The Jan. 6 committee is still amassing information on the lead-up to the Capitol riot, and they’re still dealing with intransigent Trump allies like Mark Meadows. But now a damning piece of evidence has been made public: According to The Guardian, select GOP lawmakers were shown a 38-page PowerPoint detailing how they could overturn the election Trump lost by over seven million votes. And they looked at it not long before violent Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.
The PowerPoint, a version of which chief of staff Mark Meadows gave to the committee, was called “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 Jan.” It offered a number of pathways for Trump and cronies to subvert their re-election loss. One instructed Trump to “declare a national emergency, declare all electronic voting invalid, and ask Congress to agree on a constitutionally acceptable remedy.”
It also contained multiple paths for Trump’s number two:
The PowerPoint also outlined three options for then vice-president Mike Pence to abuse his largely ceremonial role at the joint session of Congress on 6 January, when Biden was to be certified president, and unilaterally return Trump to the White House.
Pence could pursue one of three options, the PowerPoint said: seat Trump slates of electors over the objections of Democrats in key states, reject the Biden slates of electors, or delay the certification to allow for a “vetting” and counting of only “legal paper ballots”.
The final option for Pence is similar to an option that was simultaneously being advanced on 4 and 5 January by Trump lieutenants – led by lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, as well as Trump strategist Steve Bannon – working from the Willard hotel in Washington DC.
None of those, of course, happened, and it may be thanks to, of all people, former veep and notorious bad speller Dan Quayle.
The PowerPoint was presented on Jan. 4 to “a number of Republican senators and members of Congress,” though no names were specified. Trump’s lawyers, alas, were not invited to see it. The presentation was mentioned in over 6,000 of the documents Meadows turned over to the committee, and it was pitched to Meadows as a “highly controversial” plan to illegally give Trump four more years.
Though Meadows has played ball with the committee, he’s only done so up to a point. Last week he flip-flopped and refused to formally testify, citing “executive privilege” — the same excuse Trump and other allies have cited, however erroneously, to get out of spilling the beans. The committee has already vowed to find Meadows in contempt of Congress, which perhaps will result in him being cellmates with another, smelly Trump associate: Steve Bannon.
(Via The Guardian)