Democracy Has Prevailed.

September 23, 2021

That Eastman Memo And PA State Senator Doug Mastriano

I'm not sure if you've had a chance to read through the so-called Eastman Memo - the Trump team's plan to overturn the free and fair 2020 Presidential election.

From CNN:

The scheme to overturn the 2020 election and have Vice President Mike Pence gavel in Donald Trump as President on January 6 is based on nonsense legal theories and invented scenarios.

John Eastman, a lawyer working for then-President Trump's legal team, wrote a six-point memo on how Pence could dismiss the election results and hand Trump the Presidency, according to Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa's new book "Peril." The two-page memo was subsequently obtained by CNN.

And:

According to Woodward and Costa, Trump implored Pence to consider the plan during a January 4 meeting in the Oval Office. 

The then-VP Pence rejected Trump's coup plan after contacting, among others, former VP Dan Quayle.

The plan, however, hinged on there being disputed electors in 7 states:

When {The President of the Senate] gets to Arizona, he announces that he has multiple slates of electors, and so is going to defer decision on that until finishing the other States. This would be the first break with the procedure set out in the Act.   

At the end, he announces that because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States. That means the total number of “electors appointed” – the language of the 12th Amendment -- is 454. This reading of the 12th Amendment has also been advanced by Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe (here). A “majority of the electors appointed” would therefore be 228. There are at this point 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden. Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.

Pennsylvania was one of those 7 states. We know this by reading in the Lawrence Tribe article that Eastman quotes:

How would the Trump scheme supposedly work? Imagine that, after all the votes are counted, Biden has won 288 electoral votes to Trump’s 250. Game over, right? Not if Trump’s people have their way. They are currently doing everything they can to suppress votes in multiple states, but they are particularly focused on Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes, which they understand to be key to their win-while-losing strategy.

 Which is where we find our old friend treason adjacent State Senator Doug Mastriano.

We already know that The Trump White House was counting on Mastriano's help for the coup

The NYTimes reported that Trump said this in a conversation with the then-acting head of the DOJ:

“Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me” and to congressional allies, Mr. Donoghue wrote in summarizing Mr. Trump’s response.

After being told that the department can't just snap its fingers and overturn the election Trump reportedly said:

Don't expect you do do that, just say the election was was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen.

And then the note name two specific Pennsylvanians:

Scott Perry (PA) + Senator from PA - Guy Mastriano - some of the (many?) calling

The White House was counting on Doug (not Guy) Mastriano's help.

As stated above, the coup plan sketched out by Eastman hinged on there being disputed electors in each of those 7 states.

And so what was Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano doing at that time?

Take a look:

Appearing Friday on "Steve Bannon's War Room," a podcast hosted by Trump's former political adviser, state Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Adams, renewed calls for the General Assembly to seat electors friendly to Trump, rather than to Democrat Joe Biden, who won Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes.

"We're going to take our power back; we're going to seat the electors," Mastriano said. "Now, obviously, we're going to need the support of the leaders of the House and Senate."

The move was appropriate, he said without evidence, because Boockvar and other Democrats "cheated."

And then there's this from Mastriano's office itself

State Senator Doug Mastriano (R-33) proposed a legislative measure today that seeks accountability associated with the 2020 general election.

The resolution, introduced in conjunction with counterparts in the House of Representatives, disapproves and rejects the Secretary of Commonwealth’s premature certification of the results of the November 3 vote pertaining to presidential electors.

The legislative resolution directs State Department Secretary Kathy Boockvar to withdraw and vacate the certification of the presidential election.

We already know Doug Mastriano wandered all around the Capitol on January 6:

The depth of Senator Doug Mastriano’s involvement in the deadly insurrection on January 6th has been an open question with the senator giving limited details about his timeline. Reporting in WHYY previously disclosed Senator Mastriano personally chartered buses paid for by his political campaign committee. He has thus far refused to resign despite continued calls for him to leave office from his colleagues. 

An explosive report in the New Yorker has shed more light on his specific movements leading up to the breach of the U.S. Capitol highlighting a friendly right-wing radio interview. He has been identified as seeing the first and second breach of the Capitol.

How deeply is State Senator Doug Mastriano involved in the Trump Team's attempted plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election?