The Trumpscum YEEZUS, Now More Trumpscummier Than Ever!

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David Shasha

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Dec 10, 2021, 2:42:34 PM12/10/21

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Kanye West, Donald Trump and the effort to overturn the 2020 results in Georgia

By: Philip Bump

On the afternoon of Jan. 2, President Donald Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a futile, last-ditch attempt to reverse his electoral loss in the state precisely two months prior.

The call will be an eternal fixture in history books for its bluntness. At one point, Trump explicitly pressed Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes,” a total that he helpfully added was “one more than we have” after the vote was counted and recounted. Trump threw out a blizzard of false claims about fraud and irregularities, claims that were dismantled the following day in a news conference by a member of Raffensperger’s team.

Georgia was a particular focus of Trump’s at that point. The day after his call with Raffensperger, he hosted a remarkable meeting in the Oval Office in which he mulled ousting his acting attorney general in favor of a Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, who was pushing to send a letter to Georgia making the unsubstantiated claim that federal investigators had found evidence of fraud in the state.

But it was a comment Trump made at the end of the call that is of new interest following a report from Reuters on Friday morning.

“Hey Brad, why wouldn’t you want to check out Ruby Freeman?” Trump asked. It was one of more than a dozen references to Freeman, an election worker in Georgia’s Fulton County, that Trump made in the call. Freeman was one of the individuals seen in a surveillance video from State Farm Arena that went viral after the election, in which poll workers were shown running ballots through a vote-counting machine. That activity was cast as depicting illegal vote-counting, which was not true. But in his grasping effort to retain power, the accuracy of information was never a powerful constraint for Trump.

The effect on Freeman was severe. She and her daughter, who was working with her, were the targets of repeated harassment by Trump supporters who falsely accused her of cheating on Joe Biden’s behalf. A concocted “confession” circulated online in which claims about undermining the vote in “racist Georgia” were attributed to her. She was forced to repeatedly appeal to local law enforcement for protection.

On Jan. 4, the day after Trump’s call with Raffensperger, Freeman got another unsolicited knock on her door, according to the new Reuters report. This time it was a woman named Trevian Kutti who claimed that she had traveled from Chicago on behalf of a “high-profile individual.” According to the news agency, she came to “give Freeman an urgent message: confess to Trump’s voter-fraud allegations, or people would come to her home in 48 hours, and she’d go to jail.”

Freeman, understandably wary, asked for Cobb County police to provide protection. Eventually, Freeman agreed to speak with Kutti at the police station. Police body-camera footage obtained by Reuters captured some of the conversation. From its report:

“I cannot say what specifically will take place,” Kutti is heard telling Freeman in the recording. “I just know that it will disrupt your freedom,” she said, “and the freedom of one or more of your family members.”

“You are a loose end for a party that needs to tidy up,” Kutti continued. She added that “federal people” were involved, without offering specifics.

“What I would like for you to do is consider talking to a U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Georgia who is willing to take a statement from you and your daughter. And who in turn, if you are honest about the course of events that took place at State Farm Arena, will possibly be willing to grant you and your daughter immunity from charges that will imminently be brought,” Kutti told Freeman, according to journalists Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague in their book “The Steal.”

That same day, the U.S. attorney representing Georgia’s Northern District tendered his resignation. There is no indication that it was related to Kutti’s visit to Freeman.

Freeman soon walked out of the meeting. When she returned home, she searched Kutti’s name on Google, learning then that Kutti was not only linked to Trump’s reelection campaign but that she did, in fact, work for a high-profile individual from Chicago: rapper Kanye West.

Reuters reported that neither Kutti nor West responded to requests for comment.

West’s relationship with Trump was an odd one. After Trump was elected in 2016, West was one of a parade of celebrities and officials who trekked to Trump Tower to meet with the president-elect. In 2018, West, wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, met with Trump in the Oval Office for one of history’s oddest White House encounters. But by 2020, West had declared his own bemusing campaign for the presidency, launching a halfhearted effort to challenge the sitting president.

It was never much of a real campaign, and it was often written off as a novelty or an attention-grabbing stunt. But there were signs that Trump’s allies, at least, hoped it might be more substantial. After all, given the extent to which Black voters tend to vote Democratic, a candidate compelling to Black voters might help siphon enough votes away from Biden to boost Trump’s reelection chances. Even before Election Day, multiple people involved in West’s “campaign” were identified as being activists in the Republican Party. Election over, West recently publicly returned to the Trumpian fold.

We don’t know the motivation for West’s candidacy, whether it was solely a play for attention. But we do know, thanks to the new Reuters report, that at least one aide to West was focused in the aftermath of the 2020 election on boosting Trump’s chances of retaining his position. Had Kutti successfully compelled Freeman to admit committing some crime, it would certainly have upended the conversation about the election at a particularly fraught moment. The results in Georgia would have been called into question with at least some legitimacy, giving Trump and his allies ammunition to stall the upcoming certification of electoral votes. Trump would almost certainly have still been ousted, but in a throw-spaghetti-at-the-wall strategy to retain power, even one sticky piece of pasta is useful.

On Jan. 5, the FBI called Freeman and warned her that she should leave her home, Freeman told Reuters. Sure enough, the following day — in that 48-hour window that Kutti had suggested — a mob of angry Trump supporters surrounded her house with bullhorns.

That update didn’t get much attention in the press. After all, it was Jan. 6, and the media was instead focused on a much larger group of Trump supporters trying to keep the president in office using more aggressive tactics at the U.S. Capitol.

From The Washington Post, December 10, 2021

Kanye West publicist pressured Georgia poll worker: report

By: Joe Erwin

A publicist for Kayne West pressured a Georgia poll worker to support former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud, a published report says.

West publicist Trevian Kutti, told the 62-year-old grandmother she came on behalf of a “high-profile individual” to deliver a message: confess to voter fraud claims or face jail, Reuters reported Friday.

West, a rapper and business mogul, has close ties to Trump. West himself launched a presidential campaign in 2020 and got on the ballot in just 12 states, although Georgia was not among them. West’s campaign was seen by some as a ploy to pull Black votes from Joe Biden to aid Trump’s reelection bid.

Georgia was one of several states where Trump and his acolytes screamed about election fraud in their 2020 loss to Biden — despite no evidence of any malfeasance. The Democrat won the Peach State by more than 12,000 votes.

The poll worker, Ruby Freeman, told Reuters that she and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss had been harassed and threatened after Trump pushed his false fraud allegations. Kutti came to her home on Jan. 4 with an unidentified man. Freeman, fearing for her safety, refused to let them in.

“They’re saying that I need help, that it’s just a matter of time that they are going to come out for me and my family,” Freeman said on the 911 call.

When a Cobb County Cop arrived, Freeman stepped outside to talk with the publicist. Kutti said Freeman was “in danger,” Reuters reported, citing a police report. Kutti said Freeman had “48 hours” until unknown people came to hurt her.

The officer suggested continuing the talk at a police station, where Kutti was heard on video telling Freeman, “I cannot say what specifically will take place. I just know that it will disrupt your freedom and the freedom of one or more of your family members. You are a loose end for a party that needs to tidy up.”

The following day, the FBI advised Freeman to leave her home for her own safety. A day after that, Trump supporters launched their insurrection at the Capitol.