Legal expert Neal Katyal lays out the scenarios.
It’s been nearly four years since the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but that dangerous day is back in the public consciousness in a big way as the 2024 presidential election inches closer.
As you’ll recall, that riot broke out after then-President Donald Trump refused to accept that he lost the 2020 race to Joe Biden — and encouraged his supporters to “fight like hell” in a rally preceding the attack on the Capitol. Years later, the “big lie” continues to persist. Trump refused to say he lost in 2020 during this year’s debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. In a recent New York Times interview, Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance also refused to acknowledge Trump’s 2020 loss, despite being asked about it five times. Trump has also refused to say whether he’ll accept the results of this year’s election.
So it’s no surprise that political commentators and voters alike are starting to worry about what Trump might do if he loses to Harris this November (or if there’s a tie in the Electoral College). Legal expert Neal Katyal is sounding the alarm in a new piece for The New York Times in which he outlines four different strategies the Republicans could use to question, delay, or overturn the results of the presidential race.
Katyal points out that while courts across the country “decisively rejected” Trump’s efforts to stop Biden’s victory in 2020, things are highly likely to go a different way this time. “The rogues are no longer amateurs. They have spent the last four years going pro, meticulously devising a strategy across multiple fronts — state legislatures, Congress, executive branches and elected judges — to overturn any close election,” he writes.
There’s obviously a lot to unpack here, so Katie called Katyal up to go deep on what he fears could happen after Election Day, the available avenues to try to stop it, and much more. Watch their full conversation in the video below:
