Eastman’s minutes describe a scenario in which Pence would ignore the votes of the Electoral College of seven states – so that no candidate would receive the 270 Electoral College votes needed to declare a winner – and thus throw the election into Parliament. Each state delegation would then have one vote for president, and since Republicans controlled 26 state delegations, a majority could vote for Trump’s election victory.
In an interview with CNN, Eastman said his statements were consistent and that he told Pence during their January 4 meeting that returning the election to Parliament was a “weaker argument” and did not advise that in the end.
“My statement on Bannon on January 2 acknowledges that this was one of the scenarios that was discussed. But the question I presented to the vice president when he asked me openly, I told him, I said, ‘This is open. the question, “which is true. And I said, “I think that’s a weaker argument,” which is true. And that’s why I advised him to procrastinate, not to take that step, ”Eastman said.
After CNN pointed out that Eastman did not state on Bannon’s radio show that the possibility of the parliamentary elections being ranked was a “weaker” option, Eastman replied, “That’s right. Because it was a radio show.”
“I didn’t go down into the whole legal debate about weights and shortcomings. I said, ‘These are things, these are some things that have been proposed.’ This was certainly one of the paths suggested by a lot of people.Was this the advice I ended up giving to Pence? No, because I told him I found it silly to do it, even if I had that authority. “
But a few days before the January 6 election confirmation, Eastman suggested that Pence could do exactly what his minutes outlined.
Eastman argued that conditional elections are one of two possible avenues.
“I think if the vice-president, as chair of the joint session, at least agreed that because these matches are not resolved, we can’t count these voters. That, that, that means no one has a majority. Voters,” he said. things – so that these constitutional challenges are solved – or they say, ‘Okay, well, we don’t have voters from these countries that no one has a majority. That goes to parliament. “
“Any route requires us to look at what actually happened here and get to the bottom,” Eastman said.
‘Courage and spine’
“Can we assume this will be a top-notch battle?” Bannon asked.
“Well, I think a lot depends on the courage and backbone of the individuals involved,” Eastman replied.
“When you just said courage and spine,” Bannon said, “are you talking about the other side of football? Would you be, would you be, would it be nice to say a guy named Mike, Vice President, Mike Pence?” Bannon asked.
“Yes,” Eastman replied.
“If someone were to say that I don’t like the results, even though they were done correctly and there is no evidence of fraud, I don’t like the results because I will confirm my favorite voter list. The political reaction to that would be so severe and so quick and it doesn’t “No one would do that. And no one has done that in 150 years. But here we have a systematic violation of state laws by election officials,” Eastman said.
“This level of corruption simply cannot exist. And I think because of that, I think the exercise of the vice president’s powers here is very convincing,” he said.
In an interview with CNN, Eastman said he did not remember what he meant by saying the vice president’s power was “very convincing,” but reiterated that he believed the vice president had the power to postpone the election and that the return of the election was in Parliament weaker than the two arguments.
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