Page:Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.pdf/292

 not work, they pressured State legislators to disregard the vote counts and instead appoint Trump electors to vote in the electoral college.

This fundamentally anti-democratic effort was premised on the incorrect theory that, because the Constitution assigns to State legislatures the role of directing how electoral college electors are chosen (which every State legislature had done before the election, giving that power to the people at the ballot boxes) then the State legislatures could simply choose Trump/Pence electors after seeing the election results. In effect, President Trump and his advisors pushed for the rules to be changed after the election—even if it meant disenfranchising millions of Americans.

More than a month before the Presidential election, the media reported that the Trump Campaign was already developing a fallback plan that would focus on overturning certain election results at the State level. An article published on September 23, 2020, in The Atlantic explained, "[a]ccording to sources in the Republican Party at the State and national levels, the Trump Campaign is discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground States where Republicans hold the legislative majority." Ominously, the same reporting predicted, almost exactly, what would later come to pass: "With a justification based on claims of rampant fraud, Trump would ask State legislators to set aside the popular vote and exercise their power to choose a slate of electors directly."

Numerous senior Trump Campaign advisors—including Campaign Manager William Stepien, Deputy Campaign Manager and Senior Counsel Justin Clark, and President Trump's lead attorney Rudolph Giuliani—all told the Select Committee that there was, indeed, a State-focused "strategy" or "track" to challenge the outcome of the election, which included pressing State legislators to challenge results in key States and to appoint new electoral college electors.

"You know, in the days after election day, later in that first week, bleeding into the second, as our numbers and data looked bleaker, internally we knew that," Stepien told the Select Committee. "As the AP [Associated Press] called the race, I think some surrounding the President were looking for different avenues to pursue." That's when Stepien remembered the concept first coming up.

Those around President Trump were pushing this idea, and pushing it hard.