Annie Karni of the New York Times, took a crack at understanding what Donald Trump meant when he said at his Madison Square Garden rally that he and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson have a secret that will help them “do really well with the House.” Here is her set-up:
Speaker Mike Johnson was taking in former President Donald J. Trump’s grievance-fueled closing rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday afternoon when the main actor onstage turned to him and drew him into the drama.
“I think with our little secret we’re going to do really well with the House, right?” Mr. Trump said, addressing Mr. Johnson directly. “Our little secret is having a big impact. He and I have a little secret — we will tell you what it is when the race is over.”
This aside, delivered with a small chuckle, set off a frenzy among frightened Democrats who have been living with something akin to post-traumatic stress disorder caused by the last two presidential election cycles, and who are now primed to fear the worst.
In this case, the worst is very bad: It is a scenario in which Mr. Johnson, who worked with Mr. Trump to undermine the 2020 election results, would again be in cahoots with the former president to steal the election and stop the certification of the results on Jan. 6, 2025, should Vice President Kamala Harris win.
The most innocuous interpretation of Trump’s remarks is that he was referring to maintaining majority control of the U.S. House of Representatives, but in context that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, which is why many people assumed he was referring to the House’s role in choosing or certifying the winner of the presidential election.
When asked about it, Mike Johnson got very prickly, and he confirmed that whatever the secret might be, its main feature is that it “might help Donald Trump.”
In a statement provided to The New York Times, the mild-mannered Mr. Johnson did nothing to alleviate those fears. Instead, he seemed to confirm that there was, in fact, a “little secret” — and that he planned to keep it that way.
“Speaking of secrets,” Mr. Johnson said, “Harris knew Biden was physically and mentally impaired and kept it a secret. The F.B.I. knew the Hunter Biden laptop was real and kept it secret. They also knew Russia collusion was fake and kept that a secret, too.”
Mr. Johnson added: “It appears that all those secrets didn’t matter to the media because they all helped Democrats. But this one might help Donald Trump, and now they care? By definition, a secret is not to be shared — and I don’t intend to share this one.”
Now, if Donald Trump wins the Electoral College, he won’t need any help from Mike Johnson. But if he loses the Electoral College and still wants to become president somehow, he most definitely will need Johnson’s help. And here is how they can pull off a coup.
Let’s start with what happened in 2020. Trump lost the Electoral College so he went to court to challenge the results and lost in state after state. When he couldn’t prevent the states from certifying the results, he set up “alternate electors” to certify phony results in a half dozen states, and asked Vice-President Mike Pence to use these fake electors on January 6, 2021 when Congress met in Joint Session to certify Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the winners. When this effort failed, he unleashed a violent mob on Congress to try to do by force what he could not do by persuasion. This coup attempt was deadly and destructive, but it ended in six hours or so with Trump defeated. But please keep in mind that he was prepared to try to serve out a second term in office using whatever force was necessary to stop the backlash against a nakedly stolen election. Remember this if you think what I’m about to say is outlandish.
So, to begin, this plan will probably not work unless the Republicans maintain control of the House. They are not currently favored to stay in the majority, largely because they are expected to lose a bunch of seats in New York and California. If you’re wondering why Trump has been campaigning in New York and California when they are not considered competitive in the presidential race, you now have your answer.
So, in the event that the Republicans win the House but Trump loses the election, the coup will look like this:
The first step is to dispute the results and say he was robbed. This will again involve fruitless court cases and a firehose of lies. This is just to create a lack of consensus about the winner.
The second step comes on January 3rd, 2025, when the new Congress is sworn in. In the House, this will involve all 435 members. Their first order of business will be to elect a new Speaker. If the Republicans have a narrow majority, as would be almost inevitable, they may not be able to settle on a Speaker in one day, or two days, or even three weeks. That’s what happened in 2023 when both Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson struggled to win the Speakership. But dysfunction won’t be part of the secret plan. The plan is to intentionally fail to elect a Speaker on the third of January.
Then comes January 6th when, in this scenario, Vice-President Kamala Harris is to preside over a Joint Session of Congress to count and certify her victory with Tim Walz over Trump and J.D. Vance. This is when the House Republicans will use their lack of a Speaker to refuse to cooperate. They might not have a leader but they will have a majority, and they’ll be able to defeat any motion to force them into the Joint Session. They’ll throw a lot of arguments in the air. They’ll say the election was rigged but also that they need to settle on a Speaker first. And so they’ll go into private caucus meetings and pretend to be working on electing a Speaker. But they will not choose one.
And this will go on, day after day, as the country howls in outrage, until noon on January 20, 2025, when President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris will constitutionally no longer be in charge. Without a president or vice-president, the Speaker of the House becomes president. Since this will now be an emergency, the Republicans will quickly elect Trump as Speaker and immediately elevate him to the presidency.
This will again leave them without a Speaker. It will also mean that Harris, since she is no longer vice-president, could not preside over any resumption of the Joint Session to certify the November election results. They will argue that the November election is constitutionally mooted anyway because it wasn’t certified before noon on January 20, and Trump is the rightful and constitutional president.
Then they will challenge anyone to do something about it.
The Supreme Court will not likely be an eager participant in this process, but they are sympathetic to Trump and intimidated by his supporters, and most importantly, they will have to acknowledge that Trump assumed the presidency because of he was in the line of succession when the country found itself without a president or vice-president. In other words, they’d have to invent some theory for why none of this should have ever happened and is illegitimate.
At this point, the country will be in crisis. Somewhere around 80 million people will have voted for Harris and Walz and many of them will be willing to use violence in an effort to set things right. Trump and Johnson know this, but they’re prepared to do this anyway, just as they were prepared to do it four years ago.
Now, you probably have some objections. And I’m here to tell you that many of your objections are probably, hopefully correct. This is a hare-brained scheme that should not work, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be attempted.
What we know is that Trump and Johnson have a secret plan to help Trump get elected and that it involves the U.S. House of Representatives. There are very few ways that Trump can become president, even in theory, using the House of Representatives if he loses the Electoral College. The scheme I have laid out here is the only one I can think of that would work in theory.
But it depends on a lot more than the Republicans maintaining control of the House. It also will require near unanimity among the House Republicans to go along with the scheme. This is a multistep plan, that requires they stay united against any effort to force them into a Joint Session on January 6th, or any time before noon on January 20th. It requires them to agree to make Trump their Speaker with the intention of elevating him to the presidency.
It also must overcome efforts by the Democrats to thwart their plans. It’s unclear what Harris can do on January 6th in the face of House Republicans refusing to join the Joint Session. It’s unclear what the Supreme Court might do to intervene at that stage. It’s unclear what the Senate Republicans are prepared to do whether or not they are in the majority, although the only thing they’d really need to do is acquiesce to Speaker Trump assuming the vacant office of the presidency. Finally, this wouldn’t be unfolding in a normal or peaceful environment. Washington DC is an overwhelmingly Democratic city and the people will revolt.
My guess is that the plan would falter because of House Republican defections. The effort to prevent this will be frightening, but I hope unsuccessful. I hope that the plan is exactly as fanciful as it sounds and that will fail on launch. But I have little doubt that this, or something very much like it, is what Johnson and Trump are calling their “secret plan.”
There’s just nothing else it really could be. It exploits weaknesses in our constitutional system and built-in advantages the Republicans enjoy to ensure Trump cannot lose, and it addresses a problem Trump did not have four years ago. Four years ago, Trump was already in the White House and he wanted to stay. This time, he has to find a way to get back in, and the only way is if he is elevated from the Speaker’s position.
Thanks, and all entirely plausible.
Here’s hoping that Democrats have their own “secret plans” for such an eventuality. Garry Trudeau had fun with one option in last Sunday’s “Doonesbury” where Biden’s advisers remind him he’s got immunity “for official acts” from the Roberts Court and he can make full use of it (e.g., to have Trump arrested).
Other pieces of the puzzle:
*Trump has a sentencing date before Judge Merchan in NY state court for his 34 felony convictions. Merchan could sentence him to prison and (I think) order him to start serving that sentence immediately.
*Trump is out on bail in multiple jurisdictions. The prosecutors could ask and the judges could revoke Trump’s bail because he’s failed to comply with the court’s conditions (e.g., associating with known felons). At a minimum, he could be ordered to surrender his passport, and to restrict his movements.
*New and/or additional charges could be brought against Trump.
*New and/or additional charges could be brought against any number of his key advisers.
*DOD/DHS/DOJ could go after some of Trump’s key backers: e.g., Musk for endangering national security, seizing one or more of his companies, etc.
*With all the public talk/knowledge of Trump/Musk/Bannon, et al, endangering national security and their regular conversations conspiring with Putin, Netanyahu, and others, I’d be surprised and disappointed if our many, many intelligence agencies don’t have lots and lots of recordings and other compromising information that can be used to derail Trump and his co-conspirators.
*Other?
Martin this is chilling and all too plausible. I hope that you have regular readers in the Biden administration who are planning for this possibility. A NYT article this morning on the subject of possible post election chaos didn’t include this scenario. One more reason why I read this blog.
The Senate elects the Vice-President if there is no Electoral College winner. The only candidates for VP is Vance and Walz.
The VP should be first in line of succession on January 20, and would become the acting President.
That said, fascists want chaos, so Republicans bypassing the rules to get Trump or Vance as President is 100% always on the table.
The Senate elects the vice-president if no candidate gets a majority. It can’t do anything if the count isn’t certified by the Joint Session. The point is to prevent an official count.
<blockquote>The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.</blockquote>
https://protectdemocracy.org/work/understanding-the-electoral-count-reform-act-of-2022/#:~:text=Makes%20it%20more%20difficult%20for%20members%20of%20Congress%20to%20make%20frivolous%20objections%20to%20state%20election%20results.%20%5BSection%20109%5D
That’s a link to a reputable website that goes over the process of counting votes. It references The Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022.
So, each individual state sends the Electoral Votes from it’s state’s Electors to a joint session of Congress, including the House and Senate as of January 6th 2025.
The Vice President, Harris, just counts votes.
To object to certain Electoral College votes, 1/5 of both the House and Senate have to put the objection in writing to raise the objection. And to sustain the objection, a majority of both the House and Senate have to vote to object to the Electoral College votes of that state.
So, I don’t think it matters whether or not the House has chosen a Speaker of the House, because their role for the Electoral College count is to sit there and watch the Vice President count the votes sent by the states. And they’d need a majority of both the House and Senate to object to electoral votes being counted. I guess that could happen, but that kind of open coup would definitely be enough to cause a lot of violence, and it’d be Biden in the White House during all of that. Then we’d get to see some Official Acts, and I’d prefer it be Biden to test those waters.
The only mention of a quorum is in Article II Section 1 Clause 3:
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S1-C3-1/ALDE_00013598/#:~:text=Article%20II%2C%20Section%201%2C%20Clause%203%3A
That quorum is for the House to choose the President in case of neither candidate getting a majority of EC votes. And the quorum itself states that it can be met if a member or members of 2/3 of the States are there. Which means if House Republicans and Senate Republicans can successfully block enough Electoral College votes to prevent the Electoral College winner to become President, they can’t just walk out of the building and choose not to show up to the House Presidential Election, because there will definitely be at least 1 Democrat member of 2/3 of States to make a quorum for the House to select the President. That’d just be a longer and more complicated Electoral College coup, and the remaining Democrats would just vote for Harris, so I don’t think a quorum-denying action would be better than just picking Trump outright through the House vote.
Again, all of that said…I can guarantee that there are hundreds of Elected Republicans, Judges and State Election Officials who are digging through as many loopholes as possible to prevent an Electoral College victory for Harris. At this point in history, it would be Republican Negligence not to be plotting a coup in case of a loss.
I think it could come down to Faithless Electors. I mean, that’s the easiest way to do it. Get enough of them in the swing states to shave down the EC count for Harris to be under 270 and it goes to the House which will almost assuredly vote for Trump. Depending on how close things are, it could be as little as 1-5 Faithless Electors putting Trump back into the White House.
Elon Musk could give each Faithless Elector $1 Billion dollars and he wouldn’t even notice the loss of net wealth. That’s a lot of money for probably every single Electoral College voter.
It could be that Harris, presiding, could just have the votes counted in the absence of the House Republicans, and I think I said that the absence of a Speaker would form no more than an excuse for non-participation rather than an actual excuse. But the House Republicans could object to the commencement of the Joint Session, and sustain that in a majority vote, if they’re unified. This would have more pull if backed by a Senate majority, although it’s harder to see the Senate Republicans going along with it without substantial defections. The truth is, I think the plot would fail for lack of unity, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be attempted, along with howls that its the Democrats carrying out a coup by railroading the House GOP’s objections.
To work, the plan must wind up with Trump as Speaker and with no certification. When Trump becomes Speaker doesn’t matter, so long as he’s Speaker at, or immediately after noon on the 20th.
So far as I know, the quorum question for the commencement of the Joint Session isn’t contemplated. I don’t know that traditionally either the House or Senate has relied on rules (motions) for consideration when having a Joint Sessions, and that could be key, because the House really can’t do anything without a Speaker, or at least a temporary Speaker, as we say during the lead-up to Johnson getting the gavel.
It’s unclear to me what happens if there is no certification by congress. Amendment 12 does not mention certification…it just says that the votes are opened before congress and counted. It always seems to me that the crucial stage is the casting of the electoral college votes in each state in December. That’s the vote. What happens in Congress is secondary, unless there is a dispute about which electors are valid. But the recent changes to the electoral college law says that the executive in the state gets the final word about this, and Ds control the governorships in the swing states.
Everything depends on things that are unclear, like in 2020 it was the role of the vice-president in overseeing the process. In this case, it’s what happens if the states certify the votes, but the House votes not to hold a Joint Session to count them. People will argue that the Constitution mandates that they count them, and then the Supreme Court decides? Harris blows ahead to certify her own victory without the House? You get the idea. Chaos at best, a contentious victory and presidency at best, and a road to a coup at worst. Again, I don’t think the GOP can be unified sufficiently behind this plan, but it could work in theory.
I think it is exceedingly unlikely that this scenario will lead to a Trump presidency. I mean… If Harris wins the election, and the electoral college vote in the states in December, is Biden really going to give up the White House to the speaker of the house on January 20 just because Congress has not managed to meet to certify? I sincerely hope he would not.
However, you have convinced me that a Republican house very likely will not certify, one way or another. It’s obvious that Trump is going to claim fraud if he loses, and the whole right-wing ecosystem is being primed to support this. Take one look at Fox News and you will see that they are pushing the story that Trump is poised to win big, so if he doesn’t win Republicans will never accept it. Denied certification, Harris will take office under a cloud, and Republicans will spend the next four years arguing that she is not legitimately the president. I don’t know the Supreme Court will get involved – hopefully not – but one could certainly imagine right-wing judges knocking down government actions left and right on the grounds that Harris is not really the president.
It will be a never ending constitutional crisis. Oy vey.
On a tangent, two hopeful signs out of DC in the last couple of days:
1) 75,000+ turned out for Harris’ rally at the Ellipse.
2) 10% of Washington Post subscribers have canceled their subscriptions in protest of Bezos’ last-minute decision to block an endorsement of Harris.
Both suggest a “fired up & ready to go & not in the mood to put up with any more of this nonsense” center-left majority that’s prepared to take action to defend our democracy should Trump lose the election and attempt another coup. That in turn gives democratic leaders more room to operate.
I canceled my online WaPo subscription.
But not my LA Times weekend and online subscription. We like to read a hardcopy print edition on weekends, and LA Times (as well as a small local weekly that is delivered free) has many local news stories that I cannot get elsewhere.
For the most part I can get most of WaPo’s stories through other sources. But LA Times reporting on water issues up and down the Pacific coast (some examples: Salton Sea; Imperial Valley irrigation and conservation; Sacramento Delta water flows; Klamath river dams and return of salmon populations since early 1900s) – these are invaluable to me as a reader. What to do? I am waiting for someone more enlightened and courageous than the current owner to take over ownership. It’s a real dilemma!
“It’s a real dilemma!” Yup.
And just so it’s clear, I’m not suggesting there’s any one right answer. I *am* suggesting that the WaPo’s subscription base being literally decimated in a matter of days is an indication of the extent to which liberals and centrists have had enough of Trump, MAGA, and their compliant allies; and that this a good sign for Democrats’ (and their allies) to defend a Harris election victory and to defeat Trump’s 2nd attempted coup (should it come to that).