The US 2020 Presidential Election

[Albany Rifles]

Dems still don't admit Bush won Florida and have contested the electors of every GoP win presidential election since 2000. Abrams still has not conceded she lost in Georgia. Hillary is literally teaching a master class on how to take back a concession and deny defeat even after an attempted soft coup by loyalists in Congress and the DoJ. The Left created "the resistance" after Trump was elected claiming he was a Manchurian candidate and ran around yelling not my president.

Not a problem
GoP adopts the tactics and Outlook of the Dems.

Oh my God those nasty GoPers hate democracy.

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/...13-2000-287285

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...d-trump-speech

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ce/6318836002/

They may not have been the most graceful but all three you mentioned....Gore, Ms Clinton & Ms Abrams...conceded their election.

What their followers may have believed or stated is immaterial. The Democratic Party acknowledged the defeat in each case and moved forward.

[zraver]

AR there has not been an election of a GoP president that the Dems did not challenge the electors. HRC famously campaigned for faithless electors and post inauguration took her concession back. Kerry for all his faults is the only one who concerned without trying to find a backdoor route to the Oval Office. Gore of course begged the courts to make him president.

Stacy Abrams has never conceded. She still claims the election was stolen from her.

[Gun Grape]

AR there has not been an election of a GoP president that the Dems did not challenge the electors. HRC famously campaigned for faithless electors and post inauguration took her concession back. Kerry for all his faults is the only one who concerned without trying to find a backdoor route to the Oval Office. Gore of course begged the courts to make him president.

Stacy Abrams has never conceded. She still claims the election was stolen from her.

Just in my life time. Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr, Bush Jr reelection

[zraver]

Just in my life time. Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr, Bush Jr reelection

I specified early in the thread since 2000. Bush 43 came close on re-election but they still never admitted he won legit the first time.

[zraver]

Stacy Abrams not a concession speech.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/...on-speech/amp/

[Gun Grape]

I specified early in the thread since 2000. Bush 43 came close on re-election but they still never admitted he won legit the first time.

Wow, you really had to narrow it down to make your whiney "Democrats are bad" crap work

I don't remember the Capitol being assaulted over "Hanging Chads"


So what you are saying is that in the last 6 elections, 2 were contested.

As opposed to In my lifetime 2 of the last 14 elections were contested

And "They never admitted Bush won legit the first time" makes me want to bring up 8 years of Republicans claiming that Obama wasn't a legitimate President and was a foreign born Muslim.

[Albany Rifles]

16 & 2 for me...though many in the GOP decried JFK's election and couldn't accept that a major city like Chicago could vote Democratic.

[TopHatter]

House Republican says he regrets voting against certifying 2020 election results and suggested Trump was a 'coward' on January 6

Republican Rep. Tom Rice of South Carolina said in an interview on Wednesday that he regrets voting against certifying the electoral votes of Arizona and Pennsylvania after the January 6 storming of the Capitol.

"In retrospect I should have voted to certify," Rice told POLITICO's Olivia Beavers. "Because President Trump was responsible for the attack on the Capitol."

His declaration, according to POLITICO, makes him the first of the 147 House Republicans who voted against certifying the election results to publicly state that they regret their vote.

Rice was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump for incitement of insurrection. He was the only one in that group of GOP lawmakers who also voted against certifying the election results.

"He has not visited the injured and grieving. He has not offered condolences. Yesterday in a press briefing at the border, he said his comments were 'perfectly appropriate,'" Rice said at the time about his vote to impeach Trump. "I have backed this President through thick and thin for four years. I campaigned for him and voted for him twice. But, this utter failure is inexcusable."

And Rice has defended his vote in the months since the attack on the Capitol, comparing Trump to a dictator in a June interview.

"If the president, by force, can intimidate Congress into voting their way, then we might as well do away with Congress and hand it over to a king," Rice told The Washington Post. "What he did in my mind is what dictators do."

Rice told POLITICO that though he thought there were "real issues with the election," he came to change his mind about how he should vote after a mob of Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol. Still, Rice added, he needed to keep his word to voters.

"In the wee hours of that disgraceful night, while waiting for the Capitol of our great country to be secured, I knew I should vote to certify," Rice told POLITICO. "But because I had made a public announcement of my intent to object, I did not want to go back on my word. So yeah, I regret my vote to object."

Rice also said that Trump watched the January 6 storming of the Capitol "with pride" and "did nothing to stop it." He also said the House was "sacked and defaced."

"There was a coward in that equation," Rice said, alluding to the former president's tweet on January 6 declaring that Pence "didn't have the courage to do what should have been done" by trying to overturn the election results as a mob of his supporters entered the building.

"But it wasn't Mike Pence," said Rice.
_________

"Orange Man Bad"....

[TopHatter]

Pro-Trump Group Invented Voter Fraud Claims Months Before Election

A well-funded far-right group—that made inroads with Stop The Steal organizations, paid a former police captain more than $200,000 to hunt ballots, and became entangled in a roadside stickup—was making war plans for Election Day 2020 months ahead of time, documents reveal.

The fringe group, the Liberty Center for God and Country (LCGC), led a lucrative fundraising blitz in the run-up to the election and quietly networked with now-notorious election denialists. Their work came to light in October of that year when former Houston Police captain Mark Aguirre allegedly rammed his SUV into a man’s truck, forced the man onto the ground at gunpoint, and accused him of transporting 750,000 fraudulent ballots. Aguirre’s claims were baseless—his victim was an innocent air conditioner technician—and no widespread voter fraud has been found in the 2020 election. Aguirre was indicted this week for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

The criminal charges outed the LCGC, which had quietly moved hundreds of thousands of dollars in the name of preventing voter fraud in the months before the election, launching a website and fundraisers in the months before Nov. 3.

In the fall of 2020, as Donald Trump trailed Joe Biden in the polls, Republican activists sought ways to sow doubt in the event of a possible Trump loss. Aguirre and LCGC were among them.

“We are private investigators in the State of Texas who have uncovered an illegal ballot harvesting operation in Harris County,” Aguirre wrote in a GoFundMe campaign in late September 2020. “Our team is spearheaded by Mark A. Aguirre retired Captain of the Houston Police Department Lic.#C14256. We have collected evidence from 2018 displaying the massive absentee mail in voting fraud. We are currently in the process of collecting more evidence and information that will directly impact the upcoming 2020 election.”

Aguirre’s description of himself as a “retired” police captain (he’d actually been fired for a disastrous raid) was the least of the fundraiser’s lies. Although the fundraiser shed little light on Aguirre’s “team,” the fundraiser was launched one day after Aguirre signed an affidavit in a lawsuit accusing Houston-area Democrats of widespread voter fraud.

The lawsuit, filed by Republican activist Steven Hotze, accused Texas Democrats of a plot to defraud voters, in part by offering early voting and more voting locations. Some of its claims rested on supposed evidence collected by Aguirre and a former FBI agent who, like Aguirre, later became a private investigator.

“Based on interviews, review of documents, and other information, I have identified the individuals in charge of the ballot harvesting scheme,” Aguirre wrote.

Aguirre’s involvement with Hotze went deeper than the lawsuit suggested. In late August, according to business records, Hotze formed the LCGC. The group’s earliest web presence called on Trump to designate three days “for national repentance, fasting, and prayer.”

Hotze was already a known figure in Texas and Republican politics. An anti-LGBT crusader since the 1980s, Hotze made inroads with the state’s conservatives, aided by money from his medical practice where he offered “hormone replacement.” Before the 2020 election, Hotze filed a flurry of lawsuits attempting to restrict expanded voting in Texas, like early and drive-through voting. In September and October 2020, he also charged headlong into conspiracy theories about the upcoming election, making long Facebook videos and posts detailing what he said would be a Democratic effort to steal 2020 via voter fraud in Harris County, Texas.

“The Socialist Democrats know that Harris County, where Houston is located, is ground zero for the upcoming general election in Texas and nationwide,” he wrote in a post shared by the LCGC. ”As Harris County goes, so goes Texas. As Texas goes, so goes the nation.” (This is not true, either of Harris County’s significance in Texas elections, or of Texas’s role in national elections.)

In order to crack down on alleged fraud pre-election, the LCGC allegedly hired Aguirre to investigate people it suspected of running fake ballot rings. According to charging documents, Aguirre admitted to surveilling the home of air-conditioning technician David Lopez-Zuniga, on the suspicion that the Houston man was running a scheme to force children to sign 750,000 fraudulent ballots. Aguirre allegedly rammed Lopez-Zuniga’s car off the road, forced him onto the ground at gunpoint, and knelt on his back before an actual police officer was able to intervene. The day after the incident, the LCGC sent $211,400 to Aguirre’s bank account.

The LCGC was pulling in big money, its fundraisers suggest. In addition to Aguirre’s GoFundMe, which earned at least $2,600, the group operated its own GoFundMe, which raised nearly $70,000 from mid-October to mid-December.

The LCGC also registered as a nonprofit—a status that would be useful when networking with a burgeoning movement of voter fraud hoaxers.

Shortly after Trump’s loss in November 2020, a website called Every Legal Vote purported to show evidence that Trump had actually won. The site billed itself as something of a supergroup among the emerging field of election-denialist organizations.

“This site is a labor of love by American citizens,” Every Legal Vote’s now-deleted “about us” page reads. “Our Founding Sponsors: The Economic WarRoom, Allied Security Operations Group, Liberty Center for God and Country are building a coalition concerned with protecting our sacred elections from tampering and fraud.”

The Economic War Room is a web series run by Kevin Freeman, a senior fellow at an Islamophobic thinktank, the Colorado Times Recorder noted when a local politico promoted the Every Legal Vote site.

Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG) became notorious in its own right, after it was involved in an effort to “audit” voting machines in Antrim County, Michigan. Its founder, Russell Ramsland Jr., authored a report about their findings that was wildly misleading, in part because he confused the states of Michigan and Minnesota, using their voting data interchangeably. The ASOG report nevertheless became a popular document in Trumpist circles, with Rudy Giuliani citing it as evidence of fraud.

The ASOG was also a leading candidate to conduct a doomed “audit” in Maricopa County, Arizona, although they were dropped after observers pointed to their botched Antrim County report. Texts from officials involved in the Maricopa County audit reveal that ASOG was also working with Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel credited with distributing a now-infamous PowerPoint presentation on how lawmakers could invalidate the 2020 election and install Trump as president.

The LCGC did not return requests for comment about its relationship with the ASOG. But at least one ASOG fundraiser underscored a financial link between the two groups.

“ASOG urgently needs your help to continue their vitally important research,” read the fundraising plea on an election-denial website early this year. The fundraiser encouraged donors to give their money to LCGC, which was a nonprofit.

“For 501c3 Donations: Write checks to Liberty Center for God and Country,” the fundraiser said. It did not include LCGC’s address in Katy, Texas. Instead it asked supporters to send money to ASOG’s Addison, Texas offices, where a staffer “will get them to LCGC and insure your donation receipt.”
________________

How deeply shocking...and by "deeply shocking" I mean "of surprise to absolutely no one outside of Cult45"

[statquo]

Cyber Ninjas shutting down after judge fines Arizona audit company $50K a day

Cyber Ninjas, a firm hired by the Arizona state Senate to conduct a review of Maricopa County’s election results, on Thursday announced that it is shutting down after a county government report slammed the firm and a judge ordered it to pay $50,000 a day in fines.

Sam Levine, a reporter for The Guardian, first reported the news of Cyber Ninjas closing down on Thursday, tweeting that CEO “Doug Logan and the rest of the employees have been let go and Cyber Ninjas is being shut down.”

The news followed a Thursday order that Cyber Ninjas turn over public records to The Arizona Republic, including emails and text messages, to comply with an August ruling — or face $50,000 in fines per day.

The firm was hired to conduct an audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County following former President Trump's claims the election was stolen from him. Arizona was a swing state that Biden won narrowly.

Cyber Ninjas, which says it recounted 2.1 million ballots, confirmed Biden beat Trump in the state but claimed in its September draft report that thousands of ballots had issues, including duplicate ballots, voters who cast ballots multiple times and unregistered voters participating in the election.

Maricopa County released a report this month, arguing Cyber Ninjas made 22 misleading claims, 41 inaccurate claims and 13 claims that were false.

The county said Cyber Ninjas "made faulty and inaccurate conclusions about more than 53,000 ballots in 22 different categories."

"An empty piñata is a pretty accurate description of the 'audit' as a whole," the county tweeted Thursday.

[Officer of Engineers]

What fucking idiot got the stupid idea to hire hackers to do an audit? Something they clearly have no idea what they're doing!

https://cyberninjas.com/

[TopHatter]

What fucking idiot got the stupid idea to hire hackers to do an audit? Something they clearly have no idea what they're doing!

https://cyberninjas.com/

Someone who hires "only the best people". That's who.

[TopHatter]

A former GOP Senate candidate — who filmed himself setting his MAGA hat on fire — says he'll donate $1 million to charity if Trump goes on a live debate with him in Arizona

An Arizona businessman who ran for US Senate in 2020 — and who recently torched his "Make America Great Again" hat using a flamethrower — has challenged former President Donald Trump to a live debate at the latter's upcoming rally and offered to donate $1 million to charity if Trump accepts.

Daniel McCarthy, who ran for Arizona's Republican Senate nomination in 2020 but lost to former Sen. Martha McSally, tweeted a strongly worded video message for Trump on Wednesday.

"Hey, Donald Trump. This is Daniel McCarthy in Arizona. The world is waking up to your massive grift," McCarthy said while seated in the cab of a truck. "Please stop with the smoke and mirrors and with these audits.

"Stop with your fundraising, stop establishment-candidate endorsements," McCarthy continued. "Stop pushing this gene therapy, the sauce." It's not immediately clear what McCarthy was referring to.

He noted that Trump would be arriving in Arizona on January 15 for "another one of your do-nothing, rah-rah-session rallies" and suggested that Trump take 30 minutes of stage time to debate McCarthy or answer his questions in front of the former president's supporters.

The businessman, who, according to his biography, works in skin care and real estate, pledged that if the former president accepts, he can choose from six charities listed on his website to donate $1 million. The charities include a mobile anti-abortion "crisis pregnancy" center, a gun-rights lobbying group, and a legal defense fund for the "QAnon Shaman" Jacob Chansley.

Trump announced on Tuesday that he would be delivering public remarks at the Arizona rally after canceling a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida that had been scheduled for the anniversary of the Capitol riot.

In the video, McCarthy proceeded to verbally attack Trump's presidency. "Think about all the things you've done that you've not been held accountable for," he said.

"You ushered in medical tyranny. You exploded our national debt. You relinquished our sovereignty with the USMCA trade deal. You passed more gun laws than Obama did with Fix NICS," McCarthy continued, referring to Trump's 2018 signing of the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement and a 2017 gun law.

McCarthy also said he believes he lost the 2020 Arizona GOP primary because it was "stolen."

He said Trump had failed to prevent election fraud — Trump's false claim that the presidential election was stolen from him — even though McCarthy said his team "months in advance warned you that we were stolen from in the Senate primary."

McCarthy went on to blast Trump further, saying that the former president surrounded himself with "swamp creatures for four years" and that he had set up his "most loyal supporters" — those detained in connection with the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021.

"I look forward to seeing you on January 15," McCarthy said, "Although I know you won't do it because you're a little bitch."

McCarthy is then shown exiting his truck and using a flamethrower to torch a MAGA hat.

McCarthy and Trump did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.
__________

[TopHatter]

Forged election documents in Michigan and Arizona
As Trump's team pushed its discredited voter fraud narrative, the National Archives received forged certificates of ascertainment declaring him and then-Vice President Mike Pence the winners of both Michigan and Arizona and their electors after the 2020 election. Public records requests show the secretaries of state for those states sent those certificates to the Jan. 6 panel, along with correspondence between the National Archives and state officials about the documents.

Spokespeople for the Michigan and Arizona secretaries of state declined to comment on the documents. The offices confirmed that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, both Democrats, and their staff met with the panel in November.

“They mostly discussed election administration in Arizona, the 2020 elections, threats/harassment directed toward the office, and the Cyber Ninja’s partisan ballot review,” said Hobbs' spokesperson C. Murphy Hebert.

Benson and her staff took questions from the committee on the 2020 election and events leading up to the Jan. 6 riot, according to Tracy Wimmer, a spokesperson for Benson.

The National Archives sent emails to the Arizona secretary of state on Dec. 11, 2020, passing along the forged certificates “for your awareness” and informing the state officials the Archives would not accept them.

Arizona then took legal action against at least one of the groups who sent in the fake documents, sending a cease and desist letter to a pro-Trump "sovereign citizen" group telling them to stop using the state seal and referring the matter to the state attorney general.

“By affixing the state seal to documents containing false and misleading information about the results of Arizona’s November 3, 2020 General Election, you undermine the confidence in our democratic institutions,” Hobbs wrote to one of the pro-Trump groups.

That group’s leader, Lori Osiecki, had told the Arizona Republic in December 2020 that she decided to send in the certificates after taking part in post-election rallies and after attending a daylong meeting in Phoenix that had included Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.

The group that forged the Michigan certification had not used the state seal, and it appears state officials there took no further action after the Archives rejected it.
_____________

Still more (attempted) election fraud.

[TopHatter]

Trump Rage-Quits NPR Interview After He’s Grilled on Election-Fraud Lies

Donald Trump abruptly ended an interview with NPR on Tuesday after he was repeatedly called out on his baseless claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

A video of the interview, published Wednesday morning, shows Trump becoming increasingly irritated as NPR’s Steve Inskeep asks him why he’s still pushing debunked conspiracy theories about his 2020 defeat.

After Inskeep told the ex-president that his fraud claims have repeatedly been proven false, the reporter asked Trump if he’ll refuse to endorse any Republican candidates who dispute his lies about the 2020 election.

Then, Trump ended the call.

The video shows Inskeep asking Trump: “If I can just move on to ask, are you telling Republicans in 2022 that they must press your case on the past election in order to get your endorsement? Is that an absolute?”

The ex-president responded: “They are going to do whatever they want to do—whatever they have to do, they’re going to do. But the ones that are smart—the ones that know, you take a look at. Again, you take a look at how Kari Lake is doing, running for governor. She’s very big on this issue. She's leading by a lot. People have no idea how big this issue is, and they don't want it to happen again. It shouldn't be allowed to happen, and they don't want it to happen again.”

Inskeep then tried to move on by saying “I want to...” before Trump interrupted him: “And the only way it’s not going to happen again is you have to solve the problem of the presidential rigged election of 2020.”

Inskeep once again tried to ask his next question, before Trump signed off with the statement: “So Steve, thank you very much. I appreciate it.”

The transcript ends with Inskeep trying but failing to keep Trump on the line to ask him about his alleged incitement of the Capitol riot, saying: “Woah, woah, woah, I have one more question. I want to ask about a court hearing yesterday on Jan. 6. Judge Amit Mehta. He’s gone. OK.”

NPR reported that it had been trying to arrange an interview with Trump for six years before he finally called on Tuesday. According to the public-radio network, Trump had agreed to talk for 15 minutes, but hung up after just nine.

In those nine minutes, Trump faced a brutal line of questioning on his election conspiracy theories and the transcript shows that he was unable to cope with being asked about the glaring holes in his arguments. Since he left office last year, Trump has rarely granted interviews to reporters who haven’t been happy to play along with his election-fraud claims.

At one point, Inskeep flatly tells Trump that one of his claims is nonsense.

Trump posed the rhetorical question: “Go into Detroit and just ask yourself, is it true that there are more votes than there are voters? Look at Pennsylvania. Look at Philadelphia. Is it true that there were far more votes than there were voters?”

Inskeep informs him: “It is not true.”

Trump then went on to brag about the number of votes he got in 2020, even though that is obviously lower than the number of votes cast for Joe Biden. Inskeep pointed out that contradiction to Trump, who seemed to argue that only his votes were legitimate.

“You think Biden got 80 million votes? Because I don’t believe it,” Trump told the interviewer. Inskeep responded: “It’s true that you got more than any sitting president in the election you’ve disputed.”

The former president then went on to argue: “How come Biden couldn’t attract 20 people for a crowd? How come when he went to speak in different locations, nobody came to watch, but all of a sudden he got 80 million votes? Nobody believes that, Steve. Nobody believes that.”

The interviewer then came out with the withering response: “If you’ll forgive me, maybe because the election was about you.”
_________

Like listening to a 5 year throw yet another temper tantrum....

....but at least he's anti-abortion and anti-immigrant!