A
Liberal Dose
June
23, 2022
Troy
D. Smith
“Trump
Knew His Election Fraud Claims Were Untrue”
Another week, another two hearings from the House select
committee to investigate the January 6th insurrection. As I said
before, it is a litany of shame and corruption -and, unlike the conspiracy
theories being thrown at the wall by many conservatives (mostly to distract you
from these hearings), it is verified by documents and eyewitnesses under oath
-dozens and dozens of them, most of them from Trump’s own administration. I am
going to lay out the KNOWN AND VERIFIED FACTS so far.
First, not only did Trump declare there was fraud in
the election, he started declaring it months before the election was held,
implying that the only way we would know the election was fair was if he won,
because the only way he could lose was if it was rigged. This pre-planted the
idea in his followers’ minds that if he lost the election it must have been
fraudulent.
Attorney General William Barr explained to Trump that
there had been no evidence of fraud. Barr said the president did not seem to be
interested in actual facts, only in conspiracy theories that confirmed his
charge of fraud. Barr said that the theories were so bizarre and devoid of
evidence Trump would have to be “detached from reality” to believe them,
including the “2,000 mules” theory. Barr and others explained to the president
that it had been well known for decades that Democrats tended to use mail-in
and absentee ballots more, while Republicans tended to mostly vote in person
-and that this was especially true in the 2020 election as Trump had
essentially told his followers not to use mail-in ballots (to his detriment, as
he probably missed out on a lot of votes because of that). Therefore, his
advisers warned him days before the election, it was a common thing for the
Republican candidate to start off with a huge lead that would shrink as the
(mostly Democratic) mail-in votes started coming in. When that actually
happened, Trump claimed it was evidence of fraud (he also called for all
vote-counting to stop while he was ahead). Barr explained that it was NOT
nefarious for there to be video of boxes of votes coming into a polling place
at 3 or 4 a.m. the morning after the election, because in some large cities all
the votes had to be taken to one location to be counted, so you had to wait
until all the votes came in to the other locations and then move them to a main
site. Trump’s advisers explained, in fact, why each of the conspiracy theories
he was spreading (including the ones about Dominion voting machines being
rigged) were false.
All this was presented in order to establish that
Trump knew -or should have known, because he had been repeatedly told by his
staff -that his claims of fraud were untrue.
It was also revealed that Trump’s official advisers
-his legal team, Barr, and so on -were referred to as “Team Normal” by West
Wing staffers, while his informal advisers (such as Rudy Giuliani) were called “Team
Crazy.” It was also revealed that Giuliani was noticeably intoxicated when he
was meeting with Trump on election night.
One member of Team Crazy that got a lot of attention
at the hearings was a law professor named John Eastman, who came forward with a
Plan B, if you will. Eastman claimed that VP Michael Pence, as president of the
senate, had the authority to throw out the electoral votes in swing states
where Trump claimed there was fraud, and declare Trump winner of the election.
Barring that, Pence could throw out the electors in those states, and allow
different (Republican) electors instead. None of those claims are constitutional,
and Pence refused. Eastman admitted the plan would not hold up in court, and
would result in riots.
But that, investigators will contend, was the goal.
Stay tuned.
--Troy D.
Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at
Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
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