Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 175 Shares159 Views

    in Elections

    Donald Trump to address Republicans at US Capitol in first visit since January 6

    Donald Trump will go to the US Capitol to rally congressional Republicans today in his first visit since January 6, 2021, when his supporters descended on the building in an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in Trump’s favour.The high-profile meeting will set out Trump’s priorities for a second presidency, but is also expected to see him demand that the GOP further intensify efforts to overturn a recent conviction by a New York court on felony charges.Ahead of the meeting, anti-Trump and pro-Palestinian protesters were seen gathering outside the Capitol Hill Club. One sign visible from one protester read: “No one is above the law.” Some protesters implored Republicans entering the meeting to not “drink the Kool-Aid”.Trump, the presumptive GOP 2024 presidential nominee, was found guilty last month of 34 counts of document falsification relating to hush money paid to an adult film star, Stormy Daniels, shortly before his 2016 election victory.He has since corralled the Republicans into pushing a narrative line that the conviction is a result of the Department of Justice (DoJ) being weaponised against him by Joe Biden – even though the DoJ has no jurisdiction over the New York state court in which he was tried.Thursday’s visit comes a day after his Republican allies secured a significant victory in a House of Representatives vote to hold the attorney general, Merrick Garland, in contempt of Congress. Garland is being held in contempt for refusing to turn over recordings of an interview Biden gave to a special prosecutor, Robert Hur, appointed to investigate the president’s illegal retention of classified documents.The meeting was billed in advance as forward looking, with Trump supposedly focused on his agenda for a future presidency.This was expected to feature pledges against cuts to social security and Medicare in what is seen as a boon to older voters, as well as a promise to make permanent his multitrillion-dollar tax cuts of 2017, which are due to expire next year.He is also expected to amplify his plans for a crackdown on migrants trying to cross the US southern border and flag up plans for a U-turn away from the Biden administration’s foreign policy priorities, which have included aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion, per Politico.But a focus on the legal cases against him is likely to be given equal – or perhaps greater – priority.This could, according to Politico, include urging greater efforts to defund the office of special prosecutor Jack Smith. Smith was notably appointed by the DoJ to investigate Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection and the removal of classified documents from his presidency to his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.Congressional Republicans are also preparing, at Trump’s urging, legislation that would move state state cases against him, including the New York conviction, and a separate charge of attempted election interference in Georgia to federal courts.Trump apparently signified his desire for congressional support in an expletive-laden phone call with Mike Johnson, the House speaker, after his 31 May conviction.Johnson, who initially opposed an attempt by the far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene to defund Smith’s office, has now backtracked and held talks with the House judiciary chairman, Jim Jordan, about how to target it through the congressional appropriations system.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That country certainly sees what’s going on, and they don’t want Fani Willis and Alvin Bragg [the district attorneys in the Georgia and New York cases respectively] and these kinds of folks to be able to continue to use grant dollars for targeting people in a political lawfare type of way,” Jordan, a vocal Trump backer, told Politico.Some GOP members have expressed scepticism about the efforts on behalf of Trump.“We accuse Democrats of weaponising the Justice system. That’s exactly what we’d be doing,” one unnamed congressman, apparently granted anonymity for fear of reprisals from the former president’s Make America Great Again (Maga) allies, told the outlet.In another development underscoring Trump’s vicelike grip on the congressional party, five GOP senators, led by JD Vance of Ohio, reportedly in the running to be the ex-president’s running mate, will announce a plan to subject lower level Biden administration nominees to confirmation votes – a move designed to use up senate floor-time – in protest against the hush money conviction.Such appointments, including federal judges, US attorney and sub-cabinet level appointments, are normally approved without a vote.Thursday’s meeting was to be attended by senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who has not met Trump since December 2020 after criticising him over the January 6 attack but who has endorsed his 2024 candidacy.Three prominent Republican senators known for their hostility to Trump will be absent; Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. More

  • 175 Shares179 Views

    in Elections

    Rudy Giuliani says he’s ‘very, very proud’ of actions after taking Arizona mug shot

    After emerging on Monday from having his mug shot taken in connection with the fake 2020 electors case pending against him in Arizona, Rudy Giuliani boasted about having no regrets over his actions that led to the criminal charges against him.“I’m very, very proud of it,” the former Donald Trump attorney and ex-mayor of New York City said as he left the state courthouse where he was processed on Monday.When a reporter with KPNX asked him if he had any regrets about his role in trying to overturn the former president’s defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election, Giuliani added: “Oh, my goodness, no.”The comments from Giuliani came after an Arizona grand jury in May indicted him alongside 16 other Trump allies with attempting to change the outcome of Biden’s electoral victory in the state in 2020.The grand jury charged Giuliani with pressuring Arizona legislators and the Maricopa county board of supervisors to change the result of the state’s presidential election – and with encouraging Republican electors in Arizona and six other contested states to vote for Trump.It is one of Giuliani’s two unresolved criminal cases stemming from Trump’s loss to Biden. A grand jury in Georgia had previously charged him with spearheading efforts to compel state lawmakers to ignore the will of voters who rejected the former president in favor of Biden and illegally appoint pro-Trump electors to the electoral college.Giuliani has pleaded not guilty in both cases.On Monday, Giuliani was required to appear in person to be formally booked on the conspiracy, fraud and forgery charges outlined in the Arizona indictment after a virtual arraignment on 21 May. He also posted a $10,000 bond and had his mug shot as well as his fingerprints taken.The criminal charges against Giuliani in Arizona and Georgia account for only some of the 80-year-old’s legal problems. He filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2023 after being ordered to pay $148m in a defamation case brought against him by Atlanta election workers Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss.Giuliani had falsely accused Freeman and Moss of having a hand in robbing Trump of the 2020 election to Biden’s benefit.His spreading of the lie that Trump only lost in 2020 because of electoral fraudsters also prompted the New York City radio station WABC to suspend Giuliani’s show from its lineup. But such a consequence did not seem to deter Giuliani from alluding to the 2020 election in his remarks to KPNX on Monday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“There was a substantial amount of vote fraud that went on here that was covered up,” Giuliani said to the station, even though election integrity experts consider the 2020 race that Trump lost to be one of the most secure ever. “Probably one of the biggest conspiracies in American history.”Giuliani, who was previously the US attorney for the federal court district encompassing New York City, later went on his online streaming show and expressed disbelief over Monday’s events.“It’s hard for me to believe – after all my years in law enforcement and serving the government and all the cases I prosecuted successfully – that I actually had to report as a defendant in a criminal case,” he said on America’s Mayor Live. More

  • 150 Shares199 Views

    in Elections

    ‘Racial resentment’ a factor in violence of 6 January 2021, study says

    Political observers are quick to blame hyperpartisanship and political polarization for leading more than 2,000 supporters of Donald Trump to riot at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.But according to a recently published study, “racial resentment” – not just partisanship – explains the violence that broke out after the 2020 election.Angered over the claim, promoted by Trump and his closest allies, that heavily Black cities had rigged the 2020 election in favor of Democrats, white voters – some affiliated with white-nationalist groups and militias, and others acting alone – stormed the US capitol in an attempt to halt the certification of the 2020 election.“What Trump and Republicans did was they tried to make the point that something nefarious was going on in areas that were primarily African American,” said David Wilson, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who published the study with Darren Davis, a professor of political science at Notre Dame.The paper, Stop the Steal: Racial Resentment, Affective Partisanship, and Investigating the January 6th Insurrection, relied on a national survey of adults in the US conducted in 2021.Respondents were asked a question assessing their approval or disapproval of the House select committee investigating January 6, and responded to numerous statements evaluating racial resentment, such as “I resent any special considerations that African Americans receive because it’s unfair to other Americans” and “special considerations for African Americans place me at an unfair disadvantage because I have done nothing to harm them”.The research revealed a correlation between respondents’ feelings of racialized resentment and opposition to the House committee on January 6.Wilson and Davis also point to the fact that while a slew of polls show the general public split somewhat evenly over the legitimacy of the House select committee, Black Americans overwhelmingly supported the committee’s work, while white poll respondents generally opposed it.“Many of President Trump’s supporters believed they were being victimized by election fraud in the 2020 election, but they also believed that whites were being victimized more generally – the American way of life for them was changing and they were being disadvantaged by African Americans and other minorities,” Wilson and Davis wrote.The study comes as the former president and his allies are stoking unfounded fears of non-citizens voting and tainting political outcomes.The strategy activates “action emotions – primarily anger”, said Wilson. “When you’re angry, you want to see some problem resolved because it’s clearly not making you feel good. Your heart rate increases, you have a festering sense that things are wrong and you’re playing by the rules and other people aren’t and it’s just not right.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOther forms of racial resentment, according to this framework, would include the perception that affirmative action unfairly hurts white applicants – or the idea that DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies unfairly benefit people of color.Distinct from racial hatred or prejudice, racial resentment, Wilson argues, is a particularly powerful motive to action because it stems from a sense of injustice.The psycho-social phenomenon can have consequences for democracy, Wilson said.“If you can get people to believe that democracy is about your freedom, and that the government is taking that away through taxes, through policies, through regulatory efforts, and [even] by fixing and rigging elections, you can stoke their resentment and they can even come to resent democracy.” More

  • 138 Shares199 Views

    in Elections

    Georgia elections board member denies plans to help Trump subvert election

    A new appointee to the Georgia state board of elections has elicited questions about whether she may be part of preparations to subvert the election on behalf of Donald Trump and others who are hoping to cast doubt on results that don’t go his way.Those fears are unfounded, she said.The Georgia speaker of the house appointed Janelle King, a Black conservative podcast host and Republican party hand, to a critical fifth seat on the board of elections in May. The state GOP applauded the replacement of a more moderate Republican with King, seeing her as a vote for “election integrity” ahead of a critical presidential election.But King flatly denies that she intends to interfere in the state’s elections as a board member or that she has had contact with the Trump campaign or its surrogates with regard to her appointment.“I’ve heard several rumors about what I’m going to do or not going to do,” King said. “And the way I see it is that this is what people expect of me and what they perceive. But I’ve never been one to do anything based off of what other people want. I like being fair, I like getting good sleep at night.”The elections board promulgates election rules, conducts voter education, investigates questions of election misconduct or fraud, and makes recommendations to the state attorney general or Georgia’s general assembly regarding elections. The five-member board has one appointee from the Democratic and Republican party and one each from the governor, state senate and state house, which now looks like a 4-1 Republican majority, although governor Brian Kemp sits outside of the increasingly radical Trump wing of the Republican party.“The state elections board has a massive role to play in how Georgia’s elections are run and certified, especially this year in a swing state that decided the last presidential election,” said Stephanie Jackson Ali, policy director for the New Georgia Project Action Fund. “The members of the SEB could, quite literally, determine who wins in November.”“With this appointment, I’m increasingly concerned about the future politicization of a board that should be focused on running our elections smoothly and accessibly for Georgia voters, not on moving forward an agenda for partisan gain,” Jackson Ali added.King is a former deputy director of the state party. She has also worked on bipartisan outreach with the League of Women’s Voters. Her husband Kelvin King is co-chair of Let’s Win For America Action, a conservative political action committee that focuses on minority outreach for Republicans. Kelvin King ran for US Senate in 2022, losing the Republican primary to Trump’s preferred candidate Herschel Walker.Janelle King hasn’t been an active participant in the swirling drama of Georgia’s election integrity politics in the wake of the 2020 election. Relative to other appointees to the board, she’s also light on experience with elections. Asked if she believed that the 2020 election was fairly administered in Georgia, she said she didn’t know.“I believe that there were some things that are questionable,” King said. “And I believe that those things have caused a disruption in whether or not people believe in our process.”The role will “allow me to be able to see evidence and – or the lack thereof, whatever it presents”, she added. “There were some things that were questionable. But we respect that the decision has been made, right? I mean, Trump’s not in the White House. So, President Biden is our president. And that’s where we stand.”King joins the board at a sensitive moment in Georgia’s election cycle. Conservatives are raising questions about the competence of the Fulton county registration and elections board in Georgia’s most populous county, which includes most of Atlanta.The state elections board voted last month to admonish Fulton county and require outside oversight through the rest of the 2024 election cycle, as a censure after discovering county elections workers violated state law while conducting a recount of the 2020 presidential election by double-counting 3,075 ballots.The secretary of state’s office determined that the infraction did not impact election results. The results of the 2020 election in both Fulton county and the state have repeatedly been validated in recounts and in court findings.Democratic party activists suggest that the state elections board’s focus on Fulton county is table setting for further denialism if Trump loses Georgia in November.The speaker of the house in Georgia, Jon Burns, appointed King to succeed Edward Lindsey, a former state representative whose lobbying practice for county government and votes on the board rankled Republicans in the Trump wing of the party. Lindsey was the tie-breaking vote earlier this year against recommending restrictions to absentee ballot voting.Rightwing organizations like the Texas Public Policy Foundation had been calling for Lindsey’s ouster, even as Lindsey’s term expired in March. The house failed to appoint his replacement before adjourning for the year, leaving the decision to Burns.Burns’ appointment of King was greeted by Georgia GOP chairman Josh McKoon as “very good news” at a fundraising dinner in Columbus, where he described it as giving the board “a three-person working majority, three people that agree with us on the importance of election integrity”.“I believe when we look back on November 5th, 2024, we’re going to say getting to that 3-2 election integrity-minded majority on the state election board made sure that we had the level playing field to win this election,” McKoon added.The board does not certify elections in Georgia; that role belongs to county elections board and ultimately the secretary of state’s office.“I’m only one vote,” King said. “I can’t block anything myself if I wanted to at all. And I don’t plan to interfere in elections. What I plan to do is make sure that what comes before us if there’s wrong that’s being done, then we need to address it.”The Georgia speaker’s office denied that Burns has been contacted by Trump, a member of his staff or someone else working on behalf of his campaign with regard to replacing Lindsey on the board with someone amenable to Trump’s interest.“Janelle King’s appointment to the state elections board was not impacted by any outside influence,” said Kayla Robertson, a spokesperson for Burns. “Janelle will be a tremendous asset as an independent thinker and impartial arbiter who will put principle above politics and ensure transparency and accountability in our elections.” More

  • 125 Shares119 Views

    in Elections

    Publisher of debunked voter-fraud film apologizes to falsely accused man

    The publisher of 2000 Mules issued a statement Friday apologizing to a Georgia man who was shown in the film and falsely accused of ballot fraud during the 2020 election.The widely debunked film includes surveillance video showing Mark Andrews, his face blurred, putting five ballots in a drop box in Lawrenceville, an Atlanta suburb, as a voiceover by the conservative pundit and film-maker Dinesh D’Souza says: “What you are seeing is a crime. These are fraudulent votes.”Salem Media Group said in the statement that it had “removed the film from Salem’s platforms, and there will be no future distribution of the film or the book by Salem”.“It was never our intent that the publication of the 2000 Mules film and book would harm Mr Andrews. We apologize for the hurt the inclusion of Mr Andrews’ image in the movie, book, and promotional materials have caused Mr Andrews and his family,” the statement said.A state investigation found that Andrews was dropping off ballots for himself, his wife and their three adult children, who all lived at the same address. That is legal in Georgia, and an investigator said there was no evidence of wrongdoing by Andrews.The film uses research from True the Vote, a Texas-based non-profit, and suggests that ballot “mules” aligned with Democrats were paid to illegally collect and deliver ballots in Georgia and four other closely watched states. An Associated Press analysis found that it is based on faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts and improper analysis of cellphone location data.Salem said it “relied on representations by Dinesh D’Souza and True the Vote, Inc (‘TTV’) that the individuals depicted in the videos provided to us by TTV, including Mr Andrews, illegally deposited ballots”.Lawyers for D’Souza and True the Vote did not immediately respond to emails Friday afternoon seeking comment on Salem’s statement.Andrews filed a federal lawsuit in October 2022 against D’Souza, True the Vote and Salem. The case continues, and representatives for Salem and for Andrews’ legal team did not immediately respond to emails asking whether the statement came as a result of the lawsuit. More

  • 150 Shares169 Views

    in Elections

    Republican activist with ties to DeSantis and Rubio indicted over January 6

    A Republican activist with links to Florida’s Republican senator, Marco Rubio, and its governor, Ron DeSantis, has been indicted on charges relating to the 6 January 2021 storming of the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential election victory.Barbara Balmaseda, 23, has been charged with five counts of being involved in the riot, including obstructing an official proceeding, knowingly entering and remaining in a restricted building, and engaging in disorderly conduct with intent to impede a session of Congress.The indictment against Balmaseda, a former director-at-large of the Miami Young Republicans, follows her arrest on the same charges last December, after an FBI investigation alleged she had been communicating with members of the far-right Proud Boys organisation, which pledges allegiance to Donald Trump.It comes after investigators discovered a chain of mobile phone messages with a member of the group, including the potentially revealing information two days after the riot that he had her Taser.Balmaseda previously served as an intern in the office of Rubio, who voted to certify Biden’s election win, defying the then president, Donald Trump, and worked as an organiser for DeSantis’s 2018 campaign for governor.Nayib Hassan, Balmaseda’s lawyer, said she was pleading not guilty to the charges. “We look forward to presenting a vigorous defense on her behalf,” he said. Hassan added that he was awaiting the US supreme court verdict on an appeal against the conviction of another participant in the January 6 events, Joseph Fischer, saying it “may have a direct impact on Mrs Balmaseda’s case”.Balmaseda is accused of exchanging hundreds of texts with Gabriel Garcia, who was convicted last November of felony charges relating to the Capitol riot.According to documents submitted by an investigating FBI agent, Balmaseda’s messages were found on Garcia’s phone.Prosecutors say they identified the pair inside the Capitol building from January 6 footage, and allege that they had entered after they “climbed on equipment that had been staged in preparation for the presidential inauguration”.Two days later, Balmaseda allegedly messaged Garcia: “Hey! Good morning! You left a hat and a gas mask in Adolfo’s car, I also have your sunglasses in my purse and you have my taser.”The FBI investigator wrote: “As part of my investigation, I reviewed images sent in text and chat messages to Garcia’s phone, from a contact saved as ‘Barbarita Balmaseda’ in Garcia’s phone with the phone number XXX-XXX-4534 (the ‘4534 Number’).“In one text message thread, Garcia and ‘Barbarita Balmaseda’ exchanged hundreds of texts and images from August 2020 through January 2021.”A message in a separate WhatsApp thread on Garcia’s phone read: “My name is Barbara Balmaseda [I am] involved in local politics. id [sic] love to stay informed on the D116 race. Can you add me to the group chat?”A subsequent text showed a selfie-style picture featuring a woman, believed to be Balmaseda – wearing a Trump 2020 hat – posing alongside Garcia, who wore a hat sporting the words “Proud Boys”. More