Meyer Conspiracy
Meyer Conspiracy | |||
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2018–2020 SOCP Plan to Take Over Paleocacherian Government | |||
![]() Oscar Meyer and Accomplices giving press conference while President Clark was hospitalized. | |||
Date | 16 June 2018 – 24 February 2020 | ||
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Goals | Take control of the Paleocacherian government Gain control of the Paleocacherian economy | ||
Methods | Assassination Smuggling Consorting with foreign powers | ||
Status | Failed, all known members of the conspiracy were arrested | ||
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The Meyer Conspiracy was an attempt to take over the Paleocacherian government by subverting the legislature and installing a puppet as president. The conspiracy was long in the planning but was unraveled due to the hard work of several federal agents and numerous foreign intelligence sources.
Background
The Meyer Conspiracy was a plot predominantly created by the Paleocacherian Social Order Control Party or SOCP. The SOCP was Paleocacher's primary socialist/far left party and was a dominant force in national politics in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1998 three SOCP senators and 6 SOCP assemblypersons were charged with receiving bribes and the SOCP president at the time resigned in disgrace due to allegations of misappropriation of public funds. The political party was badly hurt by these scandals and withdrew from national politics to focus on rebuilding its base in several of Paleocacher's state level governments.
In 2012 the party made its comeback when a charismatic young assemblyman from Bullmar named Oscar Meyer was elected to the post of Speaker of the Chamber of Generals. The party gained its popularity back rapidly with promises of dramatic reforms and increased government spending on social policy. President Clark was elected to his first term in 2015 and he chose as his Vice President Oscar Meyer in an attempt to promote unity between the left leaning SOCP and the center-right National Union Party.
In 2016 Meyer was approached by a major donor and nominal leader to the SOCP, billionaire CEO of Information technology company Feynman Systems, Micah Bell. Bell instigated the creation of the conspiracy which grew to include leaders of major unions, other important businessmen, legislators at federal and state levels, the editor in chief of National Interests Magazine, and an Undersecretary of Public Security to keep them safe from investigation. The goals of the conspiracy were threefold, to take revenge on the NUP for the downfall of the SOCP in the 1990s, to take control of the country's government and economy, and to make Paleocacher a foremost world power by any means necessary.
Illegal Activities
At first the Conspiracy started off small. They funneled money from government projects to their own pockets and worked on ways to delegitimize and/or undermine the incumbent administration. They sought funding from overseas sources such as the dictator Alyosha Karamazov.
In the fall of 2019, during the height of the Morova crisis they conspired to cause a serious international incident to discredit the president, by sending a shipload of weapons to the Morovan government with the intention that it would be captured by international patrols enforcing the TCN blockade. Following the ship's capture the President was embarrassed in the international community and the ship's captain was assassinated while in custody to keep him from revealing that he had been coerced by threats made to his family to participate.
Subsequent to this event, Foreign Affairs Secretary Lilyarn Chilton tried to extort more money from Bell. She demanded a higher position in Meyer's administration. The conspirators decided she was a liability so she and her personal assistant (another member of the conspiracy) were assassinated by a hired Creeperian assassin with terminal cancer (he had been promised that his family would be well compensated) along with the commerce secretary to further discredit Clark's administration. Following the preceding events, and under investigation by Committees from the National Assembly, the embattled president began to lose ground in the polls for the 2020 election.
Emboldened by their successes, the conspirators decided to jump the gun and assassinate the president rather than wait for him to lose the election. A neurotoxin was slipped into his drink during a function at the Presidential Residence but due to the inexperience of the assassin he slipped into a coma instead of dying. When VP Meyer assumed the office of Acting President he ordered the would be assassin not be taken alive to prevent him from talking. He also began instituting draconian security measures including the detentions of foreign aliens, the suspension of the Constitution, and he made plans to re work the economy to the benefits of the conspiracy. To further his legislative aims he had the families of both the Speaker of the Senate and the Speaker of the General Assembly abducted in order to ensure their cooperation.
Unraveling the Conspiracy
The Meyer Conspiracy was uncovered by international law enforcement cooperation and dogged investigative work by Paleocacherian authorities. After the assassination of the ship captain while in Quebecshirite custody, the Quebecshirite secret service sent their case files to the Paleocacherian FIB. The agent in charge of the FIB's Anti-Corruption and Conspiracies Division, Martin Bluestone, received this case file and immediately became suspicious. The Quebecshirites suggested that high-ranking government officials were trying to impugn the President's reputation to further a political agenda. This suspicion was further supported when the deceased Foreign Affairs Secretary, Lilyarn Chilton's laptop was recovered from the wreckage of her hijacked plane. Two IAA agents working for Public Security recovered the laptop but not before a copy of the hard drive was made. The hard drive contained a significant amount of incriminating information.
Not knowing who to trust, Bluestone proceeded slowly over the next couple of months, corresponding with a number of other officials trying to unravel the mystery. A week before the assassination attempt he went to the President's Chief of Staff and Head of Presidential Security. Both men brought in the Attorney General and began to make plans in case the conspirators made a move on the president. They had a significant amount of evidence but did not have the names of all involved and didn't want to risk getting court orders or making premature arrests for fear of tipping off the rest of the conspirators. Following the assassination attempt they began to put plans in place, surveilling Meyer and his accomplices.
The recovery of the president and the discovery of the abducted family members of the National Assembly's leaders who could identify their captors sealed the conspiracy's fate. On the 20th of February during the President's "funeral" Meyer and dozens of his accomplices were arrested. Several escaped but would be arrested later and three took off in a private plane into bad weather and are considered missing. The legal proceedings were swift.
Treason at the time of the proceedings was the most serious offence under Paleocacherian law and was tried before the Supreme Court with no place to appeal sentence or conviction to. The trial began Friday the 21st and continued until the following Monday. Of the 46 arrested persons, the court acquitted or pardoned four including the two whose families had been abducted and were only made to participate in illegal activities after Meyer had been sworn in. Twenty seven were convicted of treason and sentenced to death by mauling, the traditional punishment but only the sentences for Meyer and Bell were carried out. The President mercifully commuted the remainder to death by hanging. All twenty seven were executed publicly in the Gardena Central Justice Area. Three others were sentenced to death after pleading guilty to aggravated murder in exchange for their testimony. They received sentences of death by firing squad and are still awaiting execution. Four more members of the conspiracy were later captured at the Quebecshirite embassy in Gardena and were imprisoned for life along with the remaining members of the original group of captured conspirators, all were convicted of lesser offenses than murder.
The government is still investigating the depths of the conspiracy and unraveling new threads even more than a year later.
Aftermath
Following the brutal public executions, Paleocacher was condemned by the Terraconserva Council of Nations and the TCN also imposed a ban on cruel methods of execution. The Paleocacherian government took the condemnation to heart and has desperately worked to redeem itself in the eyes of the international community since then. Following the events of the crisis, President Clark resigned due to his ill health and the National Assembly held a special election. Paleocacher ratified the 2020 Paleocacherian Constitution as a modernized version of the old with granting expanded rights and freedoms to the citizens and seeing the election of President Fulkerson. The Social Order Control Party is now essentially defunct as a political party due to the gutting of its leadership. Its position as second most powerful political party in Paleocacher has now fallen to the Paleocacherian Democratic People's Coalition, a centre-left party.