A deeper dive into a bombshell report from the Washington Post on Friday night that revealed the intense acrimony that developed as Donald Trump and his lawyer John Eastman pressured former vice president Mike Pence to go forward with overturning the 2020 election also reveals how far the former president and his attorney were willing to go.
The Friday night report noted that Trump and his aides immediately attempted to blame Pence for the riot as the two camps exchanged bitter attacks on each other.
However, as the Post's Aaron Blake writes, it went well beyond that with the journalist beginning, "...new revelations from The Washington Post on Friday night reinforce there was indeed an effort to leverage the mob — quite explicitly."
"Blaming a guy [Mike Pence] currently in hiding for fear of his life is certainly a position to take. We knew Trump posted a tweet attacking Pence early in the riot, even after Pence had just gone into hiding, but it hasn't been clear that Trump knew he was in hiding or the level of the danger involved. Here is Trump's lawyer suggesting that even when they were able to appreciate the danger, Pence was still being leaned on," Blake suggested before quoting from the Friday night report.
According to the WaPo:
"Pence allowed other lawmakers to speak before they returned to counting the votes, and said he wasn't counting the time from his speech or the other lawmakers against the time allotted in the Electoral Count Act. Eastman said that this prompted him to email Jacob to say that Pence should not certify the election because he had already violated the Electoral College Act, which Pence had cited as a reason that he could not send the electors back to the states."
"My point was they had already violated the electoral count act by allowing debate to extend past the allotted two hours, and by not reconvening 'immediately' in joint session after the vote in the objection," Eastman told The Post. "It seemed that had already set the precedent that it was not an impediment."
Admitting that the exchange seemed "dense," Blake accused Eastman and Trump of turning the ongoing riot into a weapon against Pence.
"... what it basically amounts to is Eastman attempting to use the fallout of a mob riot — one spurred by his and Trump's baseless claims of voter fraud and Eastman's highly unorthodox plan to overturn the election — to then get Pence to reject election results based upon a technicality," Blake wrote. "Basically everything about this entire effort to overturn the election was brazen, but that's certainly right up there in terms of degree."
Adding that the riot ultimately ended up being "counterproductive" for Trump's cause, Blake added, that even "after Eastman's plan helped spawn one of the ugliest scenes of political violence in American political history," the lawyer still pushed on trying to use the riot to "further his plan."
Blake concluded, "it's pretty clear the Trump team saw utility in the mob. And they apparently tried to exploit it to the bitter end."
You can read more here.
