Rick Hasen: Trump Is Planning a Much More Respectable Coup Next Time

[Nevilledog]

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Rick Hasen
@rickhasen
New one @Slate: Come 2024, boorish unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud to overturn election results are likely to give way to arcane legal arguments by white-shoe @fedsoc lawyers about awesome power of legislatures to run elections as they see fit.

Trump Is Planning a Much More Respectable Coup Next Time
Trump's new argument for overturning elections is one embraced by the conservative legal elite.
slate.com
8:54 AM · Aug 5, 2021

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/08/trump-2024-coup-federalist-society-doctrine.html

In recent weeks, we’ve gotten an even greater glimpse into Donald Trump’s efforts to discredit and overturn the results of the 2020 election. From the clownish ongoing audit in Arizona to the revelation of Jeffrey Clark’s insane and rejected December plan for the Department of Justice to cajole legislatures in states Biden won into overturning those results to the attorneys being sanctioned for their frivolous Trump election lawsuits, the 2020 election subversion attempt is being shown every day to have been a Keystone Cops Coup.

The crude and failed nature of Donald Trump’s attempt to destroy the 2020 election has made it easy to dismiss as overblown concerns about the integrity of the 2024 election too. After all, court after court rejected attempts by Trump and his allies in the aftermath of the November 2020 count to prove that fraud affected the election results. Despite Trump’s attempts to pressure state election officials, governors, state legislators, and officials at the U.S. Department of Justice like Clark to get state legislatures to meet and declare new electoral college votes for him after the presidential vote was certified for Biden in each challenged state, the system (barely) held, and Trump was removed from office on January 20, 2021.

But there has been a subtle shift in how Trump and his allies have talked about the supposed “rigging” of the 2020 election in a way that will make such claims more appealing to the conservative judges and politicians that held the line last time around. Come 2024, crass and boorish unsubstantiated claims of stealing are likely to give way to arcane legal arguments about the awesome power of state legislatures to run elections as they see fit. Forget bonkers accusations about Italy using lasers to manipulate American vote totals and expect white-shoe lawyers with Federalist Society bona fides to argue next time about application of the “independent state legislature” doctrine in an attempt to turn any Republican presidential defeat into victory.

Trump signaled as much in his March 2021 interview with the Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker for their book, I Alone Can Fix It, and key conservative operatives have sent the same signals according to Jane Mayer’s recent blockbuster reporting in the New Yorker about the big money behind the Big Lie.

*snip*

[2naSalit]

1. That system is functioning as intended in Montana already.

Better get the S1 passed ASAP.

[aocommunalpunch]

2. Well, that ain't happening.

I imagine we’ll never know how much disenfranchisement happens. Well, at least the filibuster will still be there for reasons.

[PortTack]

3. When President Biden wins in '24, the right will not be able to stop themselves from wild

Conspiracy theory..blasting it out on fux and the other crazy entertainment stations. It’s a sickness with them..they can’t stop it

They think they can override the US constitution when it comes to elections..they can’t