Of Course Trump’s Cronies Made an Actual PowerPoint of Their Coup Plan

There are very few things you can count on in this world, but one thing you can, with the consistency of a Swiss watch, is that at any given moment Donald Trump and his inner circle will be doing something both deeply corrupt and extremely stupid. Over the summer, for example, we learned that not only had the Trump Organization and its CFO allegedly broken so many laws that they were charged with 15 felonies but that they’d kept literal spreadsheets detailing said crimes. (Both parties have pleaded not guilty.) And on Thursday, it was revealed that the 45th president’s top administration allies made an actual PowerPoint presentation of their plan to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Whoops!

Yes, in a turn of events that, if we’re being honest with ourselves about how ridiculously not-smart these people are, we should have seen coming, the House committee investigating January 6 has obtained slides from a PowerPoint called “Election fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN,” which, you guessed it, lays out various options for stopping the certification of Joe Biden’s win, including Trump declaring a national security emergency.

The 38-page presentation, which recommends Mike Pence install Republican electors in states “where fraud occurred,” and that Trump should cite foreign “control” of electronic voting systems and declare all electronic voting invalid, was included in an email sent on January 5, 2021, the day before a gang of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol. That email was provided to the committee courtesy of former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Confused? Thought Meadows wasn’t cooperating with the committee anymore? As Rolling Stone notes, this email was turned over to investigators back when Trump’s former chief of staff was complying with a congressional subpoena, before he decided to stonewall the committee in what appears to be an attempt to get back into Trump’s good graces and keep his really bad communications from ever seeing the light of day.