Josh Marshall, as all the #BlueAnon vervently faithful know, as well as leftists like me, is proprietor of Talking Points Memo, one of the top Blue MAGA go to sites for news analysis.
Well, they've got a doozy.
First, the author, because that gets us to the header of this piece.
Josh Kovensky. But, we need his tagline:
Josh Kovensky is an investigative reporter for Talking Points Memo, based in New York. He previously worked for the Kyiv Post in Ukraine, covering politics, business, and corruption there.
There you go.
The TL/DR of the piece is that Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro had a Plan B for after Jan. 6, 2021 to try to extend the vote count past that date. The Electoral Count Act time-limits challenges to prevent an actual, or threatened, filibuster and the goal was to get around that.
Options?
- Have Pence say he would actually count votes himself;
- Have Pence recuse himself on conflict of interest grounds to Senate President Pro Tem Chuck Grassley.
- Try to filibuster anyway.
Option 1 was never happening.
Option 2? No vice president presiding over his own or his team's defeat — Tricky Dick and Dan Quayle being the two most recent, and with Nixon having better grounds than Pence to be asked to recuse — has ever done so.
Option 3? In comments to Trump, TPM says Chesebro suggested multiple lines to try to trigger it:
• 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.
Even though people like former Trump chief of staff Rinse Penis told Chesebro not to get Trump's hopes up too much, he apparently at least talked around the edges of this.
And .... nothing happened.
Trump instead incited a riot at minimum, insurrection at maximum. If he knew the details of the Chesebro plan, he ignored them.
That said, as Chesebro, and Rudy Giuliani, and gazillions of other lawyers who have worked for Trump should know, he's generally really good at ignoring advice from lawyers.
And, Kovensky should know that, too. That said, with Trump's recent NATO comments, it's a "good" time for angles like this.
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