They called it the “command center,” a collection of rooms and suites at the plush Willard Hotel, just a block from the White House, where some of President Donald Trump’s closest aides were working around the clock with one goal in mind: overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Planning for Trump’s Comeback
The January 6 rally at the Ellipse and the subsequent attack on the Capitol were organized by a pro-Trump crowd to draw the world’s attention to the effort to prevent Congress from confirming Joe Biden’s victory. But activities at the Willard that week add to the emerging picture of a less visible effort, outlined in memos by a conservative Trump-supporting legal scholar and pursued by a team of presidential advisers and lawyers seeking to implement what they claim is a legal strategy to re-elect Trump for a second term.
Leaders and Lawyers
They were led by Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. The former White House chief political strategist Stephen Bannon was present from time to time as a senior political adviser to the efforts. Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, was there as an investigator. John Eastman, the legal scholar, was also present, presenting scenarios for denying Biden’s victory in a meeting in the Oval Office on January 4 with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
Efforts and Pressures
They sought to persuade Pence and increase the pressure on him to take actions on January 6 suggested by Eastman that he claimed fell within his authority, according to three people familiar with the process who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Their activities included finding and disseminating alleged evidence of fraud, urging lawmakers from state legislatures to challenge Biden’s victory, and rallying pro-Trump supporters to pressure Republican officials in key battleground states.
Last-ditch Efforts
These efforts underscore how hard Trump and a handful of true believers worked until the last moment to manipulate the will of voters, seeking to pressure Pence to delay or even prevent the certification of the election while exploiting any possible constitutional gap to test the limits of American democracy.
Guidance and Influences
One attendee, senior campaign aide and former White House special assistant Boris Epshteyn, told The Washington Post: “I strongly believed at the time, as I believe now, that the vice president – in his role as President of the Senate – had the constitutional authority to send the matter back to the states for 10 days to investigate widespread fraud and report back before Inauguration Day, January 20.” “Our efforts were focused on communicating that message.”
Consequences and Repercussions
In an effort to compel Bannon to testify, the congressional committee investigating January 6 cited his supposed presence in the “war room” organized at the Willard. The House voted Thursday to hold Bannon in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the committee.
Investigations and Documents
The committee also requested documents and correspondence related to Eastman’s legal advice and analysis. Eastman told The Post on Wednesday he has not yet been contacted by the congressional committee investigating the insurrection. Regarding his involvement in Team Trump’s efforts at the Willard, Eastman said: “In regard to those times, those were attorney discussions. You’re not going to get any comment from me on those matters.”
Presence and Influences
In May, Eastman indicated he was at the hotel with Giuliani on the morning of January 6. “We had a war room at the Willard… coordinating all communications,” he told talk show host Peter Boyles, comments first reported in the newsletter Proof.
Presence
Effects
Giuliani’s attorney, Robert Costello, did not respond to requests for comment.
There was also one correspondent at One America News, Christina Bobb, an attorney by training who was volunteering for the campaign at the time, according to people familiar with the process. Bobb declined to comment.
Investigations and Presence
Kirk said his company missed Trump’s campaign more than $55,000 for legal team hotel rooms. The costs for the former police inspector, who was helping to lead the efforts to collect and investigate claims of electoral fraud, were later reimbursed, according to records.
Efforts and Investigations
Three people familiar with the process described the intense work in the days and hours leading up to and even surpassing 1 p.m. on January 6, when Congress convened to count the electoral votes.
Efforts and Investigations
In those early days in January, Trump supporters at the Willard Command Center were calling members of state legislatures dominated by the Republican Party in key states highlighted by Eastman in his memos, including Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona, urging them to hold special sessions to investigate fraud and redirect the electoral college votes from Biden to Trump, according to two people familiar with the process.
Efforts and Investigations
On January 2, Trump, Giuliani, and Eastman spoke to 300 state legislative members via a call aimed at providing them with alleged evidence of fraud and motivating them to act to “decertify” their election results. “You are the true power,” Trump told the state legislators, according to a report from the Washington Examiner. “You are the ones who will make the decision.”
Efforts and Investigations
One participant on the call, Michigan State Senator Ed McBroom (Republican), said he listened to Trump, Giuliani, Eastman, and others describe the authority that state legislators have in certifying electors. “I didn’t need any convincing about our broad powers,” McBroom told The Post. “I was listening to see if they had any evidence to substantiate the claims of significant electoral fraud that could change the outcome in Michigan.” He said the speakers did not provide additional information, and he did not support delaying the counting of the electoral votes.
Efforts and Investigations
But it appears others were persuaded. Three days after the call, several members of Congress from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin wrote to Pence. They asked him to postpone certifying Biden’s victory for 10 days to allow “our concerned bodies to gather, investigate, and vote as a body on whether to certify or decertify the election.”
Efforts and Investigations
Also on January 2, Eastman, Giuliani, and Epstein appeared on Bannon’s podcast to present arguments directly to Trump-supporting listeners. They discussed what Bannon described as “everyone meeting with state legislatures… being done by the Trump campaign and others.” The comments were first highlighted by Proof.
Efforts and Investigations
They argued that state legislators were legally obligated to re-examine their election results. “It is the duty of these legislatures to fix this egregious behavior and make sure we are not putting someone in the White House who didn’t win,” Eastman said. He contended that Congress itself could decide on January 6 to determine Biden’s electors in the disputed states, but “it would definitely be helpful if the legislatures in the states looked into what happened in their own states and intervened.”
Efforts and Investigations
Eastman was not the first person on the Trump team to argue that Pence was empowered to prevent or delay certifying Biden’s victory. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor – and Trump himself – suggested that on December 23, when he reshared a tweet about the possibility of invoking the “Pence card.”
Efforts
Investigations
But after other efforts failed, as January 6 approached, Eastman’s strategy began to emerge. Eastman, a member of the Federalist Society, a law professor, and a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, stated that the first memo he wrote, which was composed of only two pages, outlined a six-point plan that would allow Pence to effectively take control of the electoral count and enable Trump to win. The memo was first revealed last month in the Washington Post book “Peril” by authors Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.
Efforts and Investigations
Eastman said it was a “preliminary draft” of a more complete and complex memo outlining several potential outcomes after the joint session of Congress on January 6. The ideas in the memos were essentially the foundation for discussions about the options available to Pence with Eastman and Trump in the Oval Office on January 4, and he said he wrote the memos at the request of “someone on the legal team” whose name he could not remember.
Efforts and Investigations
In the Sacramento Bee, Eastman wrote on October 7 that he advised Pence to delay the counting of the electoral votes to give the states time to resolve concerns about alleged ballot tampering.
Efforts and Investigations
This was the strategy that Trump’s advisors coalesced around in the war room at Willard, according to two individuals familiar with discussions there in early January. For these scenarios to overturn Biden’s victory, the legislatures in those states would investigate the alleged fraud and could discard their results if they chose to do so.
Efforts and Investigations
But by January 5, Pence was not convinced by the plan, according to “Peril.” That evening, Trump called Giuliani and then Bannon, who were at Willard at the time, according to the book, which reported some details of the events at Willard that day. Trump told Bannon that Pence was “too arrogant” when he discussed it earlier that day, according to the book. The next day, Eastman spoke at a rally at the Ellipse.
Efforts and Investigations
Eastman told the crowd, “All we are asking of Vice President Pence is at 1 p.m. this afternoon to allow the legislators in the states to look at this issue so we can get to the bottom of it and the American people know whether we have control over the direction of our government or not!” “We no longer live in a self-governing republic if we don’t get an answer to this question!”
Efforts and Investigations
Pence bore the pressure. Around 1 p.m., as he prepared for the joint session, he announced via a message posted on Twitter that he would count the electoral votes as they had been cast weeks earlier.
Efforts and Investigations
When violence erupted shortly afterward, forcing Congress to pause, some of Trump’s staunchest supporters saw an opportunity.
Efforts and Investigations
Kelly Ward, chair of the Arizona Republican Party, tweeted at 3:30 p.m., more than half an hour after armed rioters had reached the Senate floor: “Congress convened. Return the electors to the legislatures.” Ward did not respond to a request for comment.
Efforts and Investigations
Epstein told the Post, “It was made very clear by the Trump legal team that any violence is not acceptable under any circumstances.” At 2:30 p.m. on January 6, shortly after the Capitol was breached, Epstein tweeted: “To all protesters, please stay peaceful and respect the law.”
Efforts and Investigations
After the violence began, Trump used his Twitter account to ask his supporters to “stay peaceful,” but he did not urge them to go home until 4:17 p.m., when he posted a video of himself addressing the rioters at the Capitol. He said, “I know your pain. I know your hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us,” and added, “We have to have peace. Go home. We love you, you’re very special.”
Efforts and Investigations
Investigations
While the lawyers at Willard focused on strengthening the legal strategy devised by Eastman, Kerrick helped lead efforts to examine claims of election fraud. Phil Waldrone, a retired U.S. Army colonel who specialized in psychological operations, led a team of individuals who provided Kerrick with analyses of state data, which supposedly showed fraudulent voting, according to two people familiar with activities at Willard.
Efforts and Investigations
Waldrone worked closely with Russell Ramsland, a Texas Republican who had been publishing conspiracy theories regarding election fraud for several months leading up to the election and provided sworn testimony in various lawsuits post-election claiming fraud, as previously reported by the Post. Ramsland was present in one of the Willard rooms on the evening of January 6, according to widely circulated Instagram images after the congressional committee mentioned the “war room.”
Efforts and Investigations
Waldrone and Ramsland did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Efforts and Investigations
Kerrick said he had been working alongside Giuliani since November 5, two days after the election, and continued until January 19. “I believed up until the day of the presidential inauguration that something could be done – that’s why the fight was ongoing,” Kerrick told the Post. “There were a lot of people who thought on January 6 it was over, but I didn’t believe that because the evidence seemed overwhelming to me.”
Efforts and Investigations
Kerrick and Giuliani established an office in Washington in early November at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, according to Kerrick, and in the third week of December, they moved to Willard, closer to the White House. Willard attracted many pro-Trump figures at the time, including controversial “Stop the Steal” advocate Roger Stone. Stone was not part of Giuliani’s team at Willard and did not participate in the team’s efforts, according to three people who know the details.
Efforts and Investigations
On January 8, Kerrick billed the Trump campaign $66,371.54 in travel expenses, including $55,295 for rooms for legal team members at Willard from December 18 to January 8, according to Kerrick and documents reviewed by the Post. The legal team members referred to in the document
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/willard-trump-eastman-giuliani-bannon/2021/10/23/c45bd2d4-3281-11ec-9241-aad8e48f01ff_story.html?itid=mr_investigations_5
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