You’d never know it by the title “Dancing in the Dark,” but the Washington Spectator’s recent investigation is about the various steps (mostly illegal) Trump is taking, including the use of enforcement tools and violence, to prepare to reverse any overall Democratic victory in the November Congressional races. The authors, Mark Medish and Joel McCleary, believe Trump needs such a coup to save himself from impeachment, congressional investigations and subpoenas seeking more proof of crimes throughout his lawless, corrupt, dictatorial regime.

Currently, Trump’s polls are so low that he is endangering enough Republican seats in the House and Senate to give the feeble, corporate money-indentured Democratic Party a chance to win control of Congress. This is precisely what Trump fears, even though he has control of the Executive Branch and the immunity given him by six Injustices of the Supreme Court. Take note, he knows that impeachment and removal from office in the Senate are final, not reviewable in the federal courts.

In 23 single-spaced pages, Medish and McCleary walk readers through the events, directives, ballot seizures, and draft emergency orders Trump could use to assert federal control over a midterm election and use a domestic paramilitary force of unprecedented size and budget. Trump and his minions have already expanded their dictatorial control of our democratic institutions. (See: The V-Dem Institute’s Democracy Report 2026.)

To obstruct the vote in key precincts, then fabricate a need for national-security powers to purge and miscount ballots, falsely charge fraud, illegally seize ballots, threaten precinct workers, and claim without evidence foreign interference are preparations for instant escalation.

They then describe the “Devil’s Accordion File” meaning “the elements of a ramified, radical strategy to hold on to power at almost any cost as we approach the test of the 2026 elections…” Although they describe Trump as a brilliant mastermind concentrating extraordinary power in his hands, they remind us that he is also in “full command of his office, directing the Justice Department, the FBI, ICE (the largest new federal police force in American history) the IRS, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, the intelligence community and the armed forces. [Under total acolyte Pete Hegseth.] He is using each agency in a coordinated attack on his political adversaries in ways that would have been dismissed as fantasy only a few years ago.”

Trump’s iron grip on institutional controls was further strengthened by the Trump/Musk DOGE criminal enterprise which tore through federal agencies in 2025, closing some, shredding others, grabbing huge troves of personal data on Americans, and destroying the non-partisan civil service that could have used federal laws to resist his coup d’état.

Focusing on swing electoral districts—including those politically redistricted earlier this year—and on the various junctures between now and the final certification process in the House of Representatives on January 3, 2027, the authors write that “the political will, personal motivation, legal architecture and technical infrastructure by now [are] all in place.” They could have added Trump’s unlimited pardon power to facilitate the violence and theft by his criminal operatives.

Trump has also precluded any opposition from corporations and the “contented classes” with tax cuts, non-regulation, subsidies and other inducements from which his family also lavishly benefits. (In 2025 Trump took in........

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