Mornin’ Politocadoes!
In a not particularly surprising development, in the e-mails that John Eastman was ordered to hand over to the January 6th Committee, Trump’s lawyers concluded that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas would be the key to overturning the results of the 2020 election. The documents indicate that Trump’s legal team was seeking to delay the electoral count that officially certified Biden’s win as much as possible.
“We want to frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt,”
Trump Attorney Kenneth Chesebro. Jeez, bro.
See, Clarence Thomas is assigned to oversee emergency petitions from the 11th Circuit Court which includes Georgia. In much the same way that Trump would later appeal to Thomas directly about the Mar-A-Lago files, the hope was to get a stay on the count in Georgia by Thomas. It was hoped that it would create the appearance that the election was in legitimate doubt. With Republican congresspeople then objecting on January 6th, for longer than a period of two hours, Pence could potentially be convinced to not certify the results.
Suddenly, it all starts to make sense. Thomas issues an injunction against the vote count, this would embolden the state legislature, and perhaps other GOP controlled state legislatures to overturn the Georgia results, and delay certification long enough for Pence to object and send back the ballots. And why not? Thomas did say that he would have accepted jurisdiction over the Texas lawsuit. Trump’s lawyers would have very good reason to think that Thomas would rule in their favor.
Between that, and Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and Lindsey Graham doing everything in their power to pressure the Georgia Secretary of State, it feels like their defense that they were only seeking relief just doesn’t hold water. That’s to say nothing of Ginni Thomas, red-pilled as hell, constantly buzzing in Mark Meadows’ ear. Or Mark Meadows actually showing up on multiple occasions in Fulton County, Georgia asking to supervise the hand recounts. Sure sounds like they were trying to overturn the election. Sure sounds a lot like Roger Stone’s plan from that documentary to “deny everything”.
To be completely fair to the lawyers in this e-mail exchange, Kenneth Chesebro and John Eastman, they knew this was a Hail Mary. They were pretty confident they could get this all in place but they were not sure it would work, especially in the timeframe they had. It was a little less than two weeks to January 6th. And if we look at it like that, then what happened on January 6th with the march on the Capitol was a last ditch effort; sloppy, poorly coordinated, but weakened the country nonetheless. It will not be so sloppy next time.
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