A Succession Plot Foiled; Georgia's Political Importance Exaggerated

 I. A Succession Plot Foiled

President Trump had begun badgering Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general, to intervene in lawsuits filed by his allies about elections results, and to appoint a special counsel. Rosen refused. Trump then turned to Jeffrey Clark, who was an assistant attorney general. Clark had been appointed in 2018 to head the Department of Justice's environmental division, but became the acting head of the civil division in September.

Clark's believe in fraud tainting the election was based not on inside information or some expert's reading of the law, but -- he reportedly told colleagues -- on spending a lot of time reading on the Internet.

Under the quaint, pre-Trump practices of "norms" and "propriety," Clark would not have spoken directly to the president without his bosses' permission. But Trump and Clark apparently developed a plan in which the president would fire Rosen and install Clark in his place. Clark would then use the DOJ's power to assist Trump's efforts to stay in office, by taking cases to the Supreme Court.

Rosen and other officials were apparently stunned by the subterfuge. The ploy came to a head in a White House meeting where Clark and Rosen made their respective cases to Trump, who was persuaded not to fire Rosen after top Justice Department officials threatened to resign en masse if he did so. 

Trump's real aim seems to have been giving the appearance of a federal challenge to the vote, which would have given Georgia legislators a pretext to throw out the state's election results. That seems unlikely to have worked, even with a DOJ letter; if legislators had acted, the matter would have ended up in court, and likely been overturned; and anyway, being awarded Georgia's electoral votes wouldn't have mattered enough to make Trump the winner.

II. More Georgia Meddling

Continuing with President Trump's election meddling in Georgia, he called Georgia's Governor Brian Kemp on the morning of December 5th. Trump demanded that Kemp overturn Biden's victory in Georgia. And at a rally in support of U.S. senators Kelly Loeffler and David Purdue, he slammed Kemp for refusing to support his authoritarian scheme to retain power. He wanted Kemp to call a special session of the state legislature to elect a slate of electors who would back Trump, and he also wanted an audit of signatures on mail-in ballots.

Trump did not originate the idea of naming a slate of electors who did not represent the results of a election in a state. During the long recount of the results of the Gore-Bush election in Florida, there were serious discussions to form a slate of electors who would be pledged to vote for Trump in the electoral college. Also, there were serious discussions in the Trump campaign to create slates of electors pledged to Trump, regardless of the elections in their respective states. Specifically, Trump summoned the Republican leaders in both houses of Michigan's legislature to the White House. Although both leaders said they did not discuss slates for the electoral college, to do so -- even if it happened -- would have meant the end of the political careers of the two Michigan political leaders, and further political trouble for Trump.

The takeaway from the intense focus on Georgia is that even without Georgia's 16 electoral votes, Joe Biden would have had 290 electoral votes, 20 more than the 270 needed to win the election; also, if the Trump campaign was somehow able to switch Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes, Biden would still  have won. Biden carried Pennsylvania by over 80,000 votes.

After the counting was done in Wisconsin, Trump was about 20,000 votes behind; however, his campaign wanted recounts only in the two Wisconsin counties with the highest percentage of minorities. In Michigan, Trump was behind by about 150,000 votes when the votes were certified. It would have taken massive fraud to negate that huge a margin.

Joe Biden garnered over 7 million more votes than President Trump, which is the largest popular vote margin that an incumbent president has been defeated in a good long time.

ADDENDUMS:

*Sheelah Kolhatkar, "In My Room," The New Yorker, January 25, 2021. - "Testing wastewater turned out to be simpler than testing individuals; a picture of a whole community could be created while people waited in long lines to get nasal swabs."

*Henry Alford, "Cocoon," Same as above. - "Ours is an age of infantilization and cosseting: our TV shows come with trigger warnings; our waistbands are elasticized; our vitamins gummied." 

*Amy Davidson Sorkin, "Fear Itself," Same as above. - "On Wednesday night, just hours after the House vote, Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, told Sean Hannity on Fox News, that the impeachment was itself an incitement."