Republicans are building a network to ensure Donald Trump returns to the White House regardless of the November election's outcome.
The former president and dozens of his GOP supporters have been indicted – and some of them have already pleaded guilty – for their efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, and MSNBC columnist Hayes Brown examined the strategy Republican activists are drawing up to restore him to power.
"While unable to lean on the Department of Justice this time around, Trump is not entirely without institutional power at his disposal," Brown wrote. "Several states have filed charges against organizers and participants in the 'fake electors' plot. In those plots, Republican presidential electors signed off on fraudulent Electoral College certificates that declared Trump the winner in their state. The goal was to cause enough chaos that Vice President Mike Pence would either throw out their state’s electoral votes or kick the can to state legislatures to hand Trump a win. Despite their criminal liability, several members of the plot have already been appointed as Electoral College members again or expressed a willingness to serve."
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"Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee has been laying the groundwork to discredit a potential Biden win," he added. "I’ve previously written about the RNC’s renewed focus on 'election integrity' efforts, following Trump’s orders to place their energy there rather traditional field programs to get voters to the polls."
The RNC plans to recruit and deploy more than 100,000 volunteers to act as poll watchers and raise questions about the integrity of the vote, especially in Democratic counties in battleground states to justify legal challenges they're already crafting.
"We’re already beginning to see some of the legal maneuvering for advantage play out in Wisconsin, where the RNC has alleged that two predominantly Democratic counties discriminated against Republicans who applied to be poll watchers," Brown wrote. "In what is likely to become a pattern, the suit claims that, despite a glut of applicants to take part as observers, election officials in Dane and Milwaukee counties arbitrarily and unfairly rejected most of them."
However, those GOP complaints seem to be in bad faith, because election officials were able to show at least one of the plaintiffs ignored five email reminders to complete his application, but Trump allies hare already claiming the 2024 election isn't legitimate because, as the right-wing Daily Signal claims, president Joe Biden had allegedly diluted the voting pool with illegal immigrants.
"If Biden beats Trump again, expect Republicans to once again say voter fraud is to blame," Brown wrote. "Even mythical voter fraud makes for a good scapegoat for a party that is low on funds, has a criminally convicted presumptive nominee, and would much rather keep certain people from voting than admit that it earned its losses fair and square.
