Raskin: 'Trump and His Flunkies' Were the 'Inner Ring of the Coup'

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a member of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that former President Donald Trump and his “flunkies” were the “inner ring of the coup.”

Raskin said, “There was a mass demonstration, a wild demonstration called by Donald Trump that turned into a riot. Okay” That was the outer ring of activity. The middle ring are of activity was the insurrection itself, and that was the Proud Boys, The Oath Keepers, The Three Percenters, the militia groups, the 1st Amendment Praetorian, a bunch of organized violent extremist groups that were training for battle that broke our windows and began the assaults on the police officers that the rioters filled in on.”

He continued, “But the scariest part of the day was really the inner ring of the coup. And there, the whole point was to try to force Vice President Mike Pence to declare completely lawless powers to unilaterally reject and repudiate electoral college votes from Arizona, from Georgia, from Pennsylvania, and a handful of other states. The point there was to lower Joe Biden’s total in the electoral college of 306 to below 270. At that point, under the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, the whole contest is kicked into the House of Representatives for a so-called contingent election.”

Raskin added, “Now, you ask, why would Donald Trump and his flunkies want to get the election decided in the House of Representatives under Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic majority? Well, under the 12th Amendment, we don’t vote in such a contingent election on the basis of one member, one vote, the way we usually vote. We vote on the basis of one state delegation, one vote. Each state gets one vote. So the Republicans had captured 27 states after the congressional elections. We have 22 states, and one state was split down the middle, Pennsylvania. So even had Liz Cheney defected from the Republican caucus on this, and I think she would have, they still would have had 26 votes to declare Donald Trump the president and to call the contest over.”

He concluded, “At that point, I think Trump would have been ready to invoke the Insurrection Act and declare something like martial law, call in the Natural Guard and pronounce himself a hero for putting down the violence and the insurrection that he had organized against us. That was the plan.”

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