https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/22/politics/trump-pence-election-memo-fact-check/index.html
Take a gander.
Here are the salient points:
“Every state certified one and only one slate of presidential electors based on the 2020 election results,” Elie Honig, a
CNN senior legal analyst and former federal and state prosecutor, told CNN. “What states (is Eastman) talking about? What dual slates?”
“That’s just conjured out of thin air,” Honig said.
In fact, no state had actually put forward an alternate slate of electors – there were merely Trump allies claiming without any authority to be electors.
According to Richard Pildes, a professor of Constitutional law at New York University, the argument from Eastman is “fundamentally wrong.”
“This memo basically argues that any random group of persons in a state can submit a paper to Congress claiming to be the true electors of a state,” Pildes told CNN, “and that the vice president can then use that as a basis to throw out the votes of those states.”
Eastman later
told The Washington Post he had advised Pence not to use the foundational tactic he spelled out in his own memo, telling him “not to act on the basis of the dueling electors”…because, as he told the Post, “at that point, no legislature had certified an alternative slate of electors.”
In an
interview with CNN Tuesday, Eastman said he had told Pence it was an open question whether he had the authority to unilaterally set aside slates of electors, but that it would be “foolish” to exercise that power because state legislatures had not certified the alternate slates put forward by Trump allies.
State officials had already certified the results of the election, electors had already cast their votes in the Electoral College and there was no dispute over the assigned electors. Eastman’s memo suggests that Pence dismiss the election results in seven states based on a completely made-up scenario.