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| Wackydoodle sez: He sent in the clowns! |
As part of the sprawling coup plan that spread to all three branches of government, the House Select Committee on Tuesday presented evidence of Herr Trumpillini's direct involvement in a scheme to present alternative slates of electors to Congress. He was part of a pressure campaign against state legislators and officials to present alternative slates of sympathetic electors so they could be forwarded for consideration by Congress.
The scheme began shortly after the election when a kraken lawyer, Cleta Mitchell sent an email to Rudy Giuliani suggesting the idea. Her suggestion was joined by Kenneth Chesebro another lawyer on the Trump roster. By Thanksgiving all were on board including the former president. It is clear the scheme attempted to take advantage of the arcane provisions of the Electoral Count Act, which was intended to prevent a election being decided by the House of Representatives as it was in 1876 after a prolonged constitutional crisis. At one point Trump got on the phone with John Eastman and Ronna McDaniel, the RNC chairwoman, to emphasize the importance of these bogus electors. At the time there were significant doubts about the legality of the effort. Even Giuliani told a meeting of Arizona legislators,“We’ve got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence.” Trump and his allies attempted to coerce officials in seven swing states. Pennsylvania's House Speaker had to ask the Trump lawyers to stop their daily calls to his office because they were inappropriate.
Despite the well-founded misgivings, the plan had supporters in Congress. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) was wiling to hand Mike Pence a bogus list of electors in the House of Representatives during his ceremonial vote count. He has denied he had anything to do with presenting fake electors to the Vice President. Not so with former DOJ lawyer Jeffery Clark, who was Trump's surprising pick to be Acting Attorney General. Clark's most salient qualification--he was a civil lawyer in environment section of DOJ backed by GOP Congressman Scott Perry--was his willingness to send a letter to Georgia election officials alleging the election in Georgia was corrupted by fraud. Trump did not care if that was true--he knew it was NOT. Whatl he wanted was an official statement to that effect; he and his congressional supporters 'would take care of the rest'. Clark's northern Virginia home was raided in the early hours of Thursday morning by FBI agents with a search warrant, presumably to seize evidence related to the bogus electors scheme. When disposed by the Select Committee's investigators, Clark took the Fifth over a hundred times.
The Committee will take a hiatus to gather and review more evidence. Hopefully they will find the courage to summon Mike Pence, the crucial cog in Trump's diabolical plan to stay in power. The country needs to hear from him. The Committee plans to reconvene in July.