Member-only story
Is Trump Hedging His Bets Again, on January 19th?
Mark your calendars for January 19th. Another “be there, will be wild”?
Whew! America seems to have dodged a (one) bullet. The several legitimate legal theories which might have interfered with Donald Trump’s official electoral college victory via the joint session of Congress didn’t gel; and the electoral college count went through with little problem — and certainly no violence.
But Trump knows he’s not fully out of the woods yet. There’s still the little issue of his having been found by a Colorado court to have engaged in insurrection; and he must be aware of the potential that this could disqualify him from taking office.
How, you ask?
You’ll recall, perhaps, that when the Colorado case got to SCOTUS — which ultimately left intact the finding that Trump had engaged in insurrection — it was merely held that a state could not keep an insurrectionist from running for president by keeping him or her off the ballot in that state.
According to SCOTUS, only Congress had the power to mess with things at that stage, either via the electoral college count or separate legislation. That explains why Trump was so bent on getting Mike Johnson and the MAGA caucus back in control for the 1/6 electoral vote count.