Peril

by Bob Woodward

“There are at this point 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden,” Eastman wrote of such a scenario. “Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.”

No such procedure existed in the Constitution, any law or past practice. Eastman apparently had drawn it out of thin air.

That was their ballgame. Either have Pence declare Trump the winner, or make sure it is thrown to the House where Trump is guaranteed to win.

“The fact is that the Constitution assigns the power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter,” it stated.

Lee had spent nearly two months trying to impress upon Trump and Meadows that they could pursue legal remedies, audits, recounts or other claims. They could file dozens of lawsuits. But their time was limited. “Just remember you’ve got a shot clock,” he said.

Giuliani offered a computer expert who presented a mathematical formula that demonstrated the near impossibility of a Biden win. Several states had recorded more votes for Biden than previous votes for Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Too abstract, Graham said. A presidential election would not be turned based on some theory.

Giuliani and his team said they had overwhelming, irrefutable proof of the dead, young people under the age of 18, and felons in jail voting in massive numbers.

Some 8,000 felons voted in Arizona, they said. “Give me some names,” Graham asked. They said they had 789 dead people who had voted in Georgia. Names, Graham said. They promised to get names to him by Monday. They said they had found 66,000 individuals under the age of 18 who illegally voted in Georgia.

“Give me some names. You need to put it in writing. You need to show me the evidence.” They promised by Monday.

Trump’s lawyers had now lost nearly 60 challenges. By the end, about 90 judges, including Trump appointees, would end up ruling against Trump-backed challenges.

Lee Holmes, Graham’s chief counsel on the Judiciary Committee, who had been with Graham for seven years.

Holmes read that a team of accountants had identified “789 dead people who voted in Georgia in the 2020 General Election.” The analysis was of mail-in and absentee ballots.

To Holmes, it was not clear how anyone could get such a massive list of people who died and meaningfully match it to their recent voting history.

Robert Drakeford, for example, was 88 years old, and got a ballot on September 18. The ballot was returned five days later. He died on November 2, according to the document. Another old person had voted and died, proving nothing even if the document was accurate.

As best he could tell, nearly all of the 789 dead people who allegedly voted in Georgia had properly received their ballots before they died. The sourcing was unclear. He could not figure out which government documents might have been used.

Holmes wondered, who were these unnamed brainiac experts? That total was more than twice the 11,779-vote margin that gave Biden the state.

How could anyone, or even a team of Ivy League statisticians, go through 7.6 million registered voters and correlate that with the postal records to find 18,325 registered at vacant addresses?

The Giuliani analysis also said there were “305,701” instances in which “absentee ballot applications date precedes earliest date permitted under Georgia law.” But that would again mean examining 7.6 million voter files. As best Holmes could tell, the information on absentee ballot applications might only be available in some Georgia counties. It would be a near impossible task to try to apply this to 7.6 million voters.

How could unregistered people cast a vote? And how could anyone find out?

Holmes backtracked to the Giuliani memos and found much of the latest data could be traced to investigative work done by Christina Bobb of the One America News Network, a pro-Trump television network that touted conspiracies about “voting machines” being “notorious” for fraud.

“42,284 registered voters voted more than once.” Holmes wondered how this was possible. In multiple precincts? The same precincts? Voting twice was clearly illegal, but who exactly would track and register that in what Giuliani said were public records?