The Iowa Insurrection
From blocking Merrick Garland's Supreme Court hearing to preparing to overturn the will of voters, Grassley is at the center of the long and future coup
I had several newsletters queued up, but then Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American came in, and as an Iowan, I had to pivot to that. Today’s Letter from an American provided details of the election fraud (NOT voter fraud, which basically doesn’t exist in the US) that Trump and his allies planned following the November 2020 election.
Basically the plan was that states submitted separate slates of electors representing the will of Republicans, not the voters. They wanted Vice President Pence to count those instead of the valid submissions. If he wouldn’t do it, they planned to have him step aside so Senator Grassley could:
“On January 5, Senator Grassley (R-IA) told a reporter that ‘we don’t expect [Pence] to be there,’ and that he, Grassley, would ‘be presiding over the Senate.’ His staff immediately walked that announcement back, saying it was a ‘misunderstanding.’
“But Grassley’s statement reveals that the plan was widely known.”
Luckily for democracy, Pence refused to step aside, and refused to count the invalid slates. That’s a pretty thin thread on which democracy was hanging.
Let’s remember that it was also Grassley who blocked the hearings for Merrick Garland, another move in the long coup whose playbook goes back at least to 1994.
There’s no way Governor Reynolds would hold Grassley accountable; she would have fully supported a successful coup. And the Republican-controlled Iowa legislature, where Senator Grassley’s grandson Pat is the Speaker of the House, won’t hold him accountable either.
I’m way out of my depth here but — could Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller bring charges against Grassley for conspiracy to undermine elections? How could we as Iowans make this an issue that won’t go away - and at the very least sink his oligarchic plans to anoint his grandson as his successor?
Pat Grassley , now Speaker of the Iowa House, says there’s no plan to do that but — if you believe that, I’ve got some beachfront property you might be interested in.
Thanks for sharing this HCR entry, Jonna - I missed this one. It meshes well with the Sidney Blumenthal piece in The Guardian, which distinguished between "the coup" and the "the insurrection" while giving a very detailed timeline of the coup.
Here's the link in case you haven't seen it:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/06/capitol-attack-coup-attempt-trump-far-right-republicans