The US 2020 Presidential Election & Attempts To Overturn It

[TopHatter]

Anyone who thinks President Biden -- not his family currently holding high office, because there aren't any, but POTUS himself -- should be held to the same standards as He Who Should Not Be Named needs to remember what those standards are … moral, ethical, and spiritual.

Any thinking person knows there is no comparison between 45 and 46.
Anyone who doesn't recognize that is delusional.

It's a cult, pure and simple. Also a massive amount of projection: Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty of.

Personally I think that if Hunter Biden did something illegal, he should investigated thoroughly and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, with no protection based on who his father is. Funny enough, that's exactly what's happened and Joe Biden even made it a point to retain the Trump-era investigator, keeping him on the job investigating his son.

Everything about the above sentence^^ is the exact opposite of what occured during Trump's presidency and continues to occur to this day: Massive obstruction of justice, stonewalling and pleading the Fifth (which is something "only the Mob does", according to Donald Trump

I'm still waiting for Trump's apologists to show me where Biden or anyone in his family argued all the up to the Supreme Court that that they're above the law, like Trump has done.

That's the giant steaming pile of shit in the room: Trump has repeatedly claimed and argued all the way to the highest court of the land that he's immune from any investigation, above the law, and his cult, "the party of law and order", wants to pretend that never happened. Surfgun liked to call it "Democrat talking points", as I recall.

[Albany Rifles]

Not sure where else to put this so I figured here would do.

Rat jumping from ship is told not so fast!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...0de_story.html

Trump aide Manafort removed from plane for revoked passport


By Associated Press
Today at 10:59 a.m. EDTFILE - In this May 23, 2018, photo, Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, leaves the Federal District Court after a hearing in Washington. Manafort was removed from a plane at Miami International Airport before it took off for Dubai because he carried a revoked passport. Miami-Dade police confirmed Wednesday, March 23, 2022, that Manafort was removed from the Emirates Airline flight without incident on Sunday night. ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Former Trump adviser Paul Manafort was removed from a plane at Miami International Airport before it took off for Dubai because he carried a revoked passport, officials said Wednesday.

Miami-Dade Police Detective Alvaro Zabaleta confirmed that Manafort was removed from the Emirates Airline flight without incident Sunday night but directed further questions to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That agency did not immediately respond to an email Wednesday seeking comment.
A lawyer who has represented Manafort did not immediately return a call and email seeking comment Wednesday.

Manafort, 72, led former President Donald Trump’s campaign for several months during the 2016 presidential race but was ousted in August of that year after revelations about his business dealings in Ukraine.

He was later indicted on a broad array of financial crimes as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. He was convicted by a jury in August 2018 and later pleaded guilty in federal court in Washington.


In May 2020, Manafort was released from a low-security prison where he was serving a more than seven-year federal sentence amid concerns about the coronavirus. Although Manafort had not served long enough to be eligible for release under the guidelines, the Bureau of Prisons decided to free him because of his age and health vulnerabilities, a person familiar with the matter has said. Trump pardoned Manafort in December 2020.

Manafort’s removal was first reported by the website Knewz.com.

___

The name of U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been corrected in this stor

y.

[DOR]

Not sure where else to put this so I figured here would do.

Rat jumping from ship is told not so fast!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...0de_story.html

y.

Something curious here.
Passengers are not required, by US Immigration, to show a passport before boarding an international flight; I've done it myself.
The airline is responsible for ensuring that passengers are legally entitled to land at the destination, and so may require such documentation.

I don't see why US officials would be involved in removing anyone from a departing flight because of a passport issue.

[Albany Rifles]

Something curious here.
Passengers are not required, by US Immigration, to show a passport before boarding an international flight; I've done it myself.
The airline is responsible for ensuring that passengers are legally entitled to land at the destination, and so may require such documentation.

I don't see why US officials would be involved in removing anyone from a departing flight because of a passport issue.

It has been awhile since I travelled internationally but I had to show my passport when I was checking a bag. It may just have been the airline I was on.

[DOR]

It has been awhile since I travelled internationally but I had to show my passport when I was checking a bag. It may just have been the airline I was on.

From the US, that is purely an airline matter.
You didn't show your passport to a US Immigration Officer, correct?

[Ironduke]

Something curious here.
Passengers are not required, by US Immigration, to show a passport before boarding an international flight; I've done it myself.
The airline is responsible for ensuring that passengers are legally entitled to land at the destination, and so may require such documentation.

I don't see why US officials would be involved in removing anyone from a departing flight because of a passport issue.

Maybe someone in the flight crew who doesn't like him recognized him, and requested to local authorities he be removed.

[DOR]

Maybe someone in the flight crew who doesn't like him recognized him, and requested to local authorities he be removed.

Highly unlikely, but humorous.

[Albany Rifles]

From the US, that is purely an airline matter.
You didn't show your passport to a US Immigration Officer, correct?

Been awhile...last was in 2017.

But you may be correct.

[DOR]

I danced with immigration enough times to know how it works.

When I lost my passport in the US, and needed to get back to Hong Kong, I went to the Cathay Pacific desk at the airport (that's when I discovered it was missing) and explained the situation. As a permanent resident in HK, they had no problem walking me through TSA – which normally would look at your documents – and letting me fly to HK. Picked up a new US passport a few days later at the consulate.

[TopHatter]

Trial date set in defamation suit against Fox News over U.S. election claims

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An April 2023 jury trial has been scheduled in Dominion Voting Systems Inc's $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit accusing Fox News of trying to boost its ratings by falsely claiming the voting machine company rigged the 2020 U.S. presidential election against former President Donald Trump.

In a short written order issued on Friday, Delaware state court judge Eric Davis said he was scheduling Denver-based Dominion's lawsuit for trial on April 17, 2023. Fox, part of Fox Corp, had asked Owens for a trial date in early 2024.

Owens set aside five weeks for the trial, which could be the first of several involving baseless claims made by a variety of news outlets and individuals about Dominion's technology. Dominion filed its lawsuit against Fox News in March 2021.

People associated with Trump's campaign, including lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, floated conspiracy theories that Dominion rigged vote totals in the weeks after the Nov. 3, 2020, election in which Democrat Joe Biden defeated Republican Trump.

Dominion has filed defamation lawsuits against several Trump allies, including Giuliani and Powell, as well as conservative television networks Newsmax and One America News. Another election technology firm at the center of conspiracy theories, Smartmatic, has filed similar lawsuits.

The defendants have said they were commenting on matters of public concern and their remarks are free speech protected by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

Davis in December ruled against a Fox News request that he dismiss Dominion's lawsuit. Owens wrote in his ruling that it was "reasonably conceivable" that Dominion has a viable defamation claim, and allowed the company to continue to seek documents and witness testimony from Fox.

Fox News representatives have called Dominion's lawsuit "baseless" and have said the network remains committed to defending itself.

"As we have maintained, FOX News, along with every single news organization across the country, vigorously covered the breaking news surrounding the unprecedented 2020 election, providing full context of every story with in-depth reporting and clear-cut analysis," a Fox spokesperson said in December.

Fox News and Dominion representatives did not immediately reply to requests for comment on Tuesday.
________

[Albany Rifles]

Discovery is going to be fun....

[TopHatter]

As NC investigates election fraud allegation, state removes Mark Meadows from voter rolls

ASHEVILLE, N.C. - Mark Meadows has been removed from North Carolina's voter rolls, a move made as the State Bureau of Investigation continues a probe into allegations the former White House chief of staff committed election fraud.

Macon County Board of Elections Director Melanie Thibault confirmed April 12 that she had removed Meadows the prior day from the county's active voter list. Thibault said she consulted N.C. Board of Elections staff in Raleigh after finding records that Meadows was registered both in Virginia and North Carolina.

"What I found was that he was also registered in the state of Virginia. And he voted in a 2021 election. The last election he voted in Macon County was in 2020," she said.

The state law under which he was removed was General Statute 163-57, which says, "if a person goes into another state, county, municipality, precinct, ward, or other election district, or into the District of Columbia, and while there exercises the right of a citizen by voting in an election, that person shall be considered to have lost residence in that State, county, municipality, precinct, ward, or other election district from which that person removed."

Meadows, an ex-Asheville and Western North Carolina congressman – former top staffer for President Donald Trump and a leading proponent of the false claim that Trump lost the election due to widespread fraud – has not commented on the allegations since news broke in March that he registered to vote at a single-wide mobile home in Macon County where there is no evidence he ever lived. Meadows voted absentee using that address in the 2020 general election.

SBI spokesperson Anjanette Grube did not immediately respond to a message asking if the change in registration had any significance to the investigation.

Thibault said Virginia records show that when Meadows registered in that state, he did not include information about his Macon County registration. Because of that, Virginia election officials did not notify N.C. officials about the double registration, she said.

It is a normal practice to remove voters in such a way, Thibault said.

The registration of Meadows' wife Debra remains active for the Scaly Mountain, N.C., address, which neither she nor her husband ever owned.

News first broke of the unlikely voter address with March 6 New Yorker story that cited interviews with neighbors, the owner and former owner who said Debra Meadows rented the home and stayed there a few nights, but Mark Meadows was never seen there.

Macon County Republican voters interviewed by the Citizen Times expressed skepticism a powerful member of the president's staff lived in the small home with a rusted roof.

An N.C. woman who said she was prosecuted for mistakenly voting while on probation, meanwhile, called for Meadows to face a similar fate.

On March 17, the SBI announced its investigation. That followed a letter from District Attorney Ashley Hornsby-Welch — whose responsibilities include Macon County — to the N.C. Department of Justice recusing herself from the matter because of a campaign contribution she received from Meadows.

More recently, Meadows, a top member of the Conservative Partnership Institute, has stopped speaking at CPI-sponsored statewide Election Integrity Summits. The summits show how to organize "citizen election integrity task forces" to check on people's voter records to ensure they live where they have registered.
___________

Finally! Election fraud showing some consequences.

[TopHatter]

Trump calls Piers Morgan 'fake', 'disloyal' and a 'fool' and WALKS OUT of interview after confronting him over document criticizing his last year in office, the 2020 election and January 6

Former President Trump furiously stormed out of a sit-down interview with Piers Morgan when the television host told him he had lost the election.

In a thirty-second preview for his new Fox Nation show 'Piers Morgan Uncensored,' Trump, curtly tells Morgan 'I'm a very honest man. Much more honest than you actually.' 'Really?' Morgan replies.

'It was a free and fair election. You lost,' Morgan says in another moment. 'Only a fool would think that,' Trump, who appears to be glistening with sweat, shoots back. "You think I'm a fool?" 'I do now, yeah.'

'I don't think you're real,' Trump tells Morgan.

The interview came to an abrupt end when Trump ordered 'turn the cameras off' as he got out of his chair and walked off. 'Very dishonest,' he muttered.

The full interview will air on the premier of 'Piers Morgan Uncensored' on April 25 and will be played on Fox Nation, Talk TV in the UK, and Sky News Australia.

Morgan has said that he and Trump have an almost 15-year friendship starting when Morgan won Celebrity Apprentice in 2008.

Morgan revealed in an op-ed for the New York Post that one hour before the interview was scheduled, someone had sent Trump a list of quotes where Morgan had been sharply critical of the former president.

He said that Trump called him into his office ahead of the interview and asked 'What the f*** is this?' Trump rattled off a few of the attacks, lifted from op-eds and TV appearances by Morgan.

'Trump's a supreme narcissist,' 'He's now acting like a Mafia mob boss,' and 'And all because Donald's stupendous ego couldn't accept losing and sent him nuts,' were a few of the quotes.

'I thought we were friends?' Trump reportedly shouted. 'This is so disloyal! After all I've done for you? Why would you say all this about me?'

Morgan said that to calm Trump down, he asked him about the hole-in-one he purported to have gotten recently, and the former president begrudgingly agreed to still sit for the interview.

But throughout the 75-minute interview, Morgan says Trump called him a 'fool' seven times, in between dubbing Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell 'stupid and his former Vice President Mike Pence 'foolish and weak,' all for not buying into his election fraud claims.

When Morgan told Trump he hadn't produced any evidence of widespread voter fraud and blamed his refusal to admit defeat for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Trump reportedly told Morgan: 'Then you're a FOOL! And you haven't studied!'

Trump told Morgan the document containing a list of negative quotes came from London, and Morgan implied he believes it came from former Brexit Leader Nigel Farage, who now works as a host at rival UK network GB News.

Trump had initially tried to end the interview by declaring 'That's it!' but when Morgan suggested they discuss his hole-in-one, he sat back down. After bragging of the supposed golf game, Trump stood up with a 'hateful' look and barked at the crew to turn the cameras off.

Trump and Morgan have had an on-and-off friendship that has rolled with the tides of Morgan's public criticisms and praises of the former president. In April 2020, Trump unfollowed Morgan on Twitter after he wrote a column for DailyMail.com telling him to 'Shut the f*ck up Mr President.'

In another DailyMail.com column Morgan said that 'Shameful would-be mob boss Don Trumpone needs to be ''whacked' by decent Republicans' over his call with Georgia Sec. of State Brad Raffensberger where the former president asked him to 'find' 11,780 votes, or the number he needed to win Georgia.

Trump has shown no signs of giving up on election fraud claims, still claiming the election was 'rigged' and 'stolen' in rallies across the country as he looks to drum up support for both himself and the 103 candidates he has endorsed for Senate, House and state governorships so far.

Trump yanked back his endorsement of Alabama GOP Rep. Mo Brooks for the Senate seat after the Republican suggested the country move on from the 2020 race.

'Mo Brooks of Alabama made a horrible mistake recently when he went 'woke' and stated, referring to the 2020 Presidential Election Scam, 'Put that behind you, put that behind you,' despite the fact that the Election was rife with fraud and irregularities,' Trump said.

Trump claimed Brooks tanked a '44-point lead' after he hired new campaign staff who 'brilliantly' told him to 'stop talking about the 2020 election.'
_________

For those of you that prefer to use supermarket tabloids as a source, I'll give you the Daily Heil for this one.

Here's the clip

[TopHatter]

How all hell broke loose after my fiery showdown with Trump over his stolen election claims

“Piers, we have a problem.”

I was standing inside the gilded confines of President Donald Trump’s exclusive Mar-a-Lago private members’ resort in Palm Beach, Florida, and one of my production team was brandishing a document with a concerned look on his face.

“What’s that?” I asked, bemused.

“This is a collection of quotes you’ve apparently said about President Trump in the past two years. Someone sent it to him in the last hour, and the quotes are not good. In fact, they’re really bad.”

I was due to start an interview with Trump in precisely eight minutes, and it was intended to be a blockbuster exclusive to rocket-launch my new global TV show, “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” on Monday, April 25.
Donald Trump was all smiles posing with Piers Morgan before their interview.Fox Nation
My four-camera crew were all set up in a palatial bar, I was suited, booted, made up and had been exchanging cordial small talk with Secret Service agents designated to ensure we behaved ourselves.

But as I hurriedly scanned the three-page white paper document, my heart sank.

There were several dozen comments from me, taken from columns I’d written and interviews I’d given, in which I was savagely critical of Trump’s conduct in the last year of his presidency, from his woeful handling of the coronavirus pandemic to his refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 election, and the appalling January 6 riot at the Capitol that followed.

Whoever sent it knew exactly what they were doing.

These were by far the worst things I’d ever said about a man with whom I’d been friends for 15 years, but I felt they were justified when I said them, and I still do now.

In the suddenly very chilly light of a sun-kissed Florida afternoon, however, they made distinctly unhelpful reading.

“Is he going to cancel the interview?” I asked, trying not to panic.

”I don’t know,” came the reply. “But he is VERY upset.”

”See if I can go and talk to him about it,” I suggested.

Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in Trump’s office.

Normally, he’d greet me with a cheery smile and the words, “How’s my champ?,” because I was his first “Celebrity Apprentice” on the series that made him a TV superstar.

But this time, there were no such welcoming niceties.

He was staring at me across his desk with undisguised fury, clutching the document titled “Piers Morgan Comments About President Trump.”
Former President Donald Trump got hold of a collection of critical comments about him by Piers Morgan ahead of the exclusive interview.Fox Nation
”What the f–k IS this?” he snarled.

Then he began slowly reading out some of the quotes.

“Trump’s a supreme narcissist …”

Pause.

“His pathetic antics in the past few weeks since losing the election in November have been utterly contemptible.”

Pause.

”Trump’s now too dangerous, he’s morphed into a monster that I no longer recognize as someone I considered to be a friend and thought I knew.”

Pause.

“He’s now acting like a Mafia mob boss.”

Pause.

“And all because Donald’s stupendous ego couldn’t accept losing and sent him nuts.”

Each time he paused, he peered over the document at me, with mounting rage in his eyes.

When I won Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice” show in 2008, his final words to me as he announced the result were: “Piers, you’re a vicious guy. I’ve seen it. You’re tough. You’re smart. You’re probably brilliant. I’m not sure. You’re certainly not diplomatic. But you did an amazing job. And you beat the hell out of everybody … you’re the Celebrity Apprentice.”

When he won the 2016 election, I returned the favor by sending him a card saying: “Well, Donald, you’re a vicious guy. I’ve seen it. You’re tough. You’re smart. You’re probably brilliant. I’m not sure. You’re certainly not diplomatic. But you did an amazing job. And you beat the hell out of everybody … you’re the President of the United States.”

So we had a reasonable understanding of each other’s personalities, good and bad.

And it wasn’t like we’d never had a spat.

He unfollowed me on Twitter (he only followed around 50 accounts at the time, so this didn’t go unnoticed!) in April 2020 after he’d proposed using household disinfectant to fight COVID, and I’d hammered him in a column for spreading “bats–t crazy coronavirus cure theories.”

But a few months later, he called me for a lengthy chat before the election and chuckled about how “mean and nasty” I’d been about him, so I mistakenly assumed he didn’t really mind me verbally whacking him from time to time.

Wrong!

I’d never seen him so livid or felt so uncomfortable in his presence as I did right now in his office.

He was almost foaming at the mouth and kept shaking his head slowly and menacingly at me, like Don Corleone when he felt he’d been disrespected.

There was no point in trying to deny the quotes.

I’d said them, and I’d meant them.

“I’ve always been critical of you when I’ve felt you deserved it,” I eventually said, “but as you know, I’ve also written and said many supportive things about you too. This is a one-sided hatchet job designed to stop you doing our interview.”

“It’s definitely a hatchet job,” he retorted, “ON ME!”

Then he read another line: “January 7, 2021 – President Trump needs to be removed from office. As soon as possible … through new emergency articles of impeachment, which would have the additional benefit of barring him from ever running for the presidency again.”

”REMOVED FROM OFFICE?!” he spat. “BARRED FROM EVER RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT AGAIN?!”

Then he threw down the document and threw me a look of withering contempt.

”I thought we were friends?” he shouted. “This is so disloyal! After all I’ve done for you? Why would you say all this about me?”

“I thought what you did was wrong,” I replied, feeling myself beginning to sweat.

This wasn’t going well.

It looked for sure like Trump was about to can the interview, which would have been a massive waste of time and money for me and our team and leave me an even more massive hole for the first show.

I was desperately thinking of some way to salvage things.

”I don’t intend our interview to be confrontational,” I said. “A lot of time has passed since I said those things, and a lot has happened in the meantime.”

“Why should I do it at all?” he scoffed. “You’re not real. You’re a fake.”

“No, I’m just brutally honest.”

“DIS-honest!”

”You didn’t make me your Celebrity Apprentice because I’m a shrinking violet who sits on the fence or doesn’t say what he really thinks.”

We stared at each other for a few seconds, his eyes boring into mine with all the warmth of an Arctic glacier.

It was time to change the mood music.

”I’d love to talk about your recent golf hole-in-one,” I stammered. “Your playing partner Ernie Els was raving about it.”

Trump sat bolt upright.

”He was? Where?”

“In a newspaper interview I read. He said it was a brilliant shot and you played really well.”

“I did, I did.”

“Was that your first hole-in-one?”

“No! I’ve had seven!”

Seven?

This claim seemed highly implausible. (I’m a keen golfer and only had one. Most amateurs haven’t even had that.) But this wasn’t a good moment to fact-check him about his sporting prowess.

”Amazing,” I replied. “Congrats!”

Suddenly, Trump clapped his hands.

“OK, I guess I’ll still do the interview. I don’t know why, honestly, but I’ll see you down there.”

My extremely fractious audience was over, and I felt a huge wave of relief as I headed back to my team.

”How was he?” asked my executive producer, Winnie Dunbar-Nelson, who’d flown from London to oversee the interview.

”He’s very annoyed,” I said, “more annoyed than I’ve ever seen him. Spitting blood, in fact. But he’s going to do it.”

Ten minutes later, President Trump arrived in the interview room, and acted like nothing had happened as we posed for smiling photos together. He was even charm personified to Winnie, whom he remembered from three previous presidential interviews we’d taped for my old show, “Good Morning Britain,” in Davos, onboard Air Force One and inside the Churchill War Rooms.

But I could sense he was still very wound up, and there was none of the usual bonhomie between us that I was used to in our many previous encounters.

I’d been promised 20 minutes and feared he would cut that down to punish me.

But in the end, I got 75 minutes, by far the longest time I’d ever had with him on camera, and it was a fascinating, often riveting, sometimes hilarious series of exchanges with arguably the world’s most famous person as we talked about everything from Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un and nuclear weapons, to the royals, transgender athletes, Twitter and Joe Biden.

For the first hour or so, it was a perfectly normal interview, and we even shared a few laughs.

Trump displayed the extremely forthright style and brash humor that first propelled him into the White House, and certainly showed no sign of losing any of his fabled energy.

I also agreed with him about a number of issues, as I have done in the past.

I’ve never been tribal or partisan about Trump — of the 100 or so columns I wrote about him during his presidency, around half were positive, half negative.

But things took a dramatic downward turn when I finally brought up his refusal to accept defeat in 2020 and the appalling scenes on January 6.

I told him I believe he lost the supposedly “rigged, stolen” election, I repeatedly pointed out his failure to produce any evidence of the widespread voter fraud he insists occurred to rob him of his presidency, and I blamed his refusal to admit defeat for the deadly riots at the Capitol.

”Then you’re a FOOL!” he sneered. “And you haven’t studied!”

He was back to the furious Trump he’d been in his office and branded me a fool six more times, in between calling Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell “stupid,” and his former vice president, Mike Pence, “foolish and weak.”

Our collective crime was that none of us agree he had the election stolen.

Now abandoning any pretense at cordiality, Trump ranted that he was far more honest than I, and again sneered that I wasn’t “real” before haranguing me for exceeding our 20 minutes, which was particularly disingenuous given that during all our previous interviews, he’d invariably decided exactly how long he wanted to keep talking.

As he bellowed insults at me for disbelieving his rigged-election bulls–t, it reminded me of the scene in “A Few Good Men” where Jack Nicholson’s arrogant, deluded Colonel Jessup calls Tom Cruise’s military lawyer, Lt. Kaffee, a “snotty little bastard” for grilling him about ordering a deadly Code Red punishment on a Marine.

“I want the truth,” demands Kaffee.

“YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!” roars a contemptuous Jessup, before losing his rag, lecturing Kaffee about loyalty and honor, and then finally admitting his culpability.

I don’t expect Trump to ever admit he lost the election fairly or confess to being responsible for the January 6 carnage.

We’ll never hear him say, “You’re goddamn right I did!” like Col. Jessup because, ironically, he can’t handle the truth.

Incensed Trump tried to end things by declaring, “That’s it!” before I reminded him that we hadn’t discussed his hole-in-one, which he then sat down again and did — briefly — before abruptly jumping to his feet, looking hateful, and barking at the shocked crew: “TURN THE CAMERAS OFF!”

Then he turned on his heel, and sloped angrily off through a side door, loudly muttering, “SO dishonest …”

It wasn’t a rhetorical observation.

Apparently, he was later heard denouncing me as a “scumbag” and saying he wished he’d never done the interview.

But I thought it was the best one we’ve ever done together, and all the tension created by the damning document he was given gave it a crackle and energy that makes for compelling television.

As for who sent him the document in the first place, Trump told me it came from London and gave it to me to “keep as souvenir of your treachery.”

Mysteriously, it contains two random, very positive comparative quotes from British politician Nigel Farage, who now works as a presenter for my rival UK network GB News.

Oh, and by an extraordinary coincidence, Farage happened to have dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on April 8, just three days before I was there.

You don’t need to be a rigged-election conspiracy theorist to work out who probably sent it.

The next day, I sent Trump an email thanking him for his time and included these words: “You had every right to get annoyed and call me a fool for not believing the election was stolen from you, but I also have every right to my opinion, and I wasn’t going to lie to your face just to avoid annoying you. The best friends are the most honest/critical ones, not the sycophants.”

As I write this, 10 days later, I haven’t had any reply.

Perhaps we’ll never speak again, and our friendship is over?

I hope not. Donald Trump remains one of the world’s most interesting people, he is still the most popular Republican choice for 2024 nominee, and if Biden’s presidency continues to self-implode as badly as it currently is, he could end up back in the White House in two years.

In which eventuality, I can only imagine his fury if we all say that election was rigged, and Biden had the presidency stolen from him.
_________

This was just too good not to post in full. The extended quote from A Few Good Men naturally caught my eye right away, but it's always a pleasure to see a total dickbag like Morgan get torn apart...and the fact that it was Trump that did it because Morgan actually told the truth about Trump? Man...that's just gravy!

[TopHatter]

Exclusive-Local election chief threatened by Republican leader seeking illegal access to voting equipment

(Reuters) - A local Republican Party leader in North Carolina threatened to get a county elections director fired or have her pay cut unless she helped him gain illegal access to voting equipment, the state elections board told Reuters.

The party official, William Keith Senter, sought evidence to support false conspiracy theories alleging the 2020 election was rigged against former U.S. President Donald Trump. The previously unreported incident is part of a national effort by Trump supporters to audit voting systems to bolster the baseless stolen-election claims.

Senter, chair of the Surry County Republican Party, told elections director Michella Huff that he would ensure she lost her job if she refused his demand to access the county's vote tabulators, the North Carolina State Board of Elections said in written responses to questions from Reuters. Senter was "aggressive, threatening, and hostile," in two meetings with Huff, the state elections board said, citing witness accounts.

Senter did not respond to requests for comment.

Huff, who refused Senter's demands, was disturbed by the incident of political intimidation. Such threats have become common nationwide since the 2020 election. Reuters has documented more than 900 threatening or hostile messages aimed at election officials in a series of investigative reports. https://www.reuters.com/investigates...mpaign-of-fear

"It’s a shame, that it is being normalized," Huff told Reuters. "I didn’t expect to get it here in our county. We are just trying to do our job by the law."

Senter's demands are a potential violation of state law. In a legal memo responding to community calls for a "forensic audit" of voting machines, Mark Payne, an attorney retained by the Surry County Board of Elections, wrote this week that it was illegal to provide access to voting machines to unauthorized individuals. Anyone threatens or intimidates an election officer could also face felony charges, according to a state statute.

Senter and a prominent pro-Trump election conspiracist, Douglas Frank, met with Huff on March 28, claiming “there was a 'chip' in the voting machines that pinged a cellular phone tower on Nov. 3, 2020, and somehow influenced election results," the state election board said, calling the claim “fabricated disinformation.” Separately, in a public gathering that Huff did not attend, Senter threatened to have Huff's pay cut, according to Huff, who said a person at the meeting told her about the threat.

Two days before meeting with Huff, Frank gave a speech in Dobson, a town in the rural county of 72,000 people on the northern border with Virginia, where he spoke about "debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election," the board said. The day after the meeting, Frank, an Ohio math teacher, thanked his "patriot" hosts in a post to the messaging app Telegram about his trip to North Carolina and said he was "leaving behind a bonfire burning in good hands.”

Frank did not respond to requests for comment.

Exactly how Senter planned to retaliate against Huff remains unclear. He claimed to have the backing of Surry County commissioners, all five of whom are Republican, to take action against her. But neither Senter nor the commission has any official power over her job, which rests with the state election board. The state board has three Democratic members and two Republican members.

Huff, a former Republican, is now registered independent.

The county commission chairman, Bill Goins, declined to comment on Senter's efforts but confirmed the commission could not fire Huff.

Patrick Gannon, spokesman for the state board of elections, said in a statement that the board reported the threats against Huff to state, federal and local law enforcement and would continue to report "any attempts to interfere with state or federal elections or harass or intimidate election officials."

No one has been charged in the incident.

The North Carolina Department of Public Safety and the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday.

Dobson Police Chief Shawn Myers said he was not aware of the threats to Huff and did not believe his department had responded. Sheriff Steve Hiatt did not respond to requests for comment.
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No such thing as rock bottom