Trump and His Allies Plan To Seize Control. They’ve Already Told Us How They’ll Do It.

The recent revelations of a concerted effort within the Trump House to overturn the election in the waning days of his presidency are not only a warning flare to defenders of our Constitution but something even more important: a roadmap. Trump, acting his own, wasn’t able to conceive of how he might cling to power under a veneer of legality, but his enablers within his party thought it through and wrote it all down. Democrats and Republican patriots alike should be paying close attention and blocking their early efforts now.

The takeaways from the Eastman memo, which laid out an outrageous but colorably “legal” scheme to declare Trump the winner of the 2020 election, combined with Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark’s draft letter to the Georgia legislature that would have put the Department of Justice’s finger on the scales of the election audits there, reveal systemic weaknesses that GOP seditionists will seek to exploit again. But their playbook also reveals that they will be unable to employ the same strategy in 2024. Rather, and somewhat ominously, they would need to seek a new, even darker path to power.

There are Five Key State Targets

Assuming, as we must, that Donald Trump will run for president, seeking a second term in 2024, the electoral math is already apparent. Trump wins if he can either prevail in the majority of the five swing states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona, or—and this is important—if the Electoral College votes of those states somehow get discarded as disputed. In the latter scenario, if he could get the five states’ votes tossed as Eastman had suggested, Trump would have a majority of the undisputed states’ votes, by a score of around 234 to 231 (give or take a vote from the special electoral-split districts in Maine and Nebraska):

In 2020, there was no way the House, with its Democratic majority, would have voted to toss any votes. In 2024, Trump would again need both chambers of Congress to go along with his scheme because any objection to a state’s electoral count must be sustained by a majority vote by both the House and the Senate. While loss of control of the House may be a very high risk in 2022, control of the Senate by the Democrats remains quite possible. What this effectively means is that a Democratic firewall must prevent a GOP takeover of the Senate in 2022 at all costs, even if Democrats lose the House as is likely.

Among the Five Swing States, Two Matter the Most

The GOP has focused its attention on Georgia and Arizona, especially around the 2022 election, for a number of reasons. First, both states are in the usual position of being governed by Republicans at the state and local level but represented by only Democrats at the national level (if you can still count Sinema as a Democrat). Of the four Senate seats these two states hold, two are up for re-election in 2022: Mark Kelly in Arizona and Raphael Warnock in Georgia. 

It is therefore no accident that the most outrageous “audit” efforts happened in Arizona and that one of the first and most dangerous voter suppression laws was signed into law in Georgia. It is also no accident that Trump-backed loyalists who subscribe to election conspiracy theories are challenging sitting secretaries of state in both Arizona and Georgia; should they prevail, it will be far easier for the GOP to void the results of the 2024 election.

Democrats need to hold the line in these two increasingly blue states and focus their energies on keeping Kelly and Warnock in office, despite the GOP’s efforts to suppress votes and sow election confusion. Without a flip of at least one of these seats, the GOP’s chances of retaking the Senate grow far narrower.

Trump Won’t Have the Vice Presidency or the DoJ To Provide an Assist in 2024

Key to both the Eastman memo and the Clark draft letter to the Georgia legislature was the use of administration officials (i.e. the vice president and the Department of Justice) to provide a “legal” basis for questioning or overturning election results. The plan was foiled only because Trump lacked political strength: His vice president didn’t do his bidding in the end despite political pressure and threats, and his Department of Justice threatened to resign if Clark were put in charge.

This much we have going for us: In 2024, Trump won’t have the power of the White House behind him. Kamala Harris will still be vice president and Merrick Garland will still be attorney general during the 2024 election, barring any calamity. This means that to achieve election chaos, Trump and his advisors will need to turn to other methods and strategies.

Trump Will Exert Pressure on State Officials To Invalidate Election Results

It would not take much for state election results to be thrown into doubt in the five key swing states discussed above. This much was revealed already in 2020, given the county election results that were challenged. It is already clear that the entire national election will come down again to the results in five counties: Fulton County, GA; Maricopa County, AZ; Dane County, WI; Wayne County, MI, and Philadelphia County, PA.

Already, with respect to Fulton County, Georgia, the new voter suppression law allows the State Election Board to replace an entire county’s election board after a “performance review.” The GOP accordingly has wasted no time blasting the “mismanagement” of elections in Fulton, paving the way for a state-level takeover. It is hard to understate the danger to election integrity of a GOP-appointed elections board overseeing the state’s most heavily Democratic county.

In Wayne County, Michigan, the certification of results from the 2020 election was nearly upended by laws that hand the final decision to bipartisan county canvassers and state-level boards. Specifically, in November of 2020, the Wayne County Board of Canvassers initially deadlocked 2-2 over certifying the results, throwing the entire Michigan result into chaos. The Trump wing will likely seek to ensure future canvassing board members are true loyalists in order to stir doubts and confusion or even block entirely the results of Wayne County, home of Detroit.

In Maricopa County, Arizona, a GOP-controlled Board of Supervisors steadfastly has stood by the election results showing a Biden victory but has faced increasing threats of violence from radical GOP extremists. As we are seeing in local school boards across the country, one way for the GOP to install their leaders is to make holding any kind of public office a living hell for any would-be citizen leaders.

What Should Democrats Do Today?

A great deal of focus by Democrats has been on trying to pass the Freedom to Vote Act at the national level, which has run into unified GOP opposition and faces an insurmountable filibuster hurdle. While it may be far less sexy or attention-grabbing, Democrats need to also focus on what’s happening on the ground in these five key states, especially with respect to the Senate and Secretary of State races and election law and election audit shenanigans taking place there. 

The federal government must step in to protect and shore up local election officials’ safety and start investigating and charging individuals that resort to intimidation and violence of election workers. The Department of Justice has indicated it intends to do this, but the protection of local election officials needs to be in the forefront of its priorities and more often in the news to boost morale for and provide assurances to beleaguered public servants.

Democratic supporters should focus their dollars and their attention on the races shaping up there, particularly in Georgia where Raphael Warnock will likely face a Trump-backed retired football player, Herschel Walker, whom the GOP hopes will peel away African American votes while the state government does everything it can to suppress Democratic voting in Fulton County. Walker has already raised over $3.7 million since launching his campaign just five weeks ago.

Finally, there are two Senate seats that are flippable in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (two of the other five key states) that could prevent electoral catastrophe even if Warnock and/or Kelly lose their race. Fifty seats will be the magic number to hold in 2022, but we might even pick up two more, giving Democrats the chance to undo the filibuster even without the support of Sens. Manchin and Sinema. These seats are not only smart insurance policies, they are a path toward reform of our system.

Politics is often called the “Art of the Possible.” But in 2022 and 2024, it must become the Art of the Practical, meaning Democrats must focus laserlike on what can be done to prevent a slide back into authoritarian Trumpism. The former president and his acolytes have already shown us what they intend to do. We must now prepare in all ways for how they intend to do it.