CNN got hold of a Trump lawyer's memo that describes a precise six-point plan for then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Anyone who read the novel Seven Days In May, or anyone who’s watched the superb movie, knows the main reason that the military coup driving the plot failed is that it got so tangled in its own complexities—codes involving horse races, secret flights of military transports, hijacking the president to a national security bunker, depending vitally upon a wishy-washy admiral in Europe—that the president and his allies finally were able to gum up the works and save the republic. The hero of the piece, Marine Colonel “Jiggs” Casey, even cites the complexity of the government as a sign that the coup plotters will fail.

What a complicated thing this government is, he thought. There sits the man with the codes that could launch a nuclear war and the Secretary of the Treasury doesn’t even know it.

The point is that it shouldn’t be this easy. CNN got hold of a memo from a lawyer in the employ of the last administration named John Eastman, which Eastman sent to then-Vice President Mike Pence, that described a precise six-point plan by which Pence could overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Eastman’s plan has an evil logic to it that cuts through any institutional safeguards in place through the simple expedient of believing that Pence was both a team player and a coward.

2. When he gets to Arizona, he announces that he has multiple slates of electors, and so is going to defer decision on that until finishing the other States. This would be the first break with the procedure set out in the Act.

3. At the end, he announces that because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States. That means the total number of “electors appointed” – the language of the 12th Amendment -- is 454. This reading of the 12th Amendment has also been advanced by Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe (here). A “majority of the electors appointed” would therefore be 228. There are at this point 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden. Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.

Ultimately, the whole plan is summarized by Point No. 6, which is fairly summarized as, “We’re lawless. So fcking what?”

The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission – either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court. Let the other side challenge his actions in court, where Tribe (who in 2001 conceded the President of the Senate might be in charge of counting the votes) and others who would press a lawsuit would have their past position -- that these are non-justiciable political questions – thrown back at them, to get the lawsuit dismissed. The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter. We should take all of our actions with that in mind.

Is there any doubt that this would have worked, at least temporarily, with the mob also howling outside the Senate chamber? At the very least, it would have thrown the government into utter chaos and prompted a constitutional crisis unlike anything we’d seen since 1861. Is there any doubt that the great mass of people in this country would have seen it as just Both Sides Arguing and gone back to sleep? (I believe there would have been fighting in the streets, which would then be cast as more evidence of our Sadly Divided Nation.) And before we all start blessing the name of Michael Richard Pence, we should remember that he actually agonized over what to do, going so far as to consult with Dan Quayle, who had to remind Pence what Pence’s duty to the republic actually was. We now have the game plan, in writing. It shouldn’t be this easy—and this, I promise you, was just a scrimmage. The real ball game still awaits.