Nothing short of convicting Trump will disqualify him from running in 2024 — and claiming the mantle of the martyred hero while doing it.
On Saturday, Trump is set to throw red meat to his base — and continue gearing up for a possible 2024 presidential run — at the Houston-area “Save America” rally. In this alternate reality, the ongoing investigation into his election scheming is all a witch hunt, those “alternate electors” were just trying to help America, and he and his fellow plotters are the real victims.
Back in the real world, the Justice Department announced on Tuesday it was investigating the Trump campaign’s bogus elector slate scheme, which has quickly become a focus of the House select committee investigating Jan. 6. The scheme began in December 2020 and involved Republicans in seven states’ sending Congressforged and fraudulent alternate electoral slates naming Donald Trump the winner of the presidential election.
Like the Justice Department’s Jan. 13 indictment of 11 Oath Keepers on charges of seditious conspiracy and the Jan. 6 committee’s subpoena surge, this Justice Department announcement represents another milestone toward full accountability. Importantly, revelation of the phony electoral slates, together with a newly unearthed draft executive order that would have directed the Defense Department to confiscate voting machines, highlights the existence of something we have been calling “Plan A.”
This plan was the first phase of the Trump administration’s plot to overturn the 2020 election. The Capitol assault aimed at pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to subvert the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory — “Plan B” — would have been needed as a backup in the event “Plan A” failed.