, but it would keep the election process at the state level.

  A federal judge in Dallas issued a temporary restraining order in favor of Texas within four hours. The restraining order was issued to cover any elections through the November election cycle, meaning the district court in Dallas would not hear the case until after the November elections. The United States attorney general immediately issued a fast-track appeal to the Supreme Court.

  This high drama was lost on the average American citizen, more concerned about their next three-day weekend, but to conservative Constitutional scholars, states’ rights advocates, Tea Party groups, and even moderate Republicans, the prospect of federal control of all elections was a watershed moment in American history. It was definitely not what the Founders intended.

  Texas’ public referendum vote had passed during the peak of the crisis; however, the Texas Constitution required a vote by the legislature to authorize any binding referendum. When the legislature took it up formally, multiple forces converged to narrowly defeat it. Governor Brahman had promised another vote was forthcoming.

  The special election in Texas Legislative District 3 to replace State Senator Milsap was two weeks away. A firebrand Texas nationalist was leading the polling by a wide margin over six other candidates to replace Milsap in the special election. The regular session of the legislature was going to be out of session by that time, and the governor had less than forty-eight hours to bring the legislature back into special session. The Texas Legislature only meets every two years, but Texas governors can call special sessions to extend a current session if a critical vote is needed.

  News broke the next day that the U.S. attorney general had requested an emergency appeal of the restraining order from the Dallas District Court judge to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, who refused to hear the case or the motion to quash the restraining order until all issues referred to in the order were settled in district court.

  Within hours, despite the 5th Circuit decision not to take the case, the news broke that the Supreme Court would hear the case. This was extraordinary, and had only happened a few times in history. The next Monday at 9:00 a.m., all parties would be in front of the U.S. Supreme Court and the new chief justice. The Court did not allow live cameras but requests to attend the hearing numbered in the thousands, with only a few dozen se
ats available.

  This would be the first official case for Chief Justice Haverton.

  During one exchange between the Texas state attorney general and the chief justice, Haverton asked, “Under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which Texas and most Southern states are still bound to, does Texas object to having an effective balloting system? Does Texas object to reports that institutional discrimination still exists at polling places?”

  “Chief Justice Haverton, this executive order is unconstitutional on its face. The federal government has no constitutional authority to take over state elections or to force Texas, Oklahoma or any other state to comply with a mandate to use a particular balloting system. This is, in fact, a de facto way to federalize state elections,” argued the Texas state attorney general.

  “Does this executive order tell Texas when to have elections?”

  “No, Chief Justice, it does not.”

  “Does this executive order tell Texas where to have polling locations?”

  “No, it does not…”

  “Does this executive order do anything that discourages a voter from casting his or her ballot?”

  “Chief Justice, that’s arguable, particularly if a citizen has less confidence in the federal balloting process versus the states’.”

  “My belief is, if in 1965 when the Voting Rights Act was written and implemented and if this type of balloting system was available at the time, it surely would have been made part of the Act,” Haverton replied.

  “Chief Justice, this case will be fully heard in due course. We are asking the Court to uphold the temporary restraining order not to implement the executive order until full arguments are held. The executive order also dictates both states to expend funds not approved by our state legislatures.”

  “The Court fully appreciates your concerns,” Chief Justice Haverton stated, “but, in the interest of fairness, the Court has to look at each state’s voting discrimination history and adherence to the Act. The recent voter ID law enactments are especially troublesome. The Court will recess and issue its decision in due time.”

 

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