Maybe I've just been enjoying the weather too much, and so can't judge what the chattering class is chattering about, but to me it's surprising that the Eastman memo doesn't seem like a Bigger Deal in the national news. Team Trump had a plan for overturning the election result, the plan was set out on paper by a Trump lawyer (John Eastman, pictured), the paper was obtained by journalists and widely disseminated, its authenticity isn't doubted, its plain language makes no attempt to apply cosmetics to the porcine content, and the media have moved on to today's scores, yesterday's games having been contested yesterday.
Here is the memo's first sentence (whole thing may be read here): "7 states have transmitted dual slates of electors to the President of the Senate." For this to be true, "state" would have to refer to free-lancing crackpots residing within its borders (as opposed to the government of the state). Everything that follows depends upon the ability of these free agent crazies to contest the result, thereby creating a "dispute" that can't be resolved. When the electoral votes of those states aren't counted, Trump is the winner by virtue of having won a majority of the undisputed electoral votes.
This is the brain fart of a guy—Eastman—who graduated from the University of Chicago Law School and clerked at the Supreme Court for Clarence Thomas. You can't count the electoral votes of seven states because . . . some dudes who live there have a theory . . . something, something . . . they've taken it upon themselves to appoint a second slate of electors. Which slate should be accepted? Impossible to tell!
It's serious business, a brazen try at installing as president the election loser, but I find myself dwelling on the unintentionally funny aspects of the memo. Eastman acknowledges that, after the electoral votes of seven states are tossed, and Trump declared the winner on account of being ahead 232 to 222 in the other 43, there will be "Howls, of course, from the Democrats." Such ninnies, objecting to our coup! This goal of "owning the libs," hearing them howl, is apparently the animating "principle" of every thought and utterance, the wet dream of every night's slumber.
It's also funny, including in the sense of odd, that Eastman's memo anticipates the Democrats howling about the legalistic details of the coup instead of the coup in general: he imagines the Dems saying, "Ah, but you're wrong, you can't win 232 to 222, you need 270 to win." Of course the memo has an answer—the Twelfth Amendment:
. . . if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice.
Either the Democrats don't know about the Twelfth Amendment, or they don't know that Republicans, while a minority of all House members, are a majority in 26 state delegations, the minimum needed to choose the president. Checkmate, Trump wins again!
Also funny, again including in the sense of odd, that Eastman isn't concerned about the possibility of any House Republicans not buying into this airtight case. Perhaps he's forgotten that Lynne Cheney is the sole representative from the state of Wyoming? That puts him down to 25, and as he well knows "a majority of all the states shall be necessary for a choice."
Maybe his memo should have been longer. The legal rationale for the coup might have been yet more comically outlandish.
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