House panel investigates taxpayer-funded ‘war-gaming’ of Trump reactions to election outcomes

by WorldTribune Staff, March 24, 2024

The House Oversight Committee has launched an investigation into a Georgetown University project accused of “war-gaming” 2020 election scenarios involving President Donald Trump.

The university group, the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), has hinted it will do the same in the 2024 election.

Georgetown University Law Center / Creative Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

Mary McCord, executive director of the Georgetown University School of Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protections, was cited by Oversight Committee member Rep. Pete Sessions for her recent comments on NBC in which she said: “We’re already starting to put together a team to think through the most damaging types of things that he [Trump] might do so that we’re ready to bring lawsuits if we have to.”

Mike Benz, director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, noted in a post on X: “They were role playing their scenarios out. TIP simulation – John Podesta Played Biden – Playing Trump combo of Bill Crystal and David Frum both are tightly intertwined with National Security States interplay with the media. 4 Star General, CIA folks, Pentagon Officials involved. Basically a DOD, CIA, Bipartisan Hit Job plan on How to cause a Domestic Color Revolution in the United States.”

Sessions demanded: “Please define if Professor McCord and her colleague are conducting this hyper partisan activity under the auspices of ICAP—an entity which is described as a ‘non-partisan institute within Georgetown University Law Center’ on the ICAP website.”

The NBC News report described McCord’s work with a “loose-knit network of public interest groups and lawmakers” that is “quietly devising plans to try to foil any efforts to expand presidential power, which could include pressuring the military to cater to [Trump’s] political needs.”

This would be intended to “suppress Article Two provisions defining presidential control of the military,” Sessions said. After noting that (TIP founder Rosa) Brooks had written “about these foundational norms of civilian control over the American military and how ‘it’s time to toss them aside,’ ” Sessions demands to know of her “involvement in this group ‘quietly devising plans’ to change or violate the U.S. Constitution.”

“In essence, removing the military from civilian control would remove the president as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, and one of the reasons provided for that would be to prevent Trump from using the Insurrection Act to squash a rebellion,” Libby Emmons and Jack Posobiec wrote for The Post Millennial on Thursday. “The inclusion of this concept leads one to wonder why the Democrats and think-tankers believe there would be an insurrection in need of quelling should Trump win a second term in the White House.”

Sessions, a Texas Republican, characterized the Transition Integrity Project as an “intensely partisan exercise” which is “intended to sew dissension and subversion regarding the American election system and the institution of the President of the United States.”

In the committee’s investigation, Sessions cited an op-ed written by TIP founder Rosa Brooks in the Washington Post in advance of the 2020 election which was titled “What’s the worst that could happen? The election will likely spark violence — and a constitutional crisis.”

Brooks said her team had “built a series of war games, sought out some of the most accomplished Republicans, Democrats, civil servants, media experts, pollsters and strategists around, and asked them to imagine what they’d do in a range of election and transition scenarios.”

The group determined that “The concept of ‘election night,’ is no longer accurate and indeed is dangerous,” and that “A determined campaign has opportunity to contest the election into January 2021, and “the administrative transition process itself may be highly disrupted.”

In a letter to Brooks, Sessions said he has been “particularly concerned by the activities of TIP in 2020, and any similar endeavor in advance of the 2024 election, because this exercise seems to have been administered adjacent to the Georgetown University Law Center.”

Sessions noted that the law center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that “receives hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding every year.”

“It would be highly inappropriate for a university that relies on federal funding to conduct partisan political activity intended to undermine a lawfully conducted election,” Sessions said in the letter to Brooks as he demanded “a comprehensive understanding of your 2020 war-gaming project, its work, and its conclusions.”

Sessions asked for the names of all participants in TIP along with transcripts, audio, video, Zoom, digital, and all other records, along with locations and venues of all meetings held by the group to engage in their work.

Major General (Ret.) Paul D. Eaton was one of the identified participants in the group, who along with two other retired flag officers, Sessions said, wrote op-eds “in which they stated that a similar war-gaming exercise to TIP should be replicated with regard to the military and making sure that is under control.”

Sessions wants to know who else at the Department of Defense, retired or active, was involved with or contacted by TIP.


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