Here’s the PowerPoint Mark Meadows turned over to Jan. 6 committee

Hines Brian December 15, 20211

It took me a while to find it, but I finally located a file of the 36-slide PowerPoint presentation dated January 5, 2021 that Mark Meadows turned over to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the nation's capitol.

Here's a PDF file of the presentation:
Download Mark Meadows Power Point

There's so much craziness in the PowerPoint, it's tempting to not take it seriously.

But the presentation found its way into the White House, and it echoes talking points put forward by both Trump acolytes and Trump himself.

This is an excerpt from a Washington Post story, "The Meadows texts and the weird Powerpoint take Jan. 6 inside the White House."

Over the past few days, two revelations have brought the Jan. 6 insurrection inside Donald Trump’s White House: A PowerPoint presentation arguing for overturning the 2020 election, and a series of urgent text messages from allies of the former president begging for him to call off the riot.

The PowerPoint reached Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows on Jan. 5, who was held in contempt Monday night by the special committee probing the Capitol attack. The document, which echoes other false claims of voter fraud and calls for what experts have diagnosed as unconstitutional remedies, came to light after the former congressman shared it with the House committee.

And Rolling Stone reports that "The Guy Behind the Anti-Democracy PowerPoint Is Now Giving Election Reform Advice at the State Level."

Phil Waldron, the retired Army colonel who promoted an anti-democracy PowerPoint referenced in the material Mark Meadows turned over to the committee investigating Jan. 6, addressed a Louisiana voting commission this week. The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the election fraudconspiracy theorist was welcomed as an “expert,” and that his 90-minute address to the body included a suggestion that the commission should start counting paper ballots by hand.

The Louisiana Voting System Commission is leading the state’s efforts to update its voting system, so touting the expertise of someone who has appeared alongside pillow kingpin and election crank Mike Lindell is more than a little concerning. When introducing Waldron on Tuesday, Republican Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin said that many members of the audience were part of his “fan club.”

Some of the PowerPoint slides look like what Homeland's Carrie Mathison used to conjure up on a wall when she was in the manic phase of her bipolar disorder — a difference being that often Mathison was on the right track, unlike the reality-free delusions such as this.

Bottom line: the PowerPoint was part of an attempt to overthrow a free and fair election that Joe Biden won. Just because Trump and his supporters failed to pull off that coup doesn't mean they won't try again.

They will. That makes the PowerPoint part of a rehearsal for a more refined overthrow of our democracy in 2024. And maybe 2022 as well.