Trump still spending all day trying to figure out how to undo the election

A small but vocal group of House Republicans spent three hours at the White House with Donald Trump on Monday plotting their effort to steal the election, Politico reported, rejecting pleas from Senate Republicans who say the coup attempt is a needless political risk that is certain to fail.

According to the report, “roughly a dozen” House Republicans met with Trump, Mike Pence, and Trump’s legal team on their idea to object to the Electoral College results on Jan. 6, after the new Congress is sworn in.

It’s a last-ditch effort by Trump and his allies to block President-elect Joe Biden from taking the office he rightfully won, as dozens of courts across the country have thrown out legal challenges to the 2020 presidential election filed by the Trump campaign and various supporters. Numerous judges slammed the lawsuits in their rulings, saying they were anti-democratic and presented no actual evidence of fraud.

Accepting the Electoral College vote is usually a ceremonial formality. But Republicans are buying into Trump’s lies about voter fraud and saying the 2020 election results shouldn’t be certified. Trump allies in the House are hoping that at least one GOP senator will join them in objecting to the certification, which would then force the entire Congress to vote on whether to accept the results.

Trump has suggested that Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville of Alabama might be that one senator on Jan. 6.

Even if these House Republicans are successful in putting the Electoral College results up for a vote in Congress, their effort will fail. Democrats still control the House and would not vote to throw the election to Trump.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has also warned that the futile effort could endanger Senate Republicans up for reelection in 2022, as it would force those lawmakers either to side with Trump or to vote to certify the tally, and being seen as insufficiently loyal to Trump could damage Republicans at the ballot box in the midterm elections.

Nevertheless, Trump and a small group of sycophantic House Republicans — including Reps. Mo Brooks of Alabama, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Andy Biggs of Arizona, and Jody Hice of Georgia, and QAnon conspiracy-theory-backing Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene — are pushing forward.

“Big meeting today with @realDonaldTrump, @VP, the President’s legal team, @freedomcaucus and other Members of Congress,” Hice tweeted Monday night. “I will lead an objection to Georgia’s electors on Jan 6. The courts refuse to hear the President’s legal case. We’re going to make sure the People can!”

Trying to block the acceptance of the Electoral College results is only one of the tactics Trump is weighing as he stews in the White House over his loss.

Even some of Trump’s most loyal aides are growing worried about what he might do in his last month in office, as he has met over the last few days with conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, the lawyer whose legal challenges to the election have been summarily rejected.

According to ABC News, Powell, who is behind a wildly false assertion that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013, helped rig voting machines to steal the election for Biden, got into screaming matches with White House officials as she pushed them to go to extremes to overturn the election, including a demand that the federal government seize voting machines to examine them for fraud.

Trump is also listening to Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and whom he recently pardoned. Flynn is pushing Trump to invoke martial law to block a peaceful transition of power.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.