There are really two topics at issue here, Olson told me: martial law and the Insurrection Act of 1807. ![]() Moreover, Trump's other advisers in the Friday meeting reportedly opposed the plan in forceful terms, and a statement from Army leadership the same day made clear the military would take no role "in determining the outcome of an American election." streets, scooping up voting machines and tossing anyone who objects before a military tribunal. The president reportedly expressed interest in Flynn's idea.Ĭould this actually happen? Though it may simply be normalcy bias at work, I can't really imagine federal troops marching through U.S. And then there's Trump himself, who met with Flynn and other allies in the Oval Office this past Friday. Lin Wood, an attorney who sued to prevent the certification of the Georgia presidential election results, tweeted Saturday that "atriots are praying" Trump will "impose martial law in disputed states." Commenters at TheDonald.win, an online forum for supporters of the president, thrilled at the idea of a "mostly peaceful martial law declaration" but wondered, absurdly, whether it would accommodate their teenagers' travel home from college or their wives' scheduled c-sections. The Justice Department searched Clark’s home last year.Flynn isn't alone in his open enthusiasm for precisely the military junta scenario the president's supporters have spent four years dismissing as a fever dream of Trump Derangement Syndrome. But the rest of DOJ’s leadership, backed by Trump’s White House lawyers, threatened to resign if he took that step. ![]() By the end of December 2020, Trump was prepared to install Clark as acting attorney general, supplanting a leadership that Trump viewed as unwilling to bolster his efforts to stay in power. Clark pushed DOJ leaders to send the letter and used his direct line to Trump to dial up the pressure. Clark, along with an aide, drafted a letter - marked for state legislatures in GOP-controlled states - urging them to return to session and consider whether to appoint new presidential electors. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a prominent conservative lawmaker, put Clark directly on Trump’s radar as Trump sought allies within DOJ to validate his unfounded claims of election fraud. And he sought a pardon after the effort failed.Ī DOJ civil attorney who primarily worked on environmental litigation rocketed up the department’s depth chart in the final weeks of Trump’s administration. ![]() He soon became the force behind efforts to persuade then-Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally block Biden’s election. But when state legislatures resisted, Eastman shifted his focus, contending that the “uncertainty” caused by slates of pro-Turmp electors that had declared themselves to be legitimate - even without the backing of a state legislature - had sowed sufficient doubt. The Trump campaign formally hired Eastman in early December 2020, and he authored Trump’s Supreme Court brief in a longshot legal bid to upend the election.Įastman argued forcefully that electors appointed by legislatures could be counted by Congress and used to reverse Trump’s apparent defeat. Eastman’s paper ended up in the Oval Office by the end of that month.Įastman also spoke to state legislatures in public and private, encouraging them to simply appoint presidential electors by claiming unilateral constitutional authority. 5, 2020, two days before the race was called for Biden, to offer his best legal analysis of state legislatures’ authority to appoint their own presidential electors in states Trump expected to challenge. A conservative attorney who had advised Florida’s legislature in the contested 2000 election, Eastman was brought into Trump’s fold in September 2020, when a like-minded lawyer - veteran GOP campaign attorney Cleta Mitchell - assembled a working group to prepare for post-election litigation.
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