The Shocking Six Page WH Memo

By the first week of January 2021, after many Republican lawsuits seeking to prove fraud in some state elections were dismissed by the courts, the WH was in chaos and still looking at options to nullify the election result. A controversial lawyer John Eastman then came to their rescue with a plan on how VP Pence could refuse to certify the election result in Congress. Eastman is associated with the conservative Claremount Institute which has the mission to restore the USA to the values of our Founding Fathers. I interpret that as a desire to accept the content of the Constitution. Eastman wrote a brief memo to be reviewed by Trump and his loyal yes men of the core arguments in his plan. Basically his argument was that Pence should ignore the established precedent of counting electoral votes and just declare certain state votes as unacceptable. It must be noted that Eastman never stated that people had cast illegal votes. His argument was that states had permitted people to vote in ways he viewed to be invalid. For instance, Eastman objected to the use of portable polling places and argued that all votes cast that way should not be counted. He went so far as to claim that a reduction in Arizona’s 29 day before election registration requirement ordered by a federal court should disqualify votes in that state. In other words, he believed that many votes cast by citizens should not be counted and that is really strange for someone claiming to be a strong believer in the Constitution. Of course, he also raised the issue of voter fraud via ballot stuffing and potential manipulation of electronic voting machines. Republican Senators Lee and Graham were asked to read the memo and found it to be inadequate to challenge the election result. But Trump bought in to Eastman’s arguments and met with Pence to convince him to throw out some electoral votes in order to declare no winner and take the decision on the next President to the House of Representatives. There each state would have one vote and since the GOP controlled 26 states, Trump would be declared the winner. Pence remained firm and stated that he lacked the authority to over rule election results submitted by the states. The WH attempted COUP had failed!