StmarysCity79
Well-Known Member
The plan would have seen the Trump campaign pushing Republican lawmakers to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s win not just on Jan. 6, but for days afterwards. GOP legislators would have feigned confusion over competing slates of electors, paralyzing Congress as the Trump campaign brought increasing pressure on the Supreme Court to step in and resolve the election in their favor.
To do this, Chesebro formulated various ways to invalidate the Electoral Count Act, the law laying out the procedures for Congress to certify the election on Jan. 6. Critically, the law places tight limits on how long individual lawmakers can debate disputed electoral votes — nullifying or inflating those limits, capped at five minutes per member and two hours total, could make Jan. 6 go on indefinitely.
That meant ensuring that the Jan. 6 certification session in Congress essentially never ended. As Chesebro put it to another attorney, “Jan 6 is the real deadline” for certifying the election result. By extension, Chesebro suggested, the Trump campaign could keep the election result up in the air if Congress kept debating the 2020 election result on Jan. 6 without certifying it.
The Electoral Count Act and its time limits were the main obstacle to that. It capped debate at two hours per state, and with seven swing states having submitted fake electors per Chesebro’s plan, that left a relatively measly legal maximum of 14 hours of debate — enough to get the campaign, potentially, into the early hours of Jan. 7, but not enough to reach the acme of a pressure campaign which might take the country to the brink of Jan. 20.
To do this, Chesebro formulated various ways to invalidate the Electoral Count Act, the law laying out the procedures for Congress to certify the election on Jan. 6. Critically, the law places tight limits on how long individual lawmakers can debate disputed electoral votes — nullifying or inflating those limits, capped at five minutes per member and two hours total, could make Jan. 6 go on indefinitely.
That meant ensuring that the Jan. 6 certification session in Congress essentially never ended. As Chesebro put it to another attorney, “Jan 6 is the real deadline” for certifying the election result. By extension, Chesebro suggested, the Trump campaign could keep the election result up in the air if Congress kept debating the 2020 election result on Jan. 6 without certifying it.
The Electoral Count Act and its time limits were the main obstacle to that. It capped debate at two hours per state, and with seven swing states having submitted fake electors per Chesebro’s plan, that left a relatively measly legal maximum of 14 hours of debate — enough to get the campaign, potentially, into the early hours of Jan. 7, but not enough to reach the acme of a pressure campaign which might take the country to the brink of Jan. 20.
- Mike Pence could decline to open Biden electoral votes — it would be a “fairly boss move,” as Chesebro put it in one email — likely delaying the certification of Biden’s win while posing a core challenge to the ECA.
- A “test case” could be filed before SCOTUS aimed at invalidating the law. It would be filed by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) acting in Pence’s place as President of the Senate.
- The Senate filibuster could be used as a blunt instrument to block the ECA from either being followed or being implemented on Jan. 6.
Docs Obtained by TPM Show Trump Lawyers’ Plan To Make Jan. 6 Last For Days On End
Donald Trump’s months-long effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election culminated on a single, now-infamous day: Jan. 6. But there was an alternate scenario gamed out by Trump’s lawyers — one…
talkingpointsmemo.com
