20th Annaversary of the fairytale of Big Lies

[Peter Lemkin]

Another of the law’s restrictions specifies that:

Not later than six months after a national emergency is declared, and not later than the end of each six-month period thereafter that such emergency continues, each House of Congress shall meet to consider a vote on a joint resolution to determine whether that emergency shall be terminated (50 U.S.C. 1622, 2002).

The law does not permit Congress to review an emergency; it requires Congress to review it.
Yet in twenty years Congress has not once met in public session to discuss the State of Emergency declared by George W. Bush in response to 9/11, a State of Emergency that remains in effect today. Appeals to the Congress to meet its responsibilities to review COG have fallen on deaf ears, even during periods when the Congress has been dominated by Democrats.[55]
During this state of emergency, COG planning has continued to expand and Congress continues to be excluded from access to it. In 2007, Bush issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 with classified Annexes, setting out what FEMA later called “a new vision to ensure the continuity of our Government.”[56] Congressman Peter DeFazio of the Homeland Security Committee twice requested to see these Annexes. When his request was denied, DeFazio made a second request, in a letter signed by the Chair of his committee. The request was denied again.[57] [NOTE: This was previously said, with slightly less detail, at the end of page 14.]
COG’s Partial Implementation on January 6, 2021, and What Was at Stake
Many readers may not know that on January 6th, the day of the insurrection at the Capitol, COG was implemented again.
January 6th Capitol riot. [Source: nbcnews.com]
The details are still in dispute, but on that day something like the following real-time report either happened, or almost happened:

Congressional leadership is being evacuated to D.C.’s Fort McNair, as lawmakers were forced to shelter in place and halt debate over the ratification of President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College win when a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, U.S. law enforcement official said. The southwest Washington, D.C. Army base has been the backup location for Congress to meet in case of terrorist attack.[58]

Fort McNair is indeed a designated COG site for the relocation of Congress, and a relocation of Congress there was actually rehearsed back in 2004.[59]
Fort McNair Army Base. [Source: wikipedia.org]
It has been alleged, and also denied, that the reported evacuation to Fort McNair occurred. That it did occur would seem to be implied by a passage in a new book by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year:

At Fort McNair, meanwhile, about 150 National Guard members secured the entrances to the base, which was being treated as a continuity of government site since the Congressional leaders were there. They were getting the extra protection typically provided when the country was under attack.[60]

One person who realized the political consequences of this evacuation was Mike Pence, who by all accounts refused to comply with it. According to the account by Leonnig and Rucker, again disputed:

At 2:26, after a team of agents scouted a safe path to ensure the Pences would not encounter trouble, [Secret Service agent] Giebels and the rest of Pence’s detail guided them down a staircase to a secured subterranean area that rioters couldn’t reach, where the vice president’s armored limousine awaited. Giebels asked Pence to get in one of the vehicles. “We can hold here,” he said. “I’m not getting in the car, Tim,” Pence told him. “I trust you, Tim, but you’re not driving the car. If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off. I’m not getting in the car.” … Around this time, [Pence’s national security adviser, ret. Lt. Gen. Keith] Kellogg, ran into Tony Ornato in the West Wing. Ornato, who oversaw Secret Service movements, told him Pence’s detail was planning to take Pence to Joint Base Andrews. “You can’t do that, Tony,” Kellogg said. “Leave him where he’s at. He’s got a job to do. I know you guys too well. You’ll fly him to Alaska if you have a chance. Don’t do it.”[61]

Pence, by this account, refused to be disempowered on a pretext of COG, the way that Ashcroft had been disempowered back on 9/11.
Mike Pence being evacuated from the Senate chamber during the January 6th Capitol riot. Pence subsequently refused to get in a car that would have transported him away from the Capitol to Joint Base Andrews and disempowered him. [Source: theguardian.com]
Anthony Ornato was a Trump loyalist whom Trump, after trying unsuccessfully to install him as head of the Secret Service, had brought into the White House as Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. In this capacity,

Ornato was among the coordinators of the June photo op for which Trump marched through Washington D.C.’s Lafayette Square to stand with a Bible – after peaceful protesters were forced from the area by troops on federal order, sparking uproar in political circles as well as among the public. Ornato also assisted in the planning of many Trump campaign rallies.[62]

Anthony M. Ornato [Source: fleta.gov]
At first glance, the astonishing slowness of the National Guard’s response to the Capitol violence might seem attributable to pro-Trump elements in the Pentagon. One man named was General Charles Flynn, brother of Trump’s first national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had “reportedly advocated declaring martial law as part of an effort to overturn the election.”[63]
General Charles Flynn [Source: stripes.com]
But in the long run the delay in summoning the Guard may have done more to weaken than to strengthen Trump’s political chances. This was the case with the delay of arrests in the October 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, seen (according to The New York Times) “as a precursor to the violence unleashed at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.”[64]
The FBI had been aware of the kidnap plot from its outset; the plotters included three FBI informants, including one “who’d advised them on where to put the explosives — and offered to get them as much as the task would require.”[65] Yet the FBI, as always, delayed arrests until enough indictable actions had been committed to ensure convictions in court.
Three of the people indicted for a plot against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer were FBI informants. [Source: abcnews.go.com]