Shell Davis

Danielle Reiff appears repeatedly throughout the “democracy files” exposed by @DataRepublican, @SKDoubleDub33 and @iamlisalogan . She’s a former State Department diplomat and RAD co-coordinator involved in emergency scenario planning, tabletop exercises and discussions about governors, a “Third Continental Congress” and alternative leadership during a federal legitimacy crisis. The more I watch this September 8 meeting, the less it feels like a normal panel discussion and the more it feels like a sales pitch. The organizers made Reiff a co-host, gave her a dedicated presentation slot and said they were “front-loading” the meeting around Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs’s scheduled arrival. They then introduced her as a “key leader” in Renew to Thrive and told Hobbs she was about to present “real thought work” taking place across the country. Reiff starts by establishing her credentials and explaining the RAD strategy. She then walks everyone through three “democratic emergency” scenarios: an election meltdown, an Insurrection Act deployment and elected members of Congress being denied their seats. Then she gets to the proposed response. If the federal government became “literally illegitimate,” Reiff said they were discussing “provisional or transitional leadership.” She floated a “cross-partisan group of governors” temporarily keeping the country running, possibly with former Presidents Bush and Obama helping lead the response. Hobbs listened to the entire presentation. When she finished, he told her, “Danielle, that was great. I’d love to maybe talk to you over a beer,” and said he had held similar conversations with members of the German parliament and the Japanese government. Later, Hobbs called the federal government “kind of” an enemy of his office, offered his civic-engagement team to the organizations on the call and agreed to continued coordination. His Civic Engagement Program manager described the office as a “nexus” for outside organizations and said they had “the seal of the secretary” behind them. Faith leaders also presented their clergy rapid-response network, which they said was aligned with people’s organizations and labor leaders to “protect the election and protect election results.” To be clear, Hobbs never openly endorsed the transitional-leadership proposal. But the sequence matters. Reiff presented the threat, introduced RAD’s framework, offered a proposed response and left with new relationships and continued access to a sitting Secretary of State’s official team. I cut the more than two-hour recording down to eight minutes so everyone can watch the most important parts for themselves and hear the statements in context. It looks a lot less like an academic conversation and a lot more like an effort to get public officials and outside organizations aligned with the plan.