This post is just me jotting down notes after talking to people who work at the relative fields + whose opinion & perspective on governments & geopolitics have been better than being worthwhile. I'm not claiming it's established information, like at all. So, take them with a big grain a salt.
①
They're pushing this second impeachment of Trump, mainly because they want to remove the lifetime Secret Service protection detail for Trump (a former president) and his spouses & children,
which updated, by Barack Obama (for Bill Clinton and two Bushes), from the limited post-presidential protection (ten years) to the lifetime protection.
(Why do they want to remove it from Trump though?)
Question: How about Trump 2024? Are they concerned by him being (re)elected in the next election?
Answer: No, after the 2016 election, they are not going to make another error. You've too heard the rumour about the so called GOP royalty ordered their field operatives to stand down for the 2020 election, right? That's why the Democrat operatives hardly encountered any resistance on that night.
②
Like many people here, I too was wondering why he would bother with issuing the EO something like this, if the new administration would come in and reverse it in less than a week or a month?
Not just the EO, but by Trump's directive, even the Department of Defense has been kept withdrawing troops from Afghanistan and other regions, which is against the bills (by the congress) to prevent the president from pulling troops from overseas. [LINK 01] [LINK 02] [LINK 03]
Question: What could be the reason(s)? Is Trump planning to take over (?) and to stay at the White House for the next four years?
Answer: No. The word is that, on Monday the Jan. 11, the Trump team determined his pre-Jan. 20 legal & political fights for the election are over.
Question: Then what's with issuing EOs and other orders, since the soon-coming-in new administration can easily reverse them?
Answer: We're not sure why the DoD still listens to Trump's EO and other orders. Most top bureaucrats in the intelligence offices have stopped that after the last December-ish.
③
However,
the Executive Order issued on the Jan. 13 is quite brilliant, really. It's targeting directly the private sector firms like WestExec Advisors. Especially, WestExec Advisors, which the next Secretary of State Antony Blinken co-founded.
Not just Antony Blinken, numerous people nominated for the top positions of the new administration have been working at WestExec Advisors, such as Michele Flournoy, Avril Haines, Lisa Monaco, David Cohen, and Robert Work. (They're all former Obama administration officials by the way.)
Then,
what kind of consulting firm WestExec Advisors is?
It's specialized in helping the US people or companies invest in Chinese businesses that are not publicly traded and/or that are suspected to have the CCP or the PLA ties.
And WestExec Advisors has also worked to help the top people of the CCP & the PLA on how to invest in the US companies. [LINK 04] [LINK 05]
Managing the financials for some of those people mentioned above is directly against the EO issued on the Jan. 13 (with the combination of the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act & the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act).
④
So,
with said EO, the senate can legitimately refuses to approve those people for the government positions related to national security and foreign policy, IF the senate wants to. (We believe at least a couple of Republicans in the senate would like to.)
And,
if the Biden team thinks there would be legit obstacles in getting approvals for ex-employees of the firms like WestExec Advisors to work at the new administration,
they need to reverse the EO and other Acts first.
Not impossible of course but it's going be tricky since the new administration hasn't fully formed yet.
And the optics are going to be pretty bad, IF people raise voices for the issue during the senate approval.
Have a safe weekend, guys.