#77 DAYS TO SUBVERT THE ELECTION TRIAL#

Likewise, during the campaign, Attorney General William P. Biden’s victory would not be enough to dissuade 14 Republican senators from joining the president’s last-ditch bid to nullify millions of Americans’ votes. Trump would eventually accede to reality, people close to the senator told The Times.

McConnell heeded misplaced assurances from White House aides like Jared Kushner that Mr. As he sought the president’s help in Georgia runoffs that could cost him his own grip on power, Mr. In the Senate, he got early room to maneuver from the majority leader, Mitch McConnell. Throughout, he was enabled by influential Republicans motivated by ambition, fear or a misplaced belief that he would not go too far. In the aftermath of that broken afternoon at the Capitol, a picture has emerged of entropic forces coming together on Trump’s behalf in an ad hoc, yet calamitous, crash of rage and denial.īut interviews with central players, and documents including previously unreported emails, videos and social media posts scattered across the web, tell a more encompassing story of a more coordinated campaign.Īcross those 77 days, the forces of disorder were summoned and directed by the departing president, who wielded the power derived from his near-infallible status among the party faithful in one final norm-defying act of a reality-denying presidency. Trump had been grooming for years finally overwhelmed the Republican Party and, as brake after brake fell away, was propelled forward by new and more radical lawyers, political organizers, financiers and the surround-sound right-wing media.

#77 DAYS TO SUBVERT THE ELECTION TRIAL#

In coming days, a presidential transition like no other will be dissected when he stands trial in the Senate on an impeachment charge of “incitement of insurrection.” Yet his lie of an election stolen by corrupt and evil forces lives on in a divided America.Ī New York Times examination of the 77 democracy-bending days between election and inauguration shows how, with conspiratorial belief rife in a country ravaged by pandemic, a lie that Mr. 6 assault on the Capitol almost inevitable. Trump’s flimsy, long-shot legal effort to reverse his loss turned into something else entirely - an extralegal campaign to subvert the election, rooted in a lie so convincing to some of his most devoted followers that it made the deadly Jan. And with that, the election-law experts were sidelined in favor of the former New York City mayor, the man who once again was telling the president what he wanted to hear. Clark a liar, according to people with direct knowledge of the exchange. And a state audit was barreling toward a conclusion that the Dominion machines had operated without interference or foul play. Giuliani had in mind would be dismissed on procedural grounds. Giuliani, was on speaker phone, pressing the president to file a federal suit in Georgia and sharing a conspiracy theory gaining traction in conservative media - that Dominion Systems voting machines had transformed thousands of Trump votes into Biden votes. As he met with colleagues to discuss strategy, the president’s deputy campaign manager, Justin Clark, was urgently summoned to the Oval Office.

77 days to subvert the election