Is Trump Creating a Deep State to Go After Unions and Democratic Opponents?

The Deep State has been blamed for many things since Donald Trump became president, including by the president himself. Also known as the “swamp,” Trump defenders have used the term Deep State loosely to include not just intelligence bureaucrats but a broader array of connected players in other administrative bureaucracies, in private industry, the media, and especially the previous administration of Barack Obama. A major promise during his 2016 campaign even included “draining the swamp” (Deep State).

Spooking the Spooks
This is the reason the president’s intelligence power play is surprisingly spooking the spooks. Erik Prince, the notorious war profiteer, is recruiting ex-spies to help the shady right-wing group Project Veritas to infiltrate groups working to defeat Trump or campaigning against him. Viewed to be “hostile” to Trump’s agenda, Trump, Prince and Project Veritas plan to disrupt and hurt teacher and labor unions, Muslim and Hispanic and African American group, congressional organizations dominated by the Democrats, and the Democratic Party.

As reported by the New York Times, “Secretary DeVos’ (Secretary of Education) brother was directly involved in a spying scheme in her home state against a teacher’s union she’s been hostile with for years. If this doesn’t clear the bar for immediate Congressional investigation nothing does.” Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, said, “They didn’t succeed in their attempt to hurt our union, but note what the right wing will do to try to eliminate workers’ voice.” Prince’s spies consequently don’t include “voluntary” spies.

Watergate?
Prince is the founder of mercenary firm Blackwater, which was accused of several atrocities in Iraq. “Both Project Veritas and Mr. Prince have ties to President Trump’s aides and family,” the Times noted. “Whether any trump administration officials or advisers to the president were involved in the operations, even tacitly, is unclear.” What isn’t unclear are documents obtained by the newspaper, including internal Prince and Project Veritas emails, that show a vigorous campaign connected to Trump’s campaign to try to undermine political opponents.

Most called the explosive revelations as “chilling,” “stunning,” and insane. Others likened it to the secret police in Germany or Soviet Union under Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Those who still remember Richard M. Nixon and Watergate said there was an uncanny resemblance, a form of political sabotage that more than likely isn’t about to stop. The President and his top aides ran what constituted a criminal operation out of the White House, mainly to use secret information to sabotage democratic leaders. It included an enemies list, like the one Trump has.

The Key to Destroying Trump’s Opposition
The Times noted that one of the former spies, an ex-M16 officer named Richard Seddon, helped run a 2017 operation to copy files and record conversations in a Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers, a large teachers’ unions. Seddon directed an undercover operative to secretly tape the union’s local leaders and try to gather information that could be made public to damage the organization, documents showed. (DeVos wants to privatize public education. Statistics also show the more educated a voter is the less likely they are to vote for Trump.)

Using a different alias the next year, the same undercover operative infiltrated the congressional campaign of Abigail Spanberger, then a former CIA officer who went on to win an important House seat in Virginia as a Democrat. The campaign discovered the operative and fired her. Both operations were run by Project Veritas, a conservative group that has gained attention using hidden cameras and aggressive tactics for sting operations on Democrats, news organizations, and liberal advocacy groups. Emails show Prince had a role in recruiting Mr. Seddon.

Deep State Politics
There is evidence the Deep State so understood-as a concerted movement or via individuals acting less independently-used secretly collected information opportunistically and illegally to sabotage Trump and his senior officials. The question is whether this sabotage was virtuous or abusive. Was the court-approved wiretap of phone conversations between Russian officials and the Trump family and his campaign necessary to reveal Russia’s election interference, its aim to damage U.S. persons, the hacking of the DNC’s email server, and removal of Russia sanctions?

What makes this latest spy scandal alarming is that foreign entities which threaten democratic elections are not being spied upon or tracked, but American citizens. It includes disrupting and destroying viable groups such as unions, political parties, and minority groups which have already suffered enumerable offenses. Put another way, the kind of surveillance Trump and Prince is doing is far worse than any wrongs that may have occurred when the Deep State monitored back-channels between Russia and the Trump campaign. Some warn it is downright evil.

Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John’s Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.WN.com. You can read more of Dallas’ writings at www.beverlydarling.com and www.WN.com/dallasdarling.