The US 2020 Presidential Election & Attempts To Overturn It

[TopHatter]

Nevada fake electors won't stand trial until January 2025 under judge's new schedule


Nevada GOP chair Michael McDonald, right, shakes hands with Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump at a campaign event, Jan. 27, 2024, in Las Vegas. Six Republicans accused of falsely declaring Donald Trump the winner of Nevada’s 2020 presidential election will not stand trial until sometime next year. A Nevada judge on Monday, March 4, 2024 pushed back the trial date due to conflicting schedules. The judge also set an April 22 hearing on a bid by McDonald and other defendants to throw out the indictment

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Six Republicans accused of submitting certificates to Congress falsely declaring Donald Trump the winner of Nevada’s 2020 presidential election won't be standing trial until early next year, a judge determined Monday.

Clark County District Court Judge Mary Kay Holthus pushed the trial, initially scheduled for this month, back to Jan. 13, 2025, because of conflicting schedules, and set a hearing for next month to consider a bid by the defendants to throw out the indictment.

The defendants are state GOP chairman Michael McDonald, national party committee member Jim DeGraffenreid, Clark County party chair Jesse Law, Storey County clerk Jim Hindle, national and Douglas County committee member Shawn Meehan and Eileen Rice, a party member from the Lake Tahoe area.

Each is charged with offering a false instrument for filing and uttering a forged instrument, felonies that carry penalties of up to four or five years in prison.

Defense attorneys led by McDonald's lawyer, Richard Wright, contend that Nevada state Attorney General Aaron Ford improperly brought the case in Las Vegas instead of Carson City, the state capital, and failed to present evidence to the grand jury that would have exonerated their clients. They also argue there is insufficient evidence and that their clients had no intent to commit a crime.

Trump lost Nevada in 2020 by more than 30,000 votes to Democratic President Joe Biden. The state’s Democratic electors certified the results in the presence of Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican whose defense of the results as reliable and accurate led the state GOP to censure her. Cegavske later conducted an investigation that found no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud in the state.

Nevada is one of seven presidential battleground states where slates of Republicans falsely certified that Trump, not Biden, had won. Others are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Criminal charges have been brought in Michigan and Georgia. In Wisconsin, 10 Republicans who posed as electors and two attorneys have settled a lawsuit. In New Mexico, the Democratic attorney general announced last month that five Republicans in his state can’t be prosecuted under current state law.
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[TopHatter]

Arizona prosecutors issue grand jury subpoenas as 2020 election probe intensifies


Prosecutors in Arizona have issued several grand jury subpoenas in recent weeks to people connected to efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election in that state, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The subpoenas suggest the state-level probe is accelerating ahead of the 2024 presidential election, when Trump is expected to once again be on the ballot as the Republican nominee. Sources told CNN that Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes could be nearing a decision on whether to bring criminal charges.

Mayes, a Democrat, has primarily focused her investigation on the 11 fake electors from Arizona and those who helped organize them, but sources familiar with the probe say she is also looking into individuals tied to the former president’s national campaign as well. Politico first reported the grand jury subpoenas were issued.

Arizona prosecutors have asked witnesses about meetings attended by Trump where the plan to put forward slates of fake GOP electors across the country was mentioned, including one in the Oval Office on December 16, 2020, the sources said.

They have also inquired about several other boldfaced names who aided Trump’s attempt to upend Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, including conservative attorney John Eastman, the sources added.

Questions about Eastman, who was among those pushing fringe legal theories for overturning the 2020 election results and intimately involved in the fake electors scheme, primarily focused on his actions in the weeks and days leading up to January 6, 2021, according to the same sources.

Among those who have been interviewed by Arizona prosecutors in recent months is pro-Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro.

CNN has identified Chesebro as one of Trump’s unindicted co-conspirators in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal indictment of the former president, which details how he was a driving force behind the fake electors plot.

Chesebro has also pleaded guilty in the sprawling conspiracy case in Georgia for his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results there and met with prosecutors from several other states who are investigating the fake electors plan.

Arizona prosecutors asked Chesebro about the December 2020 Oval Office meeting he also described during an earlier interview with investigators in Michigan, sources said.

During that Oval Office meeting, Chesebro says he told Trump he could still win – and explained how the “alternate electors” he helped assemble in Arizona and six other states gave Trump an opening to continue contesting the election until Congress certified the results on January 6, 2021, according to audio of his Michigan interview obtained by CNN.

“I ended up explaining that Arizona was still hypothetically possible — because the alternate electors had voted,” Chesebro told Michigan state investigators, later adding that this made it “clear (to Trump) in a way that maybe it hadn’t been before, that we had until January 6 to win.”

“And that, you know, created a real problem,” Chesebro added.

CNN has reached out to lawyers for Eastman and Chesebro for comment.

Eleven fake electors for Trump convened at the state Republican Party headquarters in Phoenix, on December 14, 2020. They broadcast themselves preparing to sign the documents, allegedly provided by a Trump campaign attorney, claiming that they were the legitimate representatives of the state’s electoral votes.

By that time, Trump’s loss in the state – by fewer than 11,000 votes – had already been certified by its Republican governor, affirming that Biden won Arizona in the 2020 presidential election.

But in the weeks that followed, some of the fake electors continued to push for Vice President Mike Pence to reject the legitimate Democratic slate of electors.
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[Albany Rifles]

I can get the naked ambition but just how stupid can one be?!!

Government is serious business for serious people.

[TopHatter]

The Trump campaign paid an expert $750,000 to find fraud in the 2020 election, only for him to dismiss their complaints in minutes
A new book sheds light on the lengths Trump's campaign went to find fraud in the 2020 election.

• Ken Block, a software engineer, revealed he was paid about $750,000 to help conduct the search.
• Despite the massive payday, Block told BI he disproved many of the fraud claims in minutes.

A big business cropped up to help former President Donald Trump try to validate his false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, according to someone who was there to profit from it.

Software engineer Ken Block told Business Insider ahead of the release of his forthcoming book "Disproven," that he was paid about $750,000 to conduct research that would verify the existence of mass voter fraud in swing states, including Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

Despite the massive payday, Block couldn't find any. He even disproved some of the claims of voter fraud within minutes, pointing to incomplete data that was wrongfully interpreted as fraudulent, that voters with the same name had been counted as duplicate votes, and that data for mail-in ballots had been wrongly flagged.

While Block said he wasn't pressured to misrepresent his findings, Trump's team didn't want to hear it when he brought them news the fraud couldn't be substantiated.

In one instance, Block confirmed that he proved one of the claims behind a Trump team lawsuit in Pennsylvania was wrong, which immediately ended the conference call he was on.

Representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

All told, Block found fewer than 200 duplicate mail-in ballot votes had been fraudulently cast from all of the swing states combined, he wrote in a recent op-ed recounting his experience in AZ Central.

"Former President Trump has turned losing with grace into losing with disgrace," Block writes in his book. "He has spawned a group of losing candidates who would rather howl about voter fraud—without justification— than display the leadership qualities demanded by the positions for which they ran."

He continued: "Some of these failed candidates who make meritless accusations of voter fraud don't seem to understand their own claims. Others spurn factual accuracy. For these folks, the end goal has nothing to do with winning an election. It is about raising money or profile—or worse, about undermining our republic."

Trump has since been indicted in Georgia in connection to his efforts to overturn election results in the state.

"Disproven" will be released Tuesday.
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[Albany Rifles]

Another asshole who hid the goods until his book came out.

[TopHatter]

Another One Bites the Dust: Trump 2020 Lawyer Officially Disbarred


It’s official: John Eastman, Trump’s former lawyer, can no longer practice law in the state of California, pending his appeal through California’s courts.

As of Tuesday, Eastman is listed as “not eligible to practice law” on the State Bar of California’s website. The move comes three days after State Bar Court of California Judge Yvette Roland recommended that Eastman’s law license be put on “involuntary inactive” status.

In January, the California state bar began disbarment proceedings against Eastman for helping to lead Donald Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 presidential election results and prevent the certification of votes, which included a direct appeal to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Eastman also helped try to create slates of fake pro-Trump electors in states won by Joe Biden, and helped Trump spread election fraud falsehoods, including at the January 6, 2021, rally in Washington, D.C., that turned into the Capitol insurrection. While Roland rejected the charge that Eastman’s speech helped incite the January 6 riot, she did slam his actions as “exceptionally serious ethical violations.”

Roland also said the “scale and egregiousness of Eastman’s unethical actions far surpasses” that of Donald Segretti, the lawyer who helped Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign try to sabotage the Democrats.

Eastman can still win his legal credentials back on appeal, as the California Supreme Court has the final say. But if his legal career does come to an end, his legacy isn’t great, even without his election wrongdoing: He once questioned Kamala Harris’s citizenship, arguing that she might be ineligible for the office of vice president because, he claimed, she wasn’t a U.S. citizen at birth. His argument even extended into claiming that birthright citizenship itself might not be constitutional.

Eastman may not be the last Trump ally to lose their legal license: A Washington, D.C., ethics board is currently considering whether to disbar former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, and Sidney Powell could be disbarred as a result of her October guilty plea to six misdemeanor counts related to the 2020 election in Georgia.
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[Albany Rifles]

Keep going

[TopHatter]

Pro-Trump network OAN and Smartmatic settle 2020 election defamation case


Voting technology company Smartmatic and the far-right network One America News said Tuesday that they had settled a defamation lawsuit stemming from the outlet’s lies about the 2020 election.

“The case has been resolved pursuant to a confidential agreement,” OAN attorney Chip Babcock told CNN.

Both parties declined to share details about the settlement.

The case against OAN was one of a spate of lawsuits filed against right-wing outlets in the aftermath of the election. In the wake of the 2020 presidential contest, pro-Donald Trump outlets spread lies wrongfully suggesting President Joe Biden had not been legitimately elected president.

Smartmatic filed its lawsuit against OAN in 2021, alleging that the right-wing conspiracy network “victimized” the company and spread lies about its role in the 2020 election to “increase viewership and revenue.”

The development comes one year after Fox News reached a massive settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, another voting technology company that was similarly smeared in 2020. Fox News paid more than $787 million to end that lawsuit, becoming the largest publicly known defamation settlement in US history.

Smartmatic still has pending lawsuit against Fox News, the smaller conservative channel Newsmax, and several pro-Trump figures who also pushed lies about the election.

OAN has established itself as perhaps the most extreme of the pro-Trump cable news outlets. And its reporters have sometimes crossed the line into right-wing politicking.

The little-watched network has regularly given airtime to baseless conspiracy theories that support Trump, most prominently about the 2020 election.

The channel worked closely with Russian operatives on a propaganda-style documentary during Trump’s first impeachment in 2019 over allegations he pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rivals. One of its correspondents, who is also an attorney, even worked with Trump’s legal team to subvert the 2020 election results.

OAN settled a defamation suit in September with former Dominion executive Eric Coomer, whose case revealed how the network worked with former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell and others to lie about the election.

DirecTV dropped the far-right network from its lineup in 2022, dealing a significant blow to the outlet, hitting the network’s viewership and revenue.

In its lawsuit, Smartmatic alleged OAN hosts and guests made dozens of false claims about the company’s role in the 2020 election. Personalities on the network repeatedly said Smartmatic software was used in voting machines “in 30 states,” including battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. In reality, Smartmatic software was only used in one California county.

Others on OAN claimed that Smartmatic’s software was “used to switch votes from President Trump to Joe Biden,” and said the company was engaged in digital “ballot-stuffing” to help Biden win. OAN personalities also stretched the truth about Smartmatic’s past ties to Venezuela to weave a baseless narrative that, “Maduro allies were meddling in the latest US election through a company called Smartmatic.”

The case was still in the discovery phase when the settlement was reached.

Depositions were scheduled to take place Tuesday, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The person said depositions were scheduled soon for OAN owner Robert Herring, a wealthy California businessman, and his son Charles Herring, the network’s president — but those won’t happen now that the case has concluded.

Both Herrings were also entangled in a scandal within the lawsuit. Smartmatic claimed in court filings that the pair may have “engaged in criminal activities” by obtaining and sharing internal passwords of Smartmatic employees. OAN denied the allegations, and there was never a judicial finding of wrongdoing against the Herrings.

While the Smartmatic case is over, OAN still faces a separate defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion over its promotion of 2020 election lies.
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Russia Russia Russia....all roads seem to lead back to Russia.

[Albany Rifles]

Russia Russia Russia....all roads seem to lead back to Russia.

Yet again. This is not a new occurrence.

[TopHatter]

Trump is a co-conspirator in Michigan's 2020 false electors plot, state investigator says

Lansing — Michigan prosecutors consider former President Donald Trump and some of his top aides co-conspirators in the plot to submit a certificate falsely claiming he won Michigan's 2020 election, an investigator for Attorney General Dana Nessel's office testified Wednesday in court.

Howard Shock, a special agent for Nessel, said Trump; Mark Meadows, who was Trump's chief of staff; and Rudy Giuliani, who was his personal lawyer, are "unindicted co-conspirators" in Michigan's false elector case. In total, over the last two days, Shock has identified 11 conspirators who haven't been charged. That means prosecutors believe they participated, to some extent, in an alleged scheme to commit forgery by creating a false document asserting Trump had won Michigan's 16 electoral votes when Democrat Joe Biden had won them.

Shock's testimony came on the sixth day of preliminary examinations in Ingham County District Court as Nessel's office pursues felony charges against a group of Republican activists who signed the certificate of votes claiming Trump won.



In July, Nessel, a Democrat, charged the 16 Republican electors with eight felonies each, including conspiracy to commit forgery, which would carry a penalty of up to 14 years behind bars. But Nessel's office has said its investigation is ongoing.

On Wednesday morning, lawyer Duane Silverthorn, who's representing elector Michele Lundgren of Detroit, read a list of names, asking Shock if the individuals were unindicted conspirators in the probe.

Shock said "yes" to Trump, Giuliani and Meadows. Trump is set to be the Republican presidential nominee this fall.

Shock also said "yes" to former Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman Laura Cox and to the names of several other Michigan Republicans, including former state House Speaker Tom Leonard, his wife, Jenell Leonard, and Stu Sandler, a GOP consultant and legal adviser to Cox. Silverthorn didn't ask Shock for additional details of the co-conspirators' alleged involvement.

Sandler labeled Shock's comments "outrageous."

"I stand by the sound legal advice I gave and these partisan lawfare prosecutions have to stop," Sandler said. "Why in five years of Dana Nessel are only Republicans the continuing targets of these partisan lawfare prosecutions?"

It's unclear what Tom Leonard, who ran against Nessel for attorney general in 2018, is alleged to have done. Jenell Leonard was the Clinton County Republican Party chairwoman in 2020, and James Renner of Lansing, one of the GOP electors, previously testified that she contacted him about the Dec. 14, 2020, meeting where the certificate was signed.

On Tuesday, Shock also described Mike Roman, who was Trump's director of Election Day operations, as an unindicted conspirator.

"Are there other unindicted co-conspirators?" Silverthorn asked on Wednesday. "I am going to read you a list of names.”

"Former President Trump?" Silverthorn asked.

"Yes," Shock replied.

Shock also said on Wednesday that Jenna Ellis and Kenneth Chesebro, two lawyers who worked with the Trump campaign in the weeks after the Nov. 3, 2020, presidential election, are also unindicted co-conspirators, along with Chris Velasco, who worked for Trump's campaign in Michigan.

The objective of the electors effort was to bolster claims that the election was "rigged" and ultimately "void the results favoring" Biden, wrote Chesebro, who helped create the electors plan, in a Jan. 1, 2021, email to Boris Epshteyn, a top Trump adviser.

Ellis appeared with Giuliani in Lansing during a Dec. 2, 2020, hearing of the Michigan House Oversight Committee on unproven claims of election fraud. During the meeting, Giuliani urged Michigan lawmakers to intervene in the results of the election.



The preliminary examinations for six of the Republican electors concluded on Wednesday. Through the proceedings, Ingham County District Court Judge Kristen Simmons will eventually determine whether Nessel's office has presented enough evidence to show there is probable cause to believe that crimes occurred.

But that decision won't come until after nine other GOP electors' preliminary examinations end in early June. Those court hearings begin May 28.

Cox, who was the leader of the Michigan GOP at the time of the 2020 election, testified in the first round of examinations in December. Cox said she had concerns over the certificate Republicans signed on Dec. 14, 2020.

"They weren’t the electors at that moment ... in my opinion," Cox said of Dec. 14, 2020.

Cox, a former state lawmaker from Livonia, said she wanted the Republicans to use a different document that simply said they were "available to meet and perform their duties as a presidential elector," instead of claiming they were casting Michigan's electoral votes for Trump.

Some of the defense lawyers have argued that their clients didn't understand what they were signing when they gathered in Michigan GOP headquarters on Dec. 14, 2020. They've also contended that it was Trump campaign advisers who orchestrated the false certificate.

A spokesman for Trump's campaign didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

During a hearing in February, Kahla Crino, an assistant attorney general, described the effort to submit false certificates claiming Trump won the 2020 presidential election as a "multi-state criminal conspiracy that was absolutely linked" to Trump's campaign.

Internal Trump campaign emails obtained by investigators and previously reviewed by The Detroit News showed Trump's campaign staff helped coordinate the Republicans' meeting on Dec. 14, 2020, when they signed the certificate.

Later, someone submitted the false certificate to the U.S. Senate and the National Archives. That's despite the fact that Biden won Michigan's 16 electoral votes and his victory had been certified by the Board of State Canvassers.

Trump and his campaign have previously criticized allegations that he acted improperly after the 2020 presidential election.

"Trump was carrying out his duty as president to investigate the rigged and stolen 2020 presidential election," Steven Cheung, Trump's campaign spokesperson, said in a statement on Jan. 4.

Trump is already facing charges linked to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election at the federal level, brought by special counsel Jack Smith, and in Georgia, brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

Defense lawyers called no witnesses as part of the initial round of preliminary examinations for the Michigan electors.

George Donnini, who's representing elector Kathy Berden of Snover, said he believes defense attorneys did everything they could to argue that the certificate was contingent upon "on something happening between Dec. 14, 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021, the day Congress convened to certify the results.

"The fact that it didn't ultimately happen didn't matter," Donnini said. "It could have happened. Something could have happened. And that's what's significant."
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Not sure why they're blaming Trump....It was clearly Ray Epps that orchestrated the whole thing.

[TopHatter]

Trump’s 2020 'fake electors' charged with state crimes in Arizona
The indictments also appear to include former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, based on descriptions in the document released Wednesday.

A state grand jury in Arizona on Wednesday indicted so-called "fake electors" who backed then-President Donald Trump in 2020, as well as key Trump aides, after a sprawling investigation into the alleged efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the presidential election in the state.

One month after the 2020 election, 11 Trump supporters convened at the Arizona GOP’s headquarters in Phoenix to sign a certificate claiming to be Arizona’s 11 electors to the Electoral College, though Biden won the state by 10,457 votes and state officials certified his electors. The state Republican Party documented the signing of the certificate in a social media post and sent it to Congress and the National Archives.

Among those charged is Kelli Ward, who served as chair of the Arizona GOP during the 2020 election and the immediate aftermath. She tweeted on Jan. 6, 2021, after the attack on the U.S. Capitol: “Congress is adjourned. Send the elector choice back to the legislatures.” Ward was a consistent propagator of false claims that Arizona’s election results were rigged.

Others charged were: state legislators Anthony Kern and Jake Hoffman; Michael Ward, Kelli Ward’s husband; Tyler Bowyer, the Republican National Committee's Arizona committeeman and the chief operating officer of the Trump-aligned Turning Point USA; Greg Safsten, the former Arizona GOP executive director; former U.S. Senate candidate Jim Lamon; Robert Montgomery, the former head of the Cochise County GOP; and Republican Party activists Samuel Moorhead, Nancy Cottle and Loraine Pellegrino.

Based on descriptions in the indictment, Trump appears to be identified as "Unindicted Coconspirator 1." The document includes redacted names of other people who have been charged in the case but have not yet been served. Two of them appear to be former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Trump campaign and White House official Mike Roman, per the descriptions in the indictment.

Another passage appears to describe attorney Kenneth Chesebro, one of the planners of the alleged scheme, as an unindicted coconspirator. Chesebro pleaded guilty last year in Georgia to conspiracy charges brought against him, Trump and 17 other people in the state. He is also believed to be one of the unidentified co-conspirators special counsel Jack Smith described in his federal election interference indictment of Trump last year.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, led the investigation. She won her election to be the state’s chief prosecutor in November 2022, replacing Republican Mark Brnovich, a onetime ally of Trump who later earned his scorn for not substantiating his claims of election fraud in the state.

"We conducted a thorough and professional investigation over the past 13 months into the fake electors scheme in our state," Mayes said in a video announcing the charges. "I understand for some of you today didn't come fast enough. And I know I'll be criticized by others for conducting this investigation at all. But as I've stated before, and we'll say here again, today, I will not allow American democracy to be undermined."

The Arizona charges are the latest example of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election sprouting into legal cases during his 2024 bid to retake office.

Arizona was one of seven states where “alternate electors” signed paperwork falsely claiming Trump had won the states. Prosecutors have already charged “alternate electors” in Nevada, Georgia and Michigan.

Chesebro and others, including Trump legal adviser John Eastman, argued in the months after the 2020 election that then-Vice President Mike Pence could use the existence of the alternate electors to name Trump the winner of the election as he presided over the electoral vote count in Congress on Jan. 6.

Eastman wrote in a memo: “At the end, he announces that because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States. … There are at this point 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden. Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.”

Trump lost Arizona by just under 11,000 votes. As the Republican electors sent illegitimate certifications to Washington, Trump sought to put pressure on Maricopa County officials and other Arizona Republicans, including then-state House Speaker Rusty Bowers and then-Gov. Doug Ducey.

Trump placed a phone call directly to Ducey as the governor certified the state’s election results. Ducey muted the call.

Mayes’ term as Arizona attorney general has been marked by other election cases stemming from Trump’s false claims about fraud in the 2020 election and after.

Last fall, Mayes charged two local officials who delayed the certification of midterm election results in 2022 in Cochise County. The officials voted against certifying the county’s election results by the statutory deadline after they aired baseless accusations about the integrity of the election for months. The county certified its election results only after a court ordered it to do so.
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Gotta be a way to "both sides" this....

[Albany Rifles]

So much "winning"!!!