This Week in the New Banana Republic AG Trumpcoward is Still Hiding Under His Desk (2/6)
David Shasha
Traitor Garland is Still Hiding Under His Desk as Trump Runs Wild
It was a tremendous week for the Zombie Orange Pig and his criminal followers:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/30/politics/trump-rally-texas/index.html
He has admitted to trying to overthrow the election by sending in false slates of electors to states that Biden won, ordering the illegal seizure of voting machines, calling for investigations of Pence, Cheney, and Kinzinger, and is offering pardons for the Insurrectionists if he becomes president again.
Lawrence Tribe put it succinctly:
https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1488136067249233921
In his words:
Mr. Trump’s public confession last night, all but daring the Attorney General to seek a grand jury indictment against him for seditious conspiracy and for giving aid and comfort to an insurrection to “overturn the election,” is the last straw. The Government must call his bluff.
That has not stopped Trumspcum Seditionist Alan Dershowitz from doubling-down on his Trumpscumminess:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/rH6VoD0GDY4
He knows how to settle a Lysol score:
But when law professors such as Cornell University's Michael Dorf -- who is an acolyte, water-carrier and co-author of America's most prominent constitutional hypocrite, Professor Laurence Tribe -- set out to defame me, or anyone, for a principled representation of unpopular defendants, it becomes clear, and alarming, how much trouble the Constitution is in. Dorf conducted what he called a "Highly Unscientific Twitter Poll for Most Embarrassing Yale Law School Alum" He put my name prominently on the list because "Dershowitz seems to take special pride in defending people whose alleged conduct he claims to disapprove--including, especially, Donald Trump." Dorf apparently does not remember the principle often attributed to Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Dorf acknowledges that some people might dislike me or others because "they disagree with his extreme conception of the lawyer as a zealous advocate."
Dorf also accuses me of a willingness "to say fairly outrageous things simply so people pay attention," but without citing a single example from my writings or statements. He could, of course, have cited examples of "outrageous things" from his mentor, Tribe, who garnered media attention by calling Senator Mitch McConnell a "flagrant dickhead" and then-President Donald J. Trump "dickhead-in-chief."
Merrick Garland remains a traitor to this country and has violated his oath of office to protect the Constitution and uphold the Rule of Law.
Below you can read the details of Trump’s criminality, and revel in the fact that he has yet to be indicted by the Garland DOJ.
David Shasha
Quiet part loud: Trump says Pence ‘could have overturned the election’
By: Martin Pengelly
Donald Trump was accused of “saying the quiet part loud” on Sunday night, when he protested that Mike Pence, his former vice-president, could have overturned his election defeat by Joe Biden.
Though he has appeared to admit Biden won before, Trump usually insists he won and his opponent stole the election through voter fraud – the “big lie” which animates rallies like one in Conroe, Texas, on Saturday.
On Sunday Trump attempted to seize on moves by a bipartisan group of senators to reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which Trump tried to use to have Pence refuse to certify Biden’s victory.
Pence concluded he did not have the authority to do so. On the same day, 6 January 2021, supporters Trump told to “fight like hell” attacked the US Capitol.
Seven people died and more than 100 police officers were hurt. More than 700 people have been charged, 11 with seditious conspiracy. Trump and his aides are the target of congressional investigation.
But Trump survived impeachment when enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal and he is is free to run for office.
On Saturday, he promised pardons for 6 January rioters if re-elected and exhorted followers to protest against investigations of his business and political affairs in New York and Georgia.
In a statement on Sunday, Trump claimed “fraud and many other irregularities” in the 2020 election – no large-scale fraud has been found – and asked: “How come the Democrats and … Republicans, like Wacky Susan Collins, are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the vice-president to change the results of the election?
“Actually, what they are saying, is that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away. Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power. He could have overturned the election!”
Collins, of Maine, was one of seven Republicans to vote to convict Trump over the Capitol attack. Such is his grip on her party, on Sunday she would not say she would not support him if he ran again. But she did tell ABC why she wanted to reform the Electoral Count Act.
“We saw, on 6 January 2021, how ambiguities, simple law, were exploited. We need to prevent that from happening again. I’m hopeful that we can come up with a bipartisan bill that will make very clear that the vice-president’s role is simply ministerial, that he has no ability to halt the count.”
Dick Durbin of Illinois, a member of Democratic Senate leadership, said reform to the electoral college process was merited because Trump gambits including false slates of electors “really raise a question about the integrity of that process. It hasn’t been looked at for 150 years. Now’s the time.”
Pundits seized on Trump’s latest apparent blunder into the truth.
Bill Kristol, a conservative writer, said: “Talk about saying the quiet part loud. Trump here admits or rather boasts [about] what he wanted Mike Pence to do.”
Chris Krebs, fired as head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency under Trump but who pronounced the 2020 election “the most secure in US history”, said: “In the last 24 hours the former president: (1) floated pardons for [January 6] defendants, (2) encouraged civil unrest if he’s indicted in [Georgia or New York], (3) once again confirmed he pressured Pence to overturn a lawful election.
“He’s radicalizing his base to be his personal Brown Shirts.”
Olivia Troye, a former Pence aide, wrote: “Every Republican candidate and official should go on record with their answer: Do you support sedition and pardoning domestic terrorists?”
On Monday, Liz Cheney, one of only two Republicans on the House committee investigating Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, said: “Trump uses language he knows caused the January 6 violence; suggests he’d pardon the January 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy; threatens prosecutors; and admits he was attempting to overturn the election.
“He’d do it all again if given the chance.”
From The Guardian (UK), January 31, 2022
The sloppy, patchwork, spaghetti-at-the-wall effort to steal the presidency
By: Philip Bump
As we continue to learn details of how Trump scrambled to block Joe Biden’s victory in the weeks after the 2020 election — like the report Monday evening that Trump considered various options for seizing voting machines — it is useful to fit what we know into an overarching framework. No part of the scheming by Trump and his allies is disconnected from the rest; each intertwines into an ad hoc, three-pronged ploy.
He tried to prove fraud. He tried to get elections officials to act as if there had been fraud. And then he just tried to steal the election.
As you review Trump’s efforts, patterns become apparent. While the overall effort to seize a second term in office was lengthy and complicated, none of the individual efforts to advance it went very far. This was almost never a function of Trump’s simply realizing that he was overreaching or his coming to understand that he was inappropriately crossing a boundary. It was, instead, because those against whom he was applying pressure resisted. At times, this was virtuous, as with Vice President Mike Pence’s refusal to execute the last-ditch effort to block electoral-vote counting. At other times, it seems likely that the actions were self-serving, as when Trump’s attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani objected to the seizure of voting machines as advocated by his rival, the attorney Sidney Powell. But it was others, including state-level institutions and even local actors, who applied the brakes to the plot. It was almost never Trump.
Here’s what we know about how it played out, in rough chronological order. Each item is identified as being either part of the effort to prove fraud or to get officials to act on the idea that fraud had occurred. Except for the last item on the list, which stands alone.
Trying to prove fraud: Elevating dubious and outright nonsensical claims about fraud. Months before the 2020 election, Trump began claiming that the expansion of mail-in voting would open the door to rampant fraud. This was a shift in his rhetoric; he’d previously insisted that voters showed up multiple times at the polls to vote, something that almost never happens. But rules changes centered on the coronavirus pandemic gave him a new way to claim that something dubious was afoot.
Even before the election, many Republicans were convinced that the results would be suspect, useful tilling of the soil for what ensued. After Election Day, Trump focused not on carefully vetting fraud claims and exploring the most likely for further investigation. Instead, he sought to whip up a dust storm of implications that something had occurred. He’d retweet or otherwise amplify obviously ridiculous claims, often even after they had been debunked. The obvious goal was not to have everyone believe each claim but, instead, to overwhelm observers with assertions to create an impression of sketchiness. He was a smoke machine who claimed to see a forest fire.
His allies helped. In one particularly remarkable news conference held at the Republican Party’s D.C. headquarters on Nov. 19, 2020, Giuliani and Powell offered conflicting narratives about how the election was stolen: Giuliani’s focusing on unfounded claims about absentee-ballot fraud and Powell’s on truly deranged claims about voting machines — claims that led to massive lawsuits from firms targeted by her rhetoric. That event is important a bit later in this narrative, but there’s something worth pointing out here: Trump’s effort here was aided explicitly by the GOP establishment.
As the weeks and months passed, it became obvious that there was a huge market for fraud claims, from Trump and his base alike. Individuals sitting at various points on the hustler-to-delusional spectrum offered claims about fraud and duplicity that the president and his supporters eagerly embraced.
Getting officials to act: Filing lawsuits in an effort to change state-level results. The most predictable — perhaps even normal — part of Trump’s effort to change the direction of the election results was filing multiple lawsuits aimed at stopping or reshaping vote counting in states. Such lawsuits are common after elections, although in this case, they included third-party efforts by people such as Powell. The lawsuits didn’t change anything, although at times they came close. In Wisconsin, Trump lost only narrowly in a case before the state Supreme Court after securing the support of three of the bench’s four conservative jurists.
Why it didn’t work: Courts almost always rejected the pro-Trump arguments.
Trying to prove fraud: Pressuring vote-counters. In the days after the election, Trump and his allies actively promoted efforts to send supporters to venues where votes were being counted. This had multiple uses, including providing many eyes and ears that could later attest to activity they misconstrued as suspicious.
Why it didn’t work: The votes were counted without significant interruption, and no credible evidence of improprieties was uncovered by “observers.”
Trying to prove fraud: Calling for audits and recounts. At the same time, Trump and his allies pressed states and local officials for audits or recounts of cast ballots. This served two purposes. First, just making the demand implied that there was something that needed to be reconsidered, again contributing to the blanket of smoke Trump was generating. Second, it offered the outside chance that something would emerge allowing Trump to further undermine confidence in the results. There was some optimism in Trump’s camp that official state recounts would change results just by virtue of reviewing the totals, but even people like former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker knew that wasn’t going to happen.
Why it didn’t work: The recounts and audits didn’t show any significant change to the results, much less evidence of fraud.
Getting officials to act: Trying to stop certification of election results. The formalization of Biden’s victory followed a number of preordained steps. States certified their results. Electors met formally to cast their electoral votes. Those votes were transmitted to Washington. Congress counted the votes and finalized the results. Biden was then inaugurated.
At each step, Trump and his allies tried to intervene, including that first one. Trump infamously called Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) as Ducey was in the middle of certifying his state’s results. (Ducey sent him to voice mail.) In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp (R) weathered weeks of attacks from Trump before certifying the results there. The president also summoned Michigan legislators to the White House in an effort to get them to intervene — an early example of an eventual focus on legislatures.
Trump’s team also cajoled county-level officials to throw up roadblocks. At one point, he praised two supportive members of the Wayne County, Mich., certifying body who, in an initial vote, had blocked the county’s vote total. (This was a particularly ridiculous place to dig in one’s heels, given that Biden obviously won heavily Democratic Detroit as well as clearly winning Michigan by a wide margin.) In short order, those officials backtracked under robust public pressure. Michigan’s statewide vote was certified after a Republican member of the Board of State Canvassers upheld the results. Republicans later booted him from his position.
Why it didn’t work: State and county officials had no reason not to certify the election, with no real questions about the results having emerged.
Getting officials to act: Disrupting the electoral college. Dec. 14 is the date stipulated by law on which electors cast their ballots for president in each state. So it was in 2020 — but here, too, Trump and his allies tried to intervene. In this case, it was primarily by having the individuals who would have cast ballots for Trump had he won cast them anyway. The intent was obvious: There is a process for Congress to adjudicate competing slates of electors when it counts the submitted votes, and the hope was that there would be an opening for the Trump electors to be recognized over the Biden ones. These are the “fake electors” that have been a recent subject of fascination.
Why it didn’t work: The electoral votes sent to Congress need to be accompanied by certifying documents signed by an appropriate state official. The alternative slates of electors lacked those documents, and no state seriously entertained reversing its results.
Trying to prove fraud: The plan to seize voting machines. After that news conference at the Republican National Committee, Powell was disgraced. Fox News’s Tucker Carlson called her out for having no evidence to back up her wild assertions, and courts (which we’ll get to in a bit) were making clear that they were similarly unconvinced. But after the electors had cast their votes, Trump was clearly feeling pressure.
So, on Dec. 18, 2020, Trump hosted a remarkable meeting at the White House. It was a central moment at which Trump’s world of conspiracy theories nearly gained access to the power of the presidency. The conversation included some discussion of invoking martial law but, more concretely, the idea that the government might seize electronic voting machines and that perhaps Powell should be given federal investigative power. In each case, the idea was the same: Dig up something, anything, that might be useful in suggesting that fraud had occurred — this time, though, with the authority of the U.S. government and not just some random Twitter user.
It is useful to note that the predicate for the seizure articulated in one document released publicly was a long-debunked claim about fraud in one county in Michigan. It wasn’t just that Trump wanted to seize voting machines; it was that he wanted to do so on an utterly ridiculous pretext, thanks to the advocacy of a completely discredited conspiracy theorist. It was a very good example of Trump’s pressing forward with a ridiculous plan, ignoring the obvious red flags to which others might have paid heed.
Why it didn’t work: In this case, it appears that internal dissent played an important role. Giuliani, no doubt in part irritated at the idea that Powell might be Trump’s salvation — “At least she’s giving me a chance,” Trump reportedly said — objected to the plan, as did others present. When Trump approached the Department of Homeland Security about seizing the machines, its acting head, the deeply conservative former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, rejected the idea.
Getting officials to act: Overhauling the Justice Department. On Dec. 1, 2020, Attorney General William P. Barr broke dramatically with the president to whom he’d been so loyal. Speaking to an Associated Press reporter, Barr was blunt: There was no evidence of rampant fraud. Trump was understandably furious. Barr left the administration weeks later.
The Justice Department was then under the control of Jeffrey Rosen, previously Barr’s deputy. But another official in the department had Trump’s heart: Jeffrey Clark, a senior official who advocated using the authority of the Justice Department to lean on states over their certified election results. Clark drafted a letter in which the state of Georgia was encouraged to convene its legislature to reconsider its election certification, claiming that the department had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election,” concerns that appear to have had no basis in fact.
Trump entertained the idea that he might oust Rosen (who, like Barr, saw no evidence of rampant fraud) and replace him with Clark, leading to a meeting at the White House in early January where it was made clear that such a switch would lead to a broad revolt within the department.
Why it didn’t work: Installing Clark would have meant a lot of high-profile resignations. Trump opted against it.
Trying to prove fraud: Pressuring Georgia officials to identify alleged fraud. Perhaps the most notorious moment of Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the election came when he called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021. In the call, Trump was blunt: He wanted Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes,” one more than his losing margin in the state. Raffensperger and his team had already been vocally insistent that the results of the election in the state were sound, results bolstered by an audit and a recount.
Why it didn’t work: There were no votes to find — and Raffensperger had already looked.
Getting officials to act: Encouraging state legislatures to unwind results. Clark’s letter sat on top of weeks of efforts by Republicans at the state level to bolster Trump’s claims of fraud. Remember that there was a huge market for such assertions, and Republicans in a number of states entered into the market with alacrity, hosting hearings in which Giuliani and others were given platforms to make unfounded allegations about fraud.
Trump and his allies, including the attorney John Eastman, actively encouraged legislatures to reconsider their election results. In broad strokes, the theory was that state legislatures had authority over how elections were run and, therefore, had authority to recast the election results if desired. On Jan. 3, Trump and Eastman hosted a teleconference with legislators, encouraging them to convene and revoke submitted electoral votes.
Why it didn’t work: Even sympathetic legislators lacked the power to do so.
Stealing the election: Having Pence reject electoral votes. By Jan. 6, Trump was nearly out of options. Congress convened to count the electoral votes, with Pence presiding. In a pair of memos, Eastman proposed that Pence simply not do so, rejecting submitted electoral votes and either then declaring Trump the winner, demanding that states reconsider their submissions or tossing the decision to a vote in the House. Shortly before Congress convened, Pence announced that he wouldn’t oppose the submitted votes. The last door had closed.
In a statement this week, Trump admitted that he thought Pence should have “overturned the Election,” an explicit statement of his obvious desired goal.
Why it didn’t work: Pence, after consulting with legal experts and even former vice president Dan Quayle, recognized that Eastman’s suggestion was toothless.
Stealing the election: Having legislators reject cast electoral votes. Well before the day the votes were to be counted, Republican members of the House and Senate began lining up to reap the rewards of entertaining Trump’s election-seizure strategy. Numerous members of both chambers declared their intent to object to the electoral votes submitted by a number of states, theoretically providing another route for state legislatures (controlled by Republicans) to adjudicate the results. Trump allies holed up at D.C.’s Willard hotel worked to cajole members of Congress to this end.
Why it didn’t work: There weren’t enough votes in either chamber actually to reject cast votes. Oh, and then there was a riot.
Stealing the election: Encouraging the Jan. 6 protests and tacitly encouraging the riot. After Pence announced that he would not execute Eastman’s plan, Trump, speaking outside the White House, encouraged his supporters to march to the U.S. Capitol (after, of course, spending weeks encouraging them to be in D.C. in the first place). Thousands of people surrounded the Capitol and, eventually, hundreds forced their way inside. The counting of electoral votes was blocked by force. Trump, watching from the White House, repeatedly declined to make any statement discouraging them.
As the riot was underway, Trump allies, including Giuliani, kept calling legislators to encourage them to block the electoral vote count. The idea, as Giuliani put it in a voice mail he thought he was leaving for Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), was to “try to just slow it down so we can get these legislators to get more information to you.” Just slow it down, don’t let the inevitable happen.
Eventually, though, after the Capitol was cleared, it happened — despite the objections of several Republican senators and most Republican representatives.
Why it didn’t work: The National Guard crushed the insurgency.
Trump’s intent always was no more complicated than that the election results should be ignored and that he should retain his position. Over the months, the objective was blanketed with rationales and dubious claims and legal thrusts and feints. He tried everything in his power and everything in everyone else’s power to hold onto the presidency. But none of the machinations and rationalizations of his allies should obscure the obvious truth: Trump aimed to hold power however he could. And if that meant having his allies construct a ridiculous shaky veneer of authority to do so, so be it.
The question now is how the likelihood of success in potential future efforts is lowered, how it stops somewhere before “armed members of the military intervene on behalf of democracy.”
From The Washington Post, February 1, 2022