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    Trump attempt to overturn election is 'nutty and loopy', Romney says

    Donald Trump’s flirtation with declaring martial law in battleground states and appointing a conspiracy theorist as special counsel to help his attempt to overturn defeat by Joe Biden are “really sad” and “nutty and loopy”, Mitt Romney said on Sunday.“He’s leaving Washington with a whole series of conspiracy theories and things that are so nutty and loopy that people are shaking their head wondering what in the world has gotten into this man,” the Utah Republican senator said.Joe Biden won the 3 November election by 306-232 in the electoral college and by more than 7m ballots in the popular vote. Nonetheless, Trump is entertaining outlandish schemes to remain in office, egged on by allies like former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who Trump pardoned for lying to the FBI, and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney.During a Friday meeting at the White House first reported by the New York Times, Trump discussed security clearance for Sidney Powell, a conspiracy-spouting attorney who was cut from Trump’s campaign legal team.It is unclear if Trump will actually attempt to install Powell as a special counsel, a position which the US attorney general, not the president, appoints. Numerous Republicans, from outgoing attorney general William Barr to governors and state officials, have said repeatedly there is no evidence of the mass voter fraud Trump baselessly alleges.“It’s not going to happen,” Romney told CNN. “That’s going nowhere. And I understand the president is casting about trying to find some way to have a different result than the one that was delivered by the American people, but it’s really sad in a lot of respects and embarrassing.“Because the president could right now be writing the last chapter of this administration, with a victory lap with regards to the [Covid-19] vaccine. After all he pushed aggressively to get the vaccine developed and distributed, that’s happening on a quick timeframe. He could be going out and championing this extraordinary success.“Instead … this last chapter suggests what he is going to be known for.”Trump’s campaign and allies have filed around 50 lawsuits alleging voting fraud – almost all have been dismissed. Trump has lost before judges of both parties, including some he appointed, and some of the strongest rebukes have come from conservative Republicans. The supreme court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority and three Trump appointees, has refused to take up cases.Trump has been fuming and peppering allies for options. During the Friday meeting, Giuliani pushed Trump to seize voting machines. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) made clear that it had no authority to do so. It is unclear what such a move could accomplish.Barr told the Associated Press this month the Department of Justice and DHS had looked into claims voting machines “were programmed essentially to skew the election results … and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that”. Paper ballots have been used to verify results, including in Georgia, which performed two audits of its vote tally, confirming Biden’s victory.Flynn went yet further, suggesting Trump could impose martial law and use the military to re-run the election. Chief of staff Mark Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone voiced objections, people familiar with the meeting told news outlets. Trump, who spent much of Saturday tweeting and retweeting electoral fraud claims, responded on Twitter.“Martial law = Fake News,” he wrote. “Just more knowingly bad reporting!”Trump’s grip on the Republican party remains secure, suggesting members in Congress will dutifully raise objections to the electoral college results on 6 January. Such objections will be for political ends and will not in all likelihood succeed in overturning the election. Democrats hold the House and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has indicated he will knock down objections in the Senate.On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Romney, who did better at the polls in his 2012 defeat by Barack Obama than Trump did in 2016 and 2020, was asked if his party could ever escape Trump’s grip.“I believe the Republican party has changed pretty dramatically,” he said. “And by that, I mean that the people who consider themselves Republican and voted for President Trump I think is a different cohort than the cohort that voted for me.“…You look at those that are thinking about running in 2024, [they are] trying to see who can be the most like President Trump. And that suggests that the party doesn’t want to take a different direction.”Josh Hawley of Missouri, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ted Cruz of Texas are among senators thought likely to run to succeed Trump in the White House, and therefore likely to object to the electoral college results.“I don’t think anyone who’s looking at running in 2024 has the kind of style and shtick that President Trump has,” Romney said. “He has a unique and capable politician … But I think the direction you’re seeing is one that he set out.“I’d like to see a different version of the Republican party. But my side is very small these days … I think we recognise that character actually does count.” More

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    Trump will soon leave. But his Republican enablers haven't learned their lesson | David Litt

    Joe Biden has won so much that he is, apparently, tired of winning.That was the crux of his speech Monday night, after the electoral college vote that made official (or rather, yet again made official) his victory over Donald Trump. After a blizzard of false claims of fraud and frivolous lawsuits, the race is over. The attempt to overturn the people’s will failed.In particular, the president-elect singled out courageous election officials – both Democrats and Republicans – who refused to be cowed by Trump’s attacks on the election. “We owe these public servants a debt of gratitude,” he said, “and our democracy survived because of them.” He didn’t name names, but one can reasonably assume he was talking about conservatives such as Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who publicly debunked pro-Trump conspiracy theories, or its voting system implementation manager, Gabriel Sterling, who warned that the president’s actions were stoking violence and has been since barraged with death threats.As a rhetorical matter, the president-elect was right to praise the courage of Republicans who stood up to Trump’s attempt to overturn the election. He was also right to declare victory for democracy. It’s his job to put the country’s best foot forward.But when it comes to the republic’s longer-term survival, the outcome remains far from certain. Because even the Republican officials who most bravely and patriotically stood up to Trump still don’t get it. The greatest threat to the American experiment isn’t the would-be autocrat on his way out the door. It’s the political party he continues to both lead and personify.The problem begins with the Republican establishment’s relationship to reality itself. Since at least the 1980s, mainstream conservatives have embraced theories that are not well-supported by evidence. (It’s hard to make a compelling argument, for example, that tax cuts for the rich pay for themselves.) But in recent years, as Republicans went from being the party of Reagan to the party of Mitch McConnell, the Republican party has gone from spinning facts to rejecting them entirely.Today, to be an aspiring Republican politician in good standing, one must espouse a set of core beliefs that are either entirely baseless or provably untrue: the climate crisis isn’t real; gun safety laws don’t reduce gun violence; masks don’t reduce the spread of Covid-19. To many observers, embracing a conspiracy theory about corrupted voting machines or late-night “ballot dumps” would represent a break with reality. But for much of the Republican elite, that’s not a problem. They broke with reality long ago.The Republican establishment is also increasingly willing to disenfranchise eligible voters if it helps them win. Between 2008 and 2016, America lost 10% of its polling places, with cuts falling hardest on minority communities. Ever-broader voter purges have kicked millions of eligible, registered voters off red-state voting rolls. In Florida, the Republican state legislature rammed through a new law designed to disenfranchise former felons from voting – despite a 2018 ballot measure in which an overwhelming majority of Floridians voted to restore ex-felons’ rights.These examples barely scrape the surface of the war on voting that Republican politicians, not just Trump, have waged in recent years. The president’s wild attempt to steal an election is a first in American history. But it didn’t come from nowhere. Trump simply absorbed his party establishment’s prevailing view – that it is acceptable to win elections through whatever means possible, including by throwing out large numbers of votes on technicalities, hoping conservative judges put ideology over country, or stoking fears about nonexistent fraud – and took that approach to its logical conclusion.Perhaps that’s why so many Republican elected officials endorsed Trump’s baseless attacks on our democratic process well before the first 2020 ballot was cast. Explicit calls to replace democracy with a different form of government remain relatively rare. But the idea that power should be clung to using any means possible – and that the guardrails of our republic should be ignored or dismantled – is entirely within the Republican mainstream. That’s why Republicans in the Senate refused to call witnesses during Trump’s impeachment trial.It’s commendable that a handful of Republicans stood up to a president and met the low bar he presented. But it’s not enoughThe status quo – a Republican party that attacks democracy without rejecting it entirely – cannot hold. Over the long term, we’ll either have two parties that believe in the consent of the governed, or we’ll have a new and more autocratic form of government. We can’t have both. Yet many of the laudably brave Republicans who stood up to Trump don’t yet recognize that he is a symptom, not a cause. Brad Raffensperger says he supports Georgia’s Republican senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in the state’s 5 January runoff, even though both of them called for him to be fired for defending the election results. Gabriel Sterling, the Georgia official who warned election misinformation could lead to violence, agrees. “Senator Perdue and Senator Loeffler, I feel bad for them,” he said. “I have one of their signs in my yard.”It’s commendable that a handful of Republicans stood up to a president and met the low bar he presented. But it’s not enough. Those who have admirably protected the American experiment from Trump must help America save it from the McConnell-era Republican party. That doesn’t mean Republicans need to change their minds about taxes, regulations, guns, or a host of other a host of other issues that divide the parties. But they do have to agree that democracy is the best way to settle our disagreements – and that those who don’t believe in democracy doesn’t deserve our votes, no matter how much we may support their other positions.Some politicians, such as the retiring congressman Paul Mitchell, have recognized that this is a time for choosing, and publicly left the Republican party over its assault on our nation’s most fundamental ideals. But too many genuinely patriotic Americans believe that they can have it both ways. They still view a politician’s support for authoritarianism as a mere character trait, rather than as the dealbreaker it must be for the country to survive.During his dangerous post-campaign campaign, Trump frequently used a two-part phrase to signal what he thought the country most needed. “WISDOM & COURAGE,” he declared, via tweet. Ironically, he was right. American democracy only made it through this tumultuous year thanks to profiles in courage. But over the haul, courage won’t be enough. We’ll need more profiles in wisdom, too. More

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    Kayleigh McEnany refuses to follow McConnell admitting Trump election defeat – video

    Kayleigh McEnany has described Monday’s electoral college vote confirming Joe Biden as the nation’s next president as just ‘one step in the constitutional process’. The White House press secretary’s assessment is the latest example of White House officials declining to accept Biden’s victory, even after Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday broke his silence on the winner of the presidency, saying: ‘The electoral college has spoken.’US news – live updates Continue reading… More

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    Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell acknowledges Biden/Harris victory – video

    Republican Mitch McConnell on Tuesday congratulated the Democratic president-elect, Joe Biden, and vice president-elect, Kamala Harris, on their election victories, ending his long silence on the outcome of the presidential race. In remarks on the Senate floor on Tuesday morning, the Senate majority leader acknowledged the Democrats’ winning the White House following Monday’s formal result issued by the electoral collegeMitch McConnell congratulates Biden after weeks of declining to acknowledge election win – live Continue reading… More

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    Trump is spending the last days of his presidency on a literal killing spree | Austin Sarat

    In disregard for political precedent or basic humanity, Trump has fast-tracked federal executions before Biden takes officeDonald Trump is on a killing spree. He is turning the anger and resentment which burnishes his brand into a virtually unprecedented string of federal executions. From 14 July 2020, when the attorney general, William Barr, restarted the federal death penalty by executing Daniel Lewis Lee, through last week, the administration has put ten people to death. Three more executions are on the docket in the days leading up to the inauguration of Joe Biden.Last week, Trump and Barr executed Brandon Bernard even though his crime was committed when he was just 18 years old, and they killed Alfred Bourgeois even though his IQ put him in the intellectually disabled category. Continue reading… More

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    'Democracy prevailed,' says Biden after US electoral college confirms his win – video

    US President-elect Joe Biden has delivered a forceful rebuke to President Donald Trump’s attacks on the legitimacy of his victory, hours after winning the state-by-state electoral college vote that officially determines the US presidency. ’In this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed,’ Biden said in a prime-time speech from his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. ‘The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago,’ Biden said. ‘We now know that not even a pandemic or an abuse of power can extinguish that flame.’ Monday’s vote, typically a formality, assumed outsized significance in light of Trump’s extraordinary effort to subvert the process due to what he has falsely alleged was widespread voter fraud in the 3 November election. ’Now it’s time to turn the page, as we’ve done throughout our history – to unite, to heal,’ Biden concluded.
    ‘The people prevailed’: Biden addresses nation as electoral college affirms victory – as it happened
    Electoral college confirms Joe Biden’s victory in presidential election More

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    William Barr steps down as Trump's attorney general

    The US attorney general, William Barr, one of Donald Trump’s staunchest allies, has resigned just weeks after he contradicted the president by saying the justice department had uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of the 2020 election.Barr’s departure ends a tenure marked by brazen displays of fealty to a president whose political agenda he willingly advanced. Critics said Barr had turned the Department of Justice (DoJ) into an obedient servant of the White House, eroding its commitment to independence and the rule of law.Trump sought to play down tensions as he announced Barr’s resignation in a tweet on Monday, moments after members of the electoral college officially pushed Joe Biden over the 270-vote threshold to win the White House on Monday. The procedural step effectively ends Trump’s unprecedented bid to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election based on false claims of widespread voter fraud that Barr concluded were meritless.“Just had a very nice meeting with attorney general Bill Barr at the White House,” the president said. “Our relationship has been a very good one, he has done an outstanding job! As per letter, Bill will be leaving just before Christmas to spend the holidays with his family…”In his resignation letter, released by Trump on Twitter, Barr was characteristically effusive of the president. He praised Trump’s resilience in the face of what the attorney general described as a “partisan onslaught” that aimed to undermine a duly elected president.“No tactic, no matter how abusive and deceitful, was out of bounds,” Barr wrote.“Your record is all the more historic because you accomplished it in the face of relentless, implacable resistance,” he continued, adding: “Few could have weathered these attacks, much less forge ahead with a positive program for the country.”Jeff Rosen, the deputy attorney general, who Trump called “an outstanding person”, will take over the role of acting attorney general and “highly respected” Richard Donoghue, an official in Rosen’s office, would become the deputy attorney general.Barr surprised many observers by telling the Associated Press in an interview published on 1 December that he disputed the idea, promulgated by the president and his re-election campaign, that there had been widespread fraud in the 2020 election.Trump has attempted to undermine Biden’s victory by pointing to routine, small-scale issues in an election – questions about signatures, envelopes and postal marks – as evidence of widespread fraud across the nation that cost him the election.Trump and some of his allies have also endorsed more bizarre sources of supposed fraud, such as tying Biden’s win to election software created in Venezuela “at the direction of Hugo Chávez” – the former Venezuelan president who died in 2013.“There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results. And the DHS and DoJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that,” Barr said in the interview with the AP.Barr said some people were confusing the role of the federal criminal justice system and asking it to step in on allegations that should be made in civil lawsuits and reviewed by state or local officials, not the justice department.Barr added: “There’s a growing tendency to use the criminal justice system as sort of a default fix-all, and, people don’t like something – they want the Department of Justice to come in and ‘investigate’.”Those comments infuriated Trump and his supporters as they have tried – and failed – to find any meaningful way, via the courts, requested recounts, or pressure on officials, of overturning his defeat by Biden.Speculation about Barr’s future was rife from the moment his AP interview was published, as the most high-profile member of the administration flatly to contradict the president’s continuing arguments that he is the rightful winner.For months, Barr also kept a justice department investigation into Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, from becoming public, despite calls from Republicans and the White House to launch an inquiry into the younger Biden’s business dealings, according to the Wall Street Journal. Hunter Biden, long a target of the president and his political allies, announced last week that his tax affairs were under investigation.In the weeks before the 2020 election, Trump publicly berated his attorney general for not prosecuting the president’s political enemies, among them his Democratic opponent and his predecessor, Barack Obama. In an October interview, Trump said Barr would be remembered as a “very sad, sad situation” if he did not indict Biden or Obama. Barr’s refusal to act, Trump warned then, could cost him the election.Trump announced in December 2018 that he was nominating Barr to become his next attorney general, replacing Jeff Sessions, a loyalist who angered the president when he stepped aside and allowed his deputy to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Russia’s election interference.Barr, 70, had previously served as attorney general in the George Bush administration and was initially viewed by political veterans in Washington as a much-needed stabilizing force who would insulate the department from political attacks. Yet, assuming the post the post as the Russia investigation into allegations of collusion between the Trump 2016 election campaign and Russian operatives neared its denouement in early 2019, Barr quickly upended expectations by ferociously attacking the special counsel investigation that examined the ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.In his resignation letter, the attorney general said it was the “nadir” of what he believed was a partisan crusade against the president “was the effort to cripple, if not oust, your administration with frenzied and baseless accusations of collusion with Russia”.Critics have often accused Barr of showing more loyalty to the president than to the nation. In one such instance, Barr called a press conference last April and offered a misleading preview of Mueller’s report. He omitted the report’s detailed description of potential obstruction of justice by Trump and falsely claimed the White House had cooperated fully.This set the tone for Trump’s inaccurate trumpeting when the report itself came out, in restricted form, that he and his team had enjoyed “total exoneration” by Mueller – a blatant misinterpretation.And Barr’s protocol-smashing, partisan path continued from there, as he intervened in criminal cases brought against prominent individuals in Trump’s circle, such as Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.He also initiated an investigation of the origins of the Russia investigation itself, seen as a fundamental undermining of the work of Mueller and his team, an effort that continues. More