theory

For Democrats or, for that matter, anyone who believes in checks and balances, things are starting to look up.

President Trump’s days of untrammeled war-making, law-breaking and generally doing whatever he damn well pleases may finally be drawing to a close. Public opinion, history and, especially, the surging price of gasoline and groceries, all point to a Democratic takeover of the House in November’s midterm election.

There’s a direct correlation between a president’s approval rating and the way his party performs at the midpoint of his term. Anything below 50% favorability portends political trouble; right now Trump’s positive standing in polls hovers around a dismal 40%.

Then there’s the history part. Since World War II, the party out of the White House has gained an average of more than two dozen House seats in midterm elections. Democrats need to pick up just three to take control beginning in January.

(While the Republican grip on the Senate seems weaker than just a few months ago, the GOP is still favored to hang onto the chamber in November.)

There is, however, a looming threat causing nervousness among Democrats and their allies as they contemplate a celebratory fall, a landmine of sorts buried deep in the congressional election process.

Let’s acquaint ourselves with Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution.

The pertinent language written by the Framers states, “Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members.” In other words, it’s up to the House and Senate to acknowledge and abide by the will of voters as expressed in the election returns.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, if you let your paranoia run wild, quite a lot. If the election outcome is close — and probably it would have to be very close — Republican lawmakers could theoretically seize on phony claims of fraud and effectively nullify the results of enough contests to deny Democrats control of the House.

There’s plenty of skepticism that would or could ever take place. But if it were to happen, hello, national crisis!

Normally, we could count on the occupant of the White House to humbly submit to the election returns, even if it’s a “shellacking” as President Obama called his walloping in the 2010 midterm election, or a “thumpin’ ” as President George W. Bush described his electoral spanking in 2006.

Not Trump.

This president has amply demonstrated the lengths to which he’ll go to overturn an honest election, siccing a violent mob on lawmakers certifying his 2020 defeat, telling endless lies and using the Justice Department to confiscate ballots and intimidate innocent election officials and others Trump deems his enemies.

He strong-armed Texas into a highly unusual, highly partisan redrawing of its congressional boundaries, an effort to net five seats and lengthen the odds against a Democratic takeover.

The move appears to have backfired, spurring voters in California and, last week, Virginia to redraw their state’s political maps to more than offset Texas and boost Democrats in November. (The Virginia results are being contested in court.)

Voters attend an Arlington Democrats redistricting vote watch party during a special election Tuesday in Virginia. A measure to redraw the state’s congressional map was narrowly approved.

(Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

That failure doesn’t take away Trump’s malign intent. And in the supine Speaker Mike Johnson, he has the perfect handmaiden to undermine the midterm vote.

In 2020, Johnson was the lead author of a Supreme Court brief seeking to overturn the results in four states that Joe Biden had indisputably won. That speaks to Johnson’s probity and integrity.

How would subversion of November’s election take place?

One theory goes like this: When the balloting is over, Johnson could appoint a House committee packed with Trump’s acolytes to investigate alleged voting irregularities. (And if you think Trump won’t be bellowing the words “rigged” and “fraud” in the face of defeat, you’ve either been in a coma or living on another planet for the last decade.)

Those hearings and the “evidence” they turn up could then be cited by election officials in key states — collaborators, if you will — as a reason to delay the certification of election results and block the seating of majority-making Democrats in the next Congress. In their place, the theory goes, Republicans could vote to fill those seats with GOP candidates who lost at the polls, keeping themselves in control.

Derek Muller, an election law expert, suggests that scenario is little more than a fever dream of doomsday devotees and overly nervous Nellies.

He said he’d be very surprised if all the election results weren’t certified by Jan. 3, when the new Congress convenes, given the legal remedies available to prevent stalling and undue delay. And, Muller said, there is no assurance Republicans would march in lockstep behind a plan to prevent the seating of Democrats.

Thwarting a duly elected Democratic majority “involves extraordinary coordination and precedents that have never occurred, with a unique convergence of factors,” said Muller, who teaches law at Notre Dame — though, he added, if control of the House came down to, say, a single seat “all bets are off.”

Far-fetched? Perhaps. Some of the spun-up theories surrounding November’s election do sound a bit like a product of political science fiction.

But what kind of president picks a fight with the pope? Plunges the world into crisis by unilaterally going to war with Iran with no exit plan? Demolishes the East Wing of the White House on an egotistical whim?

If Trump, an inveterate norm-buster, sees a way to keep his grip on unchecked power, don’t put anything past him.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s sweeping act of clemency for rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol also should apply to a man charged with planting pipe bombs near the national headquarters of the Democratic and Republican parties on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, the suspect’s attorneys argue in a bid to get his case dismissed.

In a court filing Monday, defense attorneys assert that Trump’s blanket pardons extend to the charges against Brian J. Cole Jr. because his alleged conduct on Jan. 5, 2021, is “inextricably tethered” to what happened at the Capitol the next day. They’re asking U.S. District Judge Amir Ali to throw out the case before trial.

Justice Department prosecutors didn’t immediately respond in writing to the defense’s request. In a previous court filing, prosecutors said Cole, under questioning by FBI agents, denied that his actions were related to the Jan. 6 proceedings at the Capitol.

On his first day back in the White House last year, Trump pardoned, commuted prison sentences and ordered the dismissal of all 1,500-plus people charged in the attack by a mob of his supporters.

Nearly a year later, Cole was arrested on charges that he placed two pipe bombs outside both the Republican and the Democratic national committees’ headquarters in Washington the night before the riot. The devices didn’t detonate before law enforcement officers discovered them Jan. 6.

Cole’s attorneys said the Justice Department’s framing of the case has explicitly linked Cole’s alleged conduct on Jan. 5 to the events of Jan. 6, when rioters disrupted the joint session of Congress for certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory over Trump.

“That is not happenstance sequencing in time. It is the government’s theory of Mr. Cole’s alleged motive and context,” defense lawyers wrote. “According to the government, the timing was chosen because of what was scheduled to occur at the Capitol on January 6.”

They also argued that prosecutors’ theory of a possible motive places Cole’s alleged conduct “in the same political controversy that animated the January 6 crowd.”

In court filings, prosecutors have said that Cole confessed to investigators after his Dec. 4 arrest. He told FBI agents that he felt “bewildered” by conspiracy theories related to the 2020 presidential election and “something just snapped” after “watching everything, just everything getting worse,” prosecutors said.

Cole has remained jailed since his arrest. His attorneys have appealed Ali’s refusal to order Cole’s pretrial release from custody. The judge hasn’t set a trial date yet.

Cole, 30, of Woodbridge, Virginia, has been diagnosed with autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder. His attorneys say he has no criminal record.

Authorities said they used phone records and other evidence to identify him as a suspect in a crime that confounded the FBI for more than four years.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.