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The attempted handoff shows just how much former President Donald Trump and his allies tried to lean on Pence to introduce false slates of electors that could have thrown the 2020 election from Biden to Donald Trump. The committee laid out an intense pressure campaign, led primarily by Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani, to push state legislatures to appoint pro-Trump electors and override the will of voters in their states.

In video and live testimony, state legislative leaders in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan all Republicans described repeated, sometimes daily pressure from Trump and his allies in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Michigan State Senate leader Mike Shirkey recalled in video testimony how, after Trump tweeted out his phone number, he received thousands of messages from Trump supporters asking him to appoint Michigans electors through the legislature.

Arizona State House speaker Rusty Bowers rejected similar pressure from Trump.

You are asking me to do something that is counter to my oath, he recalled saying.

The panel drew a direct connection between the events of Jan. 6 and the months-long effort by Trump and Giuliani to browbeat state legislative leaders. Even without the compliance of those lawmakers, Trump pushed the Republican National Committee to help identify and coordinate false slates of electors in the states.

In fact, Trump had called RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel and handed the phone to attorney John Eastman, an architect of Trumps plan to remain in power, according to newly revealed video of her testimony to the committee. Eastman urged her to help identify false electors to meet and cast votes for Trump on Dec. 14, 2020, when the legitimate members of the Electoral College were required to meet and vote.

He turned the call over to Mr. Eastman, who then proceeded to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather contingent electors in case legal challenges that were ongoing change the result, McDaniel said in video testimony.

Under Trumps plan, Pence would be presented with competing slates of electors the official results certified by the governors and those certified by state legislators and he would assert the extraordinary power to choose which slates to count. But no state legislature responded to Trumps demand, and Pence, without any genuine controversy, rejected the scheme as illegal.

The legality of the plan was at the heart of Tuesday afternoons hearing, led in part by panel member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

The system held, but barely, Schiff said in his opening remarks.

During the hearing, another theme emerged: State legislative leaders pleaded with Trump and Giuliani for any evidence to support their sweeping claims of fraud and irregularities. But Giuliani, while insisting the evidence existed, never provided it. Trump attorneys Cleta Mitchell and Eastman discussed the absence of such evidence in emails on Jan. 2 and Jan. 3.

Asked about the text messages displayed by the select committee, Johnson called it a non-story.

The senator said he was aware that his office had received a package but had no idea who delivered it. Nevertheless, he said his office attempted to facilitate the delivery of the package from Johnson to Pence, but ultimately did not after Pences team rejected it.

I was aware that we got this package and that somebody wanted us to deliver to the vice president, Johnson said. We reached out. They didnt want it, we didnt deliver it.

Johnson said his chief of staff did the right thing by attempting to arrange the delivery, adding that it all took place in a span of a few minutes.

Notably, Johnson held his own hearing on purported election fraud in mid-December 2020 and was accused by Democrats of spreading misinformation.

Trump-aligned lawyers concocted the effort, leaning on fringe constitutional theory and the guidance of Eastman. He acknowledged in emails obtained by the select committee that the Pence plan would be dead on arrival without the backing of state legislatures yet he pushed ahead anyway, suggesting that the confusion around alternate electors would give Pence enough cover to act.

Trumps own White House counsels office also raised doubts about the plan, according to testimony released by the select panel in court filings. And in the days before Jan. 6, Pences chief counsel Greg Jacob engaged in an intense debate with Eastman, contending that not a single justice of the Supreme Court would back his plan a point he said Eastman reluctantly conceded.

Other witnesses testified about Trumps pressure on Tuesday, including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whom Trump famously told on Jan. 2, 2021, to help him find the 11,000 votes he needed to win the state. Neither Raffensperger nor GOP legislators in Georgia complied with Trumps push, and his effort in Georgia triggered an ongoing investigation by the Fulton County district attorney.

Members of Trumps inner circle began contemplating the notion of turning to state legislatures even before the election was called for Biden. On Nov. 5, 2020, Mitchell who had been leading preelection preparations for Trumps legal team reached out to Eastman with a request.

John what would you think of producing a legal memo outlining the constitutional role of state legislators in designating electors? Mitchell wondered. Rather than governors, the US Constitution vests that responsibility with state legislators. why couldnt legislatures reclaim that constitutional duty, and designate the electors rather than delegating to governors.

Eastman wrote a memo later that month, which was then forwarded to the Oval Office by Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis, according to documents obtained by the Jan. 6 select committee. As Trumps legal challenges to the election began to fail and states began certifying Bidens victory, Eastman began consulting directly with state legislators, encouraging some to simply retabulate their popular votes in order to show Trump in the lead.

The goal was ultimately to present Pence with an apparent controversy: competing slates of electors certified by different government bodies governors and legislators. Jacob, Pences chief counsel, told the vice president at the time that had any state legislatures certified an alternative slate the outcome mightve been different.

A reasonable argument might further be made that when resolving a dispute between competing electoral slates, Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution places a firm thumb on the scale on the side of the State legislature, he wrote in a memo obtained by POLITICO.

Even as rioters swarmed the Capitol on Jan. 6 and sent Pence, Jacob and lawmakers into hiding, Eastman leaned on Pence to single-handedly delay the count of electoral votes, citing the possibility that the Pennsylvania legislature would reconvene and adopt an alternative slate. But Pence and his team came to view the delay as a violation of the law that governs the transfer of power and the counting of electoral votes.

Eastmans correspondence throughout the post-election period, including with another pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, shows the two grappling with the challenge of convincing state legislatures to adopt Trump slates of electors and building it into their plans. The two men helped contemplate the Trump campaigns effort to assemble pro-Trump electors to meet on Dec. 14, 2020, and cast ballots as though they were the true electors from their states. Those false certificates have drawn scrutiny from federal prosecutors. Eastman and other Republicans have contended that those meetings were necessary in case any courts sided with Trump and tipped the outcome in his favor.

Burgess Everett contributed to this report.

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Ron Johnson tried to hand fake elector info to Mike Pence on Jan. 6, panel reveals - POLITICO

The House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack is currently holding six televised hearings over the attempted insurrection at the US Capitol in 2021, mounted by supporters of 45th president Donald Trump determined to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The panel, chaired by Democratic congressman Bennie Thompson, has already interviewed over 1,000 witnesses behind closed doors, including integral members of Mr Trumps inner circle, about precisely what happened on 6 January 2021, a date to live in infamy on which five people were killed as a violent mob, geed up by their candidates false election fraud narrative, smashed through security barriers and stormed the legislative complex.

The committee has yet to lay out a full schedule or say precisely who most of its witnesses will be for the blockbuster hearings, although two men central to the discussion will of course be Mr Trump and his estranged former vice president Mike Pence.

Having lost the electoral vote on 3 November 2020 to Democrat Joe Biden by 306 to 232 and the popular vote by 81.3m ballots to 74.2m, Mr Trump immediately and baselessly began to insist the contest had been rigged in a vast nationwide conspiracy orchestrated by his opponents, a fallacy he has kept up ever since.

Two months of farcical legal proceedings led by the outgoing presidents personal attorney, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani had concluded with Mr Trumps allies entirely failing to prove his bogus allegations, although his base remained unshakeable in its conviction that the vote had indeed been stolen.

Increasingly desperate, the president began to pile pressure on his own deputy, Mr Pence, whom he implored to use his position overseeing a joint-session of Congress on 6 January to render the election results null and void, keeping the heat on his ally with a series of tweets and in person on the campaign trail.

I hope Mike Pence comes through for us, Mr Trump said, stumping for Republican Senate runoff candidates David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in Georgia. I hope our great vice president comes through for us. Hes a great guy. Of course, if he doesnt come through, I wont like him very much.

Mr Pence refused to oblige, writing a letter to Congress in which he explained: I do not believe that the founders of our country intended to invest the vice president with unilateral authority to decide which electoral votes should be counted during the joint session of Congress, and no vice president in American history has ever asserted such authority.

On the day itself, as the elected representatives convened to ratify the results, Mr Trump, Mr Giuliani and other MAGA luminaries addressed a rally organised by the Stop the Steal movement in Washington, DC, in which the president told his followers to fight like hell and beseeched them to march on the Capitol, pledging to join them before slinking off back to the White House instead to watch the carnage unfold on TV.

The rest is history and for the committee to determine, suffice to say that Mr Trumps mob, whose number included armed members of far-right groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and QAnon, came uncomfortably close to confronting Mr Pence and other lawmakers opposed to their misguided cause like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Mitt Romney after forcing their way through the barricades.

So incensed were the would-be insurrections by Mr Pences refusal to support Mr Trump that they called for his hanging on the National Mall and even erected a gallows before order could be restored later that evening, as a shocked world looked on.

Former US vice president Mike Pence gives a lecture at Stanford University in California on 17 February 2022

(Justin Sullivan/Getty)

To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today: you did not win, Mr Pence said in the aftermath.

Violence never wins. Freedom wins. And this is still the peoples house. And as we reconvene in this chamber the world will again witness the resilience and strength of our democracy.

His justifiably indignant tone stood in sharp contrast to that of the president, who issued a number of tweets that day calling on his supporters to Stay peaceful! and respect law enforcement before appearing in a hastily shot, somewhat reluctant video from the White House Rose Garden in which, without admitting he had been wrong, he urged his great patriots to go home, telling them: We love you. Youre very special.

The former running -mates would not speak for several days after 6 January but did eventually hold clear-the-air talks on 11 January that would expose how far apart the two men stood in their attitudes to what had unfolded.

Mr Trump had never once inquired about the wellbeing of Mr Pence and his family after the ordeal they had been exposed to and their relationship would never recover.

Since leaving DC after attending President Bidens inauguration, an event at which he stood in for him for Mr Trump the final time, Mr Pence has kept busy, joining the conservative think tanks the Heritage Foundation and the Young Americas Foundation, travelling abroad, making endorsement speeches on behalf of preferred Republican candidates and working on a pair of books.

MAGA rioters lay siege to the US Capitol Building on 6 January 2021

(AP)

The Jan 6 committee will hear from two figures close to Mr Pence on Thursday 16 June, including retired federal judge J Michael Luttig. Mr Luttig told the former vice president that he did not have the authority to unilaterally overturn the election results.

Knowing full well that he had lost the 2020 presidential election, the former president and his allies and supporters falsely claimed and proclaimed to the nation that he had won the election, and then he and they set about to overturn the election that he and they knew the former president had lost, Mr Luttig will reportedly say in his prepared testimony. The treacherous plan was no less ambitious than to steal Americas democracy.

Also testifying is Greg Jacob, Mr Pences chief lawyer at the time of the riot. Mr Jacob also asserted that the vice president did not have the legal authority to contest the election results.

Mr Pence, for his part, has gradually begun to be more forthcoming about the thwarted insurrection.

That day, 6 January, was a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol, he told a Republican dinner in New Hampshire in June 2021.

But thanks to the swift action of the Capitol police and federal law enforcement, violence was quelled. The Capitol was secured. And that same day, we reconvened the Congress and did our duty under the constitution and the laws of the United States.

He concluded by saying: You know, President Trump and I have spoken many times since we left office. And I dont know if well ever see eye to eye on that day.

Speaking to Sean Hannity of Fox News the following October, Mr Pence said of his former boss: Look, you cant spend almost five years in a political foxhole with somebody without developing a strong relationship.

And, you know, 6 January was a tragic day in the history of our Capitol Building. But thanks to the efforts of Capitol Hill Police, federal officials, the Capitol was secured. We finished our work, and the president and I sat down a few days later and talked through all of it.

He also issued a distinctly Trumpian attack on the press, commenting: I know the media wants to distract from the Biden administrations failed agenda by focusing on one day in January.

They want to use that one day to try and demean the character and intentions of 74m Americans who believed we could be strong again and prosperous again and supported our administration in 2016 and 2020.

But for our part, I truly believe we all ought to remain completely focused on the future. Thats where Im focused and I believe the future is bright.

Those comments drew plenty of criticism, not least from people astonished that the former veep was apparently happy to continue to toe the party line even after a serious threat had been made against his own life.

By February 2022, perhaps with one eye on a possible run for the presidency himself within two years, Mr Pence began to change his attitude towards Mr Trump.

(AP)

He told the conservative Federalist Society: I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.

Furious, Mr Trump hit back, insisting in a statement that Mr Pence could have sent back the election results and argued that the House investigators should be probing Mr Pence more closely.

Later that month, following the outbreak of Russias unjust invasion of Ukraine, the ex-Indiana governor again broke with Mr Trump to tell Republican donors congregating in New Orleans that there is no room in this party for apologists for Vladimir Putin, seemingly a nod to the former presidents admiration for the Kremlin leader, whom he had called a genius and whose denials of election meddling in 2016 he had accepted at face value at the Helsinki summit of July 2018, publicly favouring Mr Putins version of events over that of his own intelligence officials.

Most recently, Mr Pence has broken with Mr Trump once again by backing Georgia governor Brian Kemp and hinted in an interview with The New York Times that he could run for the presidency himself in 2024, saying that prayer will guide his decision-making.

For his part, Mr Trump has sneered at the prospect of a challenge from Mr Pence and indicated that his base would not permit a second Trump-Pence ticket, even if their damaged relationship could be repaired.

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What Mike Pence has said about the January 6 riot - The Independent

Yesterday, Mike Pence was in Chicago where he once again tried to ignore his own responsibility as the right-hand man to Donald Trump who spent four years spreading dangerous misinformation and lying to the American people. Mike Pence might be trying to save face now but make no mistake: He owns all of Donald Trumps lies, dangerous policies, and MAGA extremism.

While Pence may try to distance himself from Trump, he made clear again last night that he is proud of and fully owns the Trump-Pence administrations record.

Pence: January 6 was a tragic day, and I know we did our duty, but I will always be proud of our record.

First, lets not forget how Mike Pence actively worked with Donald Trump to spread the Big Lie and attempt to overturn free and fair election results.

Yahoo News: At Georgia rally, Pence says America will hear the evidence of election fraud on Jan. 6

Mike Pence in January 2021: Weve all got our doubts about the last election. I share the concerns of millions of Americans about voting irregularities [] Come this Wednesday [] well have our day in Congress. Well hear the evidence.

NPR: Pence Backs Republican Lawmakers Plan To Object To Electoral College Results

Mike Pence spent years proudly serving as Donald Trumps sidekick while the Trump-Pence administration cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans and attacked Americans health care.

Reuters: Vice President Pence urges Congress to complete Obamacare repeal

The Guardian: Mike Pence promises Obamacare repeal but shares few details on alternative

Los Angeles Times: With Pence breaking a tie, Senate votes to begin debate on Obamacare repeal bill

After Mike Pence and Donald Trump spent years failing to get Infrastructure Week and rural broadband done, it was Joe Biden who delivered the historic Bipartisan Infrastructure Law less than one year after taking office.

Washington Post: Pence promises big infrastructure bill as he address gathering of mayors

Washington Post: After repeatedly touting infrastructure during his 2016 campaign, Trump has through four years in office failed to advance infrastructure legislation through Congress.

New York Times: How Biden Got the Infrastructure Deal Trump Couldnt

Pence bragged about how the Trump-Pence administration stacked the federal courts with extreme judges, repeatedly attacked abortion access, and stripped funding from Planned Parenthood.

May 2022: [The Trump-Pence Administration] appointed 300 conservatives to our federal courts at every level, including Justice Neil Gorsuch, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett. All along the way, we stood for religious liberty and the right to life.

June 2019: I was honored to cast the tie-breaking vote and to watch the President sign legislation that allowed states across the country to defund Planned Parenthood.

May 2018: Im pro-life and I dont apologize for it and I couldnt be more honored to serve shoulder to shoulder with the most pro-life president in my lifetime. President Donald Trump has taken one step after another to affirm this administrations commitment to the sanctity of life.

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Mike Pence Owns The Trump-Pence Record - Democrats.org

The man was close to danger; the document was close to destruction.

Forty feet. That was the distance between the mob and the man and the document that governs America.

But on Jan. 6, 2021, America did not look like America. It looked like a country on the verge of anarchy, its ideals upended by a mob that stormed the Capitol and attacked the democracy the building represents.

Here we are, more than a year later. The man was Vice President Mike Pence. The document was the U.S. Constitution. Both survived the Big Lie that voter fraud cost former President Donald Trump the 2020 presidential election. And now a House committee is investigating how close both came to collapsing.

Had either succumbed Pence or the Constitution he swore to protect it would have thrust this nation and our world into unimaginable upheaval and chaos. America, even in these dark, troubled times, is held up as a model of democracy. The rioters, motivated by the lie of election fraud, sought to destroy that model, replacing it with a man who lost the election but refused to accept defeat and was willing to wrest the power from the people, where it belongs.

Of all the heinous acts on Jan. 6, the most chilling may have been the rioters murderous rage directed at Pence. His crime, in their eyes, was defying Trump, who pressured him to reject the electoral votes Joe Biden won. Rioters chanted Hang Pence, and Trump agreed, according to U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., committee vice chair.

Make no mistake about the fact that the vice presidents life was in danger, said Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., a committee member.

The pressure on Pence was part of an effort that included attempts to falsify the vote counts in swing states, according to committee findings.

Two Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea Shaye Moss were threatened by conspiracy theorists after the 2020 election.

There is nowhere I feel safe, nowhere, Freeman said during taped testimony.

Pence has been commended for his integrity, and in normal times, the praise would elevate his political standing. But these are not normal times.

Pence, mindful of offending the Trump base if he runs for president in 2024, said Biden is a bigger liar than the president who almost sent him to his death. Such is the sorry state of politics in this era.

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Editorial: Pence and the Constitution survive Jan. 6 - San Antonio Express-News

"What's the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change," said one senior Republican official. "He went golfing this weekend. It's not like he's plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He's tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he'll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he'll leave."--- November 9, 2020,Washington Post

That senior Republican official is very lucky the journalist agreed to confer anonymity. It may be the most laughably incorrect prediction in history. The January 6 committee hearings are proving in meticulously laid out detail that Donald Trump plotted to prevent Joe Biden from taking power from the moment he lost the 2020 election. (Actually,he was laying the groundworklong before the election.)

Thursday's revelations came even before the fourth hearing began whennews brokethat the FBI had raided the home of Jeffrey Clark, the former Department of Justice (DOJ) official, and fierce Trump loyalist, whom Trump had wanted to install as acting attorney general in the days before the Capitol riot. It's unclear what crime they suspect Clark of committing but their suspicions were apparently strong enough to get a judge to issue a search warrant and presumably get the go-ahead from the highest levels of the DOJ. It may or may not be a coincidence that this warrant was served the day before the Jan. 6 committee was scheduled to publicly devote several hours to Trump's plot to enlist the DOJ in his corrupt plot to overturn the 2020 election, a plot in which Clark was intimately involved.

Once againthe witness testimony in the hearingcame from Republicans who had been appointed by Trump and had previously demonstrated fealty to him.

RELATED:Trump's unrelenting attacks against dissident Republicans continue with Rusty Bowers

Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, former Deputy Attorney General Richard Donohue and former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel Steven Engel all testified on Thursday. Others from the administration appeared via video depositions, including members of the White House Counsel's office. They all testified to the fact that Donald Trump spent weeks pressuring, harassing and threatening them in an attempt to get them to investigate conspiracy theories and issue false statements about the 2020 election. These Republicans resisted every step of the way, making Trump more and more agitated.

"Just say the election was corrupt+ leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen," Trump exasperatedly instructed on one call,according to Donohue's handwritten notes.If that sounds familiar, it is a deafening echo ofthe demand Trump made to Ukrainian President VolodymyrZelenskywas that all he wanted was for him to hold a press conference announcing an investigation into Joe Biden. That's Trump's M.O.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Jeffrey Clark was an obscure DOJ official who served for most of Trump's term served as assistant attorney generalfor theEnvironment and Natural Resources Division. He was appointed acting head of theCivil Division in September 2020. He was hardly a TV star lawyer who Trump would say was from "central casting" but he was a hardcore Trumpist who suffers froma bad case of Fox News brain rotso he happily found himself in the middle of coup plotting after having been brought to Trump's attention by a fellow Pennsylvanian Republican Rep. Scott Perry.

Rosen testified that he was bewildered when Trump brought him up in passing on one of his phone calls but he soon found out that Clark was being groomed by the president to replace him if he didn't do Trump's bidding. Clark broke protocol by scheming with the White House throughout this period rather than going through the proper channels. Another lawyer who no one had mentioned before the hearing, Ken Klukowski, was scheming with Trump attorney John Eastman and Clark from within the Justice Department, where he had evidently been placed on December 15th to work under the radar. Klukowski drafted a letter the coup plotters wanted Attorney General Bill Barr to send to Georgia and other states saying the DOJ was "investigating various irregularities in the 2020 election for President of the United States," which was misleading at best. (At this point they would perfunctorily follow up on some of Trump's wild ravings but had long since determined there was no fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election.) This letter also recommended that the Georgia General Assembly convene a special session to approve a new slate of electors. It indicated that a set of fake Trump electors had already been transmitted to the U.S. Capitol.

What this means is that the plot was not really operating on separate tracks as previously assumed. We now know that the Department of Justice plot was entwined with the John Eastman fake electors - Mike Pence plot. The coup was more organized than we knew.

RELATED:Ringing the alarm for Merrick Garland: Department of Justice stands in real peril because of Trump

Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney said:

Had this letter been released on official Department of Justice letterhead, it would have falsely informed all Americans, including those who might be inclined to come to Washington on January 6th, that President Trump's election fraud allegations were likely very real.

At the time Klukowski and Clark drafted the letter, Rosen and Clark were listed as signatories. But they refused to sign it and they and Engel and several others were called to a meeting at the White House on January 3rd during which Trump said he planned to replace Rosen with Clark. In fact, the committee showed the White House call logs for that day which showed they were already referring to Clark as acting attorney general. The DOJ honchos all told Trump that Clark was unqualified for the job. Needless to say, Trump would not care about that --- he's the president who namedMatthew Whitaker,a man much less qualified than Clark, to be acting attorney general after he fired Jeff Sessions. He has long shown that his only criteria for hiring is loyalty to him. (Since they had all been Trump loyalists themselves perhaps that was an awkward realization.)

They had all agreed prior to the meeting that if Trump carried out this "Sunday Afternoon Massacre" they would quiten masse, taking a whole bunch of top DOJ officials with them. White House Counsel Pat Cippolone was quoted telling the president it was a "murder-suicide pact." Engel said the department would be a "graveyard." Trump would hardly care about any of that, of course. What likely caused him to back off was this argument by Engel:

“All anyone is going to think is that you went through two attorneys general in two weeks, until you found the environmental guy to sign this thing” pic.twitter.com/qaiFomOl8Q

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 23, 2022

So much for the M.O. The optics just wouldn't work.

That was the end of the DOJ portion of the plot but it didn't stop Trump from calling up Donohue shortly after the meeting to ask him to investigate a cockamamie rumor about a truck full of shredded ballots that were in the custody of an ICE agent down in Georgia.

The Clark coup plot may have been thwarted but nothing was going to stop Trump from pushing the Big Lie, no matter what. After all, January 6 was coming up and Trump knew it was going to be wild.

Read more:
Trump's coup was much more organized than we knew - Salon