Month: March 2021

“Get hold of yourselves,” a shaken Patrick Gallagher—then the director of the college-counseling office—wrote to the 12th-grade parents in a December email. You could tell what these people must have been up to by the new policies that Gallagher outlined. They included: not placing calls from blocked numbers or sending anonymous letters; not meeting with counselors to spread gossip about other students; not secretly recording counselors’ conversations.

Vance’s investigation, which appears to be focussed largely on business practices that Trump engaged in before taking office, may seem picayune in comparison with the outrageous offenses to democratic norms that Trump committed as President. But the New York University historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, whose recent book “Strongmen” examines the characteristics of antidemocratic rulers, told me, “If you don’t prosecute Trump, it sends the message that all that he did was acceptable.” She pointed out that strongmen typically “inhabit a gray zone between illegal and legal for years”; corrupt acts of political power are just an extension of their shady business practices. “Trumpism isn’t just about him,” Ben-Ghiat went on. “It’s a whole way of being in the world. It’s about secrecy, domination, trickery, and fraud.” She said, of Vance’s probe, “It’s symbolic for the public, and very important to give the public a sense of accountability.”

She turned around and recognized with horror the man who had kidnapped her one year earlier. Ruth ran for her car, but before she could unlock the door the man came up from behind and grabbed her wrist, then shoved her head against the window. “Get in,” he ordered, saying he wanted to take her to a bridge near August Airport Road. He threw a brown paper shopping bag through the partially open rear window onto the back seat. The bag held clothesline rope, white tape, a red bandana, and a half empty bottle of wine. “We’ll go to a nice little place where it says ‘Keep Out,’” he said.

Beaudette had been shot through the head. The autopsy report, which was released nearly a year later, showed that a copper-jacketed lead bullet had entered just below his hairline and penetrated his brain. It was a homicide, but an utterly baffling one. The weapon’s make and model were unknown. There were no eyewitnesses, no suspects, and no motive. Rumors flew around Malibu. Had his vaccine work made him a target of “Big Pharma” or “the government”? Was the perpetrator a disgruntled former park worker? Someone associated with an illegal marijuana grow? None of it made sense; it felt both terrifyingly random and shockingly precise. Beaudette had been killed while he slept beside his children, and no one knew why.

When I asked Milley about what Trump had said, his reply was clear. “As the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, if there was an order for ten thousand National Guardsmen, I would like to believe I would know that,” he said. “I know that was never transmitted to me by anyone—the President, the Secretary of Defense, or anyone else—for the 6th of January.”