The publication of the new tell-all book Peril from legendary investigative journo Bob Woodward and veteran Washington Post reporter Bob Costa, detailing the chaotic final days of Donald Trump’s desperate attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 elections, has exposed new details about the involvement of then-University of Colorado Visiting Scholar of Conservative Thought and Policy John Eastman in the plot to hand the election to Trump during the final certification of the results from the states counted in Congress on January 6th. Eastman has become a major political headache for (among others) Colorado GOP candidate for governor Heidi Ganahl, who as CU Regent enthusiastically supported Eastman’s guest gig at Colorado’s flagship university.
As we discussed on Tuesday, Eastman was the primary author of the plan that would have involved Vice President Mike Pence making a series of unprecedented changes to the rules to either declare Trump the winner outright or throw the question to the House where each state would have one vote–a scenario in which Trump might prevail due to Republicans holding a majority of state congressional delegations.
Ex-President Trump issued a statement yesterday that, far from denying the facts as laid out in Peril, blamed Republicans for not having the guts to see Eastman’s plan through:
I spent virtually no time with Senators Mike Lee of Utah, or Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, talking about the 2020 Presidential Election Scam or, as it is viewed by many, the “Crime of the Century.” Lindsey and Mike should be ashamed of themselves for not putting up the fight necessary to win… [Pols emphasis]
Chapter 40 of Peril captures Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s dim view of the Eastman coup plot:
Lee received a two-page memo from the White House on Saturday, January 2, authored by legal scholar John Eastman, who was working with Trump.
Lee was shocked. He had heard nothing about alternative slates of electors. In the arcane process set out in the Constitution, electors cast the final votes for president, as they had done on December 14. And in four days, the Senate was required to formally count those votes to certify the election…
By January 2, Lee knew nothing had happened. It had all been talk, mere noise on the matter, which was rigorously spelled out in the Constitution.
“What is this?” Lee wondered as he glanced down at Eastman’s document.
Responding to Trump’s statement yesterday, Robert Costa zeroes in on January 2nd as the critical date Eastman’s plan was introduced to key Trump supporters:
An impt date in our book: Sat, Jan. 2. That’s when Sen. Lee gets the Eastman memo. That same day, Graham, Giuliani, and Meadows meet @ WH. It was the Trump WH’s full-court press to get those senators involved, all as they pressured VP Pence.
The scenes & docs tell the story.
— Robert Costa (@costareports) September 23, 2021
But that’s not the only corroboration of this key date in what became the final failed push to overthrow American democracy. Rep.-elect Lauren Boebert Tweeted on the evening of January 2nd, the eve of Boebert’s swearing-in, her excitement about the coming days–a prelude to Boebert’s “Today is 1776” declaration on the morning of January 6th:
Great words with President Trump tonight.
Get ready, y’all!
— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) January 3, 2021
For the first time, we can reconstruct with some confidence what those “great words” from President Trump on the night of January 2nd were. They were almost certainly John Eastman’s plan to overturn the election. We’ll never know what might have happened had Vice President Mike Pence gone along with this scheme. Rather than being intimidated by the riot that disrupted the count during the afternoon of January 6th, Pence was apparently more resolute than ever after the riot to fulfill his duty–to the Constitution, not Donald Trump.
But not Lauren Boebert. Boebert was ready for the coup.
As for Heidi Ganahl, it’s clear that this “divisive question” is not going away.
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She still is, you know.
She, and others, may think they are ready. Having had a front row seat, and discussed experiences with dozens of others, she is not ready.
And Eastman and anyone who thinks his Constitutional "interpretation" is even plausible, should hire their lawyers and mercs now.
I might be splitting hairs, but if Boebert supports it, it's technically a coup coup.
Well done, sir/madam.
Cheers Duke ! BTW it is sir, and yet my kids still insist on calling me Brohaus, and I have no idea what it means. Kinda disrespectful, but hey, teens…
A play on "hausfrau", perhaps. Do you spend much time at home?
Here you go, Meltdown. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Brohaus
I tried http://www.ruraldictionary.com
Interesting result. 😉
Thanks Skinny ! Damn kids…
I do rather resent her use of the expression "ya'll". She is not southern. It is an affectation…
but, it is cultural confiscation (or, whatever you call it.) and she should knock it off.
I thought she was the daughter of a Florida wrassler who took her the gee ee dee last year. That feels kinda southern, darlin'.
Bless your heart!
There are parts of Florida that are culturally southern, but it is very cosmopolitan in many areas. I was under the impression her mother brought her to Colorado long ago, but I could easily be wrong there.
I lived in Florida from 1967 til 1973. Even then there were many un-southern folks from all over the world. Reppy le Pew Pew does not speak with the drawl I would expect if she were from, say, Arcadia, Florida as opposed to Miami.
These are just my uninformed opinions. Kwtree has a pretty good bio on her.
Lauren Opal Roberts was born in Altamonte Springs, Florida on December 19, 1986, per the Orlando Sentinel issue of 1/11/87 (h/t James2nd) Father was not listed on the birth certificate, but mother Shawn Elaine Roberts, later remarried (probably to Steven Bentz of Rifle, Colorado), sued the wrestler Wallace Lane for child support. Lauren Roberts nee Boebert has claimed to be "multiracial".
The family (Shawn / Elaine Roberts – Bentz, Lauren, her four brothers) moved to Montbello, then Aurora, CO in 1998, when Lauren was 12., per Wikipedia. They lived in those neighborhoods, and went to those schools.
When mom moved to Rifle, Lauren and brothers moved there, too, and Lauren transferred to Rifle High School, whence she graduated (although without all her credits) in 2004. She married Jayson the same year, being apparently smitten by his thumb / penis exposure stunt at the bowling alley. She was 17 – he was 23, and probably pregnant with her oldest, Tyler, if the math from the "front seat of the truck childbirth story" is accurate.
So any talk about "Democrat pedophiles" on her part is rank hypocrisy. I don't judge the poverty or struggles in her background or her lack of education – I do judge her contempt for science and education, and objective truth.
Thanks, Duke.
First , I gotta go all English teacher on you, and tell you that because English lacks a 2nd person plural pronoun, we need “y’all”, and it will inevitably evolve to be an accepted proper form. Spanish has vosotros, French has vous tous, we have “y’all”, “you all”, “you guys”, “you folks”, “you people”, and rhetorical naming flourishes, such as “Class!”, “Friends, Romans, countrymen!”, “Patriots!”, “Hello, ___!” etc.
. And regional variations such as the Jersey “Youse”, the Pennsylvania “Yinz”, and the Tennessee “You’uns”.
Of the ab
ove, I prefer y’all.English carries the footprints of every nation that has ever conquered England, as well as those England has conquered. Its wondrous inconsistencies are the bane of many a second language learner.
If the South can help us to fill our 2nd person plural gap, it will be a better contribution than grits and juleps.
Lovely observation, kaydubyuh.
My step father is from Tennessee. He says you'uns.
Does that work for you? 😆
What, we're excluding Yinz now ? Asking from a friend from rural PA…
All you all, please, focus.
The point is not grammatical or rhetorical. The Eastman memo attempts to create a Constitutional authority in the Vice Presidency that does not exist.
see, https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/the-eastman-memo-is-a-tragedy-of-errors/ ~ Dan Mclaughlin
From the memo all it would take is a simple misunderstanding that the Vice President acting as President of the Senate is able to decide which electors get counted and which do not, thus either determining the electoral outcome or forcing it into Congress to decide, House choosing POTUS, Senate choosing VPOTUS.
I acknowledge to all of you that did not happen in January 2021. But the misunderstanding is now alive as a meme, as alternative fact as the big lie, the way to stop or execute the big steal.
I predict that all but the high and highest information voters do not not understand the subtlety and mostly DO NOT CARE. Like my neighbors bitching on social media that their preferred brand of some item is out of stock at the local grocery store, they want what they want when they want it, usually now.
Like the Texas anti-abortion group which advocated for SB8, but now is outraged that people are doing it wrong – they are filing complaints for the money not to save lives, medium, low and lowest information voters know they are right.