The Green Bay Sweep is the name of a
procedural
Procedural may refer to:
* Procedural generation, a term used in computer graphics applications
*Procedural knowledge, the knowledge exercised in the performance of some task
* Procedural law, a legal concept
*Procedural memory, a cognitive scienc ...
strategy to
advocated by
Peter Navarro. He outlined the plot in a book published in November 2021 and spoke about it in multiple media interviews. It took its name from the
Packers sweep, where the
Green Bay Packers
The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. It ...
of the 1950s and '60s, led by
Vince Lombardi, would flood a zone with blockers, allowing the football to be advanced dependably behind them. In the political iteration, devised by
Steve Bannon, the
Electoral College vote count would be blocked by repeated challenges to various state's vote counts by Republican members of the
House
A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air condi ...
and
Senate
A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
favorable to
Donald Trump. Each challenge could take up to two hours of debate by each chamber, individually, leading to as much of 24 hours of televised hearings.
The Green Bay Sweep was intended to implement a strategy laid out by the
Eastman memos
The Eastman memos, also known as the "coup memo", are documents by John Eastman, an American law professor retained by then-President Donald Trump advancing the fringe legal theory that the U.S. Vice President has unilateral authority to rejec ...
for the purpose of overturning election results such that Donald J. Trump would be designated as president for a second term.
According to the plan, public pressure created by the delay would lead state legislatures in six key battleground states with Republican-dominated legislatures – Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada – to de-certify election results, with the intended outcome that Trump would have more certified electoral college votes than the election's actual winner,
Joe Biden.
Trump supported the strategy, but Pence rejected it, and the plan was dependent on Pence's participation. It was difficult to pressure Pence, said Navarro, because all communication passed through his chief of staff,
Marc Short, who had been president of the
Koch Brothers-funded
Freedom Partners.
January 6, 2021
Republican legislators initially followed the plan. Recalling January 6, 2021, Navarro said that "Sen.
Ted Cruz and
rizona Rep. Paul Gosar started the Green Bay Sweep" at 1 p.m. by challenging Arizona's election results and that over a hundred Republicans in the House and Senate were available to participate. He told this to MSNBC host Ari Melber in a January 4, 2022 interview.
After proceedings were interrupted by the
January 6 Capitol attack, Pence cited the violence as a rationale for blocking further challenges.
Indictment of Navarro
Though Navarro spoke to MSNBC host Ari Melber on January 4, 2022, several weeks after his book was released,
he defied a February 2022 subpoena from the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack, citing
executive privilege. The full House sent a
criminal referral to the Justice Department for contempt of Congress. Navarro was arrested, indicted on two counts of contempt, and will stand trial in November 2022.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Green Bay Sweep
117th United States Congress
2021 controversies in the United States
2021 in American politics
Trump administration controversies
Trumpism