4 Things You May Not Know About Trump's January 6th Coup
In honor of the release of Jack Smith’s report on the January 6th insurrection, I’m going to synthesize some materials from that report as well as the Congressional subcommittee report on January 6th in order to prevent it at all from going down the memory hole after You-Know-Who gets inaugurated on Martin Luther King Day this year.
The January 6th plot to overturn the election began before the election.
In a meeting on October 31, 2020, Steve Bannon bragged to a group linked to Chinese oligarch Guo Wengui that Donald Trump was already planning to declare victory in the election even if he didn’t win. According to a written transcript of the meeting, Bannon said, “He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner. He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.” Earlier that September, media affiliated with Gus Wengui started spreading disinformation about Hunter Biden’s laptop, including false claims that the Chinese Communist Party sent three disks’ worth of material from Hunter’s laptop to Nancy Pelosi.
Also on October 31, Tom Fitton (a.k.a. Co-Conspirator Number 1 in Trump’s George election fraud case) from the right-wing lobbying group Judicial Watch wrote an email to Trump’s assistant Molly Michael and his communication advisor Dan Scavino that Trump should give a speech saying “We had an election today—I won” regardless of the actual election results. In the same email, Fitton encouraged Trump to delegitimize any mail-in ballots cast after November 3, even though state election laws permitted the counting of those ballots. On November 3, Fitton wrote another email to confirm whether Trump had received his fraudulent statement of victory, followed by a reply from Molly Michael that Trump had received Fitton’s statement.
Two days before the election, on November 1, Jonathan Swan of Axios published “Scoop: Trump’s plan to declare premature victory,” which confirmed that Trump’s plans to overturn the election were well-known to Washington, DC media even before the election took place. After spending weeks de-legitimizing mail-in ballots, Trump planned to declare any swing in the tallies to the Democrats after Election Day as evidence of the election being “stolen.”
Trump’s plan to use fake electors to overturn the election also began before the election.
As early as September 23, 2020, Barton Gellman of the Atlantic published “The Election That Could Break America,” which revealed the fake electors plot over a month before the election. The article stated:
According to sources in the Republican Party at the state and national levels, the Trump campaign is discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority. With a justification based on claims of rampant fraud, Trump would ask state legislators to set aside the popular vote and exercise their power to choose a slate of electors directly.
Despite the euphemistic language of “loyal electors,” this is basically the same fake electors plot that Trump actually carried out, but planned over a month before the election.
Trump was not in a self-delusion that made him believe he won the 2020 election. He knew he lost, but he said otherwise repeatedly even when he knew it was a lie.
As early as Election Night, Trump’s campaign manager William Stepien told him that he shouldn’t declare victory on Election Night, because more votes had to be counted. According to testimony from Trump aide Jason Miller, Trump also received a debriefing from an election data analyst who told Trump he would lose. Despite being told that he would probably lose and that more votes needed to be counted, Trump tweeted on November 5, “STOP THE COUNT!” According to Trump campaign lawyer Alex Cannon, Mark Meadows said “So there is no there there?” after conceding that Trump had lost the election.
Again, on November 7, Stepien told Trump that he had almost no chance of winning the election, shortly after the Associated Press had called the election for Joe Biden. According to a Trump staffer who testified before the January Commission, when Trump saw Biden on TV on November 7, Trump shouted at the TV, “Can you believe I lost to this f***ing guy?” After the Electoral College certified Biden’s win on December 14, Labor Secretary Gene Scalia, Deputy White House Press Secretary Judd Deere, and White Counsel Pat Cipollone all told Donald Trump personally that he should concede. Despite all this, on January 5, 2021, the day before he incited a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol, Donald Trump told Melania, Ivanka, and Jared, “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”
Donald Trump convinced his supporters to donate $250 million to an Official Election Defense Fund, which didn’t exist.
In the process of selling the Big Lie to his supporters, Donald Trump committed wide-scale fundraising fraud by raising $250 million for an Official Election Defense Fund. The fund not only didn’t exist, but the donations were siphoned off to Trump’s Save America PAC. Since Donald Trump can use any money in Save America PAC to fund future political campaigns, Donald Trump was able to build a financial foundation for his 2024 campaign for the presidency with fraudulently raised money.