(entire piece is his; blockquotes as in the original):

The government of the United States is sitting on top of the Washington Monument, right on the very point, tipping right and left and ready to fall off and break up on the pavement. There are just a few men who can prevent it, and you’re one of them. Now, you listen to me. I’m going to tell you the damndest story you ever heard.

—Edmond O’Brien (Senator Raymond Clark) Seven Days In May, February, 1964

Late in the week, at an obscure disciplinary hearing in California, a door that almost nobody wants to walk through was opened again. One of the prevailing mysteries of the events of January 6, 2021 is why vice president Mike Pence refused to get into a car brought to him that day in the bowels of the Capitol by members of the Secret Service. Back in April of 2022, Congressman Jamie Raskin gave a talk at Georgetown. He referred to the incident in his talk based on reporting in a then-new book by two Washington Post reporters. Raskin said:

At that moment, Pence was still in his ceremonial office — protected by Secret Service agents, but vulnerable because the second-floor office had windows that could be breached and the intruding thugs had gained control of the building. Tim Giebels, the lead special agent in charge of the vice president’s protective detail, twice asked Pence to evacuate the Capitol, but Pence refused. “I’m not leaving the Capitol,” he told Giebels. The last thing the vice president wanted was the people attacking the Capitol to see his 20-car motorcade fleeing. That would only vindicate their insurrection. At 2:26, after a team of agents scouted a safe path to ensure the Pences would not encounter trouble, Giebels and the rest of Pence’s detail guided them down a staircase to a secure subterranean area that rioters couldn’t reach, where the vice president’s armored limousine awaited. Giebels asked Pence to get in one of the vehicles. “We can hold here,” he said. “I’m not getting in the car, Tim,” Pence replied. “I trust you, Tim, but you’re not driving the car. If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off. I’m not getting in the car.

From NBC News:

Speaking about the threats to Pence on Jan. 6 and the chants by rioters to hang him, Raskin said the vice president's Secret Service agents — including one who was carrying the nuclear football — ran down to an undisclosed place in the Capitol. Those agents, who Raskin said he suspects were reporting to Trump’s Secret Service agents, were trying to whisk Pence away from the Capitol. Pence then "uttered what I think are the six most chilling words of this entire thing I've seen so far: 'I'm not getting in that car,'" Raskin said. "He knew exactly what this inside coup they had planned for was going to do," Raskin said.

The story was fleshed out further that summer at the hearings of the House Special Committee investigating January 6 by Greg Jacob, who was Pence’s general counsel when Pence was the vice-president. From NBC4 Washington:

“The vice president did not want to take any chance that the world would see the vice president of the United States fleeing the United States Capitol,” his general counsel Greg Jacob testified to the House Jan. 6 committee. “He was determined that we would complete the work that we had set out to do that day, that it was his constitutional duty to see it through and that the rioters who had breached the Capitol would not have the satisfaction of disrupting the proceedings beyond the day on which they were supposed to be completed.”

The Secret Service had directed Pence and his top aides to get into the waiting cars, Jacob said. He did but then got out again when he realized the vice president had not. The head of Pence’s security detail, Tim Giebles, told the vice president, “I assure you we are not going to drive out of the building without your permission.”

The Secret Service had directed Pence and his top aides to get into the waiting cars, Jacob said. He did but then got out again when he realized the vice president had not. The head of Pence’s security detail, Tim Giebles, told the vice president, “I assure you we are not going to drive out of the building without your permission.” “Tim, I know you, I trust you, but you’re not the one behind the wheel," Pence replied according to Jacob.

Our action now moves to this past week. Out in California, the powers that be of the legal establishment are conducting disbarment hearings against John Eastman, the brains behind the notion that Pence (or someone) could refuse to accept electors sent from battleground states and “send them back” to the states where Republican legislators would validate the slates of fake electors and send them to Washington. In the course of his disbarment testimony, Eastman swung the door open again and, behind It, was the pre-corpse that is Senator Chuck Grassley. On January 6, 2021, Grassley was the president pro tem of the Senate. As such, should Pence be absented from the Capitol, it would be Grassley who oversaw the official counting of the electoral college. From Politico:

Grassley’s role generated significant intrigue in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6. The Constitution requires the vice president — who also serves as the president of the Senate — to preside over the counting of electoral votes to certify the presidential election. Historically, however, this job has at times fallen to the “Senate president pro tempore,” typically the most senior senator in the majority. In 2021, Grassley held that position.

It was that same email in which Eastman also hinted that he thought Grassley might play a role on Jan. 6. In the message, Eastman told Epshteyn that he hoped members of Congress would avoid taking any actions that might “constrain Pence (or Grassley)” from asserting the power to block Biden’s election. Carling asked Eastman whether the email suggested there had been discussions about Grassley filling in for Pence. After Eastman indicated the matter was privileged, Carling moved on to another topic.

Intriguingly, of course, Eastman’s assertion of privilege implies that whatever was being cooked up was shared with the former president* of the United States.

Eastman, testifying at his own disbarment trial, sidestepped a question Wednesday about whether he and others in former President Donald Trump’s orbit discussed the possibility that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) — rather than Mike Pence — would preside over the Jan. 6, 2021, session of Congress. During several hours of sworn testimony in a California disbarment proceeding, Eastman said discussions on that topic were protected by attorney-client privilege. When pressed about which client of his he was referring to, Eastman replied: “President Trump.”

Back in April of 2022, when Raskin spoke at Georgetown, but before he and the House special committee had explored the plot more fully, I wrote the following about what we already knew.

I first got interested in politics through paranoia. (As the years have gone by, I’ve found that this was the best kind of introduction I could have had.) I devoured political thrillers about dark doings in Washington, D.C. Seven Days in May was my gateway drug. There was Night at Camp David, about a president who went crazy, and Vanished, about a secret peace conference, and the self-explanatory The President’s Plane Is Missing, about another secret peace conference. There was Fail-Safe, the classic about an accidental nuclear exchange. If you dig deep enough, you find that my politics were formed as much by Fletcher Knebel as by anyone else. However, this early reading has become increasingly relevant in recent weeks as we steadily discover that we actually had a half-mad president* who plotted to overthrow the government. Air Force One, I presume, is still where it’s supposed to be.

I watched the movie version of Seven Days In May the other night. I recalled that, against the advice of many of his advisors, President John F. Kennedy gave the producers permission to film the movie’s opening scene of a riot at the White House on the White House grounds. At the time Kennedy did this, his intelligence community, and many of the military leaders associated with that community, was a writhing ball of snakes and its loyalty to the chain of command was nothing Kennedy could rely upon. From History Today:

The pulpy novel, written by Fletcher Knebel and Charles Bailey, was partly inspired by events in Kennedy’s presidency. Knebel and Bailey were seasoned political reporters. They began writing Seven Days in May after interviewing General Curtis LeMay in the wake of the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, when the US landed anti-communist rebels in Cuba to depose Castro. LeMay blamed JFK for aborting the operation too early, accusing him of ‘cowardice’. The more Knebel and Bailey investigated, the more they realised that the military establishment and the intelligence community despised Kennedy.

The feeling was intensely mutual. In addition, Kennedy had a dark, fatalistic streak that conflicted seriously with the sunny prospects of a New Frontier.

One summer at their Cape Cod retreat, Kennedy talked his wife, Jackie, into making a short film together. The theme was his assassination. The president was the star but the first lady took directing duties. She enlisted Secret Service agents as co-stars, explaining ‘we’re making a movie about the president’s murder’, directing them to ‘look desperate, like you heard shots’. The film’s eerie climax featured Kennedy collapsing as gunshots were fired at him, fake blood (perhaps tomato juice) spilling from his mouth. As historian Thurston Clarke comments, ‘the skit reflected … [Kennedy’s] rich but carefully concealed fantasy life’. It also reveals the president’s innermost fears and his way of coping with them.

It was this element in his personality, intensified by the vicious rivalry with the power elite in his own administration, that drove Kennedy to insist that Seven Days In May be made into a movie, and that part of the movie be filmed in his front yard throughout the summer of 1963. Of course, prior to the movie’s release in February of 1964, Kennedy was murdered in broad daylight in Dallas, and almost nobody believed that the internecine bureaucratic warfare inside his administration wasn’t at the root of it all. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy got in the car in Dallas. I mean, he had the Secret Service on duty, and it was such a nice day.