The US 2020 Presidential Election & Attempts To Overturn It

[TopHatter]

Bill Barr says he's 'not sure we would have had a transition at all' to Biden if DOJ hadn't investigated Trump's baseless voter fraud claims
Former Attorney General William Barr said he was "not sure we would have had a transition at all" if the Justice Department had not investigated Donald Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud and found them baseless.

In a closed-door deposition, Barr suggested to the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol that Trump might not have left office voluntarily if DOJ had not proactively examined the election fraud claims ahead of Joe Biden's inauguration.

"I sort of shudder to think what the situation would have been if the position of the department was: We're not even going to look at this until after Biden's in office," Barr said in the recorded deposition, a portion of which the committee aired Thursday at a hearing focused on Trump's effort to pressure the Justice Department to advance his false election fraud claims.

Barr sat for a deposition with the House January 6 committee in early June, shortly before the congressional panel began holding public hearings. The House committee has featured footage from that interview prominently, turning Barr — who said he would vote for Trump again over a Democrat — into an unlikely star of the high-profile hearings.

At the first hearing, on June 9, the House committee played footage from Barr's deposition in which the former attorney general recalled telling Trump that his election claims were "bullshit."

On Thursday, the committee played a portion of the deposition in which investigators asked Barr why he had authorized election fraud investigations at all rather than "follow the regular course of action and let the investigations occur much later in time."

Barr said he believed the "responsible thing to do was to be in a position to have a view as to whether or not there was fraud."

"Frankly, I think the fact that I put myself in the position that I could say that we had looked at this and didn't think there was fraud was really important," he added.
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Trump and his apologists have so much to answer for, it's hard to know where to begin.

[TopHatter]

Trump Now Claims He Won Wisconsin Since State Court Has Restricted Ballot Drop Boxes

Former President Donald Trump is now desperately attempting to snatch Wisconsin from the jaws of his defeat by suddenly claiming he won the state in the 2020 presidential election.

He didn’t.

His reasoning? Since the Wisconsin state Supreme Court issued a ruling Friday sharply curtailing the number of drop boxes for absentee ballots, that must mean all the votes in those boxes in November 2020 were somehow fake — and apparently were all marked for victor Joe Biden.

“This means I won the very closely contested (not actually) Wisconsin Presidential race because they used these corrupt and scandal-ridden Scam Boxes,” he falsely insisted in a post Friday on Truth Social.


(Photo: Screen Shot/Truth Social/Donald Trump)


There is no evidence that the vote in Wisconsin, or anywhere else in the nation, was fraudulent. Dozens of court cases and several recounts state by state verified Biden’s victory.

Members of Trump’s own Department of Justice found no evidence of fraud after extensive investigations. Trump’s handpicked attorney general, William Barr, called the election fraud claims “bullshit.”

“These allegations were simply not true,” Richard Donoghue, the acting deputy attorney general at the time, told Trump, he testified last month before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. He added that Trump eventually said: “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”

Trump and Republicans have claimed that drop boxes facilitated cheating but have offered no evidence.

The conservative-controlled Wisconsin court ruled that under current law, absentee ballot drop boxes may only be placed in election offices and that no one other than the voter can return a ballot in person. “Ballot drop boxes appear nowhere in the detailed statutory system for absentee voting,” Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote.

There’s no move in Wisconsin to switch Biden’s victory to Trump.

Critics say the GOP goal is to significantly decrease the number of votes, which is generally considered beneficial to Republicans. One way to do that it to make voting as inconvenient as possible.

Trump said on Fox News in 2020 that “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again” if “voting levels” rose. (Research has shown, however, that mail-in ballots don’t appear to give either party a distinct advantage.)

Trump continues to push for single-day, in-person voting in elections — prohibiting convenient mail-in ballots and early voting that 69% of American voters used in 2020. (Trump votes by mail.) That would be challenging especially for the disabled and the elderly, as well as for those working long hours or two jobs or juggling child care.

“Ultimately, we want same-day voting — one day — and only paper ballots,” Trump said to cheers at a rally in Nashville last month.
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"Ultimately, we need massive voter suppression in order to win elections"

Time for Hair Furor to take a nice long rest somewhere....say, Bellevue perhaps.

Although, at least he's got an excuse. There's countless idiots that are still obediently bleating "Oh my stars! Another Big Steal Conspiracy Theory! I need to examine this carefully and withhold judgement until then!"

[tbm3fan]

"Ultimately, we need massive voter suppression in order to win elections"

Time for Hair Furor to take a nice long rest somewhere....say, Bellevue perhaps.

Although, at least he's got an excuse. There's countless idiots that are still obediently bleating "Oh my stars! Another Big Steal Conspiracy Theory! I need to examine this carefully and withhold judgement until then!"

Contrast that with my county of Contra Costa which uses lots of drop boxes scattered about the County for ballots. We also use several manned locations where you can drop them off if you want. Probably one within a few miles of every one of our 1.162 million residents. Of course, you can still drop in any USPS mailbox or leave on your mailbox for the postal worker to pick up when delivering your mail like I do. Easy as can be as it should be since it is everyone's right to vote. Cheating is not at these boxes but at the restrictions put in place to prevent the use of these methods.

and I still would like to punch Trump in the nose...

[TopHatter]

Idaho Republicans poised to reject 2020 election results
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The Idaho Republican Party will consider 31 resolutions at its three-day convention starting Thursday, including one already adopted by Texas Republicans that President Joe Biden isn’t the legitimate leader of the country.

The Idaho resolution in the deeply conservative state that Donald Trump won with 64% of the vote in 2020 is nearly identical to the Texas resolution that was passed last month, stating: “We reject the certified results of the 2020 presidential election; and we hold that acting president Joseph Robinette Biden was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.”

Both the Idaho and Texas resolutions contend that secretaries of state circumvented their state legislatures, even though both states have Republican secretaries of state.

Jim Jones, a former chief justice of the Idaho Supreme Court as well as a former Republican state attorney general, called the resolution rejecting the 2020 presidential election results “asinine,” noting multiple courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, rejected attempts to overturn the election.

“(The Idaho Republican Party) has gotten so caught up in conspiracy theories, meaningless culture war issues, that they have quit being able to function as a meaningful political party,” he said. “We have got to get away from this authoritarian streak that has infected the Idaho Republican Party, as well as a good part of the nation, because it’s absolutely tearing our country apart.”

Idaho's resolution goes further than the Texas resolution in that it falsely states that audits found the vote count for the 2020 election to be fraudulent in Wisconsin and Arizona.

In Wisconsin, election fraud claims have been dismissed by courts or rejected by the state's bipartisan election commission.

In Arizona, where Republicans submitted a slate of fake electors, Trump supporters hired inexperienced consultants to run “a forensic audit” that was discredited. FBI agents looking into events surrounding Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss recently subpoenaed the Republican Arizona Senate president, who orchestrated a discredited review of the election.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a Trump ally, even accused Idaho of allowing election fraud. But the Idaho secretary of state said a partial recount of ballots validated the accuracy of the 2020 results.

Jaclyn Kettler, a Boise State University political scientist, said revisiting the 2020 election by different state or local Republican party officials “seems to be an issue that is commanding a lot of attention still in the Republican party. It may continue to cast doubt on our elections and increase fears of voters that their votes are not being counted.”

Among the other proposed Idaho Republican Party resolutions this week is one calling for not recognizing “imaginary identities,” a resolution aimed at transgender people.

Multiple resolutions involve voting, several focusing on people not deemed sufficiently Republican voting in Republican primaries.

One resolution, titled “A Resolution to Protect Rural Representation,” calls for changing Idaho’s system for statewide elections into a national-style electoral college, a process that sometimes leads to candidates winning without receiving the most votes.

Trump, for example, in 2016 defeated Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by winning more electoral college votes despite losing the popular vote by about 3 million votes. The proposed system for Idaho would tally electoral votes from counties. Such a change in Idaho would require changing the state’s constitution.

Another proposed resolution calls for privatizing Idaho Public Television, a long-time target of far-right Republicans.

The Idaho Republican Party will also elect officers during the gathering. First-term incumbent Chair Tom Luna, who served two terms as the state's schools chief, is being challenged by Republican Rep. Dorothy Moon. Moon ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary in May for secretary of state, contending the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent and Biden wasn't president.

Mainstream Idaho Republicans, who would be considered far-right in many states, have dominated the state for three decades. But they have become targets of far-right members of their own party and labeled as RINOs — Republican in name only.

The May primary was a mixed bag for the two groups, and the power struggle will likely continue at the convention.

In the primary, first-term incumbent Gov. Brad Little crushed Trump-backed Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, and most other statewide races went to more mainstream Idaho Republicans. But Raul Labrador, a favorite of the Tea Party during his eight years in the U.S. House, defeated five-term Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, well known for a strategy of simply calling balls and strikes that oftentimes irked his Republican colleagues when he gave them legal advice they didn't want to hear.

Several far-right lawmakers in the House lost their seats, but the Senate turned decidedly more conservative with mainstream losses that included the co-chairman of the legislature's powerful budget-setting committee.
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[TopHatter]

Conservative group finds ‘absolutely no evidence of widespread fraud’ in 2020 election

Eight prominent conservatives released a 72-page report Thursday refuting claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election in dozens of unsuccessful court cases brought forth by former President Trump and his allies.

The group — which includes former federal judges, Republican senators and Republican-appointed officials — said they reviewed all 64 court cases Trump and his allies initiated challenging the election outcome, saying they had reached an “unequivocal” conclusion that the claims were unsupported by evidence.

“We conclude that Donald Trump and his supporters had their day in court and failed to produce substantive evidence to make their case,” the group wrote.

The eight conservatives repeatedly condemned the election fraud claims, but said they have not changed their allegiance to the Democratic Party and have no “ill will” toward Trump nor his supporters.

The group consists of former Sen. John Danforth (R-Mo.); longtime Republican lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg; former federal Judge Thomas Griffith; David Hoppe, chief of staff to former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.); former federal judge J. Michael Luttig; former federal judge Michael McConnell; Theodore Olson, solicitor general under former President George W. Bush; and former Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.).

“We urge our fellow conservatives to cease obsessing over the results of the 2020 election, and to focus instead on presenting candidates and ideas that offer a positive vision for overcoming our current difficulties and bringing greater peace, prosperity and liberty to our nation,” the group wrote.

The Hill has reached out to a Trump spokesperson for comment.

The group’s report includes an analysis of the claims in each court case challenging the election results in six swing states President Biden narrowly won in 2020: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The cases included unfounded widespread claims of improperly counted ballots, rigged voting machines, mail-in ballot irregularities, ineligible voters who cast ballots and officials who blocked access for observers in polling places.

The claims have also been a focus of numerous investigations, including the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and a criminal investigation led by the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney.

Two members of the group, Ginsberg and Luttig, have testified publicly before the House panel. Luttig served as an informal adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence in the lead-up to Jan. 6, telling Pence he could not constitutionally overturn the Electoral College votes.

The eight conservatives acknowledged the election administration was not “perfect” Thursday, noting a relatively small number of cases where authorities found irregularities.

“But there is absolutely no evidence of fraud in the 2020 presidential election on the magnitude necessary to shift the result in any state, let alone the nation as a whole,” they wrote.

“In fact, there was no fraud that changed the outcome in even a single precinct,” the report continued. “It is wrong, and bad for our country, for people to propagate baseless claims that President Biden’s election was not legitimate.”

Beyond the court cases, the conservatives’ report also discussed post-election reviews conducted outside of the legal system by the six swing states, all of which the group said also “failed to support” Trump’s allegations.

In one example, the group noted the Arizona’s state Senate’s review of Maricopa County election results, which was conducted by private firm Cyber Ninjas. The firm’s final analysis found 99 additional votes for Biden and 261 fewer votes for Trump, according to the report.

Cyber Ninjas later shut down after a judge ordered it to pay $50,000 per day in fines until it turned over public records to The Arizona Republic.

In another example, the conservatives referenced a full manual recount of Georgia ballots by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), which confirmed Biden’s victory in the state.

Trump had pressured Raffensperger in a now-infamous call to “find” enough votes to reverse Biden’s victory in the state.

“There is no principle of our republic more fundamental than the right of the people to elect our leaders and for their votes to be counted accurately,” the conservatives wrote. “Efforts to thwart the people’s choice are deeply undemocratic and unpatriotic.”
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These conservatives will be promptly branded as "RINOs" or "left/extreme left" by Cult45

[Albany Rifles]

These conservatives will be promptly branded as "RINOs" or "left/extreme left" by Cult45


These 8 folks are about as rock-ribbed Republican Conservatives as they come. Ted Olsen, who lost his wife on September 11 when United Flight 11 she was on smashed into the Pentagon, was an acolyte of Justice Scalia. These folks have also stood by their party. I may disagree with much of their politics but these guys believe in America & the Constitution, something...well, you know...

[TopHatter]

These conservatives will be promptly branded as "RINOs" or "left/extreme left" by Cult45


These 8 folks are about as rock-ribbed Republican Conservatives as they come. Ted Olsen, who lost his wife on September 11 when United Flight 11 she was on smashed into the Pentagon, was an acolyte of Justice Scalia. These folks have also stood by their party. I may disagree with much of their politics but these guys believe in America & the Constitution, something...well, you know...

All of which is meaningless now of course.

[TopHatter]

No major problems with ballot drop boxes in 2020, AP finds

ATLANTA (AP) — The expanded use of drop boxes for mailed ballots during the 2020 election did not lead to any widespread problems, according to an Associated Press survey of state election officials across the U.S. that revealed no cases of fraud, vandalism or theft that could have affected the results.

The findings from both Republican- and Democratic-controlled states run contrary to claims made by former President Donald Trump and his allies who have intensely criticized their use and falsely claimed they were a target for fraud.

Drop boxes are considered by many election officials to be safe and secure, and have been used to varying degrees by states across the political spectrum. Yet conspiracy theories and efforts by Republicans to eliminate or restrict them since the 2020 election persist. This month, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled that drop boxes are not allowed under state law and can no longer be widely used.

Drop boxes also are a focal point of the film “2,000 Mules,” which used a flawed analysis of cellphone location data and ballot drop box surveillance footage to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election.

In response to the legislation and conspiracy theories surrounding drop boxes, the AP sent a survey in May to the top elections office in each state seeking information about whether the boxes were tied to fraudulent votes or stolen ballots, or whether the boxes and the ballots they contained were damaged.

All but five states responded to the questions.

None of the election offices in states that allowed the use of drop boxes in 2020 reported any instances in which the boxes were connected to voter fraud or stolen ballots. Likewise, none reported incidents in which the boxes or ballots were damaged to the extent that election results would have been affected.

A previous AP investigation found far too few cases of potential voter fraud in the six battleground states where Trump disputed his loss to President Joe Biden to affect the outcome.

A number of states — including Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas — said they do not allow the use of drop boxes. Some had not allowed them before the 2020 election, when the coronavirus pandemic prompted wider use of mailed ballots. In states where they are used, secretaries of state or election commissioners may not be aware of every incident involving a drop box if it was not reported to their office by a county or other local jurisdiction.

Drop boxes have been a mainstay in states with extensive mail voting for years and had not raised any alarms. They were used widely in 2020 as election officials sought to provide alternative ways to cast ballots with the COVID-19 outbreak creating concerns about in-person voting. The boxes also gave voters a direct method for submitting their ballots, rather than sending them through the U.S. Postal Service and worrying about delivery delays.

Starting months before the 2020 presidential election, Trump and his allies have made a series of unfounded claims suggesting that drop boxes open the door to voter fraud. Republican state lawmakers, as part of their push to add new voting restrictions, have in turn placed rules around when and where the boxes could be accessed.

Arizona Assistant Secretary of State Allie Bones said drop boxes are “safe and secure” and might even be considered more secure than Postal Service mailboxes. She said bipartisan teams in the state collect ballots from the drop boxes and take them directly to secure election facilities, following so-called chain-of-custody protocols.

“Not to say that there’s anything wrong with USPS, and I think they do a great job as well, but the hysteria around ballot drop boxes I think is just a made-up thing to create doubt and fear,” Bones said.

Arizona has had robust mail-in voting for years that includes the use of drop boxes, and in the AP survey, the state reported no damage, stolen ballots or fraud associated with them in 2020. Nevertheless, Trump-aligned lawmakers in the state pushed for legislation that would ban drop boxes, but were stymied by Democrats and several Republicans who disagreed with the strategy.

Utah is a state controlled by Republicans that also has widespread use of mailed ballots and no limits on the number of drop boxes a county can deploy. Jackson Murphy, spokesman for Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican who is the state’s top election official, said in the AP survey that Henderson encourages counties to make secure drop boxes accessible to voters.

Of the states responding to the survey, 15 indicated that drop boxes were in use before 2020 and 22 have no limits on how many can be used in this fall’s election. At least five states take the extra step of setting a minimum number of drop boxes required.

Republican-led Florida and North Dakota and Democratic-led New York did not respond. Montana and Virginia did, but did not answer the survey questions related to the 2020 election.

Last year, five states added new restrictions to ballot drop boxes, according to research by the Voting Rights Lab. That included Georgia, where President Joe Biden won a narrow victory and where drop boxes were allowed under an emergency rule prompted by the pandemic.

Georgia Republicans say their changes have resulted in drop boxes being a permanent option for voters, requiring all counties to have at least one. But the legislation, which includes a formula of one box per 100,000 registered voters, means fewer will be available in the state’s most populous communities compared with 2020.

Iowa lawmakers last year approved legislation to limit drop boxes to one per county. Previously, state law did not say how many drop boxes counties could use. This year, Louisiana, Missouri and South Carolina have passed laws effectively prohibiting drop boxes, according to the Voting Rights Lab, which researches state election law changes.

Along with incidents recorded in news reports, the AP survey found a handful of cases in 2020 in which drop boxes were damaged.

Officials in Washington state said there were instances when drop boxes were hit by vehicles, but that no ballot tampering had been reported. Massachusetts election officials said one box was damaged by arson in October 2020 but that most of the ballots inside were still legible enough for voters to be identified, notified and sent replacements.

A drop box also was set on fire in Los Angeles County in 2020, but a local election official said the vast majority of the ballots that were damaged were able to be recovered and voters provided new ballots. Another drop box in California was temporarily closed because of a wildfire.

“The irony is they were put in place to respond to a problem with the post office and make sure people had a secure way of returning their ballots,” said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat. “And so there’s no actual legitimate concern except for, again, potential external threats or people who have been radicalized through misinformation to try to tamper with drop boxes to make a point.”

North Carolina provides an example of how deep-seated the misinformation has become. The state does not allow drop boxes and did not use them during the 2020 election.

“And despite that fact, people are still claiming drop box fraud must have occurred in North Carolina,” said Patrick Gannon, public information director for the State Board of Elections. “You can’t make this up. Oh wait. Yes, you can.”

In Wisconsin, Republicans had supported the use of drop boxes before Trump seized on mailed ballots as part of his unsubstantiated claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that found ballot drop boxes were not allowed under state law also said no one other than the voter can return their ballot in person to a local clerk’s office or alternate site.

Some voters said they were frustrated by the ruling.

Kelly O’Keefe Boettcher of Milwaukee said she cast her ballot in a drop box in 2020 because of safety concerns during the pandemic and is upset that they’ll no longer be an option for her or for voters who are less able to get to the polls.

“Drop boxes are accessible; they are egalitarian,” she said. “To watch them go, I feel, people can say it’s not voter suppression. But it is.”

Wisconsin state Rep. Tim Ramthun, a Republican candidate for governor, reintroduced a resolution this past week for the GOP-controlled Legislature to decertify Biden’s victory there, adding the state Supreme Court ruling on drop boxes as one reason to do so. Trump also renewed his calls for decertification in Wisconsin, citing the ruling.

According to the AP survey, the Wisconsin Elections Commission said it is not aware of any cases in 2020 in which drop boxes were damaged, had submitted ballots stolen or destroyed, or were used for fraudulent ballots.

“Isn’t a mailbox a secure place to put a letter?” asked Dave Wanninger, who with his wife used a ballot drop box in a Milwaukee public library in 2020. “Why would a drop box be any different?”
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[TopHatter]

Trump ignores Republican calls to avoid repeating false election claims

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump ignored pressure from some fellow Republicans to avoid repeating his false claims about a stolen 2020 election on Tuesday, insisting that he won his second bid for the White House and would not allow his perceived enemies to bar a return.

In his first speech in Washington since leaving office 18 months ago, the former U.S. president stopped short of declaring his candidacy in the 2024 presidential election but predicted Republicans would retake the Senate, House of Representatives and the White House.

"I ran the first time and I won. Then I ran a second time and I did much better ... and you know what? That's going to be the story for a long time, what a disgrace it was. But we may just have to do it again," Trump said in a 93-minute speech to the conservative America First Policy Institute.

Mike Pence, who was vice president under Trump and may seek the White House in 2024, distanced himself from Trump's repeated election falsehoods, saying at a separate event earlier in the U.S. capital that conservatives needed to focus on the future to win.

"I don't know that the president and I differ on issues. But we may differ on focus. I truly do believe that elections are about the future," Pence said across town at the Heritage Foundation think tank.

"In order to win, conservatives need to do more than criticize and complain. We must unite our movement behind a bold, optimistic agenda," he said.

Trump used his speech to paint a picture of an America plagued by crime, violence, drugs and invasions of illegal migrants. He predicted a future federal government controlled by Republicans that he said should impose the death penalty on drug dealers, use the National Guard to stop violence in states and cities and relocate the urban homeless to tent encampments on the outskirts of U.S. cities.

Last week the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol depicted Trump as ignoring pleas of family and aides to intervene as he watched his supporters on live TV attack the seat of Congress for hours in a failed bid to stop certification of his loss.

Trump dismissed the panel as "hacks and thugs."

"They really want to damage me so I can no longer go back to work for you. And I don't think that's going to happen," Trump said.

Trump remains the leading figure in the Republican Party. But while he flirts with a 2024 presidential run, his standing has weakened slightly, with some 40% of Republicans saying he is at least partly to blame for the Jan. 6 riot compared with 33% in a poll conducted as the hearings got under way six weeks ago, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

The Jan. 6 committee is trying to build a case that Trump's efforts to overturn his defeat by Democrat Joe Biden in November 2020 constitute dereliction of duty and illegal conduct, rendering him unfit to return to the White House.

Waning popularity could encourage potential rivals to run, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is among those maneuvering for possible Republican primary challenges in 2024.

Signs of new momentum have emerged in a U.S. Justice Department probe into the Capitol assault and an alleged scheme by Trump allies to overturn the election with fake electors.

Former top Pence aide Marc Short last week became the highest profile official to appear before a federal grand jury investigating the two issues.
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I see Fuckface Von Clownshoe continues to go all in with his Mein Kampf routine....

But but but whatabout Hunter Biden's laptop!!

[TopHatter]

Arizona AG says most alleged 2020 dead voters were alive

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said Monday his investigators found just one dead voter after thoroughly reviewing findings from a partisan review of the 2020 election that alleged 282 ballots were cast in the name of someone who had died.

The finding by the Republican attorney general, who is running for U.S. Senate in Tuesday's primary, further discredits the review conducted last year. The review was led by an inexperienced firm, Cyber Ninjas, and conducted largely by supporters of Donald Trump who falsely believe the election was stolen from him.

“Our agents investigated all individuals that Cyber Ninjas reported as dead, and many were very surprised to learn that they were allegedly deceased,” Brnovich wrote in a letter to state Senate President Karen Fann, who used her subpoena power to obtain ballots, tabulators and election data and hired Cyber Ninjas for what she called a “forensic audit.”

Brnovich did not say whether any charges had been filed in connection with the one substantiated incident, and his spokesman, Ryan Anderson, did not respond to a phone call and text message. All other people listed by Cyber Ninjas as deceased “were found to be current voters," Brnovich wrote.

Combined with other reports of dead voters, Brnovich’s Election Integrity Unit investigated a combined 409 names and produced “only a handful of potential cases.”

Brnovich vouched for the legitimacy of the election immediately after President Joe Biden's victory but later publicized his investigation of the Cyber Ninjas allegations as he sought Trump's endorsement for his Senate campaign. Trump ultimately released a scathing statement saying Brnovich wasn't doing enough to advance his claims of fraud and endorsed businessman Blake Masters.

Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence the election was tainted. The former president’s allegations of fraud were also roundly rejected by courts, including by judges Trump appointed.

The Cyber Ninjas review looked at data, machines and ballots from Maricopa County, the state's largest. It produced a report that experts described as riddled with errors, bias and flawed methodology. Still, even that partisan review came up with a vote tally that would not have altered the outcome, finding that Biden won by 360 more votes than the official results.
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The problem is that they got the wrong company to do the audit. They were supposed to get Mutant Ninja Turtles, but they were booked, so they had to use fake ninja turtles.

[Albany Rifles]

The problem is that they got the wrong company to do the audit. They were supposed to get Mutant Ninja Turtles, but they were booked, so they had to use fake ninja turtles.

I wonder how he will fare in today's GOP primary...interested to see the results.

[TopHatter]

How Team Trump Breached the Election System
MAGA activists’ schemes to obtain voting equipment were more far-reaching, and more successful, than previously known.

After the 2020 election, Donald Trump’s legal activists went to great lengths concocting scenarios about how ballots might have been compromised. In the last few weeks, however, new reporting has revealed that it was Team Trump itself that was tampering with election infrastructure. And their attempts to breach the system went on for months after Trump left office.

The “fraudit” that dragged on last year as the incompetent Cyber Ninjas bumbled around Arizona almost seems like a professional operation compared to these previously undisclosed, under-the-radar efforts undertaken by Trump supporters in other states. Although clumsy, these maneuvers were remarkably nefarious.

For the most part, they were pretty easy to carry out, too.

“We scanned every freaking ballot,” Georgia businessman and MAGA activist Scott Hall said in a 2021 phone call. (A recording of the call has been filed to the Fulton County court.) Hall recounted how he chartered a plane of data experts to examine machines in Coffee County, Georgia. Trump won the county by 40 percent, but Trump supporters wanted to prove how the systems could be manipulated, not necessarily that the results in Trump-winning counties were false.

Hall went on, “I keep saying, guys, all of that effort, you know, the same people who went up to Michigan and did all that forensic stuff on the computers, and they sent their team down to Coffee County, Georgia, and they scanned all the equipment, imaged all the hard drives, and scanned every single ballot. You know, absentee in-person, in-person, and absentee by mail, and have gotten no feedback.”

“They imaged the hard drives?” the woman who recorded the phone call, Marilyn Marks, asked incredulously.

“Yes,” Hall replied.

“How in the world did you get permission to do that?” Marks asked.

Hall explained: “We basically had the entire elections committee there, okay, and they said, ‘We give you permission, go for it.’ So they went there and imaged every hard drive of every piece of equipment, you know all of the poll pads, everything.”

The CEO of the data solutions company SullivanStrickler, Paul Maggio, backed up Hall’s account. Maggio sent an email to Trump lawyer Sidney Powell on the morning of January 7, 2021 to notify her that his team was “on our way to Coffee County Georgia to collect what we can from the Election/ Voting machines and systems.” He later said things were “going well.” The Washington Post reported Powell contracted with SullivanStrickler for as much as $26,000 per job.

Neither the attack on the U.S. Capitol nor Congress’s official certification of Joe Biden’s victory slowed them down.

---

Remember that during the post-election interregnum, Team Trump lawyers were cooking up and digesting their own garbage—creating conspiracy theories about the stolen election, and then becoming convinced that those theories were true—and were desperate to get their hands on voting machines to find evidence. They almost convinced Trump to issue an executive order on December 16, 2020 that would have directed the defense secretary to seize voting machines. And while that order was ultimately never issued, the new reporting suggests that Team Trump’s rogue non-government lawyers—led by Powell and Rudy Giuliani—were successful in this entirely different scheme to confiscate election data that played out long after Trump left office.

According to the Washington Post, SullivanStrickler workers traveled not just to Georgia but also to Nevada and Michigan at the direction of Trump’s lawyers and later shared data with Trump allies, including a guest on Sean Hannity’s radio show.

As Hall explained, it wasn’t difficult for SullivanStrickler to obtain the data. In Georgia, former Coffee County elections supervisor Misty Hampton said she was happy to admit Hall and others into her office. She previously recorded a viral video that purported to show flaws in Dominion Voting Systems machines and said she wanted help verifying “that this election was not done true and correct.”

Hampton’s actions and remarks suggest she had utter disregard for the integrity of the election equipment. She provided unsupervised access to the system because, as she said, “I’m not a babysitter.”

“I don’t see why anything that is dealing with elections is not open to the public,” Hampton told the Post. “Why would you want to hide anything?”

A similar scheme played out in Michigan. The Michigan attorney general’s office recently laid out the findings of a criminal investigation into allegations about unauthorized third parties gaining access to tabulation machines between March 2021 and June 2021.

In a letter to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson asking for the appointment of a special prosecutor to take over the probe, the attorney general’s office said local election supervisors received calls from a state representative asking them to turn over township tabulators to “investigators.” In one case, “The representation was made that Person 1 was acting on behalf of the Sheriff’s Department and asked her to cooperate with him.” A handful of clerks obliged and agreed to deliver the tabulators.

A separate petition to the Michigan Prosecuting Attorneys Coordinating Council says that tabulators were taken to “hotels and/or AIRBNB’s” where people broke into the machines and performed “tests” on the equipment and printed “fake ballots.” The letter to Benson also said that in some cases, tabulators were handed off at a carpool lot off a highway exit and in the parking area of the Great Lakes Crossing shopping mall.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is asking for that special prosecutor because her Republican opponent in this coming November’s election, Matt DePerno, is implicated in the scheme—in fact, he is at the very center of it.

DePerno became prominent in MAGA activist circles after the 2020 election when he led a self-appointed “Election Lawsuit & Investigative Team” in Michigan’s Antrim County. Reuters linked DePerno to one of the seized tabulators by matching the serial number of the machine to a publicly released report written by one of DePerno’s allies. According to Reuters:

.
The photograph showed a printed record of a vote tabulator activity, including a string of ten-digit numbers. Reuters confirmed that those numbers matched the serial number of a Richfield [Township, Michigan] vote tabulator through public records obtained from the township. State officials had previously identified Richfield as the site of a voting-equipment security breach.

The Michigan AG’s office said that improperly accessed tabulators suffered damage and “should not be used in any future election.” Likewise, election equipment necessitated decommissioning in Arizona and Pennsylvania after MAGA activists damaged equipment in pursuit of their ill-fated election audits.

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Meanwhile, as the inquiries in Michigan and Georgia continue to play out, a Trump-aligned county clerk in Mesa County, Colorado, has been indicted and is facing trial for tampering with election equipment and misconduct.

Tina Peters and her deputy Belinda Knisley are accused of copying election software in the spring of 2021 as part of an effort to prove fraud in the 2020 election. Peters has remained defiant and ran for secretary of state, losing her primary and then raising and spending $250,000 on a recount that just confirmed her defeat.

As her legal and political ordeals threw her into the spotlight, Peters became something of a MAGA star, boosted by high-profile surrogates such as Mike Lindell. She told Colorado Public Radio, “If I have to be controversial to get the truth out, I’m not afraid of that. And that would make me dangerous, ‘cause I’m not afraid.”

Her dangerous, fearless attitude is about to be tested. Last week, Knisley agreed to a plea agreement to testify against Peters in exchange for no jail time.

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SullivanStrickler, the tech company that did all this work for Team Trump, claims it did nothing wrong in Georgia, Michigan, or Nevada, saying in a statement to the Washington Post that it had “no reason to believe that, as officers of the court, [the Team Trump] attorneys would ask or direct SullivanStrickler to do anything either improper or illegal.” We shall see whether that “we were just following orders” defense holds water.

And what about those “officers of the court”? We’re still some way off from any resolution to the investigations into the potential wrongdoing of Trump’s attorneys.

In Georgia, Trump’s top personal and campaign lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is a criminal target in the Fulton County district attorney’s broader investigation into Trump and his allies’ alleged election interference in the state. Investigators are also seeking further testimony from other high-profile Trump lawyers, such as Sidney Powell, Cleta Mitchell, and Jenna Ellis, as well as former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Moreover, none of this speaks to the congressional investigation led by the House January 6th Committee or the ongoing criminal investigation conducted by the Department of Justice. The post-2020 election saga had so many strands that it may take years to cut through all the tangles of deceit.

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[TopHatter]

GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw says election deniers privately admit the conspiracy to challenge Biden's legitimacy 'was always a lie'

• Rep. Dan Crenshaw in an episode of his podcast recalled arguments in the GOP over election denial claims.
• Behind closed doors, he said, GOP officials acknowledge fraudulent election claims are "a lie."
• Many politicians are say "things they know aren't true," he said. "It's a huge manipulation."

In a conversation on his "Hold These Truths" podcast, GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas said politicians and media personalities pushing election denial claims know "it was always a lie" and acknowledge the falsehoods behind closed doors.

"The good news is none of these people will ever have any power to overturn elections," Crenshaw said in an episode discussing rank-choice voting with Nick Troiano of Unite America. "It was always a lie. It was always a lie. The whole thing was always a lie. And it was a lie meant to rile people up and, you know, I've talked about this ad nauseam — it really made me angry."

Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL, went on to say there is "not even a process" for overturning the electoral college and challenging election results, as Trump-supporting Republicans intended to do to overturn the 2020 election. In private conversations between members of the Republican party and political personalities, Crenshaw said, he has had arguments over members perpetuating the lies.

"'We just, you know, people just need their last their like their last hurrah, like, they just need to feel like we fought one last time. Trust me, they'll be fine,'" Crenshaw said election deniers have said to him to justify their public support of an unfounded claim to the presidency. "And I was like, 'No, it won't. That's not what people believe. And that's not what you're telling them.'"

The Texas representative has taken a critical stance against the more extreme members of his party, publicly supporting Trump critic Rep. Adam Kinzinger and calling members of the Freedom Caucus — which includes controversial congresspeople like Reps. Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene — "grifters" and "performance artists."

"So we have a lot of people in the political world that are just willing to say things they know aren't true," Crenshaw said in his podcast. "And it's it's a huge manipulation."

Representatives for Crenshaw did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
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Crenshaw is unbelievably naďve to think that "none of these people will ever have any power to overturn elections"

[TopHatter]

Transcripts reveal link between Trump, Nevada fake electors
LAS VEGAS (AP) — New transcripts of closed-door testimony to the Jan. 6 House committee show Donald Trump and his allies had a direct hand in the Nevada Republican Party’s scheme to send a phony electoral certificate to Congress in 2020 in a last-ditch attempt to keep the former president in power.

The documents made public Wednesday evening included interviews with state party leader Michael McDonald and Republican National Committeeman Jim DeGraffenreid in February. Both men served as fake electors in Carson City on Dec. 14, 2020.

That day, six Nevada GOP members signed certificates falsely stating that Trump won Nevada in 2020 and sent them to Congress and the National Archives, where they were ultimately ignored. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is digging into the role that these fake electors in key battleground states had in Trump’s attempt to cling to power after his 2020 defeat.

McDonald and DeGraffenreid invoked Fifth Amendment protection hundreds of times in their separate interviews with the Jan. 6 committee, refusing to answer questions about their involvement and the extent to which Trump’s top allies had helped in orchestrating the plot.

Still, the transcripts provide an unprecedented view into the Trump team’s coordinated efforts in Nevada to overturn the results of the election — efforts that included direct communication between McDonald and the president himself.

On Nov. 4, 2020, for example, the day after the election, McDonald had a conference call with Trump, his then-chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorney Rudy Giuliani and son Eric Trump.

“They want full attack mode,” McDonald later wrote in a text message describing that call. “We’re gonna have a war room meeting in about an hour.”

Both McDonald and DeGraffenreid turned over their communications to the Jan. 6 committee related to the fake elector scheme. The FBI also seized McDonald’s cellphone in June as part of an investigation into the scheme.

Those documents, detailed at length in the transcripts, included text messages, emails and internal memorandums distributed by the national GOP arm; handwritten charts, templates for press releases and the phony certificate itself; and talking points “explaining the rationale for the electors.”

The planning was extensive, the transcripts show, and began as early as four days before the election, when state party officials began discussing whether Nevada’s Republican secretary of state, Barbara Cegavske, would sign off on the alternate slate of electors.

DeGraffenreid, in a text conversation with party officials, said Cegavske “might do a lot of things, but sending a slate of Republican electors without them being clearly the winners of the popular vote is not one of them.”

Cegavske ultimately certified President Joe Biden’s victory in Nevada, defending the results as reliable and accurate despite attacks from Trump and others within her own party, which led the Nevada Republican Party to censure her. She later conducted an investigation that found no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud throughout the state.

Meanwhile, the day before the slate of fake electors met, the transcripts show McDonald grew increasingly frustrated with the RNC’s direction over how to conduct the certificate signing. It appeared that he had gone back and forth with the RNC about logistics of the ceremony: the location, how they would publicize it and what they would say in their speeches.

“RNC essentially put us in a box on what we can say, but doesn’t sound too bad,” Shawn Meehan, one of the fake electors, said in a text to DeGraffenreid.

Meehan also told DeGraffenreid that McDonald wanted a smaller group that would plan the final details over breakfast, and that he is “stressing on the optics.” It was visible to several of the fake electors — that same day, another fake elector had texted DeGraffenreid that McDonald was upset with “mixed messages and direction on publicity for tomorrow.”

“He’s very concerned RNC will cut cord if it looks bad and steal credit if we do well,” Meehan messaged.

“I know,” DeGraffenreid responded. “He’s concerned that we look like foolish crybabies.”

Ultimately, the Nevada Republican Party would press forward, and after nearly two months of planning, McDonald, DeGraffenreid and the other fake electors gathered outside the Capitol building in Carson City for a ceremony.

“History made today in Carson City, Nevada,” the state party would write on social media after the ceremony, “as @McDonaldNV leads our electors in casting Nevada’s 6 electoral votes for the winner of Nevada, @realDonaldTrump and @Mike_Pence!”

McDonald did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday evening. A lawyer for DeGraffenreid said he declined to comment.

The nine-member committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot will dissolve when Republicans take over the House next month. The committee on Thursday released its full 800-plus page report of its 18-month investigation, which they hope will lead to criminal charges against Trump and his key allies.

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bOtH sIdEs!

[TopHatter]

What the Jan. 6th Report Says About the Fake Electors Scheme
“Freaking Trump idiots want someone to fly original elector papers to the senate President.”

On December 14, 2020, Republican operatives in at least five states—each of which had already officially certified Joe Biden as the winner—forged and submitted to Congress and the National Archives fake Electoral College certificates purporting to certify Donald Trump, not Biden, as the “duly elected” winner. The left-leaning watchdog group American Oversight first blew the whistle on the fake elector scheme in March 2021, but it wasn’t until Rachel Maddow devoted a series of shows to it in January 2022 that it really captured public attention.

The fake electors were hardly the worst of what Trump visited on us. For sheer journalistic sex appeal, a scheme by a bunch of unknown, bumbling state functionaries to phony up some documents just can’t compete with a president siccing an armed mob on the Capitol. But the fake elector scandal, while not the most shocking of Trump’s predations, has long looked like the straightest route to cracking open the entire 2020 election scheme, and to getting Donald Trump indicted and convicted of a crime (at least until the Mar-a-Lago stolen documents scandal was revealed, but that’s another story). If Trump was a knowing participant in the scheme (more on that later), his reasons for doing so would make absolutely no difference. Even if he really, truly believed the election was stolen, it would not be a defense to criminal charges for participating in a fraudulent scheme to submit forged documents as the official results of state presidential elections. To the contrary, his belief that he was stealing back a stolen election would be highly incriminating proof of his motive, not a defense.

Contrast that, for instance, with a potential charge that Trump tried to corruptly alter the result in Georgia in his infamous phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. When Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to flip the Georgia election, was he asking him to legitimately root out and disqualify votes that he honestly believed were fraudulent, or was he asking him to manufacture votes?

In the real world of courts, unanimous juries and proof beyond a reasonable doubt, showing that Trump was “only” asking Raffensperger to root out and disqualify illegally cast votes would be, if not a defense, then at least a complication. It would give Trump’s lawyers something to work with. And while I don’t think Trump gave a damn whether or not there actually were illegal votes in Georgia—Trump operates in a fact-free, amoral universe that makes it pointless, if not impossible to try to discern what he “really believed”—there’s enough in the transcript of the call to make that argument to a jury.

Same with a charge that Trump incited the January 6th insurrection. Trump has so far not been directly linked to the violence perpetrated in the Capitol attack. Yes, he sent an armed mob to the Capitol and told them to fight like hell to take back the country. But his defense team will argue that Trump was using permissible, albeit very strong political speech to exhort his followers to send a loud, angry message to Congress, not to physically attack it. And, again, there’s arguably enough weasel-wording in Trump’s January 6th speech to convince at least a single juror to give Trump the benefit of the doubt for burying the word “peacefully” in the middle of his otherwise incendiary speech.

It’s one thing to believe the obvious: that Trump was acting like a mob boss, sending coded signals that his gangland cronies fully understood. It’s another thing to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt to the satisfaction of every one of twelve randomly selected jurors. Again, it’s complicated. And prosecutors hate complicated.

Not so the fake elector scheme.

If it can be proved that Trump intentionally participated in the scheme to try to pass off forged documents as official state documents, and then use the phony documents to overturn an election, it wouldn’t make any difference why he did so. The act of participating in the scheme, in and of itself, regardless of his purported reasons for doing so, would still run afoul of all kinds of state and federal criminal laws.

The path to prosecuting Trump for the fake elector scheme—either as a standalone crime or as a crucial element of a larger conspiracy to overturn the results of a presidential election—became much clearer last week with the publication of the final report of the House January 6th Committee.

Until the publication of the report, there were arguably two open questions: (1) How high in the levels of Trump world did the scheme go? And (2), could at least some of the perpetrators assert a credible defense that they understood it was just a contingency plan to have electors in place in the event that the courts or state legislatures determined that Trump, not Biden, was the winner in one or more of the five states?

The report answered both questions. (1) The scheme went all the way to the top, right up to Trump himself. And (2), while some of the lower-level participants in the scheme—most likely some of the state-level GOP operatives who actually signed the phony certificates—may have been duped into believing that that it was a contingency plan, the higher ups who created and executed the scheme knew better.

They knew it was an action plan.

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In thinking about how far up the Trump World hierarchy the scheme went, start by forgetting about the fake electors themselves. Although the true plan was sufficiently transparent that some potential signers backed away right from the start, some participants might have innocently bought into the notion of a contingency plan. Others might have just been confused about what they were getting themselves into, although “I was just following orders” isn’t much of a defense. And of course others might have been knowing participants in the scheme.

But who cares?

Better to not indict them at all than to indict only them and let the real culprits off the hook. Better to leverage their self-protective instincts and get them to point the finger at the individuals who put them up to it, including the architects of the scheme (principally, according to the Jan 6th Committee’s report, John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro, lawyers who advised Trump and his campaign), the senior Trump enablers who knowingly helped them execute the scheme (most notably Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows), and Donald Trump, who “oversaw it himself.”

According to the report, by December 8, 2020—less than three weeks after Chesebro first laid the groundwork for the scheme in a November 18 memo—“President Trump had decided to pursue the fake elector plan and was driving it.” By mid-December, Trump had enlisted the assistance of RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel in the scheme, worked with Rudy Giuliani on its implementation, and been informed that litigation would be filed in four states “to create a pretext to claim that it was still possible for the fake electors to be authorized retroactively.”

So it appears that the previously missing link—the link between the fake elector scheme and Trump himself—is no longer missing. Trump not only “participated” in the fake elector scheme, he orchestrated it.

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With Trump’s knowing participation seemingly clear, the only remaining question appears to be whether the perpetrators can credibly soft-sell the scheme as merely a contingency plan, not an action plan to overturn an election.

They can’t.

The report makes it plain that plan was never to collect the signatures, file them away, and only pull them out in the unlikely event that a court or state legislature reversed the results of one or more of the elections in the five states. The plan was to use the fake certificates affirmatively:
.

This effort was aimed directly at the President of the Senate (which, under the Constitution, is the Vice President) in his role at the joint session of Congress on January 6th. President Trump and his advisors wanted Vice President Pence to disregard real electoral college votes for former Vice President Biden, in favor of these fake competing electoral slates.

According to the report, public comments made by Rudy Giuliani and Stephen Miller on December 14 suggesting that the phony certificates were merely “contingent” were window dressing: “That pretense was dropped in short order.” In fact, Team Trump was actively plotting to execute a strategy, designed largely by Eastman, to use the slates of fake electors as a pretext to prevent or delay certification of Biden’s election.

Nobody on the leadership team was mincing words: A December 13 memo from Chesebro to Rudy Giuliani suggested that while presiding over the counting Vice President Pence could toss out Biden’s actual electoral votes for any state where Trump had fake electors “because there are two slates of votes.”

And nobody was waiting for a court order that they knew would never come.

If there were ever any doubt about that, of course, it is dispelled by the fact that the schemers not only planned to use the phony certificates affirmatively, they did use them affirmatively, albeit ineptly.

Ever incompetent in executing even the most clerical, ministerial tasks, Team Trump orchestrated not only a massive fraud, but a comedy of errors.

The phony certifications from Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania failed to meet the requirements of federal law because they bore no state seal and no evidence that the required state officials had delivered them. The submissions from Georgia, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania lacked the required approval of the governors of those states. Other fake Trump electors failed to follow state rules specifying where they were required to meet, but nevertheless certified that they had done so.

The comedy of errors morphed into outright farce with Team Trump’s frantic, buffoonish, last-minute efforts to get them to the church on time.

By early January, the phony certificates from Michigan and Wisconsin had not yet arrived in Washington, and Team Trump freaked out. They arranged to fly the certificates to Washington for hand delivery to the Vice President. Or, in the undying words of a Wisconsin Republican Party official, “Freaking Trump idiots want someone to fly original elector papers to the senate President [i.e., Pence].”

Speaking of freaking Trump idiots, enter Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson stage right. Johnson, implored by the Trump campaign’s lead attorney in Wisconsin to assign a staffer “to get a document on Wisconsin electors to you [for] the VP immediately,” accommodated by putting not just some staffer, but his chief of staff on the job. That plan died a humiliating death when an aid to Pence brushed off Johnson’s request, bluntly telling Johnson’s chief of staff “Do not give that to him [the Vice President].”

Suffice it to say that none of this activity was triggered by a court or legislative order to the effect that Trump, not Biden, had won any of the five states. That never happened. Anywhere.

So the “it was just a contingency plan” defense is a non-starter.

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All that’s left is for Special Counsel Jack Smith to examine whether the admissibility and strength of the evidence of Trump’s direct involvement in the fake elector scheme—either as a standalone crime or as part of a wider conspiracy—is sufficient to convince a jury of Trump’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

The report strongly suggests that it is.
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I'm sure this is somehow the Dems fault....or Hunter Biden's laptop....or "Killery"