European Allies Ponder if Jan. 6th was ‘Coup’ Backed by ‘Federal Law Enforcement’

The language being used to describe the situation that unfolded on January 6th in our nation’s capital is heating up, as shocked onlookers, both at home and abroad, began to find clearer headspace.

Coming out of the fog of pseudo-war that we experienced on Wednesday, the morning brought with it revelation.  We were living on the edge there for a moment, and the agitation of it all had numbed us.

While MSNBC is certainly one of the more dramatic infotainment networks our there, Chris Hayes made a chilling point about the eerie calm of it all last night.

.@chrislhayes

Nails.

It. pic.twitter.com/RsDtedq4HP

— Eric Hirshberg (@erichirshberg) January 7, 2021

[The relevant rant is near the end of that clip.]

Now, in surveying the damage with less emotion and adrenaline, some of our allies in Europe are sounding fresh alarms.

Insider spoke with three officials on Thursday morning: 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 involving the US, terrorism, and Russia.

They said the circumstantial evidence available pointed to what would be openly called a coup attempt in any other nation. None were willing to speak on the record because of the dire nature of the subject.

While they did not furnish evidence that federal agency officials facilitated the chaos, Insider is reporting this information because it illustrates the scale and seriousness of Wednesday’s events: America’s international military and security allies are now willing to give serious credence to the idea that Trump deliberately tried to violently overturn an election and that some federal law-enforcement agents — by omission or otherwise — facilitated the attempt.

Also…

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.

And then:

“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.

“I can’t believe this happened.”

There is an enormous ongoing investigation into the events of January 6th taking place as we speak.