election result. it s a pressure campaign that came incredibly and alarmingly close to actually working. it could have completely changed the game for trump and his allies on january 6th if and only if it had succeeded. washington post is out with stunning new details on efforts by doj official jeffrey clark to essentially take over the justice department, efforts which culminated in a january 3rd meeting previously reported on by the post, the new york times and other outlets inside the oval office between clark, the man who would become the acting a.g. and his deputy richard donahue and of course one donald j. trump from the post reporting. clark had outlined a plan. in a letter he wanted to send to the leaders of key states that joe biden won. it said the justice department had, quote, identified significant concerns about the vote and that the state should consider sending a separate slate of electors supporting donald j. trump for congress to approve. in fact, clark
consistent with what you found? and it was your belief that they would. that behind the closed door of the eastmans and the meadows was not exculpatory evidence. it appears that the justice department has reached that very conclusion. trump has received a target letter. today jack smith s office told trump s lawyers they should expect an indictment. your reaction to that news? not surprising. reinforces everything that we found over the 16 months of our investigation, nicolle. we ve been marching inexorably towards this moment. i m not surprised that the special counsel has reached this conclusion or seems poised to. my guess is jack smith is holding a full house where we had two pair. i m not a poker player. but it s only gotten stronger is my point as he has been able to push through some of the privilege assertions and get act to people and information that we didn t have. we were already there at the end
the, you know, the guardrails were completely gone. trump was not listening to anyone who had kept him on track before. bill barr was gone. pat cippoloni was not being listened to. what happens is there s a vacuum around the president and it s in that vacuum where he s only listening to what he wants to hear that the eastmans and the flynns and the sidney powells have a direct line to him. this comes back to the incidents in december where flynn and powell are in the oval office pitching the president on the ideas of using the military to seize the voting machines and rerun the election. herschmann is in that meeting, trying to stop them and trying to push back there. so what was going on inside of the trump administration was that those who had enabled trump for much of his administration but had basically stopped in the final weeks, and that being the
back. this was all of the people under trump s command, the department of defense, the attorney general and by the way sydney powell no less a person would have been the special council if he would have done it, he would have been it to keep things on his side for at least a couple months. this is bone chilling because it relied on the executive branch alone which is what happens in the worst banana republics. what guardrails? it tells us that we have to rely ultimately on the good faith and integrity of the people in the executive branch which happened this time. not just barr, but people in the department of justice pushed back against the clarks and the eastmans. but that would have been the most kind of direct and brutal overturning of a democracy. it really is remarkable, the discovery of that draft memo. a draft executive order. harry litman, thank you. thanks, victor. stocks plummeting, the dow