The January 6 Committee has released the Executive Summary for it’s full report which explains their rationale for finding that Donald Trump and John Eastman should be referred to the Justice Department on charges of Insurrection and Obstruction.
This is the summary without the detailed testimony but it does outline in broad strokes the case they are making against Trump and others. We all know that there is partisan controversy about this Committee and that anything they have to say is going to be seen through a partisan lens, however, it should be again noted that when an utterly bipartisan commission was originally proposed…
Republicans voted against it.
Then when a new Committee of current House members were proposed they suggested several members who have direct links to Trump's actions that day and to those who have rationalized and justified his action and the actions of the rioters. These compromised members were blocked from the committee and it was Kevin McCarthy who chose not to provide substitutes. The one-sided appearance of the committee was devised and implemented by Republicans.
Many on the opposing side have claimed due to these decisions this Committee is a “kangaroo court” looking only to hang Trump on “trumped-up charges.” There will not be an extensive discussion of Ray Epps and whether he was an FBI Informant. There will not be a long discussion of Antifa and BLM “provocateurs”, there will not be a long discussion how the protest was “perfectly peaceful” except for a few “outside agitators” because the Committee seems to feel those perspectives are total nonsense.
But those on the GOP side of the argument do not.
Starting on Election Day, the report chronicles how Trump was in opposition with all of his own staff on the results of the election. All of them, except Rudy Giuliani who some in Trump’s inner circle called “unhinged.”
[White House Counsel] Cipollone told the Select Committee that he “had seen no evidence of massive fraud in the election” and that he “forcefully” made this point “over and over again.” For example, during a late-night group meeting with President Trump on December 18th, at which he and Herschmann urged Trump not to heed the advice of several election conspiracists at the meeting:
Cipollone: They didn’t think that we were, you know – they didn’t think we believed this, you know, that there had been massive fraud in the election, and the reason they didn’t think we believed it is because we didn’t.
Committee Staff: And you articulated that forcefully to them during the meeting?
Cipollone: I did, yeah. I had seen no evidence of massive fraud in the election…. At some point, you have to deliver with the evidence. And I – again, I just to go back to what [Bill Barr] said, he had not seen and I was not aware of any evidence of fraud to the extent that it would change the results of the election. That was made clear to them, okay, over and over again.[70]
Similarly, White House Attorney Eric Herschmann was also very clear about his views:
[T]hey never proved the allegations that they were making, and they were trying to develop.[71]
In short, President Trump was informed over and over again, by his senior appointees, campaign experts and those who had served him for years, that his election fraud allegations were nonsense.
How did President Trump continue to make false allegations despite all of this unequivocal information? Trump sought out those who were not scrupulous with the facts, and were willing to be dishonest. He found a new legal team to assert claims that his existing advisors and the Justice Department had specifically informed him were false. President Trump’s new legal team, headed by Rudolph Giuliani, and their allies ultimately lost dozens of election lawsuits in Federal and State courts.
The testimony of Trump Campaign Manager Bill Stepien helps to put this series of events in perspective. Stepien described his interaction with Giuliani as an intentional “self-demotion,” with Stepien stepping aside once it became clear that President Trump intended to spread falsehoods. Stepien knew the President’s new team was relying on unsupportable accusations, and he refused to be associated with their approach:
“There were two groups of family. We called them kind of my team and Rudy’s team. I didn’t mind being characterized as being part of ‘team normal,’ as reporters, you know, kind of started to do around that point in time.”[72]
Having worked for Republican campaigns for over two decades, Stepien said, “I think along the way I’ve built up a pretty good -- I hope a good reputation for being honest and professional, and I didn’t think what was happening was necessarily honest or professional at that point in time.”[73]
As Giuliani visited Campaign headquarters to discuss election litigation, the Trump Campaign’s professional staff began to view him as unhinged.[74] In addition, multiple law firms previously engaged to work for the Trump campaign decided that they could not participate in the strategy being instituted by Giuliani. They quit. Campaign General Counsel Matthew Morgan explained that he had conversations with “probably all of our counsel who [we]re signed up to assist on election day as they disengaged with the campaign.”[75] The “general consensus was that the law firms were not comfortable making the arguments that Rudy Giuliani was making publicly.”[76] When asked how many outside firms expressed this concern, Morgan recalled having “a similar conversation with most all of them.”[77]
Stepien grew so wary of the new team that he locked Giuliani out of his office:
Despite the claims by Trump and Giuliani the DOJ did not do anything to investigate various claims of voter fraud, the truth is that they did investigate each and every claim. They all turned out to be false. Trump was repeatedly informed of this, and yet, time and time again he continued to make claims that had been fully and completely disproven.
Then-Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen (12/15/20):
“And so he said, ‘Well, what about this? I saw it on the videotape, somebody delivering a suitcase of ballots.’ And we said, ‘It wasn’t a suitcase. It was a bin. That’s what they use when they’re counting ballots. It’s benign.’”[105]
|
President Trump one week later (12/22/20):
“There is even security camera footage from Georgia that shows officials telling poll watchers to leave the room before pulling suitcases of ballots out from under the tables and continuing to count for hours.”[106]
|
Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue (12/27 & 12/31/20):
“I told the President myself that several times, in several conversations, that these allegations about ballots being smuggled in in a suitcase and run through the machine several times, it was not true, that we looked at it, we looked at the video, we interviewed the witnesses, that it was not true…. I believe it was in the phone call on December 27th. It was also in a meeting in the Oval Office on December 31st.”[107]
|
President Trump later that week (1/2/21):
“[S]he stuffed the machine. She stuffed the ballot. Each ballot went three times, they were showing: Here’s ballot number one. Here it is a second time, third time, next ballot.” [108]
|
GA Sec. State Brad Raffensperger (1/2/21):
“You’re talking about the State Farm video. And I think it’s extremely unfortunate that Rudy Giuliani or his people, they sliced and diced that video and took it out of context.” … “[W]e did an audit of that and we proved conclusively that they were not scanned three times…. Yes, Mr. President, we’ll send you the link from WSB”
[Trump]: “I don’t care about a link. I don’t need it.”[109]
|
President Trump one day later (1/3/21):
“I spoke to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday about Fulton County and voter fraud in Georgia. He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”[110]
|
Attorney General Bill Barr (12/1/20):
“Then he raised the ‘big vote dump,’ as he called it, in Detroit. And, you know, he said, people saw boxes coming into the counting station at all hours of the morning and so forth…. I said, ‘Mr. President, there are 630 precincts in Detroit, and unlike elsewhere in the State, they centralize the counting process, so they’re not counted in each precinct, they’re moved to counting stations, and so the normal process would involve boxes coming in at all different hours.’
And I said, ‘Did anyone point out to you -- did all the people complaining about it point out to you, you actually did better in Detroit than you did last time? I mean, there’s no indication of fraud in Detroit.’”[111]
|
President Trump one day later (12/2/20):
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong, voter fraud. Here’s an example. This is Michigan. At 6:31 in the morning, a vote dump of 149,772 votes came in unexpectedly. We were winning by a lot. That batch was received in horror….
In Detroit everybody saw the tremendous conflict… there were more votes than there were voters.”[112]
|
Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue (12/27/20):
“The President then continued, there are ‘more votes than voters…’. But I was aware of that allegation, and I said, you know, that was just a matter of them ‘comparing the 2020 votes cast to 2016 registration numbers.’ That is ‘not a valid complaint.’”[113]
|
President Trump ten days later (1/6/21):
“More votes than they had voters. And many other States also.”[114]
|
Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue (1/3/21):
“[W]e would say to him, you know, ‘We checked that out, and there’s nothing to it…. And we would cite to certain allegations. And so – like such as Pennsylvania, right. ‘No, there were not 250,000 more votes reported than were actually cast. That’s not true.’ So we would say things like that.”[115]
|
President Trump three days later (1/6/21):
“In Pennsylvania, you had 205,000 more votes than you had voters. And the number is actually much greater than that now. That was as of a week ago. And this is a mathematical impossibility unless you want to say it’s a total fraud.”[116]
|
GA Sec. State Brad Raffensperger (1/2/21):
[Trump]: “[I]t’s 4,502 who voted, but they weren’t on the voter registration roll, which they had to be. You had 18,325 vacant address voters. The address was vacant, and they’re not allowed to be counted. That’s 18,325.” …
[Raffensperger]: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong.”[117]
|
President Trump two days later (1/4/21):
“4,502 illegal ballots were cast by individuals who do not appear on the state’s voter rolls. Well, that’s sort of strange. 18,325 illegal ballots were cast by individuals who registered to vote using an address listed as vacant according to the postal service.”[118]
|
GA Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger (1/2/21):
[Trump]: “So dead people voted, and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number, and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters.” …
[Raffensperger]: “The actual number were two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted. So that’s wrong.”[119]
|
President Trump four days later (1/6/21):
“[T]he number of fraudulent ballots that we've identified across the state is staggering. Over 10,300 ballots in Georgia were cast by individuals whose names and dates of birth match Georgia residents who died in 2020 and prior to the election.”[120]
|
GA Sec. State General Counsel Ryan Germany (1/2/21):
[Trump]: “You had out-of-state voters. They voted in Georgia, but they were from out of state, of 4,925.” …
[Germany]: “Every one we’ve been through are people that lived in Georgia, moved to a different state, but then moved back to Georgia legitimately.” … “They moved back in years ago. This was not like something just before the election. So there’s something about that data that, it’s just not accurate.”[121]
|
President Trump four days later (1/6/21):
“And at least 15,000 ballots were cast by individuals who moved out of the state prior to November 3rd election. They say they moved right back.”[122]
|
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany (n.d.):
“[T]he one specific I remember referencing was I don’t agree with the Dominion track.” …
“I specifically referenced waving him off of the Dominion theory earlier in my testimony.” …
[Q] “Are you saying you think he still continued to tweet that after you waved him off of it?”
[A] “Yeah…”[123]
|
President Trump:
Between mid-November and January 5, 2021, President Trump tweeted or retweeted conspiracy theories about Dominion nearly three dozen times.[124]
|
Trump Campaign Senior Advisor Jason Miller:
“…the international allegations for Dominion were not valid.”
[Q] “Okay. Did anybody communicate that to the President?”
[A]: “I know that that was -- I know that was communicated. I know I communicated it”[125]
|
President Trump:
“You have Dominion, which is very, very suspect to start off with. Nobody knows the ownership. People say the votes are counted in foreign countries and much worse…”[126]
|
Attorney General Bill Barr (11/23/20):
“I specifically raised the Dominion voting machines, which I found to be one of the most disturbing allegations – ‘disturbing’ in the sense that I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations … I told him that it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on that and it was doing great, great disservice to the country.”[127]
|
President Trump three days later (11/26/20):
“[T]hose machines are fixed, they’re rigged. You can press Trump and the vote goes to Biden…. All you have to do is play with a chip, and they played with a chip, especially in Wayne County and Detroit.”[128]
|
Attorney General Bill Barr (12/1/20):
“I explained, I said, look, if you have a machine and it counts 500 votes for Biden and 500 votes for Trump, and then you go back later and you have a -- you will have the 1,000 pieces of paper put through that machine, and you can see if there’s any discrepancy… there has been no discrepancy.”[129]
|
President Trump one day later (12/2/20):
“In one Michigan County, as an example, that used Dominion systems, they found that nearly 6,000 votes had been wrongly switched from Trump to Biden, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. This is what we caught. How many didn’t we catch?”[130]
|
Attorney General Bill Barr (12/14/20):
“‘I will, Mr. President. But there are a couple of things,’ I responded. ‘My understanding is that our experts have looked at the Antrim situation and are sure it was a human error that did not occur anywhere else. And, in any event, Antrim is doing a hand recount of the paper ballots, so we should know in a couple of days whether there is any real problem with the machines’.”[131]
|
President Trump one day later (12/15/20):
“This is BIG NEWS. Dominion Voting Machines are a disaster all over the Country. Changed the results of a landslide election. Can’t let this happen….”[132]
|
Then-Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen (12/15/20):
“[O]ther people were telling him there was fraud, you know, corruption in the election. The voting machines were no good. And we were telling him that is inconsistent, by ‘we,’ I mean Richard Donoghue and myself, that that was not what we were seeing.” … “There was this open issue as to the Michigan report. And -- I think it was Mr. Cuccinelli, not certain, but had indicated that there was a hand recount. And I think he said, "That's the gold standard.”[133]
|
President Trump one day later (12/16/20):
“Study: Dominion Machines shifted 2-3% of Trump Votes to Biden. Far more votes than needed to sway election.” Florida, Ohio, Texas and many other states were won by even greater margins than projected. Did just as well with Swing States, but bad things happened. @OANN”[134]
|
National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien (12/18/20):
“I got a call from, I think, Molly Michael in outer oval, the President’s assistant, and she said, ‘I’m connecting you to the Oval’… somebody asked me, was there -- did I have any evidence of election fraud in the voting machines or foreign interference in our voting machines. And I said, no, we’ve looked into that and there’s no evidence of it.”[135]
|
President Trump one day later (12/19/20):
“…There could also have been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big, making it an even more corrupted embarrassment for the USA. @DNI_Ratcliffe @SecPompeo”.[136]
|
Acting Deputy AG Richard Donoghue (12/31/20):
“We definitely talked about Antrim County again. That was sort of done at that point, because the hand recount had been done and all of that. But we cited back to that to say, you know, this is an example of what people are telling you and what’s being filed in some of these court filings that are just not supported by the evidence.”[137]
|
President Trump two days later (1/2/21):
“Well, Brad. Not that there’s not an issue, because we have a big issue with Dominion in other states and perhaps in yours…. in other states, we think we found tremendous corruption with Dominion machines, but we’ll have to see.” … “I won’t give Dominion a pass because we found too many bad things.”[138]
|
GA Sec. State Brad Raffensperger (1/2/21):
“I don’t believe that you’re really questioning the Dominion machines. Because we did a hand re-tally, a 100 percent re-tally of all the ballots, and compared them to what the machines said and came up with virtually the same result. Then we did the recount, and we got virtually the same result.”[139]
|
President Trump four days later (1/6/21):
“In addition, there is the highly troubling matter of Dominion Voting Systems. In one Michigan county alone, 6,000 votes were switched from Trump to Biden and the same systems are used in the majority of states in our country.” … “There is clear evidence that tens of thousands of votes were switched from President Trump to former Vice President Biden in several counties in Georgia.”[140]
|
So we have Trump’s staff, White House Counsel, DOJ, Homeland Security, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Georgia Secretary of States Office, and Arizona Secretary of State on one side of the equation then Trump, Giuliani, John Eastman and Sidney Powell on the other side. Team Normal and Team Cray Cray.
Trump’s continued claim that he truly won the election in coordination with Giuliani and Eastman and in defiance of all fact experts is a conspiracy to make false statements. It’s a lie, it’s a fraud that he perpetrated on the American people.
Team Cray Cray went on to file dozens of election lawsuits only to lose all but one. None of these cases provided sufficient evidentiary proof of widespread election fraud to have overturned the election. Even Giuliani knew this.
A group of prominent Republicans have more recently issued a report – titled Lost, Not Stolen – examining “every count of every case brought in these six battleground states” by President Trump and his allies. The report concludes “that Donald Trump and his supporters had their day in court and failed to produce substantive evidence to make their case.”[84] President Trump and his legal allies “failed because of a lack of evidence and not because of erroneous rulings or unfair judges…. In many cases, after making extravagant claims of wrongdoing, Trump’s legal representatives showed up in court or state proceedings empty-handed, and then returned to their rallies and media campaigns to repeat the same unsupported claims.”[85]
There is no reasonable basis for the allegation that these dozens of rulings by State and Federal courts were somehow politically motivated.[86] The outcome of these suits was uniform regardless of who appointed the judges. One of the authors of Lost, Not Stolen, longtime Republican election lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg, testified before the Select Committee that “in no instance did a court find that the charges of fraud were real,” without variation based on the judges involved.[87] Indeed, eleven of the judges who ruled against Donald Trump and his supporters were appointed by Donald Trump himself.
One of those Trump nominees, Judge Stephanos Bibas of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, rejected an appeal by the Trump Campaign claiming that Pennsylvania officials “did not undertake any meaningful effort” to fight illegal absentee ballots and uneven treatment of voters across counties.[88] Judge Bibas wrote in his decision that “calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”[89] Another Trump nominee, Judge Brett Ludwig of the Eastern District of Wisconsin, ruled against President Trump’s lawsuit alleging that the result was skewed by illegal procedures that governed drop boxes, ballot address information, and individuals who claimed “indefinitely confined” status to vote from home.[90] Judge Ludwig wrote in his decision, that “[t]his Court has allowed plaintiff the chance to make his case and he has lost on the merits” because the procedures used “do not remotely rise to the level” of breaking Wisconsin’s election rules.[91]
Nor is it true that these rulings focused solely on standing, or procedural issues. As Ginsberg confirmed in his testimony to the Select Committee, President Trump’s team “did have their day in court.”[92] Indeed, he and his co-authors determined in their report that 30 of these post-election cases were dismissed by a judge after an evidentiary hearing had been held, and many of these judges explicitly indicated in their decisions that the evidence presented by the plaintiffs was wholly insufficient on the merits.[93]
Ultimately, even Rudolph Giuliani and his legal team acknowledged that they had no definitive evidence of election fraud sufficient to change the election outcome. For example, although Giuliani repeatedly had claimed in public that Dominion voting machines stole the election, he admitted during his Select Committee deposition that “I do not think the machines stole the election.”[94] An attorney representing his lead investigator, Bernard Kerik, declared in a letter to the Select Committee that “it was impossible for Kerik and his team to determine conclusively whether there was widespread fraud or whether that widespread fraud would have altered the outcome of the election.”[95] Kerik also emailed President Trump’s chief of staff on December 28, 2020, writing: “We can do all the investigations we want later, but if the president plans on winning, it’s the legislators that have to be moved and this will do just that.”[96] Other Trump lawyers and supporters, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, Phil Waldron, and Michael Flynn, all invoked their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination when asked by the Select Committee what supposed proof they uncovered that the election was stolen.[97] Not a single witness--nor any combination of witnesses--provided the Select Committee with evidence demonstrating that fraud occurred on a scale even remotely close to changing the outcome in any State.[98]
For those who continue to argue that Trump and Eastman were justified in their view and their approach, the simple fact that when he had a chance to testify Eastman and Flynn pleaded the 5th Amendment against self-incrimination indicates that they know, factually, that their actions and theories were not Constitutional and not legal. They couldn’t openly admit what they did under oath.
That would not have changed if Jim Jordan was asking the questions.
[43] Dan Friedman, “Leaked Audio: Before Election Day, Bannon Said Trump Planned to Falsely Claim Victory,” Mother Jones, (July 12, 2022), available at https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/07/leaked-audio-steve-bannon-trump-2020-election-declare-victory. We note that Mr. Bannon refused to testify and has been convicted of criminal contempt by a jury of his peers. “Stephen K. Bannon Sentenced to Four Months in Prison on Two counts of Contempt of Congress,” Department of Justice, (Oct. 21, 2022), available at https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/stephen-k-bannon-sentenced-four-months-prison-two-counts-contempt-congress.
[44] At his interview, Stone invoked his Fifth Amendment Right not to incriminate himself in response to over 70 questions, including questions regarding his direct communications with Donald Trump and his role in January 6th. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Deposition of Roger Stone (Dec. 17, 2021). See also documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Christoffer Guldbrandsen Production), Video file 201101_1 (November 1, 2020, footage of Roger Stone speaking to associates).
These key people refused to cooperate, they refused to tell their side of the story. It’s doubtful they would have changed their tune if more GOP members had been included on the Committee.
At this point, Trump attorney John Eastman concocted a demented plan to have Vice President Pence overturn the election.
Despite recognizing prior to the 2020 election that the Vice President had no power to refuse to count certain electoral votes, Eastman nevertheless drafted memoranda 2 months later proposing that Pence could do exactly that on January 6th—refuse to count certified electoral votes from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.[150]Eastman v. Thompson et al.
[...]
Even after Eastman proposed the theories in his December and January memoranda, he acknowledged in conversations with Vice President Pence’s counsel Greg Jacob that Pence could not lawfully do what his own memoranda proposed.[152] Eastman admitted that the U.S. Supreme Court would unanimously reject his legal theory. “He [Eastman] had acknowledged that he would lose 9-0 at the Supreme Court.”[153] Moreover, Dr. Eastman acknowledged to Jacob that he didn’t think Vice President Al Gore had that power in 2001, nor did he think Vice President Kamala Harris should have that power in 2025.[154]
In testimony before the Select Committee, Jacob described in detail why the Trump plan for Pence was illegal:
[T]he Vice President’s first instinct, when he heard this theory, was that there was no way that our Framers, who abhorred concentrated power, who had broken away from the tyranny of George III, would ever have put one person – particularly not a person who had a direct interest in the outcome because they were on the ticket for the election –in a role to have decisive impact on the outcome of the election. And our review of text, history, and, frankly, just common sense, all confirmed the Vice President’s first instinct on that point. There is no justifiable basis to conclude that the Vice President has that kind of authority.[155]
This right here, not the crowds attacking the Capitol, this is the Insurrection. The goal here is to usurp the will of the people and the vote using the Vice President to yeet control of the country back into Trump’s hands. This is the plan and the plot to overturn the election, even though they themselves didn't believe that it was legal or even possible. Making it possible is what the rally and attack were all about.
As this was going on, Trump with Mark Meadows was reaching out to state Republican parties to concoct slates of fake electors who could be slotted in if Mike Pence made the “right call.”
The false slates were created by fake Republican electors on December 14th, at the same time the actual, certified electors in those States were meeting to cast their States’ Electoral College votes for President Biden. By that point in time, election-related litigation was over in all or nearly all of the subject States, and Trump Campaign election lawyers realized that the fake slates could not be lawful or justifiable on any grounds. Justin Clark, the Trump Campaign Deputy Campaign Manager and Senior Counsel told the Select Committee that he “had real problems with the process.”[221] Clark warned his colleagues, “unless we have litigation pending like in these States, like, I don’t think this is appropriate or, you know, this isn’t the right thing to do. I don’t remember how I phrased it, but I got into a little bit of a back and forth and I think it was with Ken Chesebro, where I said, Alright, you know, you just get after it, like, I’m out.”[222]
Matthew Morgan, the Trump Campaign General Counsel, told the Select Committee that without an official State certificate of ascertainment,[223] “the [fake] electors were, for lack of a better way of saying it, no good or not -- not valid.”[224]
The Office of White House Counsel also appears to have expressed concerns with this fake elector plan. In his interview by the Select Committee White House Counsel Pat Cipollone acknowledged his view that by mid-December, the process was “done” and that his deputy, Pat Philbin, may have advised against the fake elector strategy.[225] In an informal Committee interview, Philbin described the fake elector scheme as one of the “bad theories” that were like “whack-a-mole” in the White House during this period.[226] Cipollone agreed with this characterization.[227]
In her testimony, Cassidy Hutchinson testified that she heard at least one member of the White House Counsel’s Office say that the plan was not legal:
Committee Staff: … to be clear, did you hear the White House Counsel’s Office say that this plan to have alternate electors meet and cast votes for Donald Trump in States that he had lost was not legally sound?
Hutchinson: Yes, sir.[228]
The fake elector's plan, which had supposedly been assembled in case Trump prevailed in one of his legal cases, continued even though Trump’s cases all failed. Documents were falsified submitting these fake electors to the National Archives.
Despite the fact that all major election lawsuits thus far had failed, Trump and his co-conspirators in this effort, including John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro, pressed forward with the fake elector scheme. Ultimately, these false electoral slates, five of which purported to represent the “duly elected” electoral college votes of their States, were transmitted to Executive Branch officials at the National Archives, and to the Legislative Branch, including to the Office of the President of the Senate, Vice President Mike Pence.[231]
The fake electors followed Chesebro’s step-by-step instructions for completing and mailing the fake certificates to multiple officials in the U.S. Government,[232] complete with registered mail stickers and return address labels identifying senders like the “Arizona Republican Party” and the “Georgia Republican Party.”[233] The Wisconsin Republican Party’s fake certificates apparently weren’t properly delivered, however, so the Trump campaign arranged to fly them to Washington just before the joint session on January 6th, and try to deliver them to the Vice President via Senator Ron Johnson and Representative Mike Kelly’s offices.[234] Both Johnson and Kelly’s offices attempted to do so, but Vice President Pence’s aide refused the delivery.[235]
This right here, this fake electors plot is very clearly a “conspiracy to defraud the United States.” These electors were not legitimate, and yet, falsified documents were generated to implement this fraud against the National Archives.
Eventually, this all came to a head as Team Normal and Team Cray Cray squared off against each other in the Oval Office on December 19th. The meeting went on for hours and in some instances nearly came to blows. Immediately after it concluded Trump put out his first tweet calling for a big rally on January 6, the exact date and time the Congress would be counting the state electoral votes confirming Biden as president.
This tweet and his subsequent push for the rally was his aim to obstruct the joint session of Congress. Simply having Trump supporters screaming outside the Capitol would not be enough to stop the proceedings and intimidate Mike Pence.
They had to go in. They had to lay siege to the building. All of this had to do with putting pressure on Pence to do his bidding. He needed Pence, or a surrogate, to deliver the White House back to him.
Thereafter Trump continued to apply public pressure in a series of tweets. At 1:00 a.m. on January 6th, “[i]f Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency. Many States want to decertify the mistake they made in certifying incorrect & even fraudulent numbers in a process NOT approved by their State Legislatures (which it must be). Mike can send it back!”[177] At 8:17 a.m. on January 6th, he tweeted again: “States want to correct their votes, which they now know were based on irregularities and fraud, plus corrupt process never received legislative approval. All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!”[178]
So here is Trump, after all of his staff who are subject matter experts on the issue of elections have told him that HE LOST the contest, ignoring their advice and putting forward a weird theory that Pence can deliver the Office back to him, even though the guy who came up with that idea, John Eastman, doesn’t believe it’s true.
Frustrated with his DOJ, Trump attempted to slot a loyalist in as Acting AG. Someone who would do his bidding and support of election hoax mantra.
Acting Attorney General Rosen first learned about Clark’s contact with Trump in a call on Christmas Eve. On that call, President Trump mentioned Clark to Rosen, who was surprised to learn that Trump knew Clark and had met with him. Rosen later confronted Clark about the contact: “Jeff, anything going on that you think I should know about?”[279] Clark didn’t “immediately volunteer” the fact that he had met with the President, but ultimately “acknowledged that he had been at a meeting with the President in the Oval Office, not alone, with other people.”[280] Clark was “kind of defensive” and “somewhat apologetic,” “casting it as that he had had a meeting with Congressman Perry from Pennsylvania and that, to his surprise, or, you know, he hadn’t anticipated it, that they somehow wound up at a meeting in the Oval Office.”[281] Clark’s contact with Trump violated both Justice Department and White House policies designed to prevent political pressure on the Department.[282]
While Clark initially appeared apologetic and assured Rosen that “[i]t won’t happen again,”[283] he nevertheless continued to work and meet secretly with Trump and Congressman Perry. Less than five days after assuring Rosen that he would comply with the Department’s White House contacts policy, Clark told Rosen and Donoghue that he had again violated that policy. Donoghue confronted him: “I reminded him that I was his boss and that I had directed him to do otherwise.”[284]
DOJ protocol, adopted after the Nixon Presidency, was to limit contact between the DOJ and White House to the Attorney General and his Deputy meeting with White House Counsel. It was completely inappropriate and against policy for a lower-level DOJ staffer like Clark to meet directly with the President. It’s frankly not allowed. And yet it persisted because Trump wanted to put Clark into Rosen’s job so that he could provide a fake letter to Georgia and Arizona claiming that there were “voting irregularities.”
On December 28th, Clark worked with a Department employee named Kenneth Klukowski – a political appointee who had earlier worked with John Eastman – to produce a draft letter from the Justice Department to the State legislature of Georgia.[286] That letter mirrored a number of the positions Trump and Eastman were taking at the time.[287] (Although both Clark and Eastman refused to answer questions by asserting their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, evidence shows that Clark and Eastman were in communication in this period leading up to January 6th.[288] The draft letter to Georgia was intended to be one of several Department letters to State legislatures in swing States that had voted for Biden.[289]
The letter read: “The Department of Justice is investigating various irregularities in the 2020 election for President of the United States.”[290] Clark continued: “The Department will update you as we are able on investigatory progress, but at this time we have identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia.”[291] This was affirmatively untrue. The Department had conducted many investigations of election fraud allegations by that point, but it absolutely did not have “significant concerns” that fraud “may have impacted the outcome of the election” in any State. Jeff Clark knew this; Donoghue confirmed it again in an email responding to Clark’s letter: “[W]e simply do not currently have a basis to make such a statement. Despite dramatic claims to the contrary, we have not seen the type of fraud that calls into question the reported (and certified) results of the election.”[292]
The letter also explicitly recommended that Georgia’s State legislature should call a special session to evaluate potential election fraud. “In light of these developments, the Department recommends that the Georgia General Assembly should convene in special session so that its legislators are in a special position to take additional testimony, receive new evidence, and deliberate on the matter consistent with its duties under the U.S. Constitution.”[293]
Clark’s draft letter also referenced the fake electors that Trump and his campaign organized – arguing falsely that there were currently two competing slates of legitimate Presidential electors in Georgia:[294]
Trump kept up the pressure during his ellipsis speech.
“I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election,” Trump first told the crowd.[188]
“Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us,” Trump later said, “and if he doesn’t, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you’re sworn to uphold our Constitution.”[189]
Addressing Pence directly, Trump told the assembled crowd: “Mike Pence, I hope you’re going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country.” Trump said at another point, “And if you’re not, I’m going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I’m not hearing good stories.”[190]
“So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. And I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he’s listening to,” Trump said.[191]
This enraged the crowd against Pence. They were livid.
After getting the crowd riled up and angry at Pence, he fired them at the Capitol — during the counting of electoral votes — like a heat-seeking missile.
We just heard that Mike Pence is not going to reject any fraudulent electoral votes. [Other speaker: “Boo. You’re a traitor!”] That's right. You’ve heard it here first. Mike Pence has betrayed the United States of America. [Other speaker: “Fuck you, Mike Pence!”] Mike Pence has betrayed this President and he has betrayed the people of the United States and we will never, ever forget. [Cheers][194]
This woman cames [sic] up to the side of us and she says Pence folded. So it was kind of, like, Ok, well — in my mind I was thinking, well that’s it. You know. Well, my son-in-law looks at me and he says I want to go in.[195]
[Q] What percentage of the crowd is going to the Capitol? [A] [Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins]: One hundred percent. It has, it has spread like wildfire that Pence has betrayed us, and everybody’s marching on the Capitol. All million of us. It’s insane.[196]
Bring him out. Bring out Pence. Bring him out. Bring out Pence. Bring him out. Bring out Pence. Bring him out. Bring out Pence.[197]
Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence.[198]
So at this point, the crowd breaks through the barriers and attacks the Capitol. What does Trump do? He keeps criticizing Mike Pence for not going along with Eastman’s crazed plan.
Once Trump returned to the White House, he was informed almost immediately that violence and lawlessness had broken out at the Capitol among his supporters.[199] At 2:24 p.m., President Trump applied yet further pressure to Pence (see infra []), posting a tweet accusing Vice President Mike Pence of cowardice for not using his role as President of the Senate to change the outcome of the election: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”[200] Almost immediately thereafter, the crowd around the Capitol surged, and more individuals joined the effort to confront police and break further into the building.
The sentiment expressed in President Trump's 2:24 p.m. tweet, already present in the crowd, only grew more powerful as the President’s words spread. Timothy Hale-Cusanelli – a white supremacist who expressed Nazi sympathies – heard about the tweet while in the Crypt around 2:25 p.m., and he, according to the Department of Justice, “knew what that meant.” Vice President Pence had decided not to keep President Trump in power.[201] Other rioters described what happened next as follows:
Once we found out Pence turned on us and that they had stolen the election, like officially, the crowd went crazy. I mean, it became a mob. We crossed the gate.[202]
Then we heard the news on [P]ence…And lost it…So we stormed.[203]
They’re making an announcement right now saying if Pence betrays us you better get your mind right because we’re storming that building.[204]
Minutes after the tweet—at 2:35 p.m.—rioters continued their surge and broke a security line of the DC Metropolitan Police Department, resulting in the first fighting withdrawal in the history of the that force.[205]
This is Trump acting to aid and support the attack and the violence against the Capitol and against Pence. This is him aiding the Insurrection. He picked the time, he picked the date, he set up the scenario and he set his supporters on a path to destroy the Capitol and attack Mike Pence. He has his slate of fake electors ready to be slotted into place, he just needed to crowd to scare Pence into “coming to Jesus” or else leaving the premises so that Senate Pro Tem Chuck Grassley could take his place and call for the fake electors to replace the actual electors and keep Trump in the White House.
There’s more, but I’m going to stop here.
Refusing to listen to his advisers who told him he had lost the election. Throwing in his lot with Eastman, Giuliani and Powell. Conjuring up slates of fake electors with Meadows. Trying to pressure the DOJ to ignore the fact that their investigations were not turning up significant fraud. Trying to overturn the control over the DOJ to a sycophant who would support those allegations and push them out to the states. Threatening Pence into slotting in the fake electors, in place of the legitimate electors and vote. Hyping up the crowd to get them to threaten Pence and push him out of the picture and/or disrupt the counting of legitimate electors.
This is the plot. This is the plan. They put it down in writing, so it’s not really an argument. It’s not like J6 Committee has simply made this up. It’s documented by Eastman himself.
John Eastman, a conservative lawyer working with then-President Donald Trump’s legal team, outlined in a two-page memo a scheme to try to persuade then-Vice President Mike Pence to subvert the Constitution and throw out the 2020 election results on January 6.
The memo was obtained by The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, the authors of “Peril,” and which was subsequently obtained by CNN.
They even made a Powerpoint Presentation
Former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows turned over to the House select committee investigating the 6 January Capitol attack a PowerPoint recommending Donald Trump to declare a national security emergency in order to return himself to the presidency.
The fact that Meadows was in possession of a PowerPoint the day before the Capitol attack that detailed ways to stage a coup suggests he was at least aware of efforts by Trump and his allies to stop Joe Biden’s certification from taking place on 6 January.
The PowerPoint, titled “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 Jan”, made several recommendations for Trump to pursue in order to retain the presidency for a second term on the basis of lies and debunked conspiracies about widespread election fraud.
This can't really be denied. This is not something done by Ray Freaking Epps on the day of the attack. In point of fact, the attack on the Capitol — huge though it may be — is actually a side issue.
Donald Trump and his cohorts had a plot to undo the legitimate election of Joseph Biden. They pulled out every stop that they could, they ignored everyone who told them differently and they tried to go to the mat to implement that plan.
Sending the crowd to attack the Capitol was just the final straw, it was the final ingredient to make the special sauce that would get their fake electors put in place and keep Trump in the White House.
Even if you want to argue that Trump said “peacefully” — even though he then sat on his hands for 3 freaking hours after he was specifically told and shown that they WERE. NOT. PEACEFUL — it doesn’t matter. He showed how much he cared about “peace” by his actions or rather, his complete and total lack of action.
It was all in service of his greater plan. It was all his doing. None of it would have happened if Trump hadn’t repeatedly lied about the election if he hadn’t set up fake electors if he hadn’t tried to overturn the DOJ if he hadn’t arranged for 140 members of Congress to object to the swing state electors and he hadn’t picked the date and time to assemble and send the mob to intimidate and push Mike Pence out of the way.
This report does not answer the counterfactual questions. It will not explain who and where the FBI informants were. It will not explain where Antifa was. It will not explain why Ray Epps wasn’t arrested. It will disappoint those on the right, by not explaining which Capitol Police waved the crowd into the building. It will not fully explain the shooting of Ashli Babbit. It does not explain why the Secret Service and FBI ignored the numerous online warnings they received before the attack and why they didn’t forward those to Capitol Police or otherwise act on them.
It does explain — and they've provided video — that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, rather than overriding the request for the National Guard, were on the phones with the Secretary of the Army, the Secretary of Defense, and the Governors of Maryland and Virginia to get State Police and the National Guard to the Capitol — but then as we’ve already seen the GOP don't really care about any of that. [Many of these and other issues I addressed in this diary here.]
But it does explain what Donald Trump did, in detail.
The Arizona audit was intended to disprove and debunk wild conspiracy theories like “bamboo ballots" and custom special ballots that had hidden watermarks. In the end, it did prove that Joe Biden won Arizona by more votes than was originally thought, but unfortunately -- even after the “irregularities” claims were thoroughly debunked — the rumors and innuendos about “voter fraud” have persisted. Perhaps addressing the rumors in this report would have helped to dispel them, and perhaps like the Arizona audit simply giving these ideas oxygen may have granted them a level of seriousness and legitimacy that they do not merit.
Perhaps. And perhaps not.
We do not yet know if this criminal referral will impact the DOJ and special counsel. For the sake of preserving their autonomy and integrity, I actually hope that it doesn't impact their investigation, although the voluminous transcripts of individual interviews very likely will make a difference, exactly how that will play out is difficult to predict. We may not get charges filed against Trump, but we may have them filed against Eastman and Giuliani.
Time will tell.