Trump allies continue drive to erase his loss
A group of President Donald Trump’s allies and associates spent months trying to overturn the 2020 election based on his lie that he was the true winner.
Now, some of the same confidants who tried and failed to invalidate the results based on a set of bogus legal theories are pushing an even wilder sequel: that by “decertifying” the 2020 vote in key states, the outcome can still be reversed.
In statehouses and courtrooms across the country, as well as on right-wing news outlets, allies of Trump — including lawyer John Eastman — are pressing for states to pass resolutions rescinding Electoral College votes for President Joe Biden and to bring lawsuits that seek to prove baseless claims of largescale voter fraud. Some of those allies are casting their work as a precursor to reinstating the former president.
The efforts have failed to change any statewide outcomes or uncover mass election fraud. Legal experts dismiss them as preposterous, noting that there is no plausible scenario under the Constitution for returning Trump to office.
But just as Eastman’s original plan to use Congress’ final count of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn the election was seen as far-fetched in the run-up to the deadly Capitol riot, the continued efforts are fueling a false narrative that has resonated with Trump’s supporters and stoked their grievances. They are keeping alive the same combustible stew of conspiracy theory and misinformation that threatens to undermine faith in democracy by nurturing the lie that the election was corrupt.
The efforts have fed a cottage industry of podcasts and television appearances centered around not only false claims of widespread election fraud in 2020, but the notion that the results can still be altered after the fact — and Trump returned to power, an idea that he continues to push privately as he looks toward a probable reelection run in 2024.
Democrats and some Republicans have raised deep concerns about the impact of the decertification efforts. They warn of unintended consequences, including the potential to incite violence of the sort that erupted on Jan. 6, when a mob of Trump’s supporters — convinced that he could still be declared the winner of the 2020 election — stormed the Capitol. Legal experts worry that the focus on decertifying the last election could pave the way for more aggressive — and earlier — legislative intervention the next time around.
“At the moment, there is no other way to say it: This is the clearest and most present danger to our democracy,” said J. Michael Luttig, a leading conservative lawyer and former appeals court judge, for whom Eastman clerked and whom President George W. Bush considered as a nominee to be the chief justice of the United States. “Trump and his supporters in Congress and in the states are preparing now to lay the groundwork to overturn the election in 2024 were Trump, or his designee, to lose the vote for the presidency.”
Most of Trump’s aides would like him to stop talking about 2020 — or, if he must, to focus on changes to voting laws across the country rather than his own fate. But like he did in 2020 when many officials declined to help him upend the election results, Trump has found a group of outside allies willing to take up an outlandish argument they know he wants to see made.
The efforts have been led or loudly championed by Mike Lindell, the CEO of Mypillow; Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser; Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist; and Boris Epshteyn, an aide and associate of Trump’s.
Another key player has been Eastman, the rightwing lawyer who persuaded Trump shortly after the election that Vice President Mike Pence could reject certified electoral votes for Biden when he presided over the congressional count and declare Trump the victor instead.
Eastman, a former visiting scholar at the University of Colorado Boulder, wrote a memo and Epshteyn sent an email late last year to the main legislator pushing a decertification bill in Wisconsin, laying out a legal theory to justify the action. Eastman met last month with Robin Vos, the speaker of the state Assembly, and activists working across the country, a meeting that was reported earlier by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.