Former Senator Timothy Wirth (D-CO) and Tom Rogers suggest in Newsweek that President Trump may continue to fight the battle after the November elections finish with a narrow loss for him:
The second pathway to subverting the election is even more ominous—but we must be cognizant of it because Trump is already laying the groundwork for how he can lose the popular vote, and even lose in the key swing states necessary for an Electoral College victory, but still remain president. …
Recent press reports have revealed the compilation by the Brennan Center at New York University of an extensive list of presidential emergency powers that might be inappropriately invoked in a national security crisis. Attorney General William Barr, known for his extremist view of the expanse of presidential power, is widely believed to be developing a Justice Department opinion arguing that the president can exercise emergency powers in certain national security situations, while stating that the courts, being extremely reluctant to intervene in the sphere of a national security emergency, would allow the president to proceed unchecked.
Something like the following scenario is not just possible but increasingly probable because it is clear Trump will do anything to avoid the moniker he hates more than any other: “loser.”
Trump actually tweeted on June 22: “Rigged 2020 election: millions of mail-in ballots will be printed by foreign countries, and others. It will be the scandal of our times!” With this, Trump has begun to lay the groundwork for the step-by-step process by which he holds on to the presidency after he has clearly lost the election:
- Biden wins the popular vote, and carries the key swing states of Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by decent but not overwhelming margins.
- Trump immediately declares that the voting was rigged, that there was mail-in ballot fraud and that the Chinese were behind a plan to provide fraudulent mail-in ballots and other “election hacking” throughout the four key swing states that gave Biden his victory.
- Having railed against the Chinese throughout the campaign, calling Biden “soft on China,” Trump delivers his narrative claiming the Chinese have interfered in the U.S. election.
- Trump indicates this is a major national security issue, and he invokes emergency powers, directing the Justice Department to investigate the alleged activity in the swing states. The legal justification for the presidential powers he invokes has already been developed and issued by Barr.
- The investigation is intended to tick down the clock toward December 14, the deadline when each state’s Electoral College electors must be appointed. This is the very issue that the Supreme Court harped on in Bush v. Gore in ruling that the election process had to be brought to a close, thus forbidding the further counting of Florida ballots.
- All four swing states have Republican control of both their upper and lower houses of their state legislatures. Those state legislatures refuse to allow any Electoral College slate to be certified until the “national security” investigation is complete.
- The Democrats will have begun a legal action to certify the results in those four states, and the appointment of the Biden slate of electors, arguing that Trump has manufactured a national security emergency in order to create the ensuing chaos.
- The issue goes up to the Supreme Court, which unlike the 2000 election does not decide the election in favor of the Republicans. However, it indicates again that the December 14 Electoral College deadline must be met; that the president’s national security powers legally authorize him to investigate potential foreign country intrusion into the national election; and if no Electoral College slate can be certified by any state by December 14, the Electoral College must meet anyway and cast its votes.
- The Electoral College meets, and without the electors from those four states being represented, neither Biden nor Trump has sufficient votes to get an Electoral College majority.
- The election is thrown into the House of Representatives, pursuant to the Constitution. Under the relevant constitutional process, the vote in the House is by state delegation, where each delegation casts one vote, which is determined by the majority of the representatives in that state.
And Trump wins, 26-24.
It’s not outside the realm of possibility that Trump would pursue this strategy. He is reportedly being considered for indictment the moment this ridiculous cloak of Presidential immunity is removed, so if he wants to push off those contretemps for another four years, and perhaps bring the statute of limitations into play for at least some of those indictments, this may seem to be an attractive route.
This, of course, would be a Pyrrhic victory par excellence for the Republican Party, which is to say that if the Republican politicians responsible for these votes were to close their eyes and mutter that, Yes, maybe there was corruption in the voting! and hand Trump the Oval Office again, their family names would go down forever after as dishonorable toadies, unworthy of even contempt, much less responsibility, and the Republican Party would have reached the absolutely lowest nadir possible in their mad chase for power. All they would have to hide behind are the grasping clerics who keep telling the Republican base that Trump, with 18,000+ lies, betrayals obvious to everyone, caging children, etc etc, is still somehow more Godly than the Democrats.
As if it even matters.
If Trump were to even consider trying it, though, it would mark him forever after as a loser, and all Americans, even his base, would know it. Just the attempt would brand it into his forehead. We’d know the emergency powers thing was nothing more than a fraud.
Now, despite the evident entertainment value of this maneuver, it would not be healthy for the nation to take this detour before returning sanity to the White House. This is why – not that it need be said – the Democrats must continue to work hard to win every contest in every State, even those that seem impossible. An overwhelming rejection of Trumpian corruption is necessary to signal to Americans everywhere that renewal is underway, and that corruption in both Parties is in the process of being oustered and neutered.
Without anesthesia.
