It is absolute verity that the truth is stranger than fiction. Nobody could write this. Johnny McEntee, a guy who entered Donald Trump’s circle when he delivered a turkey sandwich to Trump Tower, and who then got a job carrying his bags, weighed in with his legal and constitutional analysis of how Thomas Jefferson came to be President of these United States. This is part of a series of anecdotes from Jonathan Karl’s new tell-all, Betrayed, and published in the Atlantic: This is one of those, “if you can read only one article today, read this one.”
Once he had cleaned up the Pentagon, McEntee turned his attention to the election, and the president’s efforts to overturn the results. He began providing legal advice. When White House Counsel Cipollone told Trump that Pence did not have the power to overturn the election, McEntee drafted his own constitutional analysis, with an assist from his own rogue legal advisers, directly contradicting Cipollone and every other serious expert in the country.
McEntee sent the memo via text message on January 1 to Pence’s chief of staff. Here it is, in its entirety:
Jefferson Used His Position as VP to Win
· The Constitution sets precise requirements for the form in which the states are to submit their electoral votes.
In 1801, the ballots of all states were in perfect conformity except Georgia’s.
· Georgia’s submission dramatically failed to conform to the requirements.
· VP Jefferson presided over the counting of the ballots even as he was one of the candidates.
· Had the defective ballots been rejected, Jefferson would have most likely lost the election.
· Senate tellers told Jefferson in a loud voice that there was a problem with the Georgia ballots.
· Rather than investigating, Jefferson ignored the problems and announced himself the winner.
· This proves that the VP has, at a minimum, a substantial discretion to address issues with the electoral process.
McEntee was no constitutional scholar and no historian. His bullet-point description was, not surprisingly, deeply flawed. Jefferson didn’t discard electoral votes, as Trump wanted Pence to do. He accepted electoral votes from a state that nobody had questioned he had won.
But the facts didn’t matter to McEntee. By distorting what happened in 1801, McEntee could turn up the pressure on Pence. Thomas Jefferson was the author of the Declaration of Independence and one of those guys on Mount Rushmore. If it was okay for him to use his power as vice president to get himself elected president, how could it not be okay for Pence to use his power to reelect Trump now?
Trump may have embraced his body guy’s theory, but Pence didn’t. He refused to single-handedly overturn the election, preventing an even bigger disaster from taking place on January 6.
Since Trump left the White House, McEntee has kept a low profile. But he remains in close contact with Trump, and over the summer spent time at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, volunteering for his political operation, according to a Trump spokesperson.
People close to Trump say there is no doubt he is going to run for president again in 2024. I am not convinced he will run, but if he does, he will be the clear favorite to win the Republican nomination. The idea of him getting elected again, although highly unlikely, no longer seems impossible. If that happens, McEntee will probably play a key role right from the start. As one of Trump’s more levelheaded senior aides told me, “I shudder to think what the Cabinet would look like in a second term.” Johnny McEntee, I expect, is already working on his list of names.
This is by no means the only bombshell level anecdote in this article. Read how McEntee converted the West Wing into his own dating service, hiring only “the most beautiful 21-year-old girls you could find, and guys who would be absolutely no threat to Johnny in going after those girls.” Your tax dollars at work. I can’t wait to hear this guy’s testimony before Congress.
I had a bad acid trip. My mind was lost in a hallucination where a former kkk rally attendee scams hundreds of millions from the government rehabing buildings that he wouldn’t rent, in his words, per his manager, to ni**ers. He raises a pathological liar who is a narcissist & racist for good measure. His daddy buys him degrees, pays a MD a free apartment to claim he has bonespurs to keep him out of Vietnam. Despite the silver spoon up his ass he blows 300million of his inheritance. Then he lies, grifts & with our enemy Russia’s help, steals the presidency. On the way he grabs a lot of ‘pussy’, his word. Then, as LSD will, it turns weird. He destroys everything he touches, steals hundreds of millions, lies 40,000 times & sets loose a virus on America. It kills more people in one & a half years than all the soliders lost in the Korean War & every war since. He embraces nazis, who kill a young woman in Virginia. He destroys little children by ripping them from their parents & love ones with no intention of ever getting them back together. He shits on gold star families, family members of veterans killed under his command & dishonors getting a purple heart by saying, ” I’ve always wanted one of these”. He gets impeached TWICE but his party let’s him off. Now, here is the really dark part. The part of an acid trip that makes you just want to lie down & wait for it to go away. He turns the GOP into a fascist cult willing to destroy America to keep their power & riches & to keep the ni**ers in their place. He then ran again because hundreds of crimes never got prosecuted. Luckily I fell asleep & now I’m better. This is why everytime u take acid, u never know how weird it can get. Keep that in mind kids.
Well, if McEntee is as much of a “Constitutional scholar” as he claims to be, then WHATEVER Jefferson may or may not have done in 1801 is completely irrelevant since we currently operate under the mechanisms of the Electoral College as provided by the Twelfth Amendment which was adopted in 1804.
And, the major point of contention was to determine whether then-Vice-President Jefferson or his “running mate” Aaron Burr would be President. In 1800, both the Democratic-Republican Party and the Federalist Party ran “tickets” of candidates (Jefferson/Burr for the Dem-Reps and John Adams/Charles Pinckney for the Federalists) but the Electoral College process require each elector to vote SEPARATELY for a President and a Vice-President. Both parties had their preferred candidate for President (Jefferson and Adams) and the electors had been “urged” for one elector from each party to cast their VP ballot for another man. The Federalists did this so that Adams got 65 electoral votes but Pinckney only got 64 (the other electoral vote for the Federalist VP) went to John Jay but, for some reason, someone among the Dem-Rep electors wouldn’t go along which meant the election was going to be decided by the House.
The House, at the time, was controlled by the Federalists who actually preferred Burr over Jefferson but, of course, the decision to choose a President through the House devolved to “one vote per state delegation” where the Federalists had a slight majority of the delegations (8 delegations to the Dem-Rep’s 7 with 1 state’s delegation split evenly) rather than “one vote per representative” (the Federalists had a 56-49 advantage in membership) but delegations voted as they chose. The Georgia Federalist representative cast his state’s vote for Jefferson. A Maryland Federalist backed Jefferson as did all the state’s Dem-Rep members which meant the state’s delegation was evenly split. Vermont’s 2-member delegation consisted of 1 Federalist and 1 Dem-Rep meaning the state’s vote was “blank.” But, ultimately, Jefferson played NO ROLE in getting elected as President. He oversaw the vote but he didn’t do anything with any ballots. His role in overseeing the Electoral College results ended the moment the matter went to the House.
But, then again, facts don’t matter in the Trumpiverse.
They never will but it’s a nice reminder there are things to be realized, as the Chamber Brothers pointed out.