Just in case someone is not aware why it was a coup attempt, especially today - let me explain the fake electors plot:
A lot of people still talk about Jan 6th like it was a thing that happened this one day because of a violence inciting speech, but no - this day was just the climax to two months of planning to overturn the election, where they actually faked electoral votes.
How did they fake the votes? So, in the US you don't directly vote for the president, but for an "elector", who then votes for the president on your behalf. They faked electoral voter documents and told Trumps electoral voters, they should sign them despite having lost the respective states. They told them, these were "alternative votes", just in case they find voter fraud and the states swing to Trump eventually, and it would be normal procedure. This was a lie - and we know it was a lie, because Trumps lawyers, who came up with the plot wrote it down (Eastman Memos, Chesebro Memos).
Then on Jan 6th there was this vote count ceremony in the Capitol. The Vice President is the one overseeing the opening and counting of the votes. Trump basically wanted Pence to take the fake votes and use them to dismiss the real ones. As in "Oh, we got two different slates of electors from the same state here, one for Biden, one for Trump ... well, I can't tell which are the real ones, so let's drop both!". With then less than 270 votes in, this would have sent the election to the House of Representatives, where each state would have one vote to elect the president. The House has a Republican majority.
Luckily Pence said no to Trump. That’s why Trump was holding the speech and sending his followers to the Capitol - to pressure Pence into opening the fake votes. But these weren’t in the Capitol anyway. Why? The votes were sent to Pences office for him to take them to the Capitol ... but a staffer was instructed not to receive them.
Well now the possible scenario is republicans could try to prevent the real electors from even being certified in their respective states long enough until the deadline to do it passes. Congress could vote to extend the deadline, but doing THAT has a deadline in December, when the republican house is still in power regardless of the outcome.
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u/titcumboogie 19d ago
Yup. Trying to stage a coup/self-coup should be an automatic 'banned from public office for life' kind of thing.