I am here to describe to you the first part of a situation that is extremely … extremely … troubling. First of all, for the state of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and for a number of other states. These lawsuits will be brought starting on Monday. But the first time it was discovered was here in Pennsylvania just a few days ago. The people you see behind me are just a few of about, I’d say, fifty to sixty poll watchers, who will all testify that they were uniformly deprived of their right to inspect any single part of the mail-in ballots. As you know from the very beginning, the mail-in ballots were a source of some degree of skepticism, if not a lot of skepticism, as being innately prone to fraud.

With quite a poker face, he outlined the case for uninspected ballots, replacement ballots, and a sweeping Democratic effort to add millions of illegal and illegitimate votes in Pennsylvania, a case he had frantically and almost single-handedly assembled over the past forty-eight hours.

The case, in Pennsylvania and in several other swing states—which would not change very much over the coming weeks and which would be rejected by every court it went before—was different from most election challenges that centered on the counting and qualification of a limited number of ballots in races with razor-thin margins. Instead, the Trump case, propounded by Giuliani with confounding brazenness or shamelessness—quite to the astonishment of everyone in Trumpworld, who was suddenly paying attention to Giuliani’s eccentric effort—was to challenge millions of votes and to demand their disqualification mostly because a Republican had not been there to observe their being counted.

That afternoon, Kushner’s appointed delegation (Stepien, Clark, Miller, and Herschmann, joined by Dave Bossie) assembled in the White House. This was to be the ultimate mission. They were now, finally, to tell the president that there was no possibility of winning this, that all scenarios had been played out, and that the overwhelming likelihood was that legal challenges would prove futile. The group was agreed that when the president asked for their recommendation, it would be that the time had come to concede.

The five men got on the elevator together, nobody in a mask except for the elevator man.

They went up to the Residence.

The president was in golf attire—red hat, white polo shirt, golf slacks.

White House waiters brought in platters of meatballs and pigs in a blanket. As a way, it seemed, for everyone to avoid talking, they stuffed food into their mouths.

Clark gave the initial recap and up-to-the-minute appraisal—except that, instead of the no-chance conclusion, he punted and said there was little more than a 5 percent chance that the election could be successfully challenged.