Earlier Tuesday, The New York Times reported that almost two weeks after Election Day, Trump campaign officials received an internal memo that debunked the most outlandish claims that were being thrown around about election fraud. The memo was released on Nov. 14. That is, 11 days after the election, six days after most media outlets declared Biden president-elect—and more importantly, six days before the now-infamous press conference at which Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell repeated some of those very claims.
Ericlewis0 diaried it here earlier, but I felt it was necessary to point out just how seismic this is. We now have hard proof of what we have known for some time—Trump was wailing “Stop the steal!” even though he damned well KNEW that he had lost, and the insurrection was underway long before a mob of pro-Trump thugs stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.
There was already ample evidence that Trump was well aware that Biden had beaten him. In late January, the New York Times reported (diaried here) that Trump’s legal team knew as early as November 12—incidentally, two days before the release of that memo—that there was no hope of winning enough legal challenges to overturn Biden’s lead. In response, the Trump campaign began what the Old Grey Lady delicately called “an extralegal campaign” to overturn those results. In light of what we now know, that’s a polite term for “insurrection.” After all, ethically the lawyers had to tell Trump this information. That means an argument can be made that every move Trump made to overturn Biden’s lead after that date was in furtherance of that insurrection.
A week later, William Saletan of Slate compiled a tranche of articles (diaried here) that moved the date back even further. Those articles, taken together, indicated Trump knew as early as the weekend of Nov. 7-8 that he was shooting his last legal bolt. His campaign advisers told him that he had only one path to a second term—winning the outstanding ballots in Arizona and Georgia by blowout margins, and winning a legal challenge in Wisconsin. Even then, he was told, his chances of pulling that off were 5-10%.
But knowing that Trump was well aware he’d lost even as he was wailing about fraud is one thing. Proving it is another. And now it looks like we have that proof. That memo was released as part of a legal filing by Eric Coomer, the former Dominion employee who is suing the Trump campaign, Giuliani, Powell and several elements of the right-wing noise machine for defamation. It cannot be stated enough folks—news reports are one thing. Legal filings are another. This amounts to DNA-level evidence that the Trump campaign damned well knew that it had lost even as it was wailing, kicking, and screaming about fraud.
When I saw this alert hit my phone, it was all I could do to keep from screaming out loud what I was thinking at that very moment—“You evil sonofabitch!” Think about it, folks. The president of the United States damned well knew he’d lost, damned well knew that the lies he was spreading were causing Coomer and other innocent third parties to be harassed, trolled, and threatened—AND DIDN’T DO A DAMN THING. Now we have hard proof of it. And that also proves that when that mob stormed the Capitol, the insurrection was already underway well before then.
In my quarter-century plus of being politically active, I have never, ever seen an elected official act this way. And we must never, ever allow this to happen again. We need to find a way to make sure that this gangster, this thug, is never allowed to run for office again. After all, on the face of it, this memo proves Trump has absolutely, positively disqualified himself from holding “any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.”