Trump Attorney Used ‘Coup Memo’ to Pressure Pence Into Overturning Election

Right Wing Watch is reporting that John Eastman wasn’t the only MAGA lawyer pressuring former Vice President Mike Pence to throw out the election results and hand the 2020 election win to Donald Trump by rejecting Electoral College votes from the battleground states Trump lost.

Jenna Ellis, another Trump attorney, had written her own memo essentially calling for a coup. Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows reportedly emailed her memo to Pence’s staff days before the January 6th Capitol insurrection. It’s another bombshell fact excerpted from ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl’s new book, “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.”

In the weeks leading up to the Capitol insurrection, Right Wing Watch reported on Ellis’s role in the demands brought by Trump’s legal team and right-wing activists that Pence ignore his constitutional duty and act to keep Trump in power, something she discussed openly in an interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). “Ellis said Pence should refuse to accept electors from states being challenged by Trump and throw the question of the electors’ legitimacy back to the state legislatures, something for which there is no legal or constitutional authority,” they write. “With a straight face, Ellis said such an act ‘wouldn’t be political’ and would create a ‘clean outcome’ for the election.”

JUST IN: @POTUS Lawyer @JennaEllisEsq suggests an option for @VP on January 6th: ask and require state legislatures to do their job. Watch her interview with @DavidBrodyCBN on #TheWaterCooler @realDonaldTrump #JustTheNews @RealAmVoice pic.twitter.com/Eyu6rDq1gs

— Just the News (@JustTheNews) January 4, 2021

Ellis essentially put all of that on paper as a blueprint for an election coup. According to Karl’s book, the Ellis memo said that a “Pence-led coup” would work like this: Pence would stop the constitutionally-mandated congressional counting of Electoral College votes on January 6th and give the battleground states until January 15th to send a new set of votes. If no set of votes arrived by that time, the state’s Electoral College votes would not be counted at all. Ellis figured that would throw the election to the House of Representatives, where she falsely believed Trump would be declared the winner of the election. (Eastman’s take was slightly different, incorrectly arguing that without the Electoral College votes from the contested battleground states, Trump would have a majority of votes cast and would simply be declared president.)

Jenna Ellis needs to testify before the January 6 Committee. https://t.co/ky69GCemg5

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) November 14, 2021

RWW says that in spite of having served as Trump’s attorney and Rudy Giuliani’s sidekick in promoting bogus election claims and demands, which has gotten her into her own legal troubles, Ellis has publicly styled herself as a “courageous crusader for truth and for Christianity itself”. Last year, she told Brody that progressives “are trying fundamentally to transform America into a post-modern culture that denies objective truth, that denies that there’s any morality, and certainly, that denies God.” [Writer’s disclosure: Jenna Ellis blocked me on Twitter a few months into the 2020 election cycle]

We now have THREE coup memos: John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, & John McEntee. Mark Meadows knew about all of them. Pair these with the Clark letters to the states trump intended to rob of their electoral votes, & we have a clear violation of 18 U.S. Code § 2384 – Seditious conspiracy pic.twitter.com/GUIBhxRp9K

— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) November 14, 2021

Read the full profile at Right Wing Watch.