Classic question arises again: "What did the President know, and when did he know it?" [View all]

[Tom Rinaldo]

Seems the media for the most part is not quite ready to openly speculate about this yet. Talk has been constrained to Trump's role in "inciting an insurrection", not any potential role he might have had in actually planning it.

I appreciate that caution is required before accusing an American President of literally conspiring in the orchestration of a coup that potentially involved planning for the assassination of key government leaders. Any charges along those lines would be the most explosive in American history. Without extremely hard evidence backing such charges, it is extremely hard to responsibly advance that case. Just the accusation itself has the potential to totally destabilize our democracy. But if that is where the evidence leads, not pursuing it would ultimately be far more "destabilizing."

So for now it seems within bounds to speculate about potential coup conspirators embedded within the Capital Police, within congressional staffs, and potentially among elected members of the U.S. House of Representatives, but it remains off limits to discuss possible premeditated sedition by senior members of Trump's Administration and/or his inner circle, up to and including the President himself. All of the recent changes in leadership at the Department of Defense, at the Justice Department, at the Department of Homeland Security etc. for now are deemed unrelated to the actual formulation of a coup. At most, for the moment, they are said to have contributed to a "lack of preparation" rather than the willful withholding of resources that could have quashed a coup attempt before it had any chance of succeeding.

"Reputable journalists", and our congressional leaders, may not be at a point yet when they can publicly ask the question, but I sure can. What did the President know, and when did he know it?