Donald Trump’s problems just escalated exponentially.

With respect to January 6th, the problem in holding Trump accountable was always going to be proving that Trump was instrumental in plotting or even approving the January 6th “plan” – and we now know it was, in fact, planned, at least at some level.

From the Washington Post:

They called it the “command center,” a set of rooms and suites in the posh Willard hotel a block from the White House where some of President Donald Trump’s most loyal lieutenants were working day and night with one goal in mind: overturning the results of the 2020 election.

And why would they have a command center if this was just a riot that got out of control and they were hoping that some senators and congressman, or Mike Pence, would succeed in blocking the certification? The only logical answer is that they knew Pence wasn’t playing along and they had nowhere near enough senators. They were buying time.

The Post talks about the protest at the Ellipse but then notes:

 But the activities at the Willard that week add to an emerging picture of a less visible effort, mapped out in memos by a conservative pro-Trump legal scholar and pursued by a team of presidential advisers and lawyers seeking to pull off what they claim was a legal strategy to reinstate Trump for a second term.

We can tell you exactly what the legal effort entailed because we predicted it in August of last year. They needed DOJ to state that they had found some fraud in the election (the active A.G. Rosen has said he was pressured to sign a letter saying he found fraud and refused), the rest was left to Trump and Congress. Congress would object because of the “fraud” and they would demand a ten-day delay to ensure accuracy. Meanwhile, state legislatures, which control delegates to the electoral college would pull their electoral college votes in some way, leaving fewer than the 260 needed for Biden to win. But all of it depended upon blocking Pence’s ability to simply run the process smoothly.

Trump took care of that part, inciting the crowd, and possibly withholding security at the Capitol (through the Pentagon and Park Service).

If the certification was not complete, it allowed time for the entire thing to be delayed and sent back to the states. Eventually, the House of Representatives would vote, one vote per state, all those small Republican states would, once again, elect a president with a tiny minority of voters over a majority of well over 7 million.

The plan was run out of the “Command Center” (not the White House) and that is key:

They were led by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani. Former chief White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon was an occasional presence as the effort’s senior political adviser. Former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik was there as an investigator. Also present was John Eastman, the scholar, who outlined scenarios for denying Biden the presidency in an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 4 with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

Calling Rudy to testify presents problems, attorney-client privilege. Bannon has nothing, and that is why the House is pushing to arrest him. He knew of the plan

Trump’s exposure just jumped exponentially. There is no conceivable way he did not know of this plan. And, because we always do in order to never let this fall through the memory hole, we present something that has bothered us from the moment we saw it:

Here's video of Marjorie Taylor Greene at the White House in late Dec 2020 saying she had a "great planning session for our January 6th objection. We aren't going to let this election be stolen by Joe Biden and the Democrats. President Trump won by a landslide." Expel Greene now. pic.twitter.com/oogwe20Z8K

— Scott Dworkin (@funder) January 28, 2021

What was she doing there? What was there to plan? There was to be a protest. MTG hadn’t even been sworn in yet. She was cannon fodder.

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[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak