now john c. eastman i'm going to try to put this as charitably as possible, john c. eastman is somebody who's willing to argue for views in positions that the vast majority of constitutional scholars would not just reject. but left it. for instance, questioning whether kamala harris is a national born citizen. and therefore eligible to be vice president. that piece that johnny's been wrote last august you'll never guess, donald trump, who's always looking for one or two people who will agree with him to give him some gravitas for his nonsense. and so you'll never guess when it came time to overturn a democratic election, john c. eastman became one of trump's go to people basically arguing for it could be. i don't genuine for the new york times reported that john c. eastman was delivering a last-minute pitch at the white house, to trump and pence about what the vice president could do to overturn the election on january six. in his new book bob woodward and robert costa reported more details about that >> woodward acosta also obtain these memo in which he lays out the

and you see in the scene president trump saying to try to listen to john eastman. listen to john. listen to john. and eastman has this memo think it's constitutional and legal for pence to essentially walk up on january 6th and then walk away. so this is president trump having a pressure campaign of his own vice president and using the legal conservative community and his allies there, the political committee, allies on the outside like judy only -- rudy giuliani and steve bannon, all listings are happening behind the scenes and that's what matters in the reporting as much or probably more than just president trump sitting there on january 6th watching tv. >> that's faceting. let's talk for a minute about vice president pence. whom president trump urged to listen to eastman. he says it's legal, he says you can do it. ultimately, the vice president decides based on the legal advice he is getting that no, he couldn't just throw out the votes. meanwhile, i believe it was senator lee who had come have taken it on himself to call the election officials in some of the states and learned

look, wolf, to hear that john eastman apparently claimed that this was a preliminary step and he wasn'te pence could just summarily overthrow the election, based on what trump was hearing from eastman and a couple of others and eastman, trump was telling people in the white house and outside the white house in the lead-up to january 6th that this was exactly the power that pence had and pence was saying that he didn't. remember donald trump made mike pence meter with john eastman for several hours before january 6th. it's fine now to say this wasn't real serious but it was. >> give peps a lot of credit for refusing to do what the president of the united states wanted him to do at that time. >> we also learned that trump reached out to the georgia secretary of state days ago, ten months from the of the election. is it still very much under way in donald trump's mind right now. >> in certain corners of the internet and people close to the former president and trying to stir him up because there's now this sort of business mod nell dlamg there was widespread fraud. there's clearly a corone

ngc in the scene president trump saying listen to john eastman, listen to john and he has his memo saying is constitutional and legal for pens to essentially walk up on january 6 and walk away, this is president trump having a pressure campaign of his own vice president and using the legal conservative community and his allies there, the political community allies like guiliani and steve being in together on june 5 and all of these are happening behind the scenes, that's what matters in the reporting as much were probably more than president trump sitting there on january 6 watching tv. >> that is fascinating let's talk for a minute about vice president pence whom president trump urged with the memo and he kept talking about eastman and he says it's legal and he says you can do it, ultimately the vice president decides the legal advice he was getting and he cannot just throw out the votes and meanwhile senator lee who had taken on himself to call the election officials in the states and learn that none of the states were gonna toss out there electric. bob woodward talk a little bit about

cnn obtaining the memo that shows conservative trump lawyer john eastman tried to convince mike penceion results. so joining me now, max boot, the former senior fellow at the council on foreign relations. and steven vladeck. professor of law at the university of texas. good evening, gentlemen. thanks for joining. steve, you say this memo from eastman is horrifying. the plan was to throw out the results in seven states, declare trump the winner, kick it to the state legislatures to affirm trump was re-elected. and let the other side take it up in court. do people have any idea how close we actually came to a coup? >> you know, don, i think hopefully now we're starting to. i mean, this was basically how to coup in six easy steps. i think if we look up the definition of sophistry in the dictionary, it would have a new entry for this memo. if mike pence had to talk to dan quayle to get talked off of this ledge, it's not because the legal arguments are any good. it's just because it was enough of a fig leaf on which pence could at least try to rest the kinds of shenanigans that these men a

you are crazy, john eastman. once they did do their due diligence, why wasn't graham shouting from the mountain tops january 4th, 5th, and 6th, this is bonkers. don't pay attention to what's going on here. don't pay attention to the coup being written down and planned in the oval office. >> this book is called "peril." we debated it behind the scenes. it could be called "power." who has the political capital. people like senator lee and senator graham, when you talk about their political standing and others in the same position recognize president trump was making claims that were not true about the election. they don't feel compelled to speak out because they are not in positions of power. that's really an issue for the republican party moving forward. even though leader mccarthy and leader mcconnell are the formal leaders of the republican party, it's the conservative movement, the podcast, people in the states, president trump in political winter, these from people that seem to wield the power right now in the

that john eastman memo gets dusted off. i hate to tell you this, it's a dangerous future for this country unless steps are taken to prevent it from happening. who better to discuss this than brad raffensperger himself. his new book is out november 2. he joins me now. it's good to have you, mr. secretary. let's start with your reaction to getting that letter on september 17 from the ex-president saying you are still stonewalling the proofs -- the proven facts the election was stolen. >> we are not stonewalling anything. we opened up an investigation three or four weeks ago and we are continuing to investigate it. we have investigated everything. when we have our final report, we will hand that over to the state election board. at the end of the day, it has been really now pushing ten months now since the november election. we continue to fight disinformation, misinformation about the election. every allegation that was made, which i put in my book, every one that was made, we found out that it wasn't supported by the facts.

on january 4th, two days before the insurrection, john eastman, president trump stands with vice presidentesident trump says to pence. listen to john. listen to john. try to read this memo. follow this guidance. and this memo shows president trump wanted vice president pence to throw out elect tours on january 5th to essentially throw the election to the house of representatives where president trump would have a very good chance of winning because the way the constitution works, the party that has the most delegations in the house could then win the presidency. that's what president trump wanted to actually have pence help him take the election away from biden. >> here's what i'm thinking, that heretofore in the media, no doubt because of the visuals, our attention has been focused on the breach of the capitol and the violence that ensued. what we've been missing and what "peril" brings out what was at play behind the scenes. by the way, was violence a part of the plan? was violence a part of what eastman and others around president trump were anticipating and hoping for? >> eastman's mem

the authors report on a two page memo drafted by john eastman john eastman is a conservative lawyer whoorking for trump's legal team it amounts to a blueprint for a coup nbc news has later obtained the memo it outlines how pence was to have disrupted the certification of the electoral college results and handed the election to trump. eastman predicts an immediate backlash and lays out plan b, he writes this. quote, "howls of course, from the democrats who now claim that 270 electoral votes are required," so pence says "fine, pursuant to the 12th amendment no candidate has achieved the necessary majority." that sends the matter to the house. republicans currently control 26 of the state delegations, president trump is re-elected there as well. trump tells pence this about eastman. quote, "you really need to listen to john he is a respected constitutional scholar. hear him out, listen, listen to john." >> seth: i like that it was trump's best attempt to sway pence. he is like a husband trying to convince his wife to let him keep gambling by inviting his bookie over. "you got to listen to

a fascist coup was written by disgraced former law professor and inventor of the side toupee, john eastman ) this eastman fellow told pence that, on january 6, he could overturn the election results by throwing out electors from seven states. seven states! that's 15% of the states! though it does say in the declaration of independence, "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal-- offer not valid in pennsylvania, georgia michigan, wisconsin, arizona, nevada, and new mexico." ( laughter ) ( applause ) here's how-- ( cheers and applause ) here's how eastman's evil plan was supposed to work: pence would throw out those seven states' electoral votes because they allegedly had competing electors. in fact, no state had actually put forward an alternate slate of electors. there were merely the former president's allies claiming without any authority to be electors. ( as eric ) "i can be an elector, dad. i hereby name you 'king president dad, the second.' now can we play catch?" with those-- ( cheers and applause ) next year-- ( cheers and applause ) -- next year, acti

trump, investigated these claims through memos that rudy giuliani and white house lawyer named john eastman gave them, and it was the kind of investigation almost predisposed, oh, okay, there's going to be supporting evidence here. they found the absolute opposite. zero. nothing. and both went, both senators graham and mike lee went on the floor of the senate and said no, nothing. and walked away. so what does that mean? i mean, i think if you're -- you really want to look at the facts as we tried to do here, and you -- if you like trump or don't like trump, read what his allies concluded that this stolen election claim is untrue. >> but do you see this as an assault on democracy by trump and his supporters? >> well, you know, we're just -- people will judge it. what is stunning is, and lindsey graham, for trump to say he's not -- doesn't talk to graham, they play golf all the time. they played golf last friday, i believe. and so, you know, the golf course and the political discussions are endless. so anyway, people can assess the facts here. >> bob, in the book, you outline how senators gr

that's john eastman on the left. with the hat on.t takes a lot to make rudy giuliani look like the sane lawyer. [ laughter ] john was able to do that. the book says eastman drew up a six-step plan explaining how mike pence should overturn the results of the election. and the steps went like this. step one, vice president pence, presiding over the joint session, opens and begins starting the ballots, starting with alabama. step two -- when he gets to arizona, pence pretends to have a coughing fit and reaches for a glas of water. step three -- while reaching for the glass, pence knocks the ballots onto the floor, saying the words "whoopsie daisy" loudly, so everyone can hear. step four -- as pence is picking up the ballots, he shouts, "hey, what's that over there?!" then kicks ballots from seven key battleground states under the podium. step five -- pence asks everyone to check under their chairs for the ballots, and while they're distracted looking under their chairs, he swallows, he eats all the ballots. [ laughter ] georgia, pennsyl

we revealed in our book and cnn has done great reporting on this how john eastman had a six point memoto get pence to throw out electors. had you mark meadows who got a subpoena, working on january 2nd at the white house in our book. all of the scenes show a selective picture of effort on the trump side to try to get the election to not go to biden. >> bob, in the wake of your reporting about examining legal claims, the former president said, i spent virtually no time with lindsey graham or lee, talking about the election scam or as it is viewed by many the crime of the century. they should be ashamed of themselves for not putting up the fight necessary to win. again, he is attacking some of his staufnchest allies who debased themselves to suck up to him and play golf with him. it's a common theme. anyone who didn't support the president's attempts to overturn the election or didn't support them vigorously enough or long enough essentially gets the president's ire and black listed. >> yes. what is significant is lindsey graham, mike lee, two of the most pro-trump republicans in the sen

hayes, and the election act is a mess and i keep saying the check offs gun of this tragedy, which john eastmanmous eastman memo is him saying here's how we could use the gaps in this law and its tension with the 12th amendment to get our guy in. how important is it to change that >> well, i think it's essential. i'm hoping that after the january 6th commission goes through and sees exactly what happened the last time around that they're going to propose some changes this time around. they're going to have to understand the john eastman strategy, at one point, he declares it's unconstitutional and just allows the vice president to do whatever h wants. so again, law making legal changes, it's so important it's my number one priority to push this over the next few years, but legal change alone is not going to protect american democracy. we're going to have to be ready for mass, peaceful protested the kinds of things i never thought we'd have to talk about in the united states >> that was sobering thank you very much. >> thanks. >>> this week, stakes are high for democrats and the country as the h

a memo from trump lawyer john eastman laying out the steps by which mike pence, on january 6th, wouldunched a chain of events aimed at overturning the electoral college vote. the former-vice president did not take those steps but the country was that close as the insurrection showed. donald trump's vanity pushed us there. republican lawmakers enabled him. some still won't repudiate him. they have purged otherwise-loyal members who have. and soon, these lawmakers could be in the majority. with us to talk about it, cnn political analyst, carl bernstein, bob woodward's old partner in journalism. and gloria borger. so, gloria, i want to start with this news in "the new york times." what does it say that according to this reporting, trump campaign officials knew and they knew early on that these claims that were being made were baseless? yet, they sat silent as these lawyers were going out and spouting them in public. >> well, they were part of the scam. that's what it says. they didn't want to take that up to the boss probably. we don't know whether trump knew or didn't know about this. b

john eastman, a law professor, john eastman wrote this memo that was given to mike pence and others and the idea was it was a blueprint to overthrow the election. the mere fact of that memo, the significance. >> yeah. so stunning, again, especially from a lawyer, an officer of the court, someone sworn to uphold the constitution. it is, again, completely indifferent to the rule of law, completely indifferent to democracy and a really shameless and from point one, with pence, the entire six-point memo is just a tissue of, you know, tearing up the constitution. these are lawyers. and i just want to underscore what casey says, they might have thought they were kind of playing games at the time and trying to be loyal to the president who lost the election, but it really has taken hold and i think has sort of affected and polluted the -- our whole political life in a way that is really different from before. it did -- the lie didn't pass with the election but hovers over us and has people, you know, antagonistic toward one another on the most basic terms. there is not even an ability to agree

john eastman, president trump confronted vice president pence and his lawyers in the oval office twohave that whole scene and president trump saying to pence listen to john, listen to john eastman, you can throw out thighs alternate electors or pretend there are alternate electors and somehow make the election go to the house of representatives by making sure biden does not have 270, the necessary threshold. this was a document that was circulating in the upper echelons of the trump administration trying to change american democracy and it is documentation of what was happening. this is not just a conversation or a text message, this was a memo that was taken very seriously by those at the top. >> documentation and details. details are what people need to pay attention to. because lindsey graham, right, this is a republican senator down in south carolina who originally said, we're certifying in election, donald lost fair and square, then he got heckled by hard core trumpers and changed his graham. lindsey graham and mike lee took these lies seriously enough that they provided resourc

we got the mem ran dumb that rudy giuliani sent to lindsey gram and the memo that this lawyer john eastmann the white house who was working for senator lee, they were investigating this. they were not going to just assume it was or wasn't. they sat on the phone for days calling people in these states trying to see if there was alternative electors. there were not. this whole thing, here, two real bedrock trump supporters, they were looking to see okay, maybe there is something here, and this election fraud allegation, the stolen election claim, it is no evidence. i -- we spent a lot of time looking at this and came up with the memos and it shows that the bedrock supporters said no, nothing. and they did the audit in arizona, and it turned out more votes for biden. so this is, i think, important in the political environment we're in because president trump is throughout still claiming the stolen election. in fact, he is making the rational for perhaps his future candidacy in 2024 well they stole in in 2020 so i how would get it back in 2024? that really does not make sense. except for what

one of the key scenes is january 4th john eastman this conservative lawyer confronts vice president penceent trump at the time and says you have to listen to us on this, try to consider maybe just pushing things to the house, see if there's time for alternate electors to emerge. this is based on different sources familiar with these events. that shows the pressure pence was under to try to pause what was happening on january 6th. >> bob, the day after the insurrection, trump condemned the violence on january 6th kind of. you detail a conversation between general milley and house speaker nancy pelosi about trump the next day. according to the transcript that you obtained in your book, she told milley, quote, you know he's crazy, he's been krscrazy a long time, so don't say you don't know what his state of mind is. he's crazy. to which milley replies, madam speaker, i agree with you on everything. you have interviewed president trump. how would you characterize his emotional state? >> well, look, how i might characterize it, i'm unqualified. but here we have the speaker of the house, the se

. >>> also we're learning new details about an internal memo former trump lawyer john eastman sent days before the riots laying out a way for vice president pence to overturn the election results. joining me is carl bernstein. good evening. good to see you. the eastman memo is horrifying. it's just the latest piece of evidence showing trump plotted to steal the election telling georgia's secretary of state to find votes pressuring the doj to call the election corrupt. summoning the mobs on january 6th. he tried it over and over and over again. >> yes. we know this. there was a real coup attempted by the president of the united states with, aided and abetted by those people, really nutso people that he brought in and listened to who tried to convince him and did convince him that there were ways to steal the election. and that's what this memo is about. it's about totally thwarting the constitutional process of the election of the president of the united states by the electoral college. trump wanted to make sure that he remained the president of the united states through hook and crook.

john eastman. area speaking at trump's rally. "washington post" journalist.ys before that, eastman handed then vp pence a two page memo. detailed overturn the election through a six olivia trou is a former pence adviser. the idea he would accept this memo. put with him calling dan quayle is there any way around this? is there any wau way around this. the fact this document xusthis exists is outrageous. it's on so many different levels. on full display just how close we came to a moment where there would have been the impeding of the transition of power. and there is full training of our democratic and individuals and so, you know, i have no doubt that i'm sure mike pence and in reading this document starts to make the phone calls. now we have more context on why, perhaps, he had the conversation with dan quayle. i wonder if he went through the document and discussed it with him. how many other people knew about this document? it looks like senator lee did. how many elected officials knew this plan existed. this is the republican playbook firsthand and my conc

then there's the revelation, the one in bob woodward and robert costa's new book, peril, that john eastman, a lawyer then working for the president then president's legal team wrote a scheme how mike pence could dismiss the election results and hand trump the presidency. so welcome to ground-hog day because apparently former president trump felt so overshadowed by real news and wants to give us all at least six more weeks of the big lie. here is the truth again. president biden won the popular vote. president biden won 306 electoral college votes. you only need 270 to win. it was a fair and free election. democracy guarantees a fair process. it doesn't guarantee you'll get the result you want. sometimes your candidate will win. sometimes your candidate will lose. themes the breaks. and yet the former president refuses to give us all a break on the premotion of the big lie. now, it's tempting to ignore it and believe me, we could if the lie was only relegated to say dark corners but it is manifested in an attack on the citadel of our democracy. it has proliferated. it's been codified. in fa

from john eastman to rudy giuliani. to sue? all this stuff happened a year ago. the other possibility is that remember donald trump forced his white house staff to sign nondisclosure. it's not something i've ever heard the president doing before. the basis is mary trump violated a nondisclosure agreement. maybe it's a shot at its white house staff to not be talking. i don't know. >> you know, tim, congressman adam schiff was on earlier in t has some legislation to make also future-proof the presidency from donald trump. i remember there was a similar thought about donald trump's refusal to release his taxes. i wonder if you think there's any chance, any hope that on the other side of this will become some side of ruling from the two political parties, or the debate commission, that any candidate has to reveal their taxes. we're here because he was the first to not release his taxes. it led to all questions about the bizarre relationship with putin, and a leveraged company. i wonder, if you think it will inspire reforms.

with the release of a six-part wild legal fantasy by one of former president trump's advisers, john eastmanhrow an eek. that's what it is. a blueprint to blood pressure to the overthrow the results fortunate election handed to the vice-president of the united states in the oval office. >> now nearly a year after the election, the big lie is deeply rooted in the republican party as identity. and a recent cnn srss poll, 6 in 10 gop voters said supporting trump and believing he won in 2020 are a somewhat important part of what being a republican means to them. to most of his die-hard supporters, the violent insurrection on january 6th was actually an attempt to save democracy, even though more than 600 people have been charged with crimes tied to the attack not to mention all the violence we see in this video. the sham arizona audit didn't give trump the win he wanted either but it did succeed in deepening distrust in the entire election system. and it set off a rash of other audits in battle-ground states, even though their elections were deemed free and fair by the courts. >> we know that th

. >> january 6th, this memo revealed in the woodward and costa book "peril" john eastman, a lawyer tomp campaign wrote and handed to mike pence. he said you should throw out the electoral votes in seven states. georgia was one of them. how does that make you feel that there was a written down plan from a lawyer to discard the votes in your state? >> well, we held the line here. we made sure we had a fair and honest election and i followed the constitution. i stood on the line and others stood for the constitution also. it's a challenging day in america. >> last week you got another letter from the former president of the united states asking all still at this point to decertify the georgia election results. how important is it to stand up and publicly say no to him. you have a book about this. >> well, i look at his letter as a plea for attention. he knows he's lost. he's been told that multiple times by a lot of people. but at the end of the day, that information that he talked about, we opened up an investigation. lots of investigations go on. once we have our findings, we report th

this just only days after we were learning about a memo from trump lawyer john eastman trying to influenceke pence to overturn the 2020 election. do these people need to be held accountable to heal our democracy? what do you think needs to happen here in order to make this right with the american people? >> well, i certainly think this investigation needs to carry on. they need to act with some degree of haste to make sure. there are going to be delays. that's kind of what the trump people do. they try to find ways to delay proceedings, and so i think they need to have as they have issued subpoenas with relatively short return dates. but i think you also need to hold responsible people like eastman, people like that guy jeff clark, lawyers who were trying to facilitate this coup attempt. lawyers who are officers of the court need to be held responsible for their involvement in these matters. now, it may mean there are criminal sanctions, but it could also mean there are bar proceedings that are taken so we send a message to members of the bar you can't do these kinds of things. >> listen,

we revealed in our book and cnn has done great reporting on this as well how john eastman, the conservativeo try to get vice president pence to throw out electors. a subpoena tonight, the chief of staff working on january 2nd at the white house, all in our book. all these scenes show a collective picture of effort on the trump side to try to get the election to not go to biden on the 6th. >> bob, in the wake of your reporting about senators lindsey graham and mike freed looking at this and finding it baseless, president trump said, quote, i spent virtually no time with senators mike lee of utah or lindsey graham. lindsey and mike should be ashamed of themselves for not putting up the night necessary to win. so he has his allies who have to put themselves out repeatedly to suck up to him and play golf with him. anyone who didn't support trump in the election or didn't support him vigorously or long enough essentially gets the president's ire and blacklisted. >> yes. but what is significant is lindsey graham, mike lee, two of the most pro-trump republicans in the senate looked -- they got the

rudy giuliani sent to senator lindsey graham of south carolina and a memo that white house lawyer john eastmant conservative pro trump republicans in the senate and perhaps in the country and so they looked at the allegations of stolen election and they concluded across the board there was zero evidence to support this so if you look at it, if you had a presentation to a jury of 12 americans, they would look at this and they might have political feelings pro trump or anti trump, butthe documentation is so solid in the investigations and the conclusions of trump's friends just this week trump denounced senators graham and senators lee saying that they gave up and that they should be embarrassed for abandoning his stolen election claim, but if you look at it through a neutral lens and given the political schism in this country, it's hard, but that's what costa and i were able to do, and it's clear, there is no evidence of the stolen election. what trump has done since he left office, he's almost basing his rationale for candidacy in 20 this is, well, they stole it from me in 2020 so maybe as a c

this was a blueprint written down by john eastman, working as an adviser to president trump. trump was trying to get pence to buy into this. how significant do you see this? >> i mean, it shows you that it's not just what the former president was saying in public and is still saying in public. it's a question of how many different ways were they trying to invalidate the results of the 2020 election that very clearly show that joe biden won? it's -- i'm fascinated by the behind the scenes detail here. there is also the reporting from the book that pence, he reached out to other people on his own. he reached out to the senate parliamentarian. he had other conversations with mike lee, the senator from utah. i mean, he's known as an extremely conservative member of congress. he had been a supporter of former president donald trump, but lee looked at this and said, no, this is not acceptable under the constitution of the united states of america. ultimately, that's what pence decided. i think back to my time covering this in the moment. i was on capitol hill covering this. i was t

pretty close back last fall to a coup, to, you know, we now know reporting from yesterday that john eastman, one of the president's lawyers had a six-point plan to try and get pence to hijack what was happening on january 6th. and but for a few votes in congress, he could have succeeded. but for raffensperger at least then doing the right thing, he could have succeeded. and you know, that is a very worrisome thing to contemplate. >> yeah, i think one of the things we discovered in that process, in that election process and its aftermath was that things that we thought, a lot of the things we thought were institutional or were actual, you know, guard rails were actually just people. it was really just, well, it really depends on what this person decides to do, and secretary of state raffensperger is a really interesting case study because he had no doubt about what the correct thing to do was in november, december, and january, absolutely no doubt, and he had no doubt when he and his team were taping that phone call with donald trump, which they then made public. they made that phone call pu

john eastman and the famous eastman memo is him basically saying we can use gaps in that law and it's tension with the 12th amendment to get our guy in. how important is it to change that? well i think it's essential. , and i'm hoping that after the january six commission goes through and sees exactly would have been. the last time around that they're gonna propose some changes this time around. but you have to understand that his strategy, at one point he declares that the electrical and the trump amendment just a the president to do whatever he wants. so again, law making legal changes is so important, it's my number one priority to push. this over the next few years. but legal change alone is not going to protect american democracy. we are going to have to be ready for a mass peaceful protest. we're gonna have to be ready to organize a simple society. the kind of things i never thought we would have to be talking about in the united states. >> i rick hasen, that was so inspiring thank you so. much >> this week stakes are high for democrats and the country as the house tries to pull

on january 4th, john eastman, the author of the memo you cited here, in that meeting, which was the ultimate temptation of power, a president to a vice president the next day, january 5th, vice president pence, who spent four years trying do the bidding politically for president trump, he said he didn't have the constitutional ability to act. this was the brink of a constitutional crisis on the eve of an insurrection. >> had mike lee indicated support for this pathway, do you think the vice president might have changed his mind? how important is that? >> it was critical, as bob said, for senator graham, senator lee and other conservatives, even former vice president dan quayle saying you can't do anything here, vice president pence, except count the votes. there's so many historical counterfactuals, what could have happened if pence went in a different direction and just walked away. >> bob, the roles of lindsey graham and mark meadows here, at times it looked like they were sort of enabling president trump's wishes on this election, and at times they seemed to want to steer him away from th

and it's also lunacy as you read through it in the sense that, you know, here's this memo from john eastmanyer saying there's a way to do this. the vice president controls the process. and -- and came pretty close. >> look, there is a part of that memo also outlines the scenario in which if they could have just sort of invalidated pennsylvania and a couple other states biden wouldn't have had 270 which is the minimum threshold at which point you -- you throw it to the house of representatives and they vote in a strange way. they vote state by state, so california would count the same as montana and republicans had a majority in that scenario in which they could have voted to -- to name him president for a second term. >> you're dead right. the six steps tells you how serious they were which is why when this played out, mike pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done. that's what the president, then president trump wanted him to do because if you go through this, paul, you're exactly right. first, just try say there were seven states with dueling electors. seven states in

think in light of some of the news that's broken in recent days about this six-step plan that john eastman about how to overthrow the election along with this other memo really points a lot of fingers in the direction of president trump to determine whether this was not just a lot of chaos that happened on january 6th, but a concerted plan. >> ashley, you covered the trump white house for four years. give us a little context based on what barbara was just saying, how important the people who receive these subpoenas were to the president, the kind of access they had and how is this going over in trump world tonight. >> so, these people who received the subpoenas are incredibly important to the trump world with the exception of steve bannon and even he in some ways they were all members of president's inner circle, intimate confident, people who were there or in contact with him the day of the insurrection and the run-up to the insurrection. and you know, journalist who immediately after wrote some of the stories trying to detail what happened on january 6th and how did we get there, this co

example, that will allow this kind of gamesmanship, were the kind of things that we saw in that john eastman memo, which by the way needs to get a lot more attention. they put it in writing. they put their coup plan in writing. we have it. i don't know why it's not on the front page of every newspaper in the country. but ultimately, what congress is going to have to do is understand that, yes, there are really serious issues involved in the election, but there are much more grave issues involving who counts those votes, including the electoral college, the electoral act, which is a ridiculous piece of legislation in which mike pence might have abused. but i do think that legislative action is also going to be necessary to prevent this from happening, otherwise we are going to see this slow rolling disaster. i mean, imagine if the secretaries of state in places like georgia had gone along with donald trump as opposed to standing up against him, we would be living in a very different world, and i think we may find out what that world looks like. >> and i'm not so sure raffensperger given a sec

topics, because this week we learned that a conservative lawyer working for trump's legal team, john eastman a supreme court clerk, he's with the federalist society, he wrote a memo ahead of the january 6th insurrection laying out how vice president pence could toss out the election results in seven states, including the great commonwealth of pennsylvania, which you represent, in order to throw the election for donald trump, basically a how to stage a bloodless coup memo. what was your reaction when you read about that? >> so i haven't read the memo so i don't know the details but you know what i think about what happened on january 6th. in my mind, it's very clear, joe biden won the election, and we were carrying out very important but essentially ministerial process that the vice president proceeds over to finalize and formalize what we already knew had happened, which was that joe biden had been elected president. any effort to derail that effort at that point, that exercise that we go through is a tremendous offense against the constitution and our country. >> well, speaking of which, yo

former-president trump had a blueprint to carry out a coup that day from a little-known lawyer named john eastmany 2nd memo laying out a six-step strategy for the former-vice president pence to overturn the election. and that strategy laid bare for the public to hear when eastman spoke at the january 6th rally. he did. he spoke there before the pro-trump mob stormed the capitol. just listen to this. >> we know there was fraud. we know that dead people voted. machines contributed to that fraud. they put those ballots in a secret folder in the machines. sitting there waiting until they know how many they need. all we are demanding of vice president pence is this afternoon at 1:00, he let the legislatures of the state look into this so we get to the bottom of it, and the american people know whether we have control of the direction of our government or not. >> outfront now, lawrence tribe, constitutional law professor at harvard law school. so, professor, good to have you on, again. and i know you call this an attempted coup. not just in the general use of the word that so many have adopted but in a

2020 election from the new book "peril" by bob woodward and robert costa, the authors report on john eastmanconservative lawyer although was working for trump's legal team. it amounts to a blueprint for a coup. nbc has obtained a memo and how pence was to have disrupted the certification and handed the election to trump. is goes, pence announces that because of the ongoing disputes in the seven states there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those states. there are 232 votes for trump, 232 votes for biden. pence then gavels president trump as re-elected. eastman lays out plan "b." writes this, howell, of course, from the democrats now claim that 270 electoral votes is required. so pence says, fine. pursuant to the 12th amendment, no candidate has achieved the necessary majority. according to the amended version of the plan, pence would delay the certification until states could send an alternate slate of electors was pitched by pence to eastman in the oval office. trump tells pence, quote, you really need to listen to john, he's a respects constitutional scholar, listen,

john eastman, who wrote a memo with the coup plot on paper, mike pence's role articulated was discussedoval office with the president. mike pence was pressured to do the right thing. talk to me about what you see when you look at these pieces target to get filled in. >> well, nicole, what you will see is all of the pieces of an autocratic movement that make one possible coming together in its various elements. you have trump filling the role of the charismatic leader. you have his enablers, the coup plotters, who were with him in the oval office, who were handmaidens to this plot. you have the cynicism of the financiers, some of the richest people on the planet, some of the richest people in the united states have been the chief financiers of this american fascist movement. some of them, like steve schwartzman, have buildings named after them and are defended by some of the most elite universities in the country. you'll always have the cynicism of the elites, the elected officials in the country, all of them, the eelise stefanik or kevin mccarthy of the world, ted cruz, josh hawley, you

john eastman, yes, he's a federal society lawyer.step back and wonder what if they had actual professionals trying to do this and you begin to wonder how much worse it could have been. >>> coming up -- >> i also feel especially proud to be standing here where some years ago jackie robinson and roy campanella paved the way and made it possible for us in baseball. they proved to the world that a man's ability is limited only by his lack of opportunity. >> that was baseball great hank aaron during his 1982 induction into the hall of fame. it's among a handful of key speeches whose impact go far beyond the world of sports. "morning joe" is coming right back. in 2016, i was working at the amazon warehouse when my brother passed away. and a couple of years later, my mother passed away. after taking care of them, i knew that i really wanted to become a nurse. amazon helped me with training and tuition. today, i'm a medical assistant and i'm studying to become a registered nurse. in filipino: you'll always be in my heart. >>> former presiden