What we know so far... and much more: Heather Cox Richardson

[Joinfortmill]

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-12-2022?s=r

Today in the New York Times, columnist Maureen Dowd reacted to Thursday’s revelations that Trump was “deadly serious about overthrowing the government,” by laying out the main points: Trump knew he had lost the election, and he was willing to see his vice president hanged in order to avoid being labeled a loser. Dowd called former president Trump an “American monster” and compared him unfavorably to Frankenstein’s monster, who at least “has self-awareness, and a reason to wreak havoc…[and] knows how to feel guilty and when to leave the stage.” Our monster, in contrast, is driven only by “pure narcissistic psychopathy—and he refuses to leave the stage or cease his vile mendacity.”

Yesterday, Politico’s Betsy Woodruff Swan and Kyle Cheney reported that on January 5, 2021, then–vice president Pence’s attorney Greg Jacob wrote a three-page memo concluding that what the president and his supporters were demanding Pence do the next day would break the 1887 Electoral College Act—that is, the law—in four different ways. The memo responded to John Eastman’s memo laying out the plan for Pence to hand the election to Trump by refusing to count a number of Biden electors. Jacob noted that Eastman himself “acknowledges that his proposal violates several provisions of statutory law.” In addition, both historical court decisions and one as recent as the day before contradicted Eastman’s plan.

Jacob’s memo concluded that if Pence did what Trump demanded, the best possible outcome was that “[t]he Vice President would likely find himself in an isolated standoff against both houses of Congress, as well as most or all of the applicable State legislatures….”

It is no wonder that Pence declined to participate.

'Today on CBS’s Face the Nation, Representative Adam Kinzinger...called out Republicans who have rallied behind the Big Lie, saying: “I don’t really know many people around [Trump] who truly believe the election was stolen,” and if Trump “truly believes the election was stolen, he’s not mentally competent to be President.”

After Thursday’s revelation by committee vice-chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) that Representative Scott Perry (R-PA), as well as “multiple other Republican congressmen,” tried to get Trump to pardon them for their participation in his plan to overturn the election, Perry’s spokesperson called the allegation a “laughable, ludicrous, and a thoroughly soulless lie.”

But today on ABC News, Representative Adam Schiff...said the panel has evidence...: “We will show the evidence that we have that members of Congress were seeking pardons…. I think that is some of the most compelling evidence of a consciousness of guilt…. Why would members do that if they felt that their involvement in this plot to overturn the election was somehow appropriate?”

Asked if the committee had evidence for their statement that congresspeople had asked for pardons, Representative Jamie Raskin...a constitutional lawyer, told CNN’s Dana Bash, “everything we’re doing is documented by evidence, unlike the Big Lie, which is based on nonsense, as former Attorney General Barr said, everything we’re doing is based on facts.”'