Secret Service deletes text messages from Jan. 5 and 6

 

You have to admit that the first time you read that the Secret Service guarding Trump deleted multiple text messages sent on January 5th and 6th , you said to yourself “Secret Service - What the fuck?”

OK Here is my take on this:

We know that Trump almost strangled an agent who refused to drive him back to the capital which was in the throes of a pro-Trump riot at that time. We also know that Trump had put his loyalist agent, Tony Ornato, as Deputy Chief of Staff. And we know that Ornato told people that Hutchinson’s account of this episode “was not consistent with his understanding of the incident”. I assume this means that he thinks that Trump did not try to strangle the agent. Another fact we know is that V.P. Pence refused to enter the limo in the basement of the capital and be driven by the Secret Service agents to a military base, since he wanted to remain in the capital for the certifications of the true electors.

Now think about what would have happened if Pence had been driven to a military base at that time. The electors would not have been certified and Trump’s people may have hanged Pence since he had no “spine”. In any case, this was the Eastman and Giuliani scenario in which Pence did not certify the true electors leading to the states.

The Eastman Proposal

1. VP Pence, presiding over the joint session (or Senate Pro Tempore Grassley, if Pence recuses himself), begins to open and count the ballots, starting with Alabama (without conceding that the procedure, specified by the Electoral Count Act, of going through the States alphabetically is required).

2. When he gets to Arizona, he announces that he has multiple slates of electors, and so is going to defer decision on that until finishing the other States. This would be the first break with the procedure set out in the Act.

3. At the end, he announces that because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States. That means the total number of “electors appointed” – the language of the 12th Amendment -- is 454. This reading of the 12th Amendment has also been advanced by Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe (here). A “majority of the electors appointed” would therefore be 228. There are at this point 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden. Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.

4. Howls, of course, from the Democrats, who now claim, contrary to Tribe’s prior position, that 270 is required. So Pence says, fine. Pursuant to the 12th Amendment, no candidate has achieved the necessary majority. That sends the matter to the House, where the “the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote.” Republicans currently control 26 of the state delegations, the bare majority needed to win that vote. President Trump is re-elected there as well.

5. One last piece. Assuming the Electoral Count Act process is followed and, upon getting the objections to the Arizona slates, the two houses break into their separate chambers, we should not allow the Electoral Count Act constraint on debate to control. That would mean that a prior legislature was determining the rules of the present one — a constitutional no-no (as Tribe has forcefully argued). So someone – Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, etc. – should demand normal rules (which includes the filibuster). That creates a stalemate that would give the state legislatures more time to weigh in to formally support the alternate slate of electors, if they had not already done so.

 6. The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission – either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court. Let the other side challenge his actions in court, where Tribe (who in 2001 conceded the President of the Senate might be in charge of counting the votes) and others who would press a lawsuit would have their past position -- that these are non-justiciable political questions – thrown back at them, to get the lawsuit dismissed. The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter. We should take all of our actions with that in mind.

This suggests that the Secret Service agents did not want Biden to become President and that Trump should! Voila - a coup has succeeded and democracy is dead.!