The January 6 Committee Is Unraveling The GQP Plot To Steal The 2020 Election

The New York Times has a long exposé on the GQP House Freedom (sic) Caucus, more accurately described as the GQP House Fascist Caucus, which first came to power in 2015, and culminated with becoming the co-conspirators, aiders and abettors behind the seditious insurrection on January 6.

The New York Times reports, Meadows and the Band of Loyalists: How They Fought to Keep Trump in Power (excerpts):

Richard P. Donoghue, a top Justice Department official in the waning days of the Trump administration, had spent weeks fielding calls, emails and in-person requests from President Donald J. Trump and his allies, all of whom asked the Justice Department to declare, falsely, that the election was corrupt. The lame-duck president had surrounded himself with a crew of unscrupulous lawyers, conspiracy theorists, even the chief executive of MyPillow — and they were stoking his election lies.

Mr. Trump had been handing out Mr. Donoghue’s cellphone number so that people could pass on rumors of election fraud. Who could be calling him now?

It turned out to be a member of Congress: Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, who began pressing the president’s case. Mr. Perry said he had compiled a dossier of voter fraud allegations that the department needed to vet. Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer who had found favor with Mr. Trump, could “do something” about the president’s claims, Mr. Perry said, even if others in the department would not.

The message was delivered by an obscure lawmaker who was doing Mr. Trump’s bidding. Justice Department officials viewed it as outrageous political pressure from a White House that had become consumed by conspiracy theories.

It was also one example of how a half-dozen right-wing members of Congress became key foot soldiers in Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election, according to dozens of interviews and a review of hundreds of pages of congressional testimony about the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.

The lawmakers — all of them members of the ultraconservative House Freedom (sic) Caucus — worked closely with the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, whose central role in Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn a democratic election is coming into focus as the congressional investigation into Jan. 6 gains traction.

The men were not alone in their efforts — most Republican lawmakers fell in line behind Mr. Trump’s false claims of fraud, at least rhetorically — but this circle moved well beyond words and into action. They bombarded the Justice Department with dubious claims of voting irregularities. They pressured members of state legislatures to conduct audits that would cast doubt on the election results. They plotted to disrupt the certification on Jan. 6 of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.

There was Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the pugnacious former wrestler who bolstered his national profile by defending Mr. Trump on cable television; Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, whose political ascent was padded by a $10 million sweepstakes win; and Representative Paul Gosar, an Arizona dentist who trafficked in conspiracy theories, spoke at a white nationalist rally and posted an animated video that depicted him killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York.

They were joined by Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, who was known for fiery speeches delivered to an empty House chamber and unsuccessfully sued Vice President Mike Pence over his refusal to interfere in the election certification; and Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, a lawyer who rode the Tea Party wave to Congress and was later sued by a Democratic congressman for inciting the Jan. 6 riot.

Mr. Perry, a former Army helicopter pilot who is close to Mr. Jordan and Mr. Meadows, acted as a de facto sergeant. He coordinated many of the efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office, including a plan to replace the acting attorney general with a more compliant official. His colleagues call him General Perry.

Mr. Meadows, a former congressman from North Carolina who co-founded the Freedom Caucus in 2015, knew the six lawmakers well. His role as Mr. Trump’s right-hand man helped to remarkably empower the group in the president’s final, chaotic weeks in office.

[C]ongressional Republicans have fought the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation at every turn, but it is increasingly clear that Mr. Trump relied on the lawmakers to help his attempts to retain power. When Justice Department officials said they could not find evidence of widespread fraud, Mr. Trump was unconcerned: “Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” he said, according to Mr. Donoghue’s notes of the call.

November

On Nov. 9, two days after The Associated Press called the race for Mr. Biden, crisis meetings were underway at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va.

Mr. Perry and Mr. Jordan huddled with senior White House officials, including Mr. Meadows; Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser; Bill Stepien, the campaign manager; and Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary.

According to two people familiar with the meetings, which have not been previously reported, the group settled on a strategy that would become a blueprint for Mr. Trump’s supporters in Congress: Hammer home the idea that the election was tainted, announce legal actions being taken by the campaign, and bolster the case with allegations of fraud. [The birth of the Big Lie.]

At a news conference later that day, Ms. McEnany delivered the message.

Mr. Jordan’s spokesman said that the meeting was to discuss media strategy, not to overturn the election. Liar!

On cable television and radio shows and at rallies, the lawmakers used unproved fraud claims to promote the idea that the election had been stolen. Mr. Brooks said he would never vote to certify Mr. Trump’s loss. Mr. Jordan told Fox News that ballots were counted in Pennsylvania after the election, contrary to state law. Mr. Gohmert claimed in Philadelphia that there was “rampant” voter fraud and later said on YouTube that the U.S. military had seized computer servers in Germany used to flip American votes.

Mr. Gosar pressed Doug Ducey, the Republican governor of Arizona, to investigate voting equipment made by Dominion Voting Systems, a company at the heart of several false conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump and his allies spread.

Mr. Gosar embraced the fraud claims so closely that his chief of staff, Tom Van Flein, rushed to an airplane hangar parking lot in Phoenix after a conspiracy theory began circulating that a suspicious jet carrying ballots from South Korea was about to land, perhaps in a bid to steal the election from Mr. Trump, according to court documents filed by one of the participants. The claim turned out to be baseless.

Mr. Van Flein did not respond to detailed questions about the episode. [I’ll bet.]

Even as the fraud claims grew increasingly outlandish, Attorney General William P. Barr authorized federal prosecutors to look into “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities. Critics inside and outside the Justice Department slammed the move, saying it went against years of the department’s norms and chipped away at its credibility. But Mr. Barr privately told advisers that ignoring the allegations — no matter how implausible — would undermine faith in the election, according to Mr. Donoghue’s testimony.

And in any event, administration officials and lawmakers believed the claims would have little effect on the peaceful transfer of power to Mr. Biden from Mr. Trump, according to multiple former officials.

Mainstream Republicans like Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said on Nov. 9 that Mr. Trump had a right to investigate allegations of irregularities, “A few legal inquiries from the president do not exactly spell the end of the Republic,” Mr. McConnell said.

December

On Dec. 1, 2020, Mr. Barr said publicly what he knew to be true: The Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread election fraud. Mr. Biden was the lawful winner.

The attorney general’s declaration seemed only to energize the six lawmakers. Mr. Gohmert suggested that the F.B.I. in Washington could not be trusted to investigate election fraud. Mr. Biggs said that Mr. Trump’s allies needed “the imprimatur, quite frankly of the D.O.J.,” to win their lawsuits claiming fraud.

They turned their attention to Jan. 6, when Mr. Pence was to officially certify Mr. Biden’s victory. Mr. Jordan, asked if the president should concede, replied, “No way.”

The lawmakers started drumming up support to derail the transfer of power.

Mr. Gohmert sued Mr. Pence in an attempt to force him to nullify the results of the election. Mr. Perry circulated a letter written by Pennsylvania state legislators to Mr. McConnell and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, asking Congress to delay certification. “I’m obliged to concur,” Mr. Perry wrote.

Mr. Meadows remained the key leader. When disputes broke out among organizers of the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” rallies, he stepped in to mediate, according to two organizers, Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lynn Lawrence.

In one case, Mr. Meadows helped settle a feud about whether to have one or two rallies on Jan. 6. The organizers decided that Mr. Trump would make what amounted to an opening statement about election fraud during his speech at the Ellipse, then the lawmakers would rise in succession during the congressional proceeding and present evidence they had gathered of purported fraud.

(That plan was ultimately derailed by the attack on Congress, Mr. Stockton said.)

On Dec. 21, Mr. Trump met with members of the Freedom Caucus to discuss their plans. Mr. Jordan, Mr. Gosar, Mr. Biggs, Mr. Brooks and Mr. Meadows were there.

“This sedition will be stopped,” Mr. Gosar wrote on Twitter.

Dude, you guys are the seditious conspiracy. Talk about psychological projection. Lay off the nitrous oxide.

Asked about such meetings, Mr. Gosar’s chief of staff said the congressman and his colleagues “have and had every right to attend rallies and speeches.” [But plotting a sedition is a crime.]

“None of the members could have anticipated what occurred (on Jan. 6),” Mr. Van Flein added.

WRONG! Arizona Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar implicated by activist in Capitol insurrection. Also, Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Biggs Helped Plan January 6 Event, Lead Organizer Says.

Mr. Perry was finding ways to exert pressure on the Justice Department. He introduced Mr. Trump to Mr. Clark, the acting head of the department’s civil division who became one of the Stop the Steal movement’s most ardent supporters.

Then, after Christmas, Mr. Perry called Mr. Donoghue to share his voter fraud dossier, which focused on unfounded election fraud claims in Pennsylvania.

“I had never heard of him before that day,” Mr. Donoghue would later testify to Senate investigators. He assumed that Mr. Trump had given Mr. Perry his personal cellphone number, as the president had done with others who were eager to pressure Justice Department officials to support the false idea of a rigged election.

Mr. Donoghue passed the dossier on to Scott Brady, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, with a note saying “for whatever it may be worth.”

Mr. Brady determined the allegations “were not well founded,” like so much of the flimsy evidence that the Trump campaign had dug up.

January

On Jan. 5, Mr. Jordan was still pushing.

That day, he forwarded Mr. Meadows a text message he had received from a lawyer and former Pentagon inspector general outlining a legal strategy to overturn the election.

“On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all — in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence,” the text read.

On Jan. 6, Washington was overcast and breezy as thousands of people gathered at the Ellipse to hear Mr. Trump and his allies spread a lie that has become a rallying cry in the months since: that the election was stolen from them in plain view.

Mr. Brooks, wearing body armor, took the stage in the morning, saying he was speaking at the behest of the White House. The crowd began to swell.

“Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass,” Mr. Brooks said. “Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America?”

Just before noon, Mr. Pence released a letter that said he would not block certification. The power to choose the president, he said, belonged “to the American people, and to them alone.”

Mr. Trump approached the dais soon after and said the vice president did not have “the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution.”

“We will never give up,” Mr. Trump said. “We will never concede.”

Roaring their approval, many in the crowd began the walk down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol, where the certification proceeding was underway. Amped up by the speakers at the rally, the crowd taunted the officers who guarded the Capitol and pushed toward the building’s staircases and entry points, eventually breaching security along the perimeter just after 1 p.m.

By this point, the six GQP lawmakers were inside the Capitol, ready to protest the certification. Mr. Gosar was speaking at 2:16 p.m. when security forces entered the chamber because rioters were in the building.

As the melee erupted, Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, yelled to his colleagues who were planning to challenge the election: “This is what you’ve gotten, guys.”

When Mr. Jordan tried to help Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, move to safety, she smacked his hand away, according to a congressional aide briefed on the exchange.

“Get away from me,” she told him. “You fucking did this.” [She has not forgotten. Cheney will not rest until she nails his insurrectionist ass.]

[Of] the six lawmakers, only Mr. Gosar and Mr. Jordan responded [the usual suspects] to requests for comment for this article, through their spokespeople.

The Aftermath

Mr. Perry was recently elected leader of the Freedom Caucus, elevating him to an influential leadership post as Republicans could regain control of the House in 2022. The stolen election claim is now a litmus test for the party, with Mr. Trump and his allies working to oust those who refuse to back it.

All six lawmakers are poised to be key supporters should Mr. Trump maintain his political clout before the midterm and general elections. Mr. Brooks is running for Senate in Alabama, and Mr. Gohmert is running for Texas attorney general.

Some, like Mr. Jordan, are in line to become committee chairs if Republicans take back the House. After Jan. 6, Mr. Jordan has claimed that he never said the election was stolen.

In many ways, they have tried to rewrite history. Several of the men have argued that the Jan. 6 attack was akin to a tourist visit to the Capitol. Mr. Gosar cast the attackers as “peaceful patriots across the country” who were harassed by federal prosecutors. A Pew research poll found that nearly two-thirds of Republicans said their party should not accept elected officials who criticize Mr. Trump.

Still, the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack appears to be picking up steam, voting this week to recommend that Mr. Meadows be charged with criminal contempt of Congress after he shifted from partly participating in the inquiry to waging a full-blown legal fight against the committee.

His fight is in line with Mr. Trump’s directive to stonewall the inquiry. [Obstruction of justice, witness tampering.]

But the committee has signaled that it will investigate the role of members of Congress.

According to one prominent witness who was interviewed by the committee, investigators are interested in the relationship between Freedom Caucus members and political activists who organized “Stop the Steal” rallies before and after the election. [Ooh, lookin’ at you Biggs and Gosar.]

Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said the panel would follow the facts wherever they led, including to members of Congress.

“Nobody,” he said, “is off-limits.”

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post adds, The GQP plotted to overturn the 2020 election before it was even over:

[E]ven as all this was playing out on Nov. 4, momentum was building behind a drastic step. As Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) detailed Tuesday night, a Republican member of Congress texted then-White House chief of staff Meadows that same day with an idea for an “AGRESSIVE [sic] STRATEGY.”

“Why can t [sic] the states of GA NC PENN and other R[epublican] controlled state houses declare this is BS (where conflicts and election not called that night) and just send their own electors to vote and have it go to the [Supreme Court],” wrote the lawmaker, who was not identified.

As Politico’s Kyle Cheney noted Tuesday night, the three states highlighted in the text are important. These were not states that had been called for Biden at that point. This member of Congress was advocating for appointing alternate electors in states that were still up in the air. Pennsylvania wouldn’t be called for Biden until Nov. 7, and Georgia wouldn’t go for him until Nov. 19. North Carolina was ultimately called for Trump, but not until Nov. 13.

The inclusion of that last one is also vital. North Carolina was a state where President Donald Trump led that day and which he seemed likely to win, but this lawmaker wanted an insurance policy when it came to overturning its results just in case.

Cheney notes that the text lays bare what this was really about: “scrapping democracy before the votes were even counted.”

Don't think this one has fully sunk in yet: A member of Congress suggested that GOP-controlled states anoint Trump electors **before those states were even called.**

This wasn't overturning the election. This was scrapping democracy before the votes were even counted. pic.twitter.com/gzf89U52jD

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 15, 2021

But it wasn’t the only recent revelation on that front.

According to other evidence revealed by the Jan. 6 committee in recent days, an unidentified member of Congress (it’s possible it’s the same one, of course) texted Meadows on Nov. 6 — again, before Biden was projected as the overall victor — with what the member described as a “highly controversial” plan. Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), chair of the House Jan. 6 committee, wrote that the text appeared to allude to a similar plot to have GOP-controlled swing states appoint alternate slates of electors.

And this time we have evidence the White House was onboard with the idea; Meadows responded, “I love it” — again, before the race was declared over.

The next day, Nov. 7 (the day Biden would be declared the winner), there was another email Meadows has now turned over. Thompson described it as “discussing the appointment of alternate slates of electors as part of a ‘direct and collateral attack’ after the election.”

To be clear, the idea that Republicans might try to appoint alternate slates of electors had been floating around for a while — even before the election — and Trump had previewed baseless claims of fraud both before Election Day and in the wee hours of Nov. 4. It was clear Trump was going to fight a loss.

What this new evidence reinforces is that Republicans and those around Trump didn’t really care about actual evidence of fraud — or anything that could even plausibly be read as amounting to it — before leaping into “AGRESSIVE” and “highly controversial” measures to overturn the election. That evidence never arrived even later, of course, but claims about it were significantly more speculative so soon after the election.

[T]hat Republicans were pushing — and that Trump’s top aide would be entertaining — a plan to scrap the votes in an election and let Republican lawmakers effectively reelect the president before it was declared to be over and even before we had the results in key states shows how much this was an effort in search of a justification.

Given the slow trickle of information about all of this, it can be easy to lose sight of that. But imagine you knew even before Biden was declared the winner that the White House chief of staff was entertaining a plot to overturn an adverse result by having Republican lawmakers effectively ignore votes from actual voters.

That’s only really come into focus with the disclosure of the Eastman memos a couple months ago; now we know it perked up almost immediately among high-ranking Republicans and White House staff.

It continues to undermine the idea that this was ever about any kind of principled objection to election results. And it should serve notice that suggestions that Republicans might more successfully attempt to game the election results in 2022 and 2024 shouldn’t be so easily dismissed as hyperbole.

This seditious conspiracy went well beyond Trump insiders, it included the Republican Party apparatus, government officials and GQP members of Congress and state legislators. It was a massive criminal conspiracy, and is still an ongoing slow-motion insurrection.