The Plan gets clearer. Washington Post (no firewall):
“The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened,” Eastman wrote to Jacob, referring to Trump’s claims of voter fraud.
Eastman sent the email as Pence, who had been presiding in the Senate, was under guard with Jacob and other advisers in a secure area. Rioters were tearing through the Capitol complex, some of them calling for Pence to be executed.
Josh Marshall thinks this is some of the most significant evidence we’ve seen yet that the January 5 insurrection really was part of a coup attempt.
Eastman didn’t recoil when the President’s rally escalated to violence. He clearly saw the inside coup plot and the insurrectionists on the street as part of the same effort. This isn’t surprising to most of us. The insurrectionists were laying siege to Pence in the Capitol because Pence wasn’t going along with the plan. And the answer was to go along with the plan. Eastman recognized the insurrection as the paramilitary wing of the coup plot he was part of and as the Capitol was under siege used it as a cudgel to force Pence’s hand.
Eastman’s infamous memo, which claimed Pence had the constitutional power to refuse to certify the votes of contested states and declare Trump the winner, came to light in the Woodward-Costa book, Peril. Eastman has since explained it away several different ways. But when you put the new information together with the already public record, there’s a very clear picture — Trump was pushing Pence to overturn the election, and the mob was incited and directed to storm the Capitol as part of that effort.
Josh Marshall:
To date the actions of Eastman, the President, his various coconspirators – during the hours of the assault on the Capitol – have largely been a black box even as we’ve learned more and more granular detail of the ransacking of the Capitol itself. We’ve had brief glimpses in reported accounts. There was the notorious phone call between Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Trump in which McCarthy demanded Trump call off his insurrectionists. Trump notoriously responded, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”
In real time, Trump’s message was the same as Eastman’s. You brought it on yourself and they’re my guys. The way to lift the siege is to do the right thing and support the coup. They both recognized the insurrectionists as their foot soldiers and expressed as much in real time to the members of Congress under siege. And of course they did since they were their foot soldiers.
See also ‘A roadmap for a coup’: inside Trump’s plot to steal the presidency by Ed Pilkington at The Guardian.
