Green Bay Sweep (politics)

The Green Bay Sweep is Peter Navarro's name for a procedural strategy to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election. He outlined the plot in a book published in November 2021[1] and spoke about it in multiple media interviews. It took its name from the Packers sweep, where the Green Bay Packers 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 and Senate 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.[2]

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.

Navarro claimed that then-president Trump was "on board with the strategy"[3][4] and that up to 100 congressmen were committed to executing the plan. However the plan was dependent on Vice President Mike Pence's participation, and 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.[2]

It was like the Soviet Union taking over Eastern Europe. As an Iron Koch Curtain fell over the vice president, the only way you could speak to VPOTUS was to go through Short.

— Peter Navarro[2]

Pence himself rejected the strategy.[5]

Republican legislators initially followed the plan, with Arizona representative Paul Gosar objecting to his state's vote counts. After proceedings were interrupted by the January 6 Capitol attack, Pence cited the violence as a rationale for blocking further challenges.[2]

The Green Bay Sweep was intended to implement a strategy laid out by the Eastman memos for the purpose of overturning election results such that Donald J. Trump would be designated as President for a second term.

In February 2022, the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack subpoenaed Navarro to provide testimony.[6]