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The US 2020 Presidential Election & Attempts To Overturn It

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  • Originally posted by Julie View Post

    People without access can go to their local library. We've had internet 30 years now. We can't obtain a server secure enough to vote. We can go on line and file our taxes with the IRS. That seems to be secure enough.
    What part of "without access" is the same as "no internet at home"?
    WITHOUT ACCESS, for whatever reason, will cover a certain portion of the population.
    Those people will not be allowed to vote, through no fault of their own.
    Trust me?
    I'm an economist!

    Comment


    • Georgia governor, defying Trump, says he'll 'follow the law' on election results

      Georgia officials on Monday responded to a barrage of attacks by President Trump by saying they would continue to “follow the law” on counting votes and certifying the election results, which show a narrow win by President-elect Joe Biden.

      Trump has asked Gov. Brian Kemp to intervene and overrule his secretary of state, who has maintained that the election in the state was conducted honestly.

      “Georgia law prohibits the governor from interfering in elections,” a spokesman for Kemp said in a statement. “The Secretary of State, who is an elected constitutional officer, has oversight over elections that cannot be overridden by executive order.

      “As the governor has said repeatedly, he will continue to follow the law and encourage the Secretary of State to take reasonable steps — including a sample audit of signatures — to restore trust and address serious issues that have been raised,” the spokesman added.

      The statement came after Trump wondered why Kemp, who he called “hapless,” would not use “his emergency powers” to overrule Georgia’s top election official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

      Kemp and Raffensperger are both Republicans. Trump endorsed Kemp when he ran in 2018, and Raffensperger said he and his family voted for and donated to Trump but “are now being thrown under the bus by him.”

      “Why won’t Governor @BrianKempGA, the hapless Governor of Georgia, use his emergency powers, which can be easily done, to overrule his obstinate Secretary of State, and do a match of signatures on envelopes,” Trump tweeted. “It will be a ‘goldmine’ of fraud, and we will easily WIN the state.”

      The president provided no evidence to support his fraud claim. Checking signatures on ballot envelopes could show that some ballots were illegitimate — but not which ones, since the envelopes are separated from the ballots once they are opened. The only apparent remedy would be to throw out all the votes in a given county, which would be an unprecedented and radical step that no court is likely to accept.

      “Also, quickly check the number of envelopes versus the number of ballots,” Trump continued. “You may just find that there are many more ballots than there are envelopes. So simple, and so easy to do. Georgia Republicans are angry, all Republicans are angry. Get it done!”

      At a press briefing Monday, Raffensperger said his office is, in fact, investigating one specific allegation that the number of absentee ballots outnumbered absentee envelopes in Gwinnett County. But the vast majority of fraud claims being brought to his office are not credible.

      “The truth matters,” Raffensperger said. “There are those who are exploiting the emotions of many Trump supporters with fantastic claims, half-truths and misinformation, and frankly they are misleading the president as well, apparently.”

      Raffensperger added that a second recount requested by the Trump campaign would be completed by Wednesday at midnight. The first, which was triggered by a mandatory audit of the results and completed on Nov. 20, showed that Biden won Georgia by more than 12,000 votes, 2,475,141 to 2,462,857.

      In a telephone interview Sunday — his first since losing the Nov. 3 election — Trump falsely claimed to Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo that he “won the election easily”; that his own Department of Justice and the FBI are failing to investigate his allegations of rampant voter fraud; and that he is “ashamed” he endorsed Kemp’s election.

      “The governor has done nothing,” Trump said. “He’s done absolutely nothing. I’m ashamed that I endorsed him.”

      ___

      Governor says he'll follow the law. No wonder Trump is so triggered.
      “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

      Comment


      • Arizona secretary of state certifies election results with Biden winning state's 11 electoral votes

        Arizona officials certified the results of the state’s election on Monday, confirming Democratic President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state and clearing the way for Mark Kelly to take his seat in the U.S. Senate this week.

        Secretary of State Katie Hobbs touted high turnout despite the election unfolding in the middle of a pandemic.

        Voters cast more than 3.2 million ballots and turnout neared 80%, a 23% increase from the midterm election two years ago and an 8% increase from the last presidential election in 2016, Hobbs said.

        "Despite the unprecedented challenges, Arizonans showed up for our democracy," Hobbs said. "Every Arizona voter has my thanks and should know they can stand proud that this election was transparency, accuracy and fairness in accordance with Arizona’s laws and election procedures, despite numerous unfounded claims to the contrary."

        Hobbs, a Democrat, signed the official election results in the old state Capitol in Phoenix along with the state's Republican governor and attorney general, Doug Ducey and Mark Brnovich, and Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Brutinel.

        Ducey expressed confidence in the election process.

        "We do elections well here in Arizona. The system is strong and that’s why I bragged on it so much," he said.


        Comment


        • National Review Op-Ed: Trump’s Disgraceful Endgame

          President Trump said the other day that he’d leave office if he loses the vote of the Electoral College on December 14.

          This is not the kind of assurance presidents of the United States typically need to make, but it was noteworthy given Trump’s disgraceful conduct since losing his bid for reelection to Joe Biden on November 3.

          Behind in almost all the major polls, Trump stormed within a hair’s breadth in the key battlegrounds of winning reelection, and his unexpectedly robust performance helped put Republicans in a strong position for the post-Trump-presidency era. This is not nothing. But the president can’t stand to admit that he lost and so has insisted since the wee hours of Election Night that he really won — and won “by a lot.”

          There are legitimate issues to consider after the 2020 vote about the security of mail-in ballots and the process of counting votes (some jurisdictions, bizarrely, take weeks to complete their initial count), but make no mistake: The chief driver of the post-election contention of the past several weeks is the petulant refusal of one man to accept the verdict of the American people. The Trump team (and much of the GOP) is working backwards, desperately trying to find something, anything to support the president’s aggrieved feelings, rather than objectively considering the evidence and reacting as warranted.

          Almost nothing that the Trump team has alleged has withstood the slightest scrutiny. In particular, it’s hard to find much that is remotely true in the president’s Twitter feed these days. It is full of already-debunked claims and crackpot conspiracy theories about Dominion voting systems. Over the weekend, he repeated the charge that 1.8 million mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania were mailed out, yet 2.6 million were ultimately tallied. In a rather elementary error, this compares the number of mail-ballots requested in the primary to the number of ballots counted in the general. A straight apples-to-apples comparison finds that 1.8 million mail-in ballots were requested in the primary and 1.5 million returned, while 3.1 million ballots were requested in the general and 2.6 million returned.

          Flawed and dishonest assertions like this pollute the public discourse and mislead good people who make the mistake of believing things said by the president of the United States.

          Elected Republicans have generally taken the attitude that the president should be able to have his day in court. It’s his legal right to file suits, of course, but he shouldn’t pursue meritless litigation in Hail Mary attempts to get millions of votes tossed out. This is exactly what he’s been doing, it’s why reputable GOP lawyers have increasingly steered clear, and it’s why Trump has suffered defeat after defeat in court.

          In its signature federal suit in Pennsylvania, the Trump team argued that it violated the equal-protection clause of the U.S. Constitution for some Pennsylvania counties to let absentee voters fix or “cure” their ballots if they contained an error while other counties didn’t. It maintained that it was another constitutional violation for Trump election observers not to be allowed in close proximity to the counting of ballots. On this basis, the Trump team sought to disqualify 1.5 million ballots and bar the certification of the Pennsylvania results or have the Pennsylvania General Assembly appoint presidential electors.

          By the time the suit reached the Third Circuit, it had been whittled down to a relatively minor procedural issue (whether the Trump complaint could be amended a second time in the district court). The Trump team lost on that question, and the unanimous panel of the Third Circuit (in an opinion written by a Trump appointee) made it clear that the other claims lacked merit as well. It noted that the suit contained no evidence that Trump and Biden ballots or observers were treated differently, let alone evidence of fraud. Within reason, it is permissible for counties to have different procedures for handling ballots, and nothing forced some counties to permit voters to cure flawed absentee ballots and others to decline to do so.

          Not that it mattered. The court pointed out that the suit challenged the procedures to fix absentee ballots in seven Democratic counties, which don’t even come close to having enough cured ballots to change the outcome in the state; the counties might have allowed, at most, 10,000 voters to fix their ballots, and even if every single one of them voted for Biden, that’s still far short of Biden’s 80,000-plus margin in the state.

          The idea, as the Trump team stalwartly maintains, that the Supreme Court is going to take up this case and issue a game-changing ruling is fantastical. Conservative judges have consistently rejected Trump’s flailing legal appeals, and the justices are unlikely to have a different reaction.

          Trump’s most reprehensible tactic has been to attempt, somewhat shamefacedly, to get local Republican officials to block the certification of votes and state legislatures to appoint Trump electors in clear violation of the public will. This has gone nowhere, thanks to the honesty and sense of duty of most of the Republicans involved, but it’s a profoundly undemocratic move that we hope no losing presidential candidate ever even thinks of again.

          Getting defeated in a national election is a blow to the ego of even the most thick-skinned politicians and inevitably engenders personal feelings of bitterness and anger. What America has long expected is that losing candidates swallow those feelings and at least pretend to be gracious. If Trump’s not capable of it, he should at least stop waging war on the outcome.
          ___________

          What's Trump going to do when the apparatus of the federal government is no longer subject to his deranged whims?

          Notice how the editors of the National Review are baffled at how "some jurisdictions, bizarrely, take weeks to complete their initial count"? Well, when the Republican-controlled legislatures of those jurisdictions slash funding for elections, what the hell do they expect is going to happen?
          “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

          Comment


          • Trump Lawyer: DHS Whistleblower Should Be Executed
            During Newsmax call-in Joe diGenova said Chris Krebs should be put to death

            On Monday President Trump’s campaign lawyer and former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova said that fired Trump cybersecurity chief Chris Krebs should be executed for saying that the election was the “most secure in United States history.”

            DiGenova, appearing on the Howie Carr show, which simulcasts on Newsmax, took aim at Krebs as an aside during a wheels-off segment full of false claims about how the United States election had been rigged.

            “Anybody who thinks the election went well, like that idiot Krebs who used to be the head of cybersecurity [for Trump]. That guy is a class A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot,” diGenova said.

            This is not just a random Parler troll trying to get attention. This is an attorney speaking on behalf of the President of the United States’ re-election campaign. And while it may read like a macabre joke, the direct nature of diGenova’s comments make it impossible to interpret as anything other than a real wish/threat against a public servant for offering truthful testimony.

            Carr responded to the statement with an awkward pause and a laugh and then changed the subject. Some shit is so weird that it even makes Newsmax people uncomfortable.

            DiGenova’s execution wishcasting comes on the heels of a Krebs interview with 60 Minutes in which he debunked the Trump team’s outlandish and conspiratorial claims about the election. Krebs is a lifelong Republican who Trump put in charge of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which had oversight of election security. (Trump fired Krebs via tweet.)

            In addition to threatening Krebs, over the course of the interview diGenova made ominous and false suggestions about “circuit breakers” shutting down on election night in multiple states, which allowed for vote fraud; millions of votes showing up in dump trucks, tow trucks, and vans without detection; and he called on state legislatures to have the “cojones” to overturn the results of the election.

            In other words: Just a normal day for Elite Strike Force.
            _____________

            Hey, that's what you do with Enemies Of The People™, no?
            “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

            Comment


            • A witness in Trump ally Sidney Powell's lawsuits says the voting results in 'Edison County' indicate fraud. No such place exists.

              A witness in a lawsuit from allies of President Donald Trump trying to overturn democracy in Michigan said that the vote count in Edison County "are cause for concern and indicate fraud" because President-elect Joe Biden won "more than 100% of the votes."

              There's just one problem: There is no Edison County in Michigan,
              the Detroit Free Press pointed out.

              In fact, there is no Edison County in the entire United States of America.

              The claim comes from Navid Keshavarz-Nia, who describes himself in the affidavit as a cybersecurity expert working at a defense contractor and has received training from several government agencies. The affidavit is included as an exhibit appended to a lawsuit filed last week by people working with Sidney Powell, a former member of the Trump campaign's legal team.

              Keshavarz-Nia's nonsensical claim about Edison County drew widespread attention with a tweet from Jonathan Oosting, a reporter at the nonprofit news organization Bridge Michigan.

              The typo-peppered lawsuit makes many of the same wildly conspiratorial arguments Powell made at a press conference that led to her ouster from Trump's legal team: That the now-dead Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez used voting machines to manipulate election results in his own country, and the very same machines are now being used to manipulate 2020 election results. There's no evidence of the claim, and the companies named in Powell's lawsuits have debunked the arguments made in her lawsuits.

              The witness says he hasn't actually looked at the voting machines
              In the affidavit, Keshavarz-Nia sais he has not analyzed any of the voting machines used in the 2020 election but argued there's "evidence of fraud" based on his analysis of election data.

              Much of that data is simply false or based on a misunderstanding of how election data is reported.

              It's not clear if Keshavarz-Nia had another county in mind when referring to a vote count of more than 100% in "Edison County," but some internet sleuths have made claims about more than 100% of particular counties voting by relying on outdated voter record information or simply using the wrong datasets, USA Today and Reuters have reported.

              In another part of the affidavit, Keshavarz-Nia writes that President Donald Trump's lead in Pennsylvania dropped at a rate faster than votes can be counted. But the votes were simply reported by precincts in the timespan he indicates, not actually counted at that time.

              Even though Keshavarz-Nia testified to not analyzing the machines used in the 2020 election, Powell's lawsuit cites his affidavit to argue that "hundreds of thousands of votes that were cast for President Trump in the 2020 general election were transferred to former Vice-President Biden" — which is not true.

              The lawsuit ultimately asks a federal judge to force Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to ignore voters and "transmit certified election results that state that President Donald Trump is the winner of the election."

              Michigan has already certified its election results, granting its 16 electoral votes to Biden. The Trump campaign itself withdrew a federal lawsuit trying to challenge the state's election results, and three other lawsuits filed by Republican-aligned groups failed, with the judges overseeing the cases finding no evidence of fraud.

              Keshavarz-Nia couldn't be reached for comment, and Powell did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
              ___________
              “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

              Comment


              • I am not ashamed to admit I love the movie The Bridges of Edison County....


                BTW, isn't Bowling Green located in Edison County?
                “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                Mark Twain

                Comment


                • Barr’s future in doubt after Giuliani and Trump campaign blast him for denying widespread election fraud

                  Attorney General William Barr was seen entering the White House shortly after telling the Associated Press the Justice Department has found no evidence of the widespread voter fraud Donald Trump and his legal team have alleged.

                  “There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results. And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that,” Mr Barr told the wire service, also referring to the Department of Homeland Security.

                  The top Senate Democrat, with a wide smile, pounced on the attorney general’s comment as he noted others in the Trump administration who have spoken in contradiction to the president’s talk of a “rigged” election have been ousted.

                  "I guess he's the next one to be fired," Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters.

                  Mr Trump claimed earlier in the day his camp has located “truckloads” of illegal votes for President-elect Joe Biden. His camp, however, has yet to reveal any evidence of voter fraud.

                  That has been pointed out by multiple federal judges, including ones appointed by Mr Trump and other Republican presidents. Those and other judges have tossed dozens of Trump team lawsuits, which do not actually allege voter fraud.

                  Still, ever ones – like their client – to punch back, two of the president’s legal team members quickly blasted Mr Barr.

                  “there hasn’t been any semblance of a Department of Justice investigation. We have gathered ample evidence of illegal voting in at least six states, which they have not examined. We have many witnesses swearing under oath they saw crimes being committed in connection with voter fraud. As far as we know, not a single one has been interviewed by the DOJ. The Justice Department also hasn’t audited any voting machines or used their subpoena powers to determine the truth,” Trump lawyers Rudolph Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said in a statement.

                  “Nonetheless, we will continue our pursuit of the truth through the judicial system and state legislatures, and continue toward the Constitution’s mandate and ensuring that every legal vote is counted and every illegal vote is not," the duo added. "Again, with the greatest respect to the Attorney General, his opinion appears to be without any knowledge or investigation of the substantial irregularities and evidence of systemic fraud.”

                  Attorneys general routinely visit the West Wing for long-planned meetings on any number of topics. A White House spokeswoman had not responded to a request for comment on why Mr Barr is there on Tuesday afternoon.
                  ________

                  "Barr told the AP that U.S. attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up specific complaints and information they’ve received, but “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

                  Well I'll be seein' ya Billy Boy. Drop me a line now, will ya?

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                  “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                  Comment


                  • Lou Dobbs Rages At William Barr, Suggests He Might Be 'Compromised' Or 'Ill'

                    Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs fumed on Tuesday after William Barr said there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the recent election, and suggested that the attorney general must have been “compromised” or unwell to have said such a thing.

                    Dobbs, who has devotedly parroted Trump’s baseless “stolen election” claims since his loss to Democrat Joe Biden, went at Barr with full force even though Barr ― a loyal Trump ally himself ― waited nearly a month after the Nov. 3 election to publicly state that no evidence had been unearthed to support the president’s claims the election had been rigged.

                    “For the attorney general of the United States to make that statement, he is either a liar or a fool or both,” Dobbs declared. “He may be, uh, perhaps compromised. He may be simply unprincipled. Or he may be personally distraught or ill.”

                    The “Lou Dobbs Tonight” host also complained that Barr was joining in with the “radical Dems and the deep state and the resistance” by announcing the Justice Department had failed to find any proof of wrongdoing in the election.

                    Barr told The Associated Press on Tuesday that U.S. attorneys and FBI agents have been following up on specific complaints and information they’ve received but that, “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election.”

                    The Trump campaign and the president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani have been on a crusade alleging a nationwide conspiracy by Democrats and other hidden players to rig the election for Biden, who received 6 million more votes than the president and reaped 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. These unsubstantiated claims have repeatedly been dismissed and debunked in the courts, by bipartisan election officials and now by the Justice Department.

                    It’s particularly striking that Dobbs would allege Barr is working against the president, but his claims were no more outrageous than other disinformation he’s shared on his show in the past. His segments about Trump routinely earn him comparisons to state television propaganda in North Korea.
                    __________

                    Couldn't decide if this post belongs in this thread or in surfgun's Deranged Trump Followers thread....
                    “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                    Comment


                    • Well, when the Republican-controlled legislatures of those jurisdictions slash funding for elections, what the hell do they expect is going to happen?
                      or, like in Pennsylvania, when the Republican-controlled legislature says you can't start counting early votes until Election Day...

                      you know, I'm enjoying the Sidney Powell/Lin Wood show as they urge their fellow Republicans not to vote in Georgia.
                      There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

                      Comment


                      • US Supreme Court asked to block Biden win in Pennsylvania

                        HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Republicans attempting to undo President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to take up their lawsuit, three days after it was thrown out by the highest court in the battleground state.

                        In the request to the U.S. Supreme Court, Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly of northwestern Pennsylvania and the other plaintiffs are asking the court to prevent the state from certifying any contests from the Nov. 3 election, and undo any certifications already made, such as Biden’s victory.

                        They maintain that Pennsylvania’s expansive vote-by-mail law is unconstitutional because it required a constitutional amendment to authorize its provisions.

                        Biden beat President Donald Trump by more than 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania, a state Trump had won in 2016.

                        Pennsylvania's Supreme Court on Saturday night threw out the lawsuit, including an order by a lower court judge blocking the certification of any uncertified races.

                        Justices cited the law's 180-day time limit on filing legal challenges to its provisions, as well as the staggering demand that an entire election be overturned retroactively.

                        In the state's courts, Kelly and the other Republican plaintiffs had sought to either throw out the 2.5 million mail-in ballots submitted under the law — most of them by Democrats — or to wipe out the election results and direct the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature to pick Pennsylvania’s presidential electors.

                        ___

                        If the Trump-packed SCOTUS declines to hear this case, I'd love to see who voted which way, yes or no.
                        “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                        Comment


                        • Why Republicans waste all this effort going back and forth to courts is a mystery to me. All they should do is say what they really want and that is only in person voting by white males who own property since that is what this boils down to.

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by tbm3fan View Post
                            Why Republicans waste all this effort going back and forth to courts is a mystery to me. All they should do is say what they really want and that is only in person voting by white males who own property since that is what this boils down to.
                            Some of them are True Believers. They genuinely believe that North Korean agents delivered thousands of ballots to Maine and that Hugo Chavez interfered with the election etc.

                            Others are simply showing fealty to the cult Leader, they don't know or care if any this nonsense is true. They just want an opportunity to worship him and "own the libs".

                            Still others don't believe any of it but can't afford to be "primaryed" by the cult Leader. Once it's clear that Trump has lost his grip on the cult, they'll suddenly come out of their shells.
                            “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                            Comment


                            • Trump aide banned from Justice Department after trying to get case info

                              WASHINGTON (AP) — The official serving as President Donald Trump’s eyes and ears at the Justice Department has been banned from the building after trying to pressure staffers to give up sensitive information about election fraud and other matters she could relay to the White House, three people familiar with the matter tell The Associated Press.

                              Heidi Stirrup, an ally of top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, was quietly installed at the Justice Department as a White House liaison a few months ago. She was told within the last two weeks to vacate the building after top Justice officials learned of her efforts to collect insider information about ongoing cases and the department’s work on election fraud, the people said.

                              Stirrup is accused of approaching staffers in the department demanding they give her information about investigations, including election fraud matters, the people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.

                              The effort came as Trump continues to level baseless claims that he won the election and alleges without evidence that massive voting fraud was responsible for his defeat to President-elect Joe Biden.

                              Stirrup had also extended job offers to political allies for positions at some of the highest levels of the Justice Department without consulting any senior department officials or the White House counsel's office and also attempted to interfere in the hiring process for career staffers, a violation of the government's human resources policies, one of the people said.

                              The Justice Department declined to comment. Attempts to reach Stirrup for comment were not immediately successful.

                              Earlier this week, Attorney General William Barr told the AP that U.S. attorneys and the FBI had looked into allegations of election irregularities and found no evidence of widespread voting fraud that would change the outcome of the election.

                              “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” he said on Tuesday.

                              Trump shot back at Barr on Thursday, saying the Justice Department “hasn’t looked very hard" and calling it a disappointment. But he stopping short of implying Barr’s future as attorney general could be cut short.

                              “Ask me that in a number of weeks from now,” Trump said when asked if he still has confidence in Barr.

                              “They should be looking at all of this fraud,” Trump said.

                              He was also critical of Barr’s statement that much of what has been presented so far by the Trump campaign and its allies amounts to allegations that belong in lawsuits, not federal crimes.

                              “This is not civil. This is criminal stuff. This is very bad, criminal stuff,” Trump said.

                              Stirrup, who previously was a central figure in the Trump administration’s push for hard-line immigration policies, technically still remains in her position after being placed at the Justice Department by the White House Office of Presidential Personnel.

                              The Trump administration has been working to have liaisons report directly to the White House instead of the agencies where they work. Across the administration, there have been concerns that the liaisons were undercutting the work not just of career professionals but also of Trump’s own political appointees.

                              Shortly after the election, the presidential personnel office had also instructed the liaisons to fire any political appointees who were looking for jobs while Trump refused to accept the election results. Trump’s term ends at noon on Jan. 20. Several thousand political appointees across the government will see their jobs end by that date.

                              The White House personnel office has been headed by former Trump personal assistant John McEntee, who has renewed Trump’s push to rid the administration of those deemed “disloyal” to the president.

                              In September, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson inadvertently made public his anger with McEntee when cameras captured writing on the back of a page he was consulting during a speech.

                              In a reference to the White House Presidential Personnel Office, Carson’s notes said: “I am not happy with the way PPO is handling my agency.” It’s a sentiment that has been shared across the government.

                              Stirrup, a close ally of Miller, previously served as the acting director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and was also a deputy White House liaison at the Department of Health and Human Services.
                              ________

                              And the circus shit show just keeps on truckin'

                              I have a feeling that entire (non-Trump Kool-aid drinking) federal government is going to let out a thunderous cheer come January 20th...somewhere around noon, perhaps?
                              “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                              Comment


                              • All they should do is say what they really want and that is only in person voting by white males who own property since that is what this boils down to.
                                I figure they can simplify it some more: only Trump votes are real votes, everything else is pure fraud.
                                There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

                                Comment

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