Jonathan Karl's new book, "Tired of Winning," reveals how Donald Trump used junior, inexperienced staffers to come up with his legal strategies.
Reports surfaced this week, before the book was published at midnight Tuesday, that Trump's body man, Johnny McEntee, was handed the power to hire and fire based on his loyalty.
Another story reveals that when Trump was told "no" by White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who would frequently tell the ex-president that something wasn't legal, he would turn to McEntee — who had no legal experience. Such was the case when Trump was looking for examples in presidential history of incumbents who tried to use the government to keep their position despite election results going against them.
"Joined by a young lawyer on his Presidential Personnel Office staff named Dan Huff, McEntee began searching online for anything resembling a precedent for such a move," Karl wrote.
"They couldn’t find anything comparable, so they settled on what they considered the closest match: the election of 1800, when Vice President Thomas Jefferson presided over the counting of electoral votes that would certify his own White House victory. Jefferson didn’t reject any slates of electors, but he did accept electors from Georgia despite some technical issues with the document conveying the state’s votes."
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Karl explains that McEntee was at least aware that the two were apples and oranges, but he still wrote up the report for Trump.
"Together with Huff, the young Presidential Personnel Office lawyer, McEntee began preparing a new memo entitled 'PENCE CAN LET THE STATES DECIDE.' It took the duo just a few hours to come up with what they considered to be a far more reasonable plan, whereby half the contested electoral votes would be sent back to the states to be reconsidered and Biden would be left without the majority needed to be certified as the president-elect."
The memo began: “The VP doesn’t need to declare Trump the winner, or to reject ALL the ballots of a disputed state." McEntee claimed: “There is a middle path that is a way out for everybody.”
So, Karl claims, the "throw it back to the states" plan was invented by a 30-year-old, non-lawyer who the author said was previously fired as a security risk due to his gambling debts.
He has since launched a Republican dating app, "The Right Stuff," with help from Peter Thiel, and now works for The Heritage Foundation, helping craft its 2025 plan.
Karl's book claims people like McEntee will be the norm in the next White House.
