Will Bunch

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10/19/2026

Will Bunch @ Inquirer: Are the secrets to a Trump postelection coup locked in a White House safe?

What two ex-high-ranking U.S. government officials fear about a presidential emergency should terrify all Americans.

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From 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. on January 5, a series of Trump rallies were held at Freedom Plaza.^[154] Notable speakers included Alex Jones, Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, and Roger Stone.^[161]

Both Flynn and Stone had received presidential pardons in prior weeks. On December 8, Trump pardoned retired US Army lieutenant general Michael Flynn, who had pleaded guilty to "willfully and knowingly" making false statements to the FBI about communications with the Russian ambassador.

Flynn, a prominent QAnon proponent, participated in the D.C. events on January 5, while his brother, U.S. Army general Charles Flynn, would participate in a conference call on January 6 when he would refuse permission to deploy the National Guard after the breach of the Capitol.^[162]

On December 23, Trump pardoned Roger Stone, who had been found guilty at trial of witness tampering, making false statements to Congress, and obstruction. Stone, who had longtime ties to both the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, employed Oath Keepers as security on January 5.^[163] Stone's Oath-Keeper driver was later convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in plotting and executing the following day's attack.^[164]

Bunch, Will (February 7, 2021). "Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, and the criminal conspiracy case of U.S. v. Donald Trump". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on August 26, 2023. Retrieved November 25, 2023.

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AN 4 26

The U.S. Supreme Court, “nine angry men and women in black robes,” according to Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch, has gone “off the rails,” and is now “at war with itself.”

“Almost every day, there are new signs — from shocking news leaks to surprisingly indecorous public jabs, and legal opinions that read like cries for help — that the U.S. Supreme Court is at war … with itself,” Bunch argues. “Looming large over this soft civil war inside one of America’s three branches of government is our most fundamental liberty, the right to vote.”

Pointing to President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, amid its “shaky” ceasefire and “the daily unraveling” of the White House, “the biggest bombshell wasn’t dropped in the Persian Gulf but in the pages of the New York Times.”

Bunch is referring to the widely-cited scoop from the Times‘ Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak, that reveals the extreme steps Chief Justice John Roberts took to block President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan — and expand the powers of the Court via the “shadow docket.”

“For more than a decade now, these emergency rulings have largely constrained Democratic presidents and boosted the power of Donald Trump on major issues,” Bunch writes.

He notes that the Times published a batch of five justices’ secret memos, including those from Roberts, that “exposed the hypocrisy” of the Chief Justice, “who has argued during his two decades overseeing the court that its justices are not political actors but impartial umpires ‘calling balls and strikes,’ based on sound interpretation of the law.”

Bunch states these memos “reveal Roberts as less an umpire and more the manager of a team desperate to win the World Series for corporate America.”

The leaking of the memos, which, to many, cast Roberts in a negative light, “is just the latest in a series of news leaks and public statements coming from the Supreme Court that lack any precedent, legal or otherwise.”

Bunch says the court had already been facing a “crisis of credibility,” given the “revelations of alleged corruption” swirling about Justice Clarence Thomas, and the “billion-dollar efforts by wealthy conservatives to shape and then lobby the court.”

The Times’ report was far from the first leak.

In 2022 came the “Mother of All Leaks” — the draft opinion that would ultimately overturn 1970s’ landmark ruling, Roe v. Wade.

The leaker was never discovered, but “there’s been much speculation that it came from the conservative wing hoping the news coverage would prevent last-minute defections.”

Meanwhile, since the Court’s 2024 decision granting President Donald Trump and all presidents sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts,” Bunch writes, “there has been even less decorum and more overt verbal warfare.”

Sometimes, justices publish their snipings inside their opinions, “as when Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in response to that ruling on presidential power that POTUS is now ‘a king above the law,’ signing off ‘with fear for our democracy.'”

Bunch says an even more “shocking” event occurred when Sotomayor “lashed out” at Justice Brett Kavanaugh, when she commented that one of his opinions had come from “a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.”

She quickly apologized.

Like the 2022 leak, no one has publicly stated who leaked the secret memos to The New York Times.

But, Bunch surmises, someone “very high in the judicial pyramid is trying to send a ‘bat signal’ to the American public — that things at the nation’s highest court have gone off the rails.”

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Election law expert and Democracy Docket publisher Marc Elias has been warning that if President Joe Biden or another Democratic candidate wins the 2024 election, presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump and his allies will do everything they can to overturn the election results — only they will be better equipped this year than in 2020.

Now, the Heritage Foundation is claiming, without evidence, that Democrats are planning to steal the election.

The Washington Post's Isaac Arnsdorf reports that Heritage made that claim during a "war game" presentation at their headquarters on Thursday, July 11.

"Barbra Streisand kidnapped by Hamas, Antifa-BLM protesters taking over a migrant detention facility, the FBI arresting Donald Trump two days after winning the election — these were among the far-fetched scenarios imagined by a simulation of threats to the 2024 election showcased on Thursday by the right-wing Heritage Foundation," Arnsdorf explains. "The presentation, delivered at the Foundation's Washington headquarters, stated as a given that the Biden Administration was already engaged in a sweeping conspiracy to use multiple forms of federal power to influence the presidential election. It did not supply any evidence."

Mike Howell, executive director of Heritage's Oversight Project, claimed, "As things stand right now, there's a zero percent chance of a free and fair election. I'm formally accusing the Biden Administration of creating the conditions that most reasonable policymakers and officials cannot in good conscience certify an election."

Arnsdorf notes that the July 11 simulation, billed as the "2024 Transition Integrity Project," is "technically independent of the Heritage Foundation but included multiple Heritage employees."

Heritage has recently been drawing a great deal of scrutiny over Project 2025, its 900-page blueprint for a second Trump presidency. The proposals range from severe abortion restrictions to giving the U.S. federal government's executive branch considerably more power, and Project 2025 is so controversial that even Trump himself is trying to distance himself from it.

Kevin Roberts, the far-right Chrisitan nationalist who heads the Heritage Foundation, is also being criticized for some recent remarks that his detractors say were promoting violence.

During an appearance on Real America's Voice, Roberts said, "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be."

In response, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch argued, on X (formerly Twitter), "The author of Project 2025 is calling for revolution and suggesting bloodshed if liberals dare oppose them."

Conservative/libertarian former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Virginia) warned, "Kevin Roberts is threatening violence to anyone not following his dear leader. Every network should cover this. All of this happening while Dems whinge and play new candidate lotto."

Read the Washington Post's full report at this link (subscription required).