But we begin tonight with the
three-year anniversary of the greatest assault on American democracy in
modern times,
the January 6th Insurrection. We're just about 3 days away
again from that anniversary,
and the key architects of that extensive plan,
including members of Congress, remain at large.
For those of you who may have forgotten,
roughly a dozen members of Congress met with Donald Trump
at the White House after his loss and worked with
his allies to implement a plan to overturn the 2020
presidential election. The plan, cooked up by Peter Navarro and
Steve Bannon,
was dubbed the Green Bay Sweep.
Part of the plan was pressuring Attorney General Bill Barr
to investigate false claims of voter fraud.
Barr claimed those claims, called those claims BS and idiotic,
and resigned 2 weeks after publicly stating that there were
no credible claims of fraud.
That's what Republican Congressman Scott Perry jumps into the fray.
It was Perry who took it upon himself to find
someone within the administration who was willing to do what
Barr refused to namely to lie for the President.
And Perry had just the man,
Jeffrey Clark, a former Assistant US Attorney General in the
Environmental division,
who was more than willing to disregard his constitutional oath.
Clark first came to Trump's attention after Congressman Perry recommended
him to Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
And now, like Meadows, Clark is indicted in Georgia for
his role in the election scheme.
He's also one of the six unnamed Co conspirators in
Jack Smith's indictment of Donald Trump.
Cassidy Hutchinson has mentioned Perry and his role.
She did so in her key her eyewitness testimony
to what happened behind the scenes at the White House
in the lead up to January 6th.
And here's what she told a local Pennsylvania affiliate about
their congressman.
But I think it is also important for Central Pennsylvanians
to know that
Scott Perry was at the central was was central to
the planning of January 6th and central to the planning
of
operating the Justice Department officials to execute a plan that
Donald Trump wanted.
And what Donald Trump wanted was
to essentially shred the Constitution in any way that he
could stay in power.
And Scott Perry has a lot of information about that.
In her congressional testimony, Hutchinson alleged that Congressman Perry was
one of several lawmakers who sought A pardon from Trump
before he left office.
We also learned from publicly released text messages seized from
Perry's phone in connection to Jack Smith's investigation that Perry
not only introduced Trump to Clark,
but he also held meetings with people like Rudy Giuliani,
Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, and others.
After failing to get Clark installed at the DOJ,
Perry began implementing a second part of the plan,
which centered on members of Congress delaying the vote on
January 6th by objecting to the certification.
Part of that was helping facilitate the delivery of a
false slate of electors to Vice President Mike Pence.
And here's what's ironic, Perry was reelected the same day
Donald Trump lost.
Oddly enough, he never claimed his election was rigged,
only Trump's, meaning he expected people to believe that only
the top line on the ballot was rigged,
but no other race listed below it on the same
form.
And Perry's 100% faith in his election continues.
He is running again to represent
Pennsylvania's 10th Congressional District, but that's becoming a bit more
complicated.
Yesterday, a former Democratic congressional candidate in the district filed
A lawsuit calling for Perry to be removed from the
2024 ballot due to the
14th Amendment's insurrection clause, citing his active role in trying
to undermine the 2020 results.
Frankly, it's pretty stunning that it has taken this long,
given the long trail of publicly available evidence of Perry's
role in actively undermining the election.
But he's hardly alone.
In this day and age in the Republican Party,
accountability and the Constitution comes second to Trump,
which explains why every single member of the House Republican
leadership has endorsed the coup president,
a man who was ordered by the Colorado Supreme Court
and Maine's top election official to be removed from the
ballot because of his role in overturning the election and
inciting the January 6th insurrection.
Late today, the former President asked the Supreme Court to
reverse
Colorado's decision using some stunning legal arguments about what constitutes
insurrection and the role of the presidency.
Which brings us to Joe Biden,
the current president who is just as unpopular as a
man who incited an insurrection.
Biden and Vice President Harris will launch their re election
campaign in earnest later this week.
Biden will hold his first real campaign event on January
6th near Valley Forge,
PA, where George Washington and the Continental Army spent a
bleak winter nearly
250 years ago. There he will lay out how modern
day America could face its own bleak winter,
according to his campaign manager.
The message is clear and it is simple.
We are running a campaign like the fate of our
democracy depends on it.
Because it does. Joining me now is Benjamin Wittes,
editor in chief of Law Fair and a senior fellow
at the Brookings Institution,
and Cornell Belcher, Democratic pollster and strategist and MSNBC political
analyst.
Thank you both for being here.
Ben thanks you for being here in person.
I'm going to start with you because
Donald Trump, his attempts to stay in power depend on
a reading of the 14th Amendment that excludes only one
officer from
the oath that he took and accountability to it and
that would be the president of the United States.
Does that make sense to you?
So it certainly doesn't make logical sense.
There is a a non trivial legal argument that it's
what the Constitution says.
I think it's not the better legal argument on that
point.
But there is an argument to be made
as a as a logical matter.
It makes no sense at all.
The the the drafters of the 14th Amendment were concerned
to keep Confederate
actors, soldiers and politicians out of power in the new
regime.
And it would have been very odd for them to
exclude Jefferson Davis from that or to say that say
you know,
Robert E Lee or some Confederate private
could run for president of the United States.
That would be a very odd thing for them to
do.
Now,
ironically, because of this quirk about the presidency
in relation to this office,
Scott Perry, actually it it's more clear than somebody like
if Scott Perry,
you know, depending on how broadly you construe the insurrection,
it's more clear that this covers Scott Perry than it
is that it covers Donald Trump.
Oh, it's very clear. And it's ironic that he would
think that elections are meaningful when he wants to run
and therefore he wants to run again.
Let me just stay with you for just one moment.
This is in the the Trump appeal to the Supreme
Court.
Here is what he is saying.
First, the president is not an officer of the United
States.
He took a different oath than the one set forth
in Section 3,
and the presidency is not an office under the United
States.
Therefore, President Trump falls outside the scope of Section 3.
Second, the Colorado Supreme Court aired in how it described
President Trump's role in the events of January
6/20/21. It was not insurrection and Trump in no way
engaged in insurrection.
Your thoughts on that? Yeah.
So the the first part of that is this technical
argument that it kind of doesn't apply to the president.
And it's it's a it's a tortured,
complicated legal argument that has some
support in in certain academic circles.
It's not a trivial argument.
The Supreme Court will take it seriously.
Now the second part of it,
which is that Trump didn't engage in insurrection actually has
two parts,
right. One is is January 6th an insurrection within the
meaning of the insurrection clause.
And the 2nd is did Trump engage in it?
Right. He didn't storm the Capitol himself.
He's not. I think the argument that Donald Trump,
ironically the the sillier of the arguments is actually the
better one.
So the the argument that this there's a technical mismatch
between the officer language,
the office language and the nature of the presidency is,
for your legal reasons, actually a better argument than the
argument.
That just is quite ridiculous actually,
that January 6th is not an insurrection or that President
Trump didn't meaningfully engage in it.
Right. And so I think look for that weird tortured
argument.
To the extent the Supreme Court wants to evade this
problem and get rid of the Colorado Supreme Court,
look for that weird tortured argument about officer actually to
have more legs.
It's less it's less embarrassing because it's that's what they
do technical and well there's also the fun part about
Section 3 saying or supported insurrection and there been a
bunch of people convicted from the insurrection act and they
have all cited Donald Trump as the person they were
doing it for.
So it's that makes it a little bit more difficult
from as well.