"Catholic Inc." Hates Donald Trump

Georgetown Law School under Congressional investigation

Renowned Jesuit Georgetown University is under scrutiny for engaging in blatant partisan political activity against President Donald Trump.

Congressman Pete Sessions (R-TX) recently sent a preservation letter to Hoya law professor Rosa Brooks demanding the records of the “Transition Integrity Project” (TIP). The ongoing project, co-founded by Brooks in 2019, was created to thwart Donald Trump from being inaugurated, even if he won the 2020 election.

Sessions writes: “As our nation prepares for the 2024 presidential election, the work of TIP has been brought to my attention as an intensely partisan exercise intended to sew [sic] dissension and subversion regarding the American election system and the institution of the president of the United States.”

“As you know, Georgetown University operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and receives hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding every year,” the Texas Congressman points out. “It would be highly inappropriate for a university that relies on federal funding to conduct partisan political activity intended to undermine a lawfully conducted election.” 

Among his numerous demands, Sessions is asking for "a full list of TIP members, staff, consultants, and anyone who operated with the project during its period of operation" as well as "all transcripts, audio, video, Zoom, digital, and any and all records and recordings of TIP’s meetings."

Brooks has until April 19 to comply.

Battle simulations in case Trump won

In June 2020, Brooks, who served as an Obama appointee at the Defense Department, along with her estimated 60-70 colleagues, put out a 17-page document for how to keep Trump from the presidency — even if he won the election.

The document included four different scenarios of what to do in an election crisis. The four scenarios the TIPsters enacted were a narrow Biden win, a big Biden win (with a decisive lead in both the electoral college and the popular vote), a Trump win (with an electoral college lead but a large popular-vote loss), and a period of extended uncertainty (as occurred in the 2000 election).

As a follow-up, the never-Trumper wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post in September 2020 explaining the scenarios. Entitled “What’s the Worst That Could Happen?,” the article describes how TIP "built a series of war games" in which participants — "the most accomplished Republicans, Democrats, civil servants, media experts, pollsters and strategists around" — were asked "to imagine what they'd do in a range of election and transition scenarios."

Prominent TIPsters who took part in the simulations included former Hillary Clinton campaign managerJohn Podesta, who role played Biden, as well as journalists Bill Cristol and David Frum, who took turns role playing Trump.

In the op-ed, Brooks explained what propelled the group to hatch their scheming plot.

"[M]y colleagues and I ... didn’t want to lie awake at night contemplating the ways the American experiment could fail [i.e., if Trump took office]," so "we realized that identifying the most serious risks to our democracy might be the best way to avert a November disaster." 

Sessions referred to TIPS' wargames in the letter, writing that “with the exception of the ‘big Biden win’ scenario, each of [the] exercises reached the brink of catastrophe, with massive disinformation campaigns, violence in the streets and a constitutional impasse.”

Heart of darkness

In a recent interview, Mike Benz, executive director of Foundation for Freedom Online, says "This [TIP] really gets into the heart of darkness of the deep power structure within the US government and what Trump was up against."  

"This is basically a plot, probably the cleanest thing we've ever seen in this country to a domestic color revolution," he added.

Georgetown alumnus DeRoy Murdock, is also disturbed by the TIPsters' machinations. In a March 17 essay, “Hoyagate: Georgetown Law Is Vatican of Trump Hatred,” he writes, "I am troubled by an emerging pattern: The relentless lawsuits and other efforts to 'get Trump' too often lead back to my alma mater and, more specifically, Georgetown Law School."

Georgetown TIPsters

Murdock identifies a number of the Georgetown University TIP participants whom he calls "characters [who] populate these assorted Trump-hating schemes.” In addition to Rosa Brooks and John Podesta mentioned above, they include,

Peter Strzok, former Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI, and a chief "Trump tormentor," who was a major player in the Russiagate hoax that deliberately mislabeled the 45th as a Russian agent, a lie that lingers to this day.

He is famous for texting his FBI mistress, attorney Lisa Page, on August 15, 2016. “There’s no way Trump gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk," he told his lover. "It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.” The implementation of the Russiagate hoax was a major piece of the “insurance policy.”

He's also remembered for thumbing his nose at blue collar folks. "Just went to a Southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support,” he texted Page a few days later.

He works as an adjunct professor in Georgetown’s foreign service school.

Mary McCord — mentioned by name in Sessions' letter — also played a significant role in the Russiagate hoax. She submitted the original false FISA application to the surveillance court using the false dossier.

In a January interview with NBC News, McCord says she is “already starting to put together a team to think through the most damaging types of things that [Trump] might do so that we’re ready to bring lawsuits" — should he be elected in 2024.

She is a visiting professor at Georgetown Law School and a current board member of Georgetown Law’s “Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection” (ICAP).

Donna Brazile, former DNC Chair (at the time of Seth Rich's murder) and TIP participant, is an adjunct assistant professor in Georgetown's Women's Studies Program.

Jennifer Granholm, current Secretary of Energy and former Governor of Michigan, joined the board of Georgetown Law’s ICAP in 2019, a few months before becoming involved with TIP.

No Ginny-come-lately

The concoction of the 2019-2020 wargame exercises were not Brooks' first foray into sabotaging Trump's presidential aspirations. Just a few weeks into Trump’s first term in 2017, she published an article about ways to get rid of Trump. The methods ranged from folks waiting "patiently" until the November 2020 election comes around, "at which point, American voters will ... be prepared to throw the bum out” to "a military coup, or at least a refusal by military leaders to obey certain orders."

Once the renowned home of leading Catholic intellectuals

Georgetown University is the the oldest Catholic institution of higher education in the US. An recent article addressing the Congressional inquiry in Association of Mature Americans reflects on Georgetown's former greatness.

"Just a few decades ago, Georgetown was renowned as the home of leading Catholic intellectuals, including names like James Schall, a prominent Jesuit writer and thinker, and foreign policy lights such as Anthony Bouscaren, Lev Dobriansky, and Jeane Kirkpatrick," the source posits. "Now, however, rather than these great thought leaders who exposed Soviet totalitarianism and rallied people to the defense of freedom, Georgetown has courted all the sons and daughters of the radical leftism that is tearing the United States apart."

Some Catholics mark 2009 as the turning point in Georgetown's trajectory. President Barack Obama’s address that year in the hallowed Gaston Hall elicited national outrage among Catholics when the letters IHS directly behind the Obama's podium were covered. IHS, a Christian symbol, is a contraction of the Greek word for Jesus.

According to Fr. Schall, government professor at Georgetown at the time, the Obama Administration’s request to cover Jesus' name "was reflective of a new approach on the issue of Church-State relations."

“[This is] not the separation of church and state, but the establishment of a new vision in which the only thing allowed to be visible is the state,” he wrote in The Catholic Thing in 2009.

Murdock is rooting for the Congressional investigators get to the bottom of the "vicious partisanship" at his alma mater and "give Georgetown University the tough love it needs to become, once again, the center of balanced intellectual inquiry that I recall so fondly."

He says succinctly of the TIPsters, “To 'defend democracy,' those people keep crushing democracy."

Dr. Barbara Toth has a doctorate in rhetoric and composition from Bowling Green State University. She has taught at universities in the US, China and Saudi Arabia. Her work in setting up a writing center at Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahmen University, an all-women's university in Riyadh, has been cited in American journals. Toth has published academic and non-academic articles and poems internationally.

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