Transition Integrity Project – improved

In three earlier articles, CNAV has treated the Heritage Foundation’s version of the Transition Integrity Project. Heritage intended it to anticipate every possible contingency, and plan for everything from election challenges to widespread street violence. But they forgot that they were creating fictional drama – and to be of any value, fiction must be compelling. Their facilitators forgot key elements of the writer’s craft, including basic story structure and “Chekhov’s Gun,” especially in Game Two. Worse, events were rapidly overtaking them during their exercises, then between exercise completion and their final draft. Then came a literally pivotal event in our country’s history, the full significance of which the people still don’t know. So at present, this exercise has no value – and if they wish to repeat it, Heritage must improve their gameplay setup, and their initial assumptions.

Original game play setup of the Heritage Transition Integrity Project

CNAV has treated the Heritage Transition Integrity Project in three articles, discussing basic gameplay setup, and Games One and Two. The insights in these previous treatments derive from the TIP Final Report.

To review, Heritage set up the players in several teams, which they grouped into three cells, as follows:

Blue Cell: Biden Administration, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Congressional Democrats, Intelligence Community/FBI/CIA, Department of Justice, Mainstream Media, Big Tech/Social Media/Internet Companies, TikTok, Black Lives Matter/Antifa/Pro-Hamas, and Urban Law Enforcement.

Red Cell: Republican National Committee (RNC), Congressional Republicans, Republican Lawyers’ Association, Conservative Media, Evangelicals, Twitter/X and Truth Social, Project 2025, and Local Sheriffs.

White Cell: China, Russia, Mexico/Central America, Cartels, Appeals Court, Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Military, Lower Courts in Swing States, and Swing State Governors.

Roles functioning as non-players/exercise facilitators: Exercise Leader, Exercise Manager, Scenario Analysts, Tech Support, and Scribes.

Game play proceeded in six Turns, as follows:

1. Democratic National Convention to Labor Day,
2. Labor Day to whenever early voting starts in any given unit (i.e., county or independent city),
3. From start of early voting to Election Day,
4. From Election Day to November 12,
5. The certification period (November 13 through December 5), and
6. End of certification period to the Constitutional Inauguration Day (January 20, 2025).

Communications flowed freely between and among some players (almost always within Cells), and not so freely between and among others. As each game began, all players received a briefing on the circumstances peculiar to the war game they would run. Then the players relayed their intentions to the Facilitators – who played the same role as that of the Dungeon Master in Dungeons and Dragons. The Facilitators, said Heritage, “used free arbitration methods to decide which measures would meet with success.” Meaning, they would roll dice – or guess.

Social media players, whoever they were, could emulate – or change – the Rules of the particular social media platforms they portrayed.

Initial assumptions

The Project made these key assumptions about the state of American politics after the Democratic National Convention:

1. Joe Biden, freshly renominated, polls 2 percent ahead of Trump in the estimated national popular vote.
2. These States were battlegrounds leading into summer: Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Minnesota, Virginia, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada. As of August 26, 2024, Nevada and Pennsylvania are mathematically tied. Biden leads in Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia, and Trump leads in the remaining four – all within the margin of error.
3. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is on the ballot in enough states to win the Presidency – if he carries them all.
4. Voters list these concerns, in order: the economy, poor leadership, and immigration.
5. Illegal crossings continue to occur, but less than usual; migrants have stopped trying to cross into Texas, preferring Arizona instead.
6. Judge Juan Merchan in New York sentenced Trump on July 11. Trump appealed, and remains free pending appeal. (Merchan had considered placing Trump under house arrest, but Democratic officials – speaking very informally to the Judge – did not want that spectacle.) All of Trump’s other pending cases cannot come to trial until after the election. (Note: all those cases are alive during original gameplay.)

Overtaking events

The most recent event the Transition Integrity Project report even mentions is the Supreme Court’s decision in Murthy v. Missouri. That actually supports their decision to separate X and Truth Social from remaining platforms. Those other platforms, they had every reason to assume, would behave in the same ham-handed fashion as in 2020. Truth Social still struggles to build a user base, but X still has the base it had as Twitter.

But on the very next day after the Murthy decision, came other events, in rapid-fire order, that invalidated certain assumptions. First, Donald Trump and Joe Biden met to debate – and that was an unmitigated disaster for Biden. Ever since then, he’s had to contend with a chorus of voices telling him to drop out of the race.

The next day, the Supreme Court invalidated several January 6 prosecutions. Specifically, the Court disallowed any felony count having its basis in the Sarbanes-Oxley law about obstructing justice in financial crimes. Fischer v. United States. On the same day they also canceled the “Chevron Deference” courts used to give quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial executive agencies. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.

Then on July 1, the Court released a primer on Presidential immunity, which could invalidate most remaining cases against Trump. Trump v. United States. Furthermore, in the one case (a State case) that has resulted in conviction, the judge has delayed sentencing. That directly invalidates Assumption Six above, and preempts any notion of placing Trump under arrest as in Game Two.

A would-be assassin cancels all bets

As significant as those overtaking events were, they pale in comparison to the event two days after the report’s release. A would-be assassin shot President Trump while he was on an open-air stage, killing an attendee and wounding two others. This has shocked several players into changing their behavior in key ways. Trump distinguished himself immediately by standing up, raising a fist, and calling on his audience to fight.

Leftist media first downplayed the event, then either described it as his just due, or accused him of staging it. (“Joyless” Reid continues to maintain that he staged the event.) The shock hit Trump the next day, when he told The New York Post, “I should be dead!”

The Republican National Convention convened in Milwaukee, Wisconsin that Monday. Trump insisted on traveling to and appearing at the venue, to “look alive.” The convention held their pressing business – the votes – that day. At Trump’s direction, they nominated Senator J. D. Vance (R-Ohio) for Vice-President.

While this was happening, Judge Aileen Cannon released a 93-page order that she had been working on since February. In it she dismissed the “Florida Documents Case” because Special Counsel Jack Smith never had a legal appointment. Smith has appealed to the Eleventh Circuit, and that could create more drama.

On Thursday evening, Trump made a speech proving his stamina, and new-found humbleness. Meanwhile, evidence has emerged – which not everyone will accept – that Trump’s attempted assassination was a conspiracy involving the Cabinet – and maybe the White House.

Flaws in the Transition Integrity Project gameplay setup

Add to the above, that the game play setup was flawed from the beginning. First, the Exercise Facilitators left unresolved details in both their Games, which the original Transition Integrity Project facilitators, four years ago, avoided. They also introduced details that never amounted to anything, in violation of Chekhov’s Gun Rule:

If in the first act you introduce a gun, by the third act you have to use it.

Furthermore, their setup is incomplete. Where are Gab, Andrew Torba (its founder), Nicholas J. Fuentes, or Bradlee Dean and his associates? They should form a Green Cell, because their attitudes are significantly different from all the rest. (Gary DeMar doesn’t have anything significant to say anymore. He mocked the folly of gun-control advocates after the Trump assassination attempt, but that was all.)

In addition, let’s add Team Trump to Red Cell, and the New York courts to Blue Cell. Also add to Blue Cell the Globalist Axis – the Deep State, and the institutional investors BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street. Round out Blue Cell with Dominion Voting Systems, and add Election Systems and Software, KNOWiNK, and all other Electronic Voting Machine vendors to White Cell. Add different Officers of Election to Blue, Red or White, depending on whether they are Democratic, Republican, or Unaffiliated. Add YouTube to Blue Cell, and Rumble to Red. White gets the Texas Nationalist and Greater Idaho Movements, and New California.

And furthermore: start Turn One after the Republican National Convention, and end it immediately after the Democratic. Then renumber all other turns accordingly.

What the new Transition Integrity Project must reflect

The Heritage Foundation perhaps could not have foreseen an attempted assassination. Not even a smoldering fire of rhetoric on the left, calling for that precise thing, could have predicted it. Nor could they have foreseen that Joe Biden would enter into a debate and make a fool of himself.

But the assassination attempt especially is causing a significant number of Americans to question the basic fairness of their government. A secret cabal of intelligence professionals, security personnel, gigantic institutional investors, and would-be social engineers now appears to have tried to remove from public life – and life, period – the one candidate who called them out and vowed to stop them. Trump’s supporters know it. They also know that the notorious Dominion Voting Services is part of that cabal. (As a matter of fact, many unit registrars refuse to use Dominion machines.)

Furthermore, the country has an active movement seeking recognition of its State as an independent country. That movement cited the Trump assassination attempt as yet another reason for secession.Another seeks to transfer a vast tract of land from one State to another. Were Trump to die – or lose when he has every reasonable expectation of winning – civil war might then supervene.

At the same time, the federal courts are having a civil war of their own – non-violent thus far. The Supreme Court’s Originalist Bloc, and a certain up-and-coming judge, have handed down revolutionary decisions. This has provoked attempted judicial assassination, and the Trump attempt might incite more.

Exploring the concept

In further installments in this series, CNAV will explore at least two scenarios, with this modified gameplay setup. In one, Blue Cell will desperately try everything to stop Trump, mainly through lawfare (however crippled) and election integrity compromise. A key legal drama will play out in the Eleventh circuit, concerning the legality of Special Counsels. The Supreme Court will return from recess with at least two nasty review petitions waiting for its consideration:

• Trump v. New York, on potential certiorari to the New York State Court of Appeal (that State’s highest court), and
• Trump v. United States, on potential certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit.

The election will have the greatest number of accredited Party challengers in recent memory – and a cadre of Officers of Election determined to prevent a repeat of the abuses of 2020, by replacing, to the extent possible, the original perpetrators.

The second will gallop toward civil war. A major false-flag pseudo-operation will provide an excuse for the suspension of elections. When that happens, the Texas Nationalist and Greater Idaho Movements will shift from political activism – to armed resistance.