With all the violence and vandalism on Jan. 6, it's easy to forget that Trump and his henchmen's real game plan was to send the election to the House and let them decide the winner as the Constitution anticipated would happen in case of a tie. This was to be accomplished by submitting competing sets of electors to the VP who would throw up his hands and say that he didn't know how to count the votes so Congress would have to decide the election. According to Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, they had hoped that in the event Pence didn't cooperate, having the mob storm the Capitol could have caused a delay which would have allowed Justice Samuel Alito time to stop the certification but they were thwarted when Speaker Nancy Pelosi reconvened Congress that night. (There is no word on whether Justice Alito had been apprised of his role but it's not a stretch to think he would have been happy to oblige considering his history of flying insurrectionist flags during that period.)
Had they persuaded Pence to twist the constitutional process for a tie vote into a process for resolving (fake) competing slates of electoral votes and had the House of Representatives taken it up, Trump would have won because votes are counted by state delegation and there are more Republican delegations than Democratic. There was a whole group of Republicans ready and willing to declare Trump the winner and let the courts and anyone else try and stop them under this unprecedented, unconstitutional plot. This was the coup.
