In The Daily Beast exclusive, one of Donald Trump’s top advisers Peter Navarro admitted that both he and Steve Bannon were responsible for trying to stop former Vice President Mike Pence from certifying Joe Biden’s victory. They called their strategy the “Green Bay Sweep.” He and Bannon stayed in touch along with some of the Republican House members loyal to Trump such as Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). Navarro said:
‘We spent a lot of time lining up over 100 congressmen, including some senators. It started out perfectly. At 1 p.m., Gosar and Cruz did exactly what was expected of them. It was a perfect plan. And it all predicated on peace and calm on Capitol Hill. We didn’t even need any protestors, because we had over 100 congressmen committed to it.’
Their plan was to force Pence to refuse to certify the incoming president. And it might have worked. They wanted the former vice president to return six states’ electoral votes so that the swing state legislatures would overturn the election, all Republicans. They hoped to draw the attention of major news outlets to cover some “unproven conspiracy theories about widespread election fraud.” Navarro said:
‘The Green Bay Sweep was very well thought out. It was designed to get us 24 hours of televised hearings. But we thought that we could bypass the corporate media by getting this stuff televised.’
Navarro provided “a three-part White House report” along with the ex-president’s people’s assisting. Their titles read “The Immaculate Deception” and “The Art of the Steal:”
‘My role was to provide the receipts for the 100 congressmen or so who would make their cases…who could rely in part on the body of evidence I’d collected. To lay the legal predicate for the actions to be taken.’
The next phase of the plan was up to Bannon, Navarro described in his memoir, In Trump Time:
‘Steve Bannon’s role was to figure out how to use this information—what he called ‘receipts’—to overturn the election result. That’s how Steve had come up with the Green Bay Sweep idea.’
‘The political and legal beauty of the strategy was this: by law, both the House of Representatives and the Senate must spend up to two hours of debate per state on each requested challenge. For the six battleground states, that would add up to as much as twenty-four hours of nationally televised hearings across the two chambers of Congress.’
Navarro was pleased that he had been canceled in the roster of speakers before Trump on January 6:
‘It was better for me to spend that morning working on the Green Bay Sweep. Just checking to see that everything was in line, that congressmen were on board. It was a pretty mellow morning for me. I was convinced everything was set in place.’
Bannon referred to the “War Room Pandemic” in football terms on Bannon’s podcast:
‘We are right on the cusp of victory. It’s quite simple. Play’s been called. Mike Pence, run the play. Take the football. Take the handoff from the quarterback. You’ve got guards in front of you. You’ve got big, strong people in front of you. Just do your duty.’
In Navarro’s book, he wrote:
‘Stephen K. Bannon, myself, and President Donald John Trump ]were] the last three people on God’s good Earth who want to see violence erupt on Capitol Hill.’
Why? It would screw up their strategy. But, was Trump in on it:
‘I never spoke directly to him about it. But he was certainly on board with the strategy. Just listen to his speech that day. He’d been briefed on the law, and how Mike [Pence] had the authority to it.’
In Trump’s attorney John Eastman’s book, he wrote about how the ex-president might stage a coup. Trump told the crowd before him on January 6:
‘I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so… all Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify (sic) and we become president and you are the happiest people.’
That did not ring true, because Bannon has been convicted after disobeying a Congress subpoena. Navarro also claimed that he was surprised that the mob turned violent later:
‘I’m telling you man, it was just so peaceful. I saw no anger. None. Zero.’
The Select Committee has just started looking into Congress Republicans who were probably involved in the insurrection, such as Representatives Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Scott Perry (R-PA). Navarro said the Select Committee had no interest in him:
‘They don’t want any part of me. I exonerate Trump and Bannon. I’m telling you man, it was just so peaceful. I saw no anger. None. Zero.’
Eventually, the states did not recover any evidence of electoral fraud beyond the normal, very small number.
Then, in the next phase of the strategy, Navarro said that early on January 6, he communicated with Bannon:
‘I check my messages and am pleased to see Steve Bannon has us fully ready to implement our Green Bay Sweep on Capitol Hill. Call the play. Run the play.’
Navarro referred to Pence as “the Brutus most responsible… for the final betrayal of President Trump.”
The Bharat Express News wrote that Navarro implicated 100 House members of the GOP and Senator Cruz.
Three White Lions podcast, Gloria Christie reads a chapter from her book of the same title. She also writes for the liberal online newspaper The Bipartisan Report. Gloria Christie Report her newsletter for people on the go. Written in her own unique style with a twist of humor in a briefer version of Bipartisan Report. Christie’s Mueller Report Adventures In Bite-Sizes a real-life compelling spy mystery (in process). Find her here on Facebook.
