Another memo on Trump's coup strategy surfaces, highlighting intent to disenfranchise millions
Dartagnan
Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis prepared a memo detailing how the administration could disenfranchise the American electorate.
The human attention span is now shorter than that of a goldfish. In fact, according to one study, over the past twenty years it has dropped by over 30%, given the instant gratification and complete absence of critical skills needed to decipher the clever memes and pithy messages of the social media universe now embraced by most of the developed world. For Americans in particular, when presented with an unfamiliar concept like an attempted “coup”against their own government, the real ramifications of what that actually means tend to get lost amid phrases like “overturning” an “election result.”
But the reality is that when we talk about an attempted coup in this country, we are talking about the immediate, arbitrary and total disenfranchisement of tens of millions of people who entered the voting booth with a reasonable, lawful expectation that their vote would be counted. A coup seeks to negate not just those votes, but the hopes and beliefs of all people that cast them as well. In this country, on top of the obvious insult to the nation’s entire democratic history, a coup is essentially an act of violence, intending to invalidate the desires and values of real living, breathing, and thinking people. It’s a personal attack, a visceral betrayal of the country writ over and over again for every person whose vote is so devalued, which is why in many less civilized countries those guilty of attempting failed coups often end up in mass graves.
In its clumsy but brazen attempts to erase enough Americans’ votes to alter the 2020 election result, the Trump administration left a clear trail of evidence confirming that a full-blown coup was a palatable and desirable outcome. The memo prepared by attorney John Eastman (a former law clerk to current Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas), which detailed the exact course necessary to accomplish the coup was the first written record confirming the Trump administration’s intent. Now, another memo has surfaced, prepared by Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis and transmitted by White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to staffers of former Vice President Mike Pence, further fleshing out Trump’’s scheme to disenfranchise and nullify votes lawfully cast by millions of Americans.
.............
As reported by Libby Cathie, writing for ABC News, the memo is discussed in a forthcoming book authored by that network’s chief Washington correspondent, Jonathan Karl.
As reported by Cathie, Ellis’ memo, like Eastman’s, set forth a series of steps to be taken by Vice President Pence during the certification of each state’s vote electoral vote count on Jan. 6, the same day that Donald Trump, from his perch onstage along the national Mall, exhorted and incited a crowd summoned and massed by aides to storm the capital and attack members of Congress. As each state’s votes were called to be certified, “Pence was to send back the electoral votes from six battleground states that Trump falsely claimed he had won.”
The plan was to provide those states with a deadline of Jan. 15th to “send back a new set of votes, according to Karl.” When the states’ Republican legislatures deliberately failed to meet that deadline, the lack of a clear majority for either Trump or Biden would then force the issue to be decided by each state’s delegation as it consisted within the House of Representatives .
Mark Meadows, Trump’s acting chief of staff, transmitted the memo to Pence’s staff on December 31. This was followed the next day with another memo, prepared by Trump aide John McEntee, arguing (inaccurately) that President Thomas Jefferson had utilized his position as VP in a similar manner.
That the preparation of these memos were not simply intellectual exercises but were actual plans to be executed is evident in Trump’s own actions as the certification of Jan. 6 approached. As Libbie reports, three days later, Trump spoke to a crowd in Georgia, where he alluded to the role he expected Pence to play during the upcoming certification process, then two days away.
On Jan. 6 Trump spoke to the crowd of insurrectionists gathered near the capitol. His words, however, were not intended for the rioters, but directed again at Mike Pence, then inside the Capitol Building, waiting to certify the Electoral Counts. According to Karl’s book, Trump also did not dispute that he called Pence on the morning of Jan 6, telling him “"You can be a patriot or you can be a p****," (presumably the deleted word is “pussy”; This conversation had been previously reported in the New York Times). Eastman, who had also submitted a blueprint for accomplishing the coup, also opined on Jan. 2 that whether the election could be overturned depended on Pence’s “courage” and “spine.”
The fact that an attempted coup does not succeed does not make it any less of a coup attempt. What this administration hoped and planned to do was to nullify the vote of every American who voted for Joe Biden, in the most convenient and nefarious way possible — by vacating the expressed will of six — or possibly seven--entire states’ populations, enough to turn the election over to a complicit Republican House, who would then invalidate the results. In that respect not only Trump and his administration are implicated, but every Republican representative who afterwards voted against certifying the election results, because by doing so they demonstrated their willingness to abet the planned coup.
Again, the stage for all of this was already set by Trump’s intensive repetition of the “Big Lie” coupled with a systematic effort made by complicit Republicans in state legislatures who knowingly attempted to cast doubts on their own state’s voting procedures, procedures which in many cases had been approved by those same Republican legislators prior to the actual 2020 election. The fact that in doing so these Republicans — from Trump on down — would effectively disenfranchise the votes of their own populations was, by all appearances, hardly given a second thought.
Thus far they’ve suffered no consequence for their actions, many even overtly taking steps to fundraise and monetize off their attempts to subvert the democratic process, as if the magnitude of their own treachery was beside the point.
But it’s not. Their treachery is the point. These people actively planned to murder our democracy, all because they didn’t like the results of an election. And they should all be forced to answer for it, one way or another.
Dartagnan
Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis prepared a memo detailing how the administration could disenfranchise the American electorate.
The human attention span is now shorter than that of a goldfish. In fact, according to one study, over the past twenty years it has dropped by over 30%, given the instant gratification and complete absence of critical skills needed to decipher the clever memes and pithy messages of the social media universe now embraced by most of the developed world. For Americans in particular, when presented with an unfamiliar concept like an attempted “coup”against their own government, the real ramifications of what that actually means tend to get lost amid phrases like “overturning” an “election result.”
But the reality is that when we talk about an attempted coup in this country, we are talking about the immediate, arbitrary and total disenfranchisement of tens of millions of people who entered the voting booth with a reasonable, lawful expectation that their vote would be counted. A coup seeks to negate not just those votes, but the hopes and beliefs of all people that cast them as well. In this country, on top of the obvious insult to the nation’s entire democratic history, a coup is essentially an act of violence, intending to invalidate the desires and values of real living, breathing, and thinking people. It’s a personal attack, a visceral betrayal of the country writ over and over again for every person whose vote is so devalued, which is why in many less civilized countries those guilty of attempting failed coups often end up in mass graves.
In its clumsy but brazen attempts to erase enough Americans’ votes to alter the 2020 election result, the Trump administration left a clear trail of evidence confirming that a full-blown coup was a palatable and desirable outcome. The memo prepared by attorney John Eastman (a former law clerk to current Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas), which detailed the exact course necessary to accomplish the coup was the first written record confirming the Trump administration’s intent. Now, another memo has surfaced, prepared by Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis and transmitted by White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to staffers of former Vice President Mike Pence, further fleshing out Trump’’s scheme to disenfranchise and nullify votes lawfully cast by millions of Americans.
.............
As reported by Libby Cathie, writing for ABC News, the memo is discussed in a forthcoming book authored by that network’s chief Washington correspondent, Jonathan Karl.
As reported by Cathie, Ellis’ memo, like Eastman’s, set forth a series of steps to be taken by Vice President Pence during the certification of each state’s vote electoral vote count on Jan. 6, the same day that Donald Trump, from his perch onstage along the national Mall, exhorted and incited a crowd summoned and massed by aides to storm the capital and attack members of Congress. As each state’s votes were called to be certified, “Pence was to send back the electoral votes from six battleground states that Trump falsely claimed he had won.”
The plan was to provide those states with a deadline of Jan. 15th to “send back a new set of votes, according to Karl.” When the states’ Republican legislatures deliberately failed to meet that deadline, the lack of a clear majority for either Trump or Biden would then force the issue to be decided by each state’s delegation as it consisted within the House of Representatives .
Mark Meadows, Trump’s acting chief of staff, transmitted the memo to Pence’s staff on December 31. This was followed the next day with another memo, prepared by Trump aide John McEntee, arguing (inaccurately) that President Thomas Jefferson had utilized his position as VP in a similar manner.
That the preparation of these memos were not simply intellectual exercises but were actual plans to be executed is evident in Trump’s own actions as the certification of Jan. 6 approached. As Libbie reports, three days later, Trump spoke to a crowd in Georgia, where he alluded to the role he expected Pence to play during the upcoming certification process, then two days away.
On Jan. 6 Trump spoke to the crowd of insurrectionists gathered near the capitol. His words, however, were not intended for the rioters, but directed again at Mike Pence, then inside the Capitol Building, waiting to certify the Electoral Counts. According to Karl’s book, Trump also did not dispute that he called Pence on the morning of Jan 6, telling him “"You can be a patriot or you can be a p****," (presumably the deleted word is “pussy”; This conversation had been previously reported in the New York Times). Eastman, who had also submitted a blueprint for accomplishing the coup, also opined on Jan. 2 that whether the election could be overturned depended on Pence’s “courage” and “spine.”
The fact that an attempted coup does not succeed does not make it any less of a coup attempt. What this administration hoped and planned to do was to nullify the vote of every American who voted for Joe Biden, in the most convenient and nefarious way possible — by vacating the expressed will of six — or possibly seven--entire states’ populations, enough to turn the election over to a complicit Republican House, who would then invalidate the results. In that respect not only Trump and his administration are implicated, but every Republican representative who afterwards voted against certifying the election results, because by doing so they demonstrated their willingness to abet the planned coup.
Again, the stage for all of this was already set by Trump’s intensive repetition of the “Big Lie” coupled with a systematic effort made by complicit Republicans in state legislatures who knowingly attempted to cast doubts on their own state’s voting procedures, procedures which in many cases had been approved by those same Republican legislators prior to the actual 2020 election. The fact that in doing so these Republicans — from Trump on down — would effectively disenfranchise the votes of their own populations was, by all appearances, hardly given a second thought.
Thus far they’ve suffered no consequence for their actions, many even overtly taking steps to fundraise and monetize off their attempts to subvert the democratic process, as if the magnitude of their own treachery was beside the point.
But it’s not. Their treachery is the point. These people actively planned to murder our democracy, all because they didn’t like the results of an election. And they should all be forced to answer for it, one way or another.
Last edited:
