It is clear that Trump attempted to provide some degree of legitimacy to his claim that he remains president by extending for six months Secret Service protection for his family and two of his administration's officials. As a former president, Trump and his wife receive lifetime Secret Service protection, but Trump extended it for his adult children and their spouses, including Ivanka Trump; her husband, Jared Kushner; son Donald Trump Jr.; son Eric Trump and his wife, Lara Trump; and daughter Tiffany Trump. For six months and a cost of $1.7 million of taxpayers' money, Trump's family, as well as former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows who remained as Trump's personal assistant and former national security adviser Robert O'Brien, received Secret Service protection as though they were still the part of an administration.
In June 2021, Mnuchin and his Secret Service detail traveled to Israel; Doha, Qatar; and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico in the manner of a still-serving Cabinet official. Likewise, Kushner traveled in May 2021 to Abu Dhabi with his Secret Service team. Meadows had his own Secret Service team on trips to Mar-a-Lago in Florida and North Carolina. This waste of taxpayers' money had nothing at all to with security and everything to do with giving the impression that Trump and his top officials represented some sort of rival presidency or "government-in-exile."
Rival claimants to national office constitute major destabilization factors. It was the dual inaugurations in March 2020 of two rival presidents in Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah that ultimately led to the collapse of the government and the Taliban takeover in August. A month earlier, Guinea-Bissau was further destabilized by the swearing in of two rival presidential claimants, Umaro Cissoko Embalo and Domingos Simoes Pereira, both of whom installed rival prime ministers. Unless the Biden administration wishes for the United States to fall further into Third World-style instability, it should put a quick end to Trump's trappings of running a rival presidential administration, even if that includes indicting him for insurrection and sedition and jailing him until trial as a flight risk.
As far as Guo's and Bannon's China government-in-exile in New York, it should be shut down. Under international law, the United States recognizes the People's Republic of China as the legitimate government of China. Guo's and Bannon's attempts to negotiate with third countries on behalf of their fantasy Chinese government stands to complicate Chinese and American relations with various countries, including Greece, Malta, the United Arab Emirates, Mongolia, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, Japan, India, and other nations, which is not in the interests of either the United States or China.
It is time for the administration, the actual and legal one presided over by President Biden, to make it quite clear to the illegal claimant to the Oval Office in Mar-a-Lago that any further attempts by him to conduct his own foreign policy will be met with an indictment for violating the Logan Act. As for Guo Wengui, Bannon's Chinese "Daddy Warbucks," his political asylum status in the United States should be voided and U.S. Marshals should escort him to the next outbound plane to China.
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