Sheila Markin Nielsen is a former Assistant US Attorney. She helps people to understand in plain English what is going on in US politics today.
As a former Assistant US Attorney, I am keenly aware of the way the Trump administration violated the law and ethical norms. While Trump was president, I provided blog posts to help people understand the legal ramifications of Trump’s actions.
My background is not grounded solely in the legal world. I am also a counselor and executive coach with an understanding of mental health and psychology. I have a masters in social work from Bryn Mawr College and have worked as a counselor and coach for over 35 years. As a career coach, I work with people who are trying to develop insight and performance skills as well as those searching for jobs and improving their interview skills. I help people with their personal messaging and navigating through the complex and convoluted world of workplace politics.
All my life, whenever I am deeply affected by something, I write about it. The day after Trump was elected, I began to write commentaries and post them on a variety of Facebook sites. Many people responded positively. Some told me that what I write helps them make sense of what was going on. Because of my background as a prosecutor, I am able to clarify and unpack the legal implications of ongoing investigations and possible consequences. Others say I helped them to keep their spirits up in a world turned upside down.
In response to Trump and his administration there was a rising tide of progressive energy to reclaim the country. It began with the Women’s Marches after the inauguration. The energy of people who realized what had just happened to us was channeled in many ways and directions. We saw women and men in the suburbs who were life-long Republicans turning away from the Republican party which has become locked in a kind of death grip with Trump and Trumpism.
Thousands of organizations have sprung up to actively push back: Indivisible, Swing Left, Move On, Feminist Majority Foundation, 314 Action, and many many other groups were led by engaged, concerned energetic people who saw the need for restorative efforts to push against the Trump administration and the forces that are pulling our country back in time and, for the majority of Americans, that is the wrong direction. Progressives rose up even in the so-called red districts and red states. Turns out there are “blue people” even in red states and there are more and more people turning certain states purple. Remarkable, admirable, smart, ethical women and men decided to drop what they had been doing to run for office.
People talked about the blue wave coming before the midterm election, but they were not sure it would really happen. It took work- phone banking, knocking on doors, showing up for rallies, and supporting good candidates. When the blue wave came it was a rising tide that turned out to be a tsunami. The People’s House became solidly Democratic in 2018 with 40 more seats. The goal for 2020 was to achieve unitary government with a Biden/Harris administration, a House and Senate led by Democrats. That goal was achieved.
Sometimes a wake up call is what it takes to realize what is at risk. Getting hit upside the head is no fun. But it gets your attention. After the election, our country experienced a nightmare.
January 6th was part of that nightmare. Inspired by Trump and many others, including lawmakers like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, a right wing mob of white supremacists and Q’Anon conspiracy believers, who had been lied to for years by Trump and right wing media, came to Washington, DC with the goal of attacking the Electoral College final counting of votes that would seal Trump’s loss and Biden’s win.
Incited by Trump, the mob attacked Capitol Hill, both chambers of Congress, and broke through inadequate barriers to entry by breaking the bullet proof glass and climbing in through the broken windows and doors. They chanted “Kill Mike Pence1” and they hunted for Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They erected a gallows in front of Congress. They came armed with guns, wearing protective gear. Some of them actually believed that this was the “Storm” that would keep Trump in power. 5 people died as a result of this attack. It was lucky that lawmakers were not found and hurt or killed by this mob.
Many in the mob that thought it was going to keep Trump in power have since been charged with criminal offenses that in many cases were easy to prove because so many of these people documented what they did that day on their cell phones and shared the content on social media. This attack was the result of the culture wars and disinformation Donald Trump and other Republicans have used to create a rabid base that is really a cult. Trump gets this group of people to do his bidding when he needs them. This is a group of Americans who have been lied to on Fox News, Breitbart, OAN and other social media platforms and conservative radio. They accept the Big Lie and other disinformation as the truth despite the fact that they could read content outside of their social media feeds to learn the truth.
Over and over again after the election, Trump told the Big Lie– that he had won in a landslide when it was Biden who had won. The Big Lie is part of every would-be dictator’s go to playbook. This time it didn’t work. Trump was impeached by the House despite a large number of Republicans failing to vote to convict. Democrats were joined by 10 House Republicans. The Senate had a trial to see if Trump would be the first president ever impeached twice AND convicted. But no former president has been convicted after being impeached and this time was no different. If you cannot convict a president for domestic terrorism when he clearly inspired an insurrection to stay in power, then does impeachment become irrelevant?
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were inaugurated on January 20th at noon. But the capitol looked like a war zone that day, with troops everywhere to keep right wing militias from trying to launch another attack.
Many people worked hard and came together to elect Biden and Harris. At first, after the 2020 election, many people thought that the threat Trump posed was gone. But Trump is not gone because members of the GOP who at first repudiated Trump, turned around and continued to support him despite knowing that he was lying and cheating and breaking the laws. Trump is currently the presumptive Republican nominee for president in 2024. At this point he has been impeached twice, lost every challenge to the 2020 election claims of vote fraud, lost his civil lawsuits that proved him liable for sexual assault against E. Jean Carroll and he lost a massive financial fraud civil case that may cause him to have some of his flagship properties seized by the state of New York. He has also been criminally indicted in 4 cases; two federal cases and two state cases.
The first is a case in Manhattan brought by Alvin Bragg, the States Attorney of New York in which he engaged in a fraudulent scheme along with the National Enquirer to win the 2016 election by injecting fake news into the eco-system to influence tabloid readers to vote for him and filed false financial documents. That case has just begun in Manhattan.
Next, there is the Georgia RICO case brought by Fani Willis which charges that Trump tried to stay in power by lying and cheating and getting others to assist him- many of them are indicted co-conspirators.
Next there is a 4 count federal criminal indictment brought by Jack Smith of the DOJ in which he is charged with similar facts as the Georgia RICO case for lying and cheating to stay in power and encouraging followers to storm the capitol to interfere with the Electoral College vote count after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden.
And finally there is the documents case in Florida where Trump took thousands of top secret documents that should have gone to the National Archives but were shipped instead to his golf resort at Mar-a-Lago where they were carelessly kept in the bathroom, the basement, the ballroom and other places where they never should have been. Some of these documents are so top secret they should only be viewed inside a skiff ( a secure location to protect against espionage.)
We have learned that our democracy is precious and that it is also fragile. Going forward, we need to find ways to make sure that all Americans have access to the truth, facts, and reliable sources of information. Without that, we cannot even start to have productive conversations with each other.
That is the goal of the Markin Report. I promise to do my level best to provide honest, truthful, factual information in these blog posts. These posts do not have a paywall. They can be accessed and read by anyone in the public. They are sassy op-eds to make them more interesting, but they are factually accurate to the best of my ability. If there is an error I learn about I remove any misinformation in the post and fix that error.
Welcome to the Markin Report. Please share it with friends and family. To send me a message write to sheila@markinreport.com. I welcome your thoughts and comments. I also report all threats to the police and FBI. I hope our country can some day overcome the damage Trump and the MAGA movement has done.