Election lies die hard.
According to a report in The New York Times, a group of Trump loyalists are relentlessly trying to decertify the results of the 2020 election in several battle ground states. Their explicit goal is to remove President Joe Biden from the White House and return Trump to power.
The mission – led by a motley crew of right-wing ideologues including John Eastman, Steve Bannon, Mike Lindell, Boris Epshteyn, and Michael Flynn – is both absurd and constitutionally impossible. But Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Pennsylvania have been receptive to the group’s ideas and Trump has been urging them on.
The Times reports:
The fringe legal theory that Mr. Eastman and Mr. Epshteyn are promoting — which has been widely dismissed — holds that state lawmakers have the power to choose how electors are selected, and they can change them long after the Electoral College has certified votes if they find fraud and illegality sufficiently altered the outcome.
The Times adds:
Mr. Bannon, Mr. Lindell and Mr. Epshteyn have repeatedly promoted decertification at the state level on Mr. Bannon’s podcast, “War Room,” since last summer, pushing it as a steady drumbeat and at times claiming that it could lead to Mr. Trump being put back into office. They have described the so-called audit movement that began in Arizona and spread to other states as part of a larger effort to decertify electoral votes.
“We are on a full, full freight train to decertify,” Mr. Epshteyn said on the program in January. “That’s what we’re going to get. Everyone knows. Everyone knows this election was stolen.”
The idea that Trump will return to the Oval Office during Biden’s term has been a hallmark of the Big Lie since its inception. Lindell, the pillow entrepreneur turned conspiracy theorist, claimed Trump would be re-instated last August. That didn’t happen, but his enthusiasm for a coup is undimmed. Even if the effort to reverse the 2020 election fails – as it surely will – the distrust being sown by Trump’s circle raises serious concerns about American democracy and the 2024 election.
The Times writes:
Democrats and some Republicans have raised deep concerns about the impact of the decertification efforts. They warn of unintended consequences, including the potential to incite violence of the sort that erupted on Jan. 6, when a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters — convinced that he could still be declared the winner of the 2020 election — stormed the Capitol.
“At the moment, there is no other way to say it: This is the clearest and most present danger to our democracy,” J. Michael Luttig, a leading conservative lawyer and former judge, told The Times. “Trump and his supporters in Congress and in the states are preparing now to lay the groundwork to overturn the election in 2024 were Trump, or his designee, to lose the vote for the presidency.”
The Big Lie has also become a litmus test within the Republican Party. The Times explains:
The legal drive to reverse his 2020 loss has had ripple effects in the Republican Party. With midterm congressional elections less than six months away, the push has put pressure on candidates to either endorse it or risk the wrath of Mr. Trump and his supporters. In Alabama, Representative Mo Brooks said that the former president had repeatedly demanded that he “rescind” the election and remove Mr. Biden. When the congressman said that was impossible, Mr. Trump withdrew his endorsement in the state’s Senate Republican primary.
The Times notes that “most of Mr. Trump’s aides would like him to stop talking about 2020.” Yet, Trump’s baseless grievances have not harmed him significantly among GOP voters. In January, a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll revealed that he is the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2024.
