Bill Blum talks about his recent commentaries regarding the midterm election, “Will Jan. 3 Be the New Jan. 6?” Blum notes, When it comes to election subversion, expect the worst when Congress reconvenes in 2027, and “Trump’s Voter Purge Machine Just Got a Boost From the Supreme Court,” as well as other threats looming over the midterm election.
SCOTT HARRIS: Bill Blum, he’s a former California administrative law judge and death penalty defense attorney. He’s the author of Three Legal Thrillers: Prejudicial Error, The Last Appeal, and the Face of Justice. Judge Blum is a contributing writer to In These Times, The Nation Magazine, The Progressive, San Jose Mercury News, and his recent commentaries, he’s been discussing the election. He wrote a couple of weeks back, Trump’s voter purge machine just got a boost from the Supreme Court following the SAVE list that was being promoted by Trump. And then “Could Trump’s next January 6th come on January 3rd?” that we’re going to be talking about this evening? Bill, so much appreciation for you making time for our discussion tonight. Thank you so much.
BILL BLUM: Good to be with you. Just one correction.
SCOTT HARRIS: Yes.
BILL BLUM: The last name is Blum, rhymes with drum or dumb even.
SCOTT HARRIS: Thank you for that, Bill. (chuckles)
I think just to sort of take an overview of what’s been happening here and all our concern and growing coverage of Trump’s multi-pronged attack on a free and fair midterm election on Nov. 3. Of course, we’ve seen just incredible attacks on mail-in voting that you wrote about; the false claims of massive voter fraud; unprecedented midterm gerrymandering; threats against state election officials; serious discussions of declaring an emergency to deploy the military to seize ballots; close down key polling sites; or suspend constitutional rights and declare martial law. And what I know we’ll be talking about tonight is the Trump regime conspiring with House and Senate Republicans to refuse to certify Democratic party candidates who are elected, who are victorious on Nov. 3rd, refuse to seat them in the new Congress, essentially a legislative coup d’etat. There’s a lot there. It’s not just one thing, it’s so many things.
And with the levers of power at his disposal, Trump has much capacity to do a lot of damage. What are some of the scenarios that you’re most concerned about, Bill?
BILL BLUM: Okay. So just to take a step back and to understand why this is happening, Donald Trump is not going to relinquish power easily, if at all. He’s going to do anything he thinks he can to retain power, which as far as the midterms are concerned, means that he wants the Republicans to keep control of both the House and the Senate. So a multi-pronged attack on voting rights has been initiated. It’s been going on for a long time, but accelerating as we get to Nov. 3rd. And it’s going to culminate, in my view, on Jan. 3rd when, under the Constitution, the new Congress convenes. This will be the 120th Congress. So, many of the efforts up to now have been concerned with restricting Democratic votes; creating citizenship lists using the post office to use those lists to suppress Democratic votes; and threatening to prosecute state election officials, as in California, that just came out yesterday, but I wrote about it before that, who insist on allowing everyone to vote.
Whereas the Department of Justice is saying, “We’ve identified 20,000 people who are registered who may be non-citizens, and if you don’t segregate their votes, you might be subject to prosecution at a later time.” But I think the key date, I think Trump is going to lose all of the pre-election and immediately in the post-election period, going to lose all of the efforts to defeat a Democratic takeover of the House and probably of the Senate as well. So what happens on Jan. 3rd? What happens on Jan. 3rd varies from chamber to chamber. In the House, and this is something I wrote about first in March, and Judge Michael Luttig then wrote a really long and very good article recently for the New Republic is that an administrator called the clerk of the House gathers all of the election certificates from the states and then creates what’s called a roll of the representatives-elect.
Remember, every member of the House is elected every two years. So it’s not a continuing body like the Senate. And only those people who are listed on the roll will, according to this scenario, then be sworn in. So a certain number of Democrats might be kept out because Mike Johnson, the current speaker of the House, has unilateral authority to dismiss the current clerk of the House—who’s apparently an even-handed individual—and replace him with a MAGA loyalist who will not enroll all the Democrats who have been legitimately elected. And so you’ll have a situation where you’ll have an artificial Republican majority, at least on the surface at the outset in the House. And in the Senate, something similar will happen except that it will be JD Vance who is responsible as the president of the Senate, since he’s the vice president of the United States, to swear in all new members.
And there’ll be 35 new senators. There are two special elections and there are 33 who are up in the regular course of business. And if he refuses to swear in a certain number of Democrats, depriving the Democrats of the majority, then you have another situation where the Republicans at least initially maintain control of both houses.
So here’s what could happen. I think that ultimately there will be litigation and that ultimately those who are elected legitimately, mainly Democrats, will be seated, but that will take some time. We don’t know how much time will be consumed. It could be days, it could be weeks. Within that framework, the country will effectively be without its Article One branch of government. It won’t have a legislature. And so if it doesn’t have a legitimate legislature, that’s actually, in my view, a national emergency. And unlike many of the other emergency declarations that Trump has promulgated, this would be a real one, even though it’s artificially created.
So what will he do? He will issue some kind of national emergency declaration. I’m not sure what that would be, no one knows, but it will certainly not be one inspired by democratic norms and values. And that’s, I think, the scenario that we have to keep in mind. Even as we have all this litigation that’s going to happen after the election, you’ll have challenges to various contests, say in Michigan, say that’s a really tight Senate contest. You’ll have demands for recounts. You will have lawsuits filed. You’ll have all sorts of propaganda flying around saying that the Chinese and the Iranians have interfered with the election. And there’s already a national emergency declaration on the books issued by Trump, I think in January, where he is authorizing the intelligence agencies to conduct a review of foreign cyber interference. What would he try to do? It’s hard to say.
This is different from declaring martial law. There is no federal definition of martial law, but something similar to that could possibly be coming down the pike. And if you think that it’s hyperbole, you have to ask yourself, given everything that Donald Trump has done so far, do you think for a moment that he is going to allow himself to be subject to the kinds of investigations and potential accountability which would come about if the Democrats control even one chamber of the legislature? And I think the answer is he’s not going to put up with that at all. So we have to be prepared to deal with that eventuality, that possibility. And I think the best preparation is to get out and vote in numbers so overwhelming that any claims of fraud or having a rigged election in favor of the Democrats are so absurd that they won’t get off the ground, that they’ll be killed in the crib.
And that’s the message that I’m trying to send.
SCOTT HARRIS: Thank you so much. That’s a compelling outline of what could transpire after this election. We’re speaking with Bill Blum, a former California administrative law judge, and we’re talking about his recent article, “Could Trump’s Next January 6th Come on January 3rd?” Judge Blum, I did want to ask you about the scenarios you just painted. If, as you say, there’s an attempt to delay seating, certifying and really undermining the legislative branch following the election with this conspiracy really. We’ve had practice runs at this, right? In the 2020 election, a bunch of Republicans attempted to delay certifying Joe Biden’s victory, right? And that didn’t succeed mostly because they had Vice President Mike Pence who didn’t cooperate with the scheme. And then more recently, you had House Speaker Mike Johnson delay swearing in of Democratic Rep.-Elect Adelita Grijalva from Arizona, right? And that was seven weeks, I believe, after she won this special election after her father died, right?
BILL BLUM:That’s right.
SCOTT HARRIS: They’ve actually gamed this out in some ways over the years. But if the courts don’t restore democracy, then it seems discussions I’ve had with many people in lessons around the world where authoritarians attempt to take over and destroy democratic institutions, one of the few tools of democracy left is massive street protests and stopping business as usual. And I just wanted to get your response to that notion that that may be required to protect democracy in the end here.
BILL BLUM: Well, I think that street demonstrations play a vital role in establishing and re-establishing democracy. So yes, I think that could be very, very important. But I think that one thing to keep in mind is that the MAGA movement has become extraordinarily unpopular. So Trump and his acolytes don’t have the popular political wind at their backs anymore. So I think that we have much more power, “we” being broadly speaking, people committed to democracy than we might think. And I am confident that courts will seat these representatives. I also want people to know that certification fights in the House are not uncommon. There have literally been hundreds of them since the founding of the Republic. But generally speaking, what you have is the majority party trying to unseat minority candidates. Here you have something very different. You’d have an actual majority, the Democrats, which would be unseated by an artificial minority manipulated into existence by the firing of the existing clerk of the House and the hiring of a new one.
So one thing to keep very closely in mind is to watch what Mike Johnson does before Jan. 3rd, because Mike Johnson, like every other representative, loses his position at noon on Jan. 3rd because every member of the House turns over. So if he’s going to replace the clerk, we’ll know it before Jan. 3rd. I mean, he could do it on the morning of Jan. 3rd, but I think they’ll probably do it ahead of time. If there’s movement in that direction, then you know that something really terrible is afoot because there’s no other reason to replace the clerk. The clerk doesn’t turn over. The clerk is not a representative. The clerk’s just an employee, like an administrator, a secretary. And if the current clerk gets removed, you know that something’s coming down the pike, something really bad. You also know that JD Vance will do whatever Trump tells him to do.
The only way to stop this short of these massive protests would be for the vote to be so overwhelmingly against the Republicans that they can’t even get the conspiracy off the ground. And that just may happen. If the polls are any indication or the early voting is any indication, that may just be happening now. So be prepared for anything and everything and everything literally is on the line if you do care about democracy.
SCOTT HARRIS: Judge Blum, thank you so much for spending time with us and talking about this important article recommend to our listeners. It’s titled, “Could Trump’s Next January 6th come on January 3rd,” talking a lot about Judge Luttig’s theories as well. And it can be found at TruthDig, right? Common Dreams and the LA Progressive.
BILL BLUM: Common Dreams, Alternet, LA Progressive, originated with TruthDig.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, thanks so much for sort of assessing what we might be headed for, giving us some warning here and some things to think about how we should respond and for spending time with our audience this evening. Appreciate it. And I’d love to stay in touch. I know you’ll be writing some more important articles in the weeks to come, so we’ll stay in touch.
BILL BLUM: Thank you. Thanks. Definitely.
SCOTT HARRIS: Take care. Good night.
BILL BLUM: Good night.
SCOTT HARRIS: That’s Judge Bill Blum, former California administrative law judge and author of this piece again titled, “Could Trump’s Next January 6th Come on January 3rd.”
