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    ‘Chaos will be created’: Arizona court hears election-subversion case – with eyes on 2024

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    In a courtroom in Phoenix, Arizona, two elected officials who allegedly tried to subvert the county’s 2022 election tried to get a lawsuit against them thrown out in a case one of their defense attorneys called both “silly” and “scary”.The Cochise county supervisors, Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, appeared in court virtually, to defend themselves against charges of attempted election interference for their initial failure to certify the county’s election results.The implications of the case extend far beyond the rural county and the Phoenix courtroom 200 miles away.The state attorney general, Kris Mayes, a Democrat, sought the charges in the deep-red border county, where election denialism has gripped part of the electorate. Those looking to sow doubt in elections found, to some degree, willing ears with the two Republicans on the board.View image in fullscreenTheir attorneys argue that the officials’ conduct did not actually delay the election results statewide. They also claim the two supervisors have legislative immunity for their votes, regardless of their underlying motivations. And, while the state has maintained that signing off on election results is a required duty not subject to supervisors’ discretion, the supervisors claim they don’t just serve as a “rubber stamp” on election results.The Arizona legislature’s Republican leaders filed a brief in the case aligning with the supervisors, saying that the lawsuit “portends further weaponization of legal and judicial processes for political retribution”.“What we’ve got is a rogue prosecution, a rogue prosecutor in a rogue prosecution, arguing, well, we’ll just take any legislative function – clearly, which it was, this vote – and we’re going to now read into it,” Dennis Wilenchik, Crosby’s attorney, said in a court hearing on 19 April.The lawsuit is part of a deeper conflict – a clash between a Democratic attorney general, narrowly elected in 2022, and Republicans who question election results in the state. The recent indictments against the Republican slate of Arizona fake electors, two of whom are sitting lawmakers, further the divide.Both Mayes and the Republican-controlled legislature allege the other side is playing politics instead of doing their job. The state house started a committee to investigate Mayes’ actions on various issues, including Cochise elections; the committee’s chair has said the group could recommend actions be taken against Mayes, including potential impeachment.The battle lines drawn in Cochise county extend far beyond its borders, into whether local elected officials can decide not to sign off on election results, into the fate of Arizona’s future and who controls it. The culmination of the case holds potential consequences for the 2024 election, when officials at the local level could try similar tactics to question results.View image in fullscreenPart of a patternAfter the 2020 election, activists in counties around the country turned up at meetings to allege that voter fraud stole the election from Donald Trump and demanded changes to how their elections are run.In Cochise county, these activists repeatedly brought up unsubstantiated claims about problems with tabulation machines that made their use in elections suspect. They wanted the county to count ballots fully by hand and throw out the machines.Crosby and Judd aligned with those activists, agreeing to a full hand-count. The idea invited a lawsuit, which led to a ruling that a full hand-count would be illegal in Arizona.The supervisors claimed they had lingering questions about the use of tabulation machines, specifically whether those machines had the proper certification, so they refused to certify the election. A court intervened, forcing certification. Judd eventually voted in favor of certifying results after the court ruling, but Crosby didn’t show up for the meeting.Personnel issues have plagued the elections office as these legal battles have played out. The county’s former elections director, Lisa Marra, opposed the hand count, and Crosby and Judd sued her personally in an attempt to get access to the ballots for a hand count. Marra eventually quit because of a “threatening” work environment, leading to a monetary payout.View image in fullscreenThe county is on its fourth elections director since the 2022 election, after the most recent director, Tim Mattix, left in April for personal reasons. The director before him, Bob Bartelsmeyer, was an election skeptic who stayed in the role for just five months after his conservative bonafides were repeatedly impugned by local far-right activists.Mayes’ office contends the two supervisors’ pattern of behavior leading up to delaying certification speaks to a plan to sow chaos in elections and question results.“This is a criminal conspiracy to obstruct the election,” the assistant attorney general Todd Lawson argued, “so that the secretary of state is unable to certify, and that chaos will be created, no one will know what will happen, and that people like the US House of Representatives, perhaps the Arizona legislature, will have to step in and declare election results, irrespective of who actually won.”Whatever happens in the case, now in Maricopa county superior court, it will almost certainly be appealed to a higher court.Crosby did not answer questions sent from the Guardian, responding: “No thanks.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJudd also did not respond, and her attorney said he had advised against her speaking with the media at this time.But Judd told Votebeat that she wasn’t a driving force for a hand count in the first place and voted for it because of what she was hearing from constituents.“You can ask anyone. I never pushed for it,” she said.A separate courtroom battle over the legality of hand counts, stemming from Mohave county, could affect whether Cochise and other jurisdictions pursue the elimination of voting machines in this year’s presidential election.In the Republican-dominated county, the supervisor Ron Gould sued Mayes after her office sent a letter warning supervisors against a full hand-count of the 2024 election, something the board there had been considering but ultimately voted against.Mayes warned that supervisors could face criminal prosecution if they proceeded with a hand count, as many counties across the country have tried to do since 2020.View image in fullscreenLegislature strikes backBefore the first meeting of the house ad hoc committee of executive oversight in early April, Mayes held a press conference and derided the legislature’s “outlandish personal attacks” on her and the attorney general’s office.“Perhaps our Republican senate president and speaker of the house aren’t very used to an attorney general who will actually roll up her sleeves and fight for Arizonans,” she said. “But that is what they have in me.”View image in fullscreenIn the house, Democrats skipped the meeting in protest. Representative Jacqueline Parker, the committee’s chair, said it would investigate Mayes’ actions to see whether she had weaponized her office or abused her authority, but it seemed the committee already believed she had.The Cochise county skirmishes were just one part of their opposition – they also mentioned her refusal to prosecute anyone who violated Arizona’s abortion ban and her unwillingness to defend laws on LGBTQ+ issues such as one outlawing trans girls from playing girls’ sports, among other concerns.One of the first records requests to Mayes’ office from the committee centered on Cochise county – in particular, an unsuccessful lawsuit brought by the attorney general when the board voted to move some election authority to the Republican county recorder, who had pushed for the hand count and cast doubt on elections.“We would like to better understand your motivation for targeting Cochise county and including such inflammatory and irrelevant material in your court filings,” the committee chairs wrote.Parker said in the initial hearing that she hoped Mayes cooperates with the records request because she would “really be interested in finding out why she’s only going after Cochise county and not other bad-acting counties like Pima or Maricopa, who have had, in my opinion, many, many more issues”.After Mayes announced the fake electors charges, Parker called on her to recuse herself from “any legal matters involving elected officials or candidates” because she has “prosecuted or threatened to prosecute public officials if they dare disagree with you”.Mayes’ office said the backlash doesn’t affect her work and that she “won’t let the partisan attacks by the GOP deter her from doing her job”. 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      A physician, a lawyer, a CEO: the 84 fake electors who allegedly tried to steal the 2020 election

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      With the indictment announced in Arizona this week, 36 out of 84 people who signed certificates falsely alleging they were electors for Donald Trump have now been criminally charged.Kris Mayes is the third state attorney general to indict part of the slate of people who signed the false documents with plans to turn them over to Mike Pence, the US vice-president, to steal the election from Joe Biden. Attorneys general in Michigan and Nevada have also brought charges, and in Wisconsin, fake electors face a civil lawsuit.
      36 have been criminally indicted (one has had charges dropped)
      10 face a civil lawsuit
      14 have been subpoenaed by Congress as part of the January 6 investigation
      This year, as the country prepares for a rematch between Trump and Biden, the majority of the 84 people have not been prosecuted criminally. Some of the fake electors, including those in Pennsylvania, are unlikely to be charged because of how the document they signed there was worded; their documents said their electoral votes would only be counted if they were determined to be the “duly elected and qualified electors” for Pennsylvania.A small number of the 84 people – who in 2020 mostly were local Republican party leaders and activists – have been elected to public office or appointed to positions of power since the scheme.
      Seven have been elected to office
      Seven have lost elections
      Four have been appointed or nominated to positions of power
      One is currently running for federal office
      It’s unclear whether Trump and his allies would use a similar playbook to try to steal the next election if he loses in November. He and others in his orbit are already laying the groundwork to claim voter fraud.As of now, a number of the people who signed false elector certificates have positions of authority and could help Trump if he were to attempt something similar again.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenArizona (11)On Wednesday, Kris Mayes, the state attorney general, announced that Arizona’s 11 fake electors and seven other Trump allies had been indicted for their role in the scheme.Tyler Bowyer: Bowyer is the chief operating officer of Turning Point USA, a Phoenix-based non-profit organization, and an Arizona committee member for the Republican National Committee. He has called on the RNC to “immediately indemnify” those who participated in what he calls the “contingent elector plan”. Recently he has also led trainings for Turning Point to encourage Republicans to cast early ballots.Nancy Cottle: Cottle was one of two Arizona fake electors who were subpoenaed by a congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack. She was the chair of Arizona’s fake elector delegation.Jake Hoffman: Hoffman is an Arizona state senator, elected in 2022, and was previously a state representative. He founded the legislature’s far-right freedom caucus and announced in March that he’s running to represent the state as a member of the Republican National Committee. He also runs a conservative digital-marketing company, Rally Forge, that was banned from Facebook and suspended from Twitter for engaging in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” on behalf of Turning Point Action, an affiliate of Turning Point USA.Anthony T Kern: Kern is an Arizona state senator, elected in 2022, and is currently running for a seat in the US Congress to represent Arizona’s eighth district. He was an Arizona state representative from 2015 until he lost his seat in the 2020 election. He has introduced a senate proposal calling for the state legislature to decide on presidential electors instead of adhering to a popular vote. Kern participated in the January 6 riots in Washington, which he has called a peaceful demonstration.James Lamon: Lamon ran for the US Senate to represent Arizona in 2022, losing in the Republican primary.Robert Montgomery: Montgomery was appointed to a seat on the Palominas fire district board in 2022 and is the former head of the Cochise county Republican committee.Samuel I Moorhead: Moorhead serves as the second vice-chair of the Gila county Arizona Republican party.Loraine B Pellegrino: Pellegrino, the secretary of Arizona’s fake elector delegation, was also subpoenaed by a congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack. Pellegrino has served as president of Ahwatukee Republican Women and was previously president of the Arizona Federation of Republican Women.Greg Safsten: Safsten was the executive director of the Republican party of Arizona during the 2020 election. Records show that he had been in communication with Kenneth Chesebro, a Trump ally and the architect of the fake elector plan, with instructions on how to carry out the plan.Kelli Ward: Ward is an osteopathic physician who served as the chair of the Arizona Republican party from 2019 to 2023. Following the 2020 election, Ward filed a number of lawsuits to nullify Arizona’s results, in support of Trump’s effort to prove the election had been stolen. She previously served in the Arizona state senate. Records show that Ward had also been in communication with Kenneth Chesebro, a Trump ally and the architect of the fake elector plan, with instructions on how to carry out the plan. Two days before the Arizona delegation gathered, Ward emailed various people connected to Trump’s campaign about the effort, according to records. She was subponead in 2022 as part of the January 6 select committee’s investigation, and filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to block the subpoena.Michael Ward: Kelli Ward’s husband is an emergency medicine physician. He was also subpoenaed in 2022 as part of the January 6 select committee’s investigation and, with Kelli Ward, filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to block it.Georgia (16)Three of Georgia’s fake electors were named in the Fulton county indictment of Trump and 18 of his allies for efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state. Several other fake electors struck immunity deals or plea agreements with the office of Fani Willis, Fulton county’s district attorney.Mark Amick: Amick is a member of the election feasibility committee in Milton, Georgia, and the Georgia Republican Foundation. In 2020, he served as a poll watcher in Milton county and testified in a hearing after the election that he saw more than 9,000 votes wrongly go to Joe Biden during the first Georgia recount.Joseph Brannan: Brannan is the former treasurer of the Georgia Republican party. He is reportedly “unindicted co-conspirator individual 9” in Fani Willis’s indictment of Trump and his allies in Fulton county. He received an email from Kenneth Chesebro before the scheme with logistics on how the Trump campaign hoped alternate electors would cast their votes.James “Ken” Carroll: Carroll, formerly the assistant secretary for the Georgia Republican party, recently ran unsuccessfully to be the state GOP’s second vice-chair. He told the Washington Post that, knowing what he does now, he would not have agreed to cast an electoral college vote for Trump. Carroll is a witness for the state in the prosecution of Trump and others in Fulton county, according to a court filing.Brad Carver: Carver, a lawyer and member of the Republican National Lawyers Association, was also investigated by the Georgia state bar in 2022 for his role in the scheme following a complaint by a legal watchdog.Vikki Townsend Consiglio: Consiglio is a former assistant treasurer for the Georgia Republican party. In 2022, Brian Kemp, the Georgia governor, reappointed her to the state soil and water conservation commission. Townsend is a witness for the state in the prosecution of Trump and others in Fulton county, according to a court filing.John Downey: Downey was involved with the Cobb county Republican party in 2020.Carolyn Hall Fisher: Fisher is a former first vice-chair for the Georgia Republican party. She is a witness for the state in the prosecution of Trump and others in Fulton county, according to a court filing.Gloria Kay Godwin: Godwin is a local Republican party leader in Blackshear. She is a witness for the state in the prosecution of Trump and others in Fulton county, according to a court filing.David G Hanna: Hanna was the CEO and co-founder of a financial technology company.Mark W Hennessy: In 2023, Brian Kemp, the Georgia governor, named Hennessy, the owner of several Georgia car dealerships, to the board of natural resources.Burt Jones: Jones is currently the lieutenant governor of Georgia, a position he’s held since being elected in 2022. Previously he was a member of the Georgia state senate for 10 years. Before January 6, Jones planned to deliver a letter to Mike Pence calling on him to delay the tally of electoral college votes, but he never delivered it, according to reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In 2022, a judge ruled that Fani Willis cannot target Jones in Fulton county alongside Trump and others because of a conflict of interest (Willis held a fundraiser for his eventual Democratic opponent in the lieutenant governor’s race), but state prosecutor Pete Skandalakis said recently that he will lead the investigation into Jones’ alleged role in trying to overturn the election. Jones is reportedly “unindicted co-conspirator individual 8” in Fani Willis’s indictment of Trump in Fulton county.Cathy Latham: Latham, who was the Coffee county Republican party chair during the 2020 election, was indicted along with Trump and 17 others in Fulton county for her efforts to help Trump overturn the election. Latham allegedly helped breach and tamper with election equipment in Coffee county.Daryl Moody: Moody, an attorney, is chair of the board of governors for the Georgia Republican Foundation. In 2022 the Georgia state bar investigated him for his role in the scheme following a complaint by a legal watchdog.David Shafer: Shafer, who was the chair of the state GOP during the 2020 election, was indicted along with Trump and 17 others in Fulton county for his efforts to help Trump overturn the election. According to prosecutors, Shafer played a key role in organizing the slate of fake electors, convening them in the state capitol and telling them that “thousands of people” voted illegally in the state. He was also a Georgia state senator from 2003 to 2019. In 2018, he ran for lieutenant governor and lost in the primary. He was subpoenaed by the January 6 committee in Congress.View image in fullscreenShawn Still: Still is a state senator in Georgia, elected in 2022. He was finance chair of the Georgia GOP during the 2020 election, and was indicted along with Trump and 17 others in Fulton county for his efforts to help Trump overturn the election. He was the secretary of the fake elector meeting in the state capitol. He was also subpoenaed by the January 6 committee in Congress. In September 2023, a three-person panel appointed by the governor didn’t recommend that he be removed from the state senate while the Fulton county case is pending.CB Yadav: A small-business owner in Camden county, Yadav is a member of the Georgians First commission under the governor’s office.Michigan (16)In July 2023, Dana Nessel, the Michigan attorney general, charged all 16 of the state’s fake electors with eight felonies each. They all pleaded not guilty. One has since had his charges dropped. A judge is currently considering whether to send the rest to trial.Kathy Berden: Berden is a national committee member of the Republican party of Michigan. She was one of two Michigan fake electors who were subpoenaed by a congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack.Hank Choate: Choate, a dairy farmer, served as chair of the Jackson county Republican party.Amy Facchinello: Facchinello was elected in 2020 to serve on the school board in Grand Blanc and has been the subject of protests over her QAnon social media posts. Facchinello refused to resign, though there have been efforts to recall her.Clifford Frost: A real estate agent, Frost ran unsuccessfully for the Macomb county board of commissioners in 2022. He has also run unsuccessfully to represent the 28th district in the Michigan house. He is one of two of the state’s fake electors to try to get the felony charges against them dismissed because of comments made by the attorney general Dana Nessel, that the electors had been “brainwashed”.Stanley Grot: Grot is the Shelby township clerk, appointed in 2012, and ran unsuccessfully for the Michigan house in 2022. After the Michigan attorney general charged Grot, the state stripped him of his ability to administer elections, but he remains in office.John Haggard: Haggard was one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Michigan officials in which he sought to overturn the 2020 election results.Mari-Ann Henry: Henry is treasurer of the seventh congressional district Republican committee. She is one of two of the state’s fake electors to try to get the felony charges against them dismissed because of comments made by the attorney general Dana Nessel, that the electors had been “brainwashed”.Timothy King: King was one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Michigan officials in which he sought to overturn the 2020 election results.Michele Lundgren: Lundgren was the Republican nominee in 2022 for a Detroit-based seat in the Michigan house, but lost in the general election.Meshawn Maddock: Maddock is the former Michigan Republican party co-chair and is the co-owner of A-1 Bail Bonds, along with her spouse, the state representative Matt Maddock. CNN reported that she bragged about the Trump campaign’s involvement in the fake elector scheme. She and her husband spoke at a pro-Trump event in DC the day before the January 6 insurrection.James Renner: Renner has served as a precinct delegate and volunteer with the Michigan Republican party. He is the only Michigan fake elector to get his felony charges dropped after he agreed to “cooperate fully” with the attorney general’s investigation. He then testified in February that he did not know how the electoral process worked and “never would have challenged it” had he known it was illegal.Mayra Rodriguez: Rodriguez served as the chair and secretary of Michigan’s Republican electors. She was one of two Michigan fake electors who were subpoenaed by a congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack.Rose Rook: Rook is the former Van Buren county GOP chair.Marian Sheridan: Sheridan is grassroots vice-chair for the Michigan Republican party. She was one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Michigan officials in which she sought to overturn the 2020 election results.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKen Thompson: Thompson was brought in to replace a GOP elector who was “uncomfortable with the whole thing” and refused to participate, a state GOP official testified to the House January 6 commission.Kent Vanderwood: Vanderwood is the mayor of Wyoming, Michigan, winning election in 2022. He was previously a longtime member of the city council in Wyoming, a small city near Grand Rapids.New Mexico (5)New Mexico prosecutors investigated the state’s fake elector scheme and determined that nothing in state election law applies to the participants’ conduct, according to the department’s final report issued in January.Anissa Ford-Tinnin: Ford-Tinnin is the former executive director of the state Republican party.Lupe Garcia: Garcia is a business owner.Deborah W Maestas: Maestas is former chair of the Republican party of New Mexico. She was one of two New Mexico fake electors who were subpoenaed by a congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack.Jewll Powdrell: Powdrell chaired the state fake elector meeting and was one of two New Mexico fake electors who were subpoenaed by a congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack.Rosie Tripp: Tripp was a national committee member for the Republican party of New Mexico, a former Socorro county commissioner and a former city council member in Socorro.Nevada (6)A Nevada grand jury in December indicted the six state fake electors and charged them with two felonies each. They have all pleaded not guilty. Under the current schedule, they will not stand trial until next year.James DeGraffenreid: DeGraffenreid has served as vice-chair of the Nevada Republican party. He was one of two New Mexico fake electors who were subpoenaed by a congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack. He was summoned to testify by Fulton county prosecutors about his communications with Kenneth Chesebro about the scheme and was also called to testify in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal investigation of Trump.Jim Hindle: Hindle runs elections in Storey county, Nevada, where he was elected clerk in 2022. He was previously vice-chair of the Nevada Republican committee.Jesse Law: Law is chair of the Clark county Republican party and was a staffer on the Trump campaign. He announced in December that he’s running for state assembly.Michael J McDonald: The chair of the Nevada Republican party, McDonald is a former member of the Las Vegas city council. He was one of two Nevada fake electors who were subpoenaed by a congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack. He was also called to testify in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal investigation of Trump.Shawn Meehan: Meehan is a retired air force veteran who serves on the Nevada Republican central committee and the Douglas county Republican party. He recently said he launched an effort to “guard” the constitution.Eileen Rice: Rice serves on the board of the Douglas county Republican party.Pennsylvania (20)Pennsylvania’s 20 fake electors are unlikely to face criminal charges because of the stipulation written on their electoral vote documents.Bill Bachenberg: Bachenberg, who chaired the state’s slate of fake electors, is the millionaire owner of Lehigh Valley Sporting Clays. He allegedly funded efforts to uncover voter fraud in Pennsylvania and other states. He was involved in Arizona’s sham “audit” and was subpoenaed by a congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack.Lou Barletta: Barletta served as a member of the US House from 2011 to 2019, and as mayor of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, from 2000 to 2010. In 2022, he unsuccessfully ran in the Republican gubernatorial primary.Tom Carroll: Carroll ran unsuccessfully in 2019 for district attorney in Northampton county and refused to concede the race because of “overwhelming irregularities” in how the election was administered. He brought a lawsuit against state and local officials alleging election law violations in the 2020 election.Ted Christian: Christian was the Pennsylvania state director for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.Chuck Coccodrilli: Coccodrilli was a board member with the Pennsylvania Great Frontier Pac. He died in October 2021 after an illness.Bernadette Comfort: Comfort is the vice-chair for the Pennsylvania Republican party.View image in fullscreenSam DeMarco III: DeMarco has been an at-large representative on the Allegheny county council since 2016. He is also the chair of the Republican committee of Allegheny county. In 2022, he was interviewed by the FBI about his role in the scheme. He recently filed a lawsuit challenging the use of ballot drop off locations in the county, and the county agreed to a settlement.Marcela Diaz-Myers: Diaz-Myers is the chair of the Pennsylvania GOP Hispanic Advisory Council.Christie DiEsposti: DiEsposti is an account representative at Pure Water Technology. She has reportedly moved to Florida.Josephine Ferro: Ferro was Monroe county register from 2015 until losing reelection in 2023. She is the former president of the Pennsylvania Federation of Republican Women. In 2020 and 2022, she was a plaintiff in lawsuits seeking to block voters from being able to correct defective ballots and to stop pre-canvassing of ballots.Charlie Gerow: Gerow is a Republican strategist who ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary for governor in 2022. He is also former vice-chair of the American Conservative Union, and the CEO of Quantum Communications, a Harrisburg-based public relations firm, where the fake electors met in Pennsylvania in December 2020.Kevin Harley: Harley works with Gerow as managing director of Quantum Communications and has served as a spokesperson for Gerow. He has also worked as press secretary for Tom Corbett, the former Pennsylvania governor.Leah Hoopes: Hoopes served as a poll watcher in 2020 and co-wrote a book about election fraud. She filed a lawsuit against Delaware county, accusing it of mishandling ballots in the 2020 election. She was named as a defendant in a Delaware county voting machine supervisor’s lawsuit alleging that Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that election officials tampered with the election made the supervisor the subject of physical threats.Ash Khare: An immigrant from India and retired engineer, Khare is a member of the Warren county GOP committee.Andre McCoy: McCoy was present at the Maricopa county ballot recount and was involved in the Arizona sham “audit”.Lisa Patton: Patton was the secretary of Pennsylvania’s slate of fake electors and was a member of the Pennsylvania Women for Trump leadership team. She was subpoenaed by a congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack.View image in fullscreenPat Poprik: Poprik is the chair of the Bucks county Republican committee.Andy Reilly: Reilly is a national committee member for the Republican party of Pennsylvania and former secretary for the party. Reilly was previously elected twice to serve as a member of the Delaware county council.Suk Smith: Smith was on the advisory board of Gun Owners/Sportsmen for Trump in 2020.Calvin Tucker: Tucker was deputy chair and director of engagement and advancement for the Pennsylvania Republican party. In 2016, he served as a media surrogate and African-American adviser to Trump’s campaign.Wisconsin (10)A civil lawsuit over the fake electors scheme settled in December. The 10 Republicans acknowledged Biden’s victory and agreed not to serve in the electoral college this year.Mary Buestrin: A former national committee member of the Republican party of Wisconsin.Carol Brunner: Brunner is the former vice-chair of Wisconsin’s first congressional district Republican party.Darryl Carlson: Carlson is the former chair of the sixth congressional district GOP. He ran an unsuccessful campaign in 2014 for the Wisconsin state assembly.Bill Feehan: Feehan is the chair of the third congressional district GOP. In 2022, he sat on an advisory board for the gubernatorial campaign of Rebecca Kleefisch, an election denier who has sued the Wisconsin election commission (WEC) over its administration of the 2020 election, according to American Oversight.Scott Grabins: Grabins is former chair of the Dane county Republican party.Andrew Hitt: The chair of the Republican party of Wisconsin from 2019 until 2021, Hitt was one of two Wisconsin fake electors who were subpoenaed by a congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack. He was interviewed on 60 Minutes in February and said he feared for his family’s safety if he didn’t sign the fake elector papers.Kathy Kiernan: Kiernan is the second vice-chair of the state Republican party.Kelly Ruh: Ruh is chair of the eighth congressional district Republican party, former alderperson for De Pere, and was one of two Wisconsin fake electors who were subpoenaed by a congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack.Bob Spindell: Spindell has been a Republican commissioner on the Wisconsin election commission since 2019 and is the chair of the Republican fourth congressional district. He was previously the Milwaukee election commissioner for more than 18 years. In 2021, he refused to recuse himself from a vote on whether the WEC should investigate Wisconsin’s false electors.Pam Travis: Travis was the vice-chair of the seventh congressional district GOP and is a former staffer for the US senator Ron Johnson’s 2022 re-election campaign. More

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      Exclusive: Georgia lawmaker runs secret election-conspiracy Telegram channel

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      A Fulton county commissioner in Georgia has been operating a private Telegram channel for years, propagating debunked claims about the 2020 election, and spreading accusations of crimes by county employees, including Ruby Freeman, an election worker defamed by Rudy Giuliani in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2020 loss.Bridget Thorne, a Republican representing the relatively conservative cities of Fulton county north of Atlanta, indirectly identifies herself as the creator and administrator of the Fulton County Elections channel on Telegram, a mobile messaging platform, in multiple posts to its page. The channel uses the official logo of the Fulton county board of registration and elections.The channel, created in May 2021, had 133 subscribers as of Tuesday night. The Guardian learned of its existence from Marisa Pyle, an Atlanta-based political organizer.In a post from 14 February, the administrator of the page accused Freeman, a former Fulton county elections worker, of misconduct, despite a Georgia elections board finding that all of the conspiracy theories about her were “false and unsubstantiated”.“We clearly see her double scanning ballots,” the channel administrator wrote about Freeman, a regular target of attention on the Telegram page. “We see her incriminating Facebook posts. Yet, she is made to be a victim and given hero awards.”Rudy Giuliani repeatedly attacked Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, suggesting without evidence that they had committed crimes during the 2020 election. Investigators from the Georgia secretary of state’s office quickly debunked the accusations, but Giuliani continued to make them throughout his campaign to overturn the election, leading to a $148m defamation judgment against him in December. Freeman and Moss were the target of rampant harassment and threats because of the misinformation.View image in fullscreenThorne confirmed in an email to the Guardian that she started the Telegram channel in 2021 “initially for a private archive of events”, but said she is “no longer the primary administrator, nor do I regularly contribute to the conversations found within”. She said the channel was “made private for safety reasons (after receiving online death threats and threatening anonymous mail)”.“I have never stated that Ms Freeman committed any crime or election fraud,” Thorne said. She did not respond directly to a question about whether she posted the lines above. However, Thorne said: “It should be noted that last summer, the state board of elections provided a public reprimand and letter of instruction to Fulton county after the 2020 election specifically noting that ballots were double-scanned. My position has been and will remain that any concerns raised during any election should be thoroughly investigated.”The post about Freeman under the Telegram channel’s administrator account is dated 14 February 2024. A subsequent post in March is self-referential to Thorne: “Oh look! They must have had an earthquake in Union City. My picture along with Hall’s came crashing down in the election warehouse. Somehow in the crash, the actual picture was destroyed.” The March post accompanies an image of a wall of pictures of county commissioners – Thorne’s is the only photo missing in the picture.Thorne is one of two Republicans elected to Fulton county’s seven-member board of commissioners. She has a vote on appointments to the Fulton county board of registration and elections, election office budgeting and some county policies regarding elections administration.Pyle has been pseudonymously subscribed to the channel since its inception and saw Thorne’s posts. “After the 2020 election, I subscribed to as many election-denial channels on Telegram and other platforms as I could, to keep track of things,” she said.Pyle had until recently been the rapid response director for Fair Fight Action, a progressive voting-rights organization founded by Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia representative. Fair Fight and rightwing groups claiming election fraud were mutually antagonistic in Georgia even before the 2020 election, a point Thorne herself has regularly noted in posts on the channel.View image in fullscreenThe Fulton County Elections channel went private after Thorne’s election in November 2022, Pyle said. Pyle, now the senior democracy defense manager with the voting rights group All Voting Is Local, exposed posts from the group on X last week after the unexpected resignation of Patrice Perkins-Hooker, the Fulton county elections board chair, who has taken a position as Atlanta’s interim city attorney.“The way in which she is consistently accusing Fulton county and election staff and the state and voters of malfeasance, she has very directly demeaned her own staff, she has accused people within the county of conspiring against her,” Pyle said.Though she can only identify a handful of other people who are following Thorne’s Telegram channel, every time Thorne posts something on the page, other election-conspiracy pages Pyle follows repost it, Pyle said. “She may have the first amendment right to do this, but that is not immunity from it causing repercussions and harm to democracy,” Pyle said. “That delegitimizes the position she holds.”The Guardian initially verified the authenticity of Thorne’s posts by examining Pyle’s device to access the Telegram channel directly.Thorne’s posts on the page level accusations of mismanagement against elections office staff and others. “Fulton Elections Director Nadine Williams and [elections board] Chair Patrice Perkins Hooker creating a hostile environment for anyone observing the polls. … why?” Thorne wrote. “Do they have something to hide? They should be rolling out the red carpet for observers.”Thorne has repeatedly called for the firing of previous and current elections office staff workers, including Williams.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAfter being made aware of the contents of the Telegram page, Williams said she had never heard Thorne call for her firing directly before, and is concerned about the impact Thorne may have had on recruiting and retaining poll workers. “It does make for an environment that people are uncomfortable in our department, knowing that that person is not working with Fulton but is working against Fulton,” Williams said.Much of Thorne’s ire targets temporary elections workers contracted through Happy Faces, a staffing firm the Fulton county elections board ultimately dropped, and other temporary workers. She pointedly and repeatedly noted the apparent Nigerian citizenship of an IT staffer. The IT staffer Thorne referred to is an American citizen, county officials confirmed Thursday.“Current Georgia law requires poll workers to be United States citizens,” Thorne said in an email Thursday. “I think this is a perfectly reasonable policy and I wish it would have passed last year. To that end, I think I am well within bounds to question whether Fulton county can comply with that law once it takes effect.”Thorne, a Republican, has presented in public statements her concerns about the integrity of the 2020 election in Fulton county as a nonpartisan matter, and avoided describing the election as stolen or fraudulent. “It just seems like every year, Fulton county is a mess,” she said in comments before the Fulton county board of elections in March 2022. “I just want to reiterate that I’m not here as a partisan figure. I’m just listening to anyone who will hear my concerns.”Her comments on the private Telegram channel are not so restrained.Thorne has regularly posted articles during the last three years from fringe and far-right publications like the Epoch Times claiming election fraud in Fulton county and elsewhere around the country. Between the inception of the page in May 2021 and her election in November 2022, Thorne reposted videos and articles by VoterGa, an activist group founded by Garland Favorito, a far-right conspiracy theorist who continues to press debunked claims about the 2020 election in court and the media.Thorne also sought to recruit poll workers through her contacts on the page, using claims of fraud as a rallying cry. “We are in a pivotal time in our country, and we need YOU to stand up NOW,” she wrote. “Voting is not ENOUGH. Freedom is not FREE. YOU can help end the corruption, illegal conduct, and incompetence in Fulton County Elections and restore trust and faith in our system again.”In a 21 March 2022 post, Thorne – as administrator of the channel – wrote a first-person post describing the reasons for her candidacy for the Fulton county commission: “I decided that maybe I could be more effective in fighting for election integrity by running for District 1 Commissioner. Instead of fighting them from the outside, I can fight from the inside. I can ask the tough questions. I can force them to be transparent. I hope that you can help me.” The post is followed by a link to Thorne’s campaign website.Later in May 2022, Thorne posted a recruiting document from Fight Voter Fraud, a Connecticut-based rightwing election advocacy group seeking to raise a “secret army” in Georgia to conduct research on voters the group has “deemed questionable”.Thorne rose to political prominence as an employee of the Fulton county elections office during the 2020 election. A software engineer, she was a Fulton county precinct manager and Dominion-trained poll worker who helped test and set up election equipment in 2020. She claimed that ballots had been mishandled, and before the November 2020 election reported her observations first to elections staff in Fulton county, then to the secretary of state’s office.She then went on social media with rightwing Tea Party organizations and appeared on Fox News to describe a “haphazard” process for handling absentee ballots, and to argue that elections officials were ignoring mistakes. On 3 December 2020, Thorne testified to her observations at a hearing at the Georgia state senate, the same one at which Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani had been pressing a case to overturn the election.Giuliani’s arguments to overturn the 2020 election at this hearing are one element of the racketeering case for election interference brought against him, Trump and 17 others in Fulton county.After the testimony, Richard Barron, the Fulton county elections director, ordered that Thorne and Suzi Voyles, another elections office employee who had been publicly critical of the election, not be rehired for the runoff election in January 2021 – effectively firing them. Barron’s office said the women had committed infractions like taking prohibited cellphone photographs and improperly showing ballots to a poll monitor. But Republican political figures across the state – including Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state – exploded at the firing of two whistleblowers, issuing condemnations of Fulton county and demanding they be rehired.Lawmakers subsequently appointed Carter Jones as an outside observer to review the county’s elections processes. County commissioners eventually fired Barron. Jones declared in June 2021 that Fulton county’s elections operation was rife with sloppiness, mismanagement and disorganization, but wasn’t engaged in malfeasance, dishonesty or fraud. More

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      A far-right US youth group is ramping up its movement to back election deniers

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      Turning Point USA, a far-right youth group known for its fundraising prowess and for promoting election-conspiracy theories, is mounting a multimillion-dollar mobilization drive via its advocacy arm in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin.Arizona-based TPUSA, a non-profit co-founded in 2012 by then 18-year-old Charlie Kirk that’s become a key ally in Donald Trump’s Maga ecosystem, has launched the drive through Turning Point Action, which has raised tens of millions of dollars and is hiring hundreds of full-time employees in the three states, according to its spokesperson, Andrew Kolvet.While its current fundraising drive is to support the voter-outreach efforts, TP Action is likely to help finance other political advocacy initiatives, including ousting some key Arizona election officials who disputed claims of election fraud in 2020.Dubbed “chase the vote”, the drive is being supplemented by another get-out-the-vote campaign that TP Action is starting with the Christian nationalist and televangelist Lance Wallnau.Together with Wallnau and some other Maga allies like Moms for America, TP Action is planning a “courage tour” in the same three swing states to enlist pastors and their churches in the voter-mobilization drive, which will include booths in churches to register voters.TP Action’s fledgling campaign is aimed at identifying and registering “patriotic” voters, encouraging early voting and getting voters to the polls in November, according to its website. Billed as the “first and most robust conservative ballot-chasing operation”, TP Action’s drive could benefit Trump and Maga-allied candidates in the three states.The new political advocacy drives come after TPUSA and TP Action sparked strong criticism from veteran Republicans, watchdog groups and analysts for backing several hard-right candidates in Arizona who were defeated in 2022, and pushing conspiracies about election fraud, Covid-19 and other issues.“TPUSA has a radicalized worldview that they use as a litmus test” in backing candidates, said Kathy Petsas, a GOP district leader in Phoenix. “When it comes to the general elections that matter, their ROI is lousy.”Notably, four top Arizona candidates in 2022 who were backed by TP Action lost to Democrats, including ex-Fox News anchor Kari Lake in her race for governor, and Mark Finchem in his bid to become secretary of state.“Virtually every major race they touched they lost in the general election in Arizona,” the former Arizona congressman Matt Salmon said. “Everyone Trump endorses they get behind. It’s not clear if it’s the tail wagging the dog, or vice versa.”Kolvet pushed back on criticism of the group’s 2022 results, noting that TP Action only spent $500,000 in total in several states in 2022, but that this year it intends to mount a much better-financed and robust effort, hiring hundreds of full-time employees for its “chase the vote” drive and seeking to raise an eye-popping $108m dollars.View image in fullscreenTP Action’s aggressive fundraising could prove useful in other election-related projects this year that the group is likely to get involved with.Austin Smith, a state legislator and TP Action’s enterprise director, in a tweet this week signaled an effort to oust several key election officials in the state’s largest county, Maricopa, in primaries this July.Smith said “[we] need to clean house in Maricopa county” and cited, among other officers, the county recorder, the Republican lawyer Stephen Richer, who rejected unsubstantiated claims of voting fraud in 2020 and 2022.Kolvet said TP Action to date hasn’t joined the effort, but added that “it’s more likely than not we’ll get involved in some of these races. We’re going to get behind conservative candidates.”One key example: TP Action in February endorsed Trump loyalist Kari Lake’s 2024 Arizona senate campaign.Kirk and TPUSA’s strong fundraising talents could prove helpful to TP Action’s current drive. TPUSA’s annual revenues have soared in recent years with help from leading rightwing donors including the Bradley Impact Fund, which chipped in $7.8m in 2022, the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation and dark-money behemoth Donors Trust.TPUSA has also benefited mightily from hosting several gaudy gatherings at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and in tony Arizona venues that have drawn some big donors and conservative stars like the representatives Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gaetz, and Don Trump Jr.These events and mega-donor checks have helped make TPUSA a fundraising goliath: the group’s revenues soared from $39.8m dollars in 2020 to $55.8m in 2021 and $80.6m in 2022, according to public records.TPUSA now employs 450 people and has broadened its focus from fighting left and “woke” influence on campuses to other culture war fronts by setting up a Turning Point Faith unit that’s hosted large gatherings at churches featuring Wallnau and other Christian nationalist figures.Notwithstanding TPUSA’s fundraising successes, the organization and Kirk have been buffeted by criticism on multiple fronts. Late last year, Kirk ignited a political firestorm in mainstream GOP circles by using his eponymous radio show and an Arizona bash to make incendiary attacks on the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, which recycled old and unverified slurs about King, and disparaged Black airline pilots.During a major TPUSA event in Arizona in December, Kirk opined that “MLK was awful. He’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe.”“Kirk’s cheapening of Martin Luther King’s legacy and disparaging remarks about Black pilots hurt our cause, and don’t help it,” Salmon of Arizona said, adding that Kirk is “one of the strongest voices for factionalism in the party”.Other GOP veterans also voiced harsh critiques.“Kirk chases conspiracies that animate his followers and generate funds,” the long-time GOP consultant Tyler Montague said. “Kirk has used this method to push conspiracies about election fraud, Christian nationalism, anti-immigrant xenophobia, and now he’s opened a new front in racism with his Martin Luther King attacks.”Montague’s comments are in keeping with earlier criticism of Kirk for promoting Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of election fraud in 2020.Kirk and TP Action collaborated with about a dozen other groups to bring busloads of Trump allies to DC to attend Trump’s 6 January March to Save America rally that preceded the mob attack on the Capitol.View image in fullscreenPrior to the rally, Kirk predicted in a tweet it “would likely be one of the largest and most consequential in American history”, but he quickly deleted the tweet after the day’s violence.Independent analysts who study misinformation criticize Kirk’s penchant for pushing conspiracies and false narratives on the Charlie Kirk Show, which runs daily on the evangelical Salem Radio Network.“The Charlie Kirk Show consistently ranks high in the top 100 shows on Apple podcasts, and has been a leader in spreading false and unverified claims,” said Valerie Wirtschafter, a Brookings Institution fellow in AI and emerging technologies.Kirk’s dubious claims range “from the idea that the Covid-19 vaccine was poison, to the belief that the election was stolen in 2020 with fraudulent ballots, to claims that purported Ukrainian bioweapons facilities are somehow linked to Anthony Fauci,” she added.Kirk had company in backing Trump’s election fraud claims, which could pose legal risks to a top TP Action official: Tyler Bowyer, the COO, who also had that title with TPUSA, and who was one of Arizona’s 11 fake electors for Trump in 2020. He and the other fake electors are facing a state attorney general probe.The 11 fake electors filmed themselves signing documents stating they were legitimate electors, even though the then GOP governor, Doug Ducey, had certified Biden’s win by more than 10,000 votes.Bowyer, an Arizona GOP national committeeman who signed paperwork falsely claiming that Trump had won, introduced a resolution at a Republican National Committee meeting that began in late January seeking to get the RNC to indemnify RNC members in multiple states who had been fake electors and who face legal bills due to state probes.Bowyer justified his resolution by writing on X that “we need to send a clear signal that the RNC will defend those who serve as electors against Democratic radicals trying to criminalize civic engagement and process”.The resolution didn’t pass, but to appease Trump backers the RNC pledged to “vocally” back individuals who “lawfully” served as Trump electors in states that Biden actually won.Prosecutors in three states have brought charges against fake electors for sending certificates to Congress falsely stating Trump had won their states, and the justice department has probed fake elector schemes in multiple states in its wide-ranging inquiry into efforts by Trump and his allies to thwart Biden’s election.Serendipitously, right before the RNC meeting, TP Action hosted a two-day summit dubbed Restoring National Confidence, which drew several big-name election deniers including My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, ex-Trump senior White House strategist Steve Bannon and Don Jr.In a tweet, Don Jr wrote: “It was great speaking to all my friends at the Turning Point Restoring National Confidence Summit earlier this week.”The tight ties between TPUSA and Don Jr were underscored in 2020 when TPUSA paid a company owned by Don Jr $333,000 to buy copies of one of his books, which TPUSA gave away as part of a fundraising drive, according to the Associated Press.But watchdog groups are alarmed by TPUSA and TP Action’s record of promoting the ex-president’s bogus claims of election fraud, and candidates in Arizona in 2022 who espoused similar election falsehoods. They’re bracing for more in another heated election year.“They’ve backed conspiracy theorists for high office, mobilized activists around the ‘big lie’ and hired one of Arizona’s fake electors to help run their campaign arm,” said Heather Sawyer, the president of the watchdog group American Oversight.“Since January 6, TPUSA has become an animating force behind the election-denial movement.” More

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      Federal judge rejects Trump’s attempt to dismiss 2020 election subversion case

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      A federal judge on Friday rejected Donald Trump’s attempt to dismiss his federal criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, ruling that he enjoyed no immunity from prosecution simply because it was based on actions he took when he was still president.The order by the presiding US district judge Tanya Chutkan simultaneously denied two of Trump’s motions to dismiss – on presidential immunity grounds and constitutional grounds – setting the stage for Trump to appeal to the DC circuit and ultimately the US supreme court.“The court cannot conclude that our constitution cloaks former presidents with absolute immunity for any federal crimes they committed while in office,” Chutkan wrote. “Nothing in the constitution’s text or allocation of government powers requires exempting former presidents.”“Defendant’s four-year service as commander in chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens,” Chutkan’s 48-page opinion added.Trump’s lawyers had always expected to lose their initial attempt to toss the charges, which is scheduled for trial in federal district court in Washington next March, and to use the appeals process as their final strategy to delay the case as long as possible.The former president has made it no secret that his strategy for all his impending cases is to delay, ideally beyond the 2024 election in November, in the hopes that winning re-election could enable him to potentially pardon himself or direct his attorney general to drop the charges.Trump’s lawyers filed their motions to dismiss in October, advancing a sweeping and unprecedented interpretation of executive power that argued former presidents could not be held criminally accountable for actions undertaken while in office.The filing contended that all of Trump’s attempts to reverse his 2020 election defeat in the indictment, from pressuring his vice-president, Mike Pence, to stop the congressional certification to organizing fake slates of electors, were in his capacity as president and therefore protected.At the heart of the Trump legal team’s filing was the extraordinary contention that not only was Trump entitled to absolute presidential immunity, but that the immunity applied regardless of Trump’s intent in engaging in the conduct described in the indictment.The judge emphatically rejected the presidential immunity arguments in the opinion accompanying her order, writing that neither the US constitution nor legal precedent supported such an extraordinary extension of post-presidential power.“Whatever immunities a sitting president may enjoy, the United States has only one chief executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass,” Chutkan wrote. “Former presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability.”The judge appeared to take particular umbrage at the Trump lawyers’ claim that it was unconstitutional to charge Trump just because no other former presidents before him had been charged, writing that while his case was unprecedented, so too were the crimes for which he has been charged.“The supreme court has never immunized presidents – much less former presidents – from judicial process merely because it was the first time that process had been necessary,” Chutkan wrote, invoking US history and the pardon conferred to Richard Nixon after the Watergate scandalThe presidential pardon to Nixon was granted and accepted precisely to prevent the possibility of criminal prosecution over Watergate, the opinion said – without which, there would have been no need for a pardon in the first place.The judge noted, however, that she was not expressing an opinion on an adjacent argument Trump had raised about whether his actions related to January 6 could be prosecuted because they fell within the so-called “outer perimeter” of his duties as president.Chutkan’s denial came hours after the DC circuit also rejected Trump’s attempt to use a similar presidential immunity argument to protect himself from several civil lawsuits seeking to hold him accountable for inciting the violence that took place during the January 6 Capitol attack.In a statement, a Trump spokesperson attacked the order: “Radical Democrats, under the direction of crooked Joe Biden, continue to try and destroy bedrock constitutional principles and set dangerous precedents that would cripple future presidential administrations and our country as a whole, in their desperate effort to interfere in the 2024 presidential election.” More

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      US judge rejects Mark Meadows’ request to move Georgia case to federal court

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      A federal judge denied a request from former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to transfer his Georgia 2020 election interference case from state to federal court on the basis that some of the charged conduct was within the scope of his official duties.The ruling from US district judge Steve Jones on Friday means the prosecution of Meadows brought by the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis stays in superior court in Atlanta, unless Meadows appeals and the decision is reversed by the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit.“The Court finds insufficient evidence to establish that the gravamen, or a heavy majority of overt acts alleged against Meadows relate to his role as White House Chief of Staff,” the judge wrote in an unusually detailed and extensive 49-page decision.“Even if Meadows took on tasks that mirror the duties that he carried out when acting in his official role,” the judge wrote, “he has failed to demonstrate how the election-related activities that serve as the basis for the charges in the indictment are related to any of his official acts.”Last month, the Atlanta-area grand jury handed up a sprawling 41-count indictment against Donald Trump and 18 others, including Meadows, alleging that they violated Georgia’s state Rico statute in their efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election.Meadows had sought to remove the case to federal court arguing that the sprawling racketeering charges related to his normal work undertaken as a White House chief of staff, which gave him immunity from prosecution and prevented him from being prosecuted at the state level.But the judge rejected his arguments in a detailed 49-page decision, determining that Meadows did not meet his burden to show that he was acting within his job description when he undertook efforts to benefit Trump as a political candidate rather than Trump as president.“The color of the Office of the White House Chief of Staff did not include working with or working for the Trump campaign,” the judge wrote, “except for simply coordinating the President’s schedule, traveling with the President to his campaign events, and redirecting communications to the campaign.The rationale to seek removal to federal court is seen as twofold: the jury pool would expand beyond just the Atlanta area – which skews heavily Democratic – and a federal judge might be less deferential to local prosecutors compared with judges in the Fulton county superior court.Trump has weighed for weeks whether to file a similar removal motion, and the Guardian has previously reported that the Trump legal team was watching to see how Meadows fared before deciding whether to make a request before their statutory deadline at the end of September.Meadows’s defeat compounds his legal difficulties in Fulton county because his value as a cooperating witness has now diminished, legal experts said. The ruling is also ominous for Trump, who is seen as having a weaker case for removal compared to his former chief of staff.A spokesperson for Trump declined to comment.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBroadly speaking, Jones determined that Meadows could not have undertaken any political actions as part of his official duties because the US constitution does not provide any basis for the executive branch to involve itself in state election and post-election procedures.To determine Meadows’s scope, the judge used the Hatch Act, which plainly prohibits executive branch officials like Meadows from using their official authority to influence or interfere with the results of an election through partisan political activity.The indictment described Meadows as having participated in several so-called overt acts in furtherance of the racket and Meadows had argued that even if one of those acts fell under the scope of his chief of staff role, the case should be transferred to federal court.But the judge interpreted the removal statute differently and he decided that Meadows having a single overt act come under his duties was not enough for the federal court to assume jurisdiction.The more important question was what activities were at the “heart” of Meadows’s participation in the racket and whether those activities as a whole related to the scope of his federal office, the judge wrote, before concluding that they were not.And even if the remaining overt acts were characterized as everyday chief of staff duties like making phone calls or preparing meetings for the purpose of advising the president, the underlying substance of the actions were political in nature and therefore outside his official duties, the judge wrote. More

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      in World Politics

      The New York Times Confesses to Paranoia

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      In carrying out its mission to promote themes dear to the Democratic Party establishment, The New York Times has produced a slick video on voting technology. The document counters US President Donald Trump’s claim that the 2020 election will be rigged. The video’s title sums up its case and sets the tone: “This U.S. Election Could Be the Most Secure Yet.”

      Some viewers may notice that the verb “could” contains some serious ambiguity. In contrast with “will,” “could” expresses deep uncertainty. This should tip off viewers that they may be in for a rhetorical ride as they sift through the strong innuendo and shaky evidence of the nearly 14-minute video.

      France’s Problem With Freedom of Expression

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      It doesn’t take long to realize that the entire thesis is built on two sweeping generalizations with nothing to back them up. The first is the assertion in the title that the US presidential election will be secure. It wants us to feel convinced a serious problem has been solved. The second is the thesis that can be found in so many Times articles that the only problem with US democracy is Russian interference. 

      Early in the video, we meet the first figure of authority, David Sanger. His title appears on the right side of the screen: The New York Times national security correspondent. He authoritatively announces the gist of the problem: “The Russians managed to get us paranoid about the security of our own election systems.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Paranoid:

      In the world of journalism, a productive mental state that incites editors and journalists at The New York Times to produce an unending series of stories that blame Russia for every political problem in the United States.

      Contextual Note

      The self-confessed paranoiac Sanger is immediately followed by David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR). He informs viewers that all is well in the asylum thanks to this reassuring message: “I think it is safe to say that this is the most secure election we’ve ever held in the United States.” In case the viewer isn’t sure whether this unknown personality can be trusted, the video editor provides a caption in the middle of the screen with an arrow pointing to Becker’s head. It says, “Expert.” The curious will have to Google CEIR to learn that Becker’s institute was funded by Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. Google will also lead them to stories that tell the true story about voting machine vulnerabilities, such as this one.

      Once we are reassured by what the “expert” thinks, the voiceover reminds us that vigilance is still required because the Russians are still there. “In 2015, Russians infiltrated our voting in every single state,” the female voice tells us against a background listing the states, whose names, one by one, flip from black to red (the color everyone associates with Soviet Russia). Then comes a curiously honest disclaimer: “Now, there’s no evidence Russians altered votes but… .” The “but” is followed by Sanger offering the analogy of a cat burglar that “got into your house and cased the joint but didn’t take anything.” Russia is a cat burglar.

      Embed from Getty Images

      All of the above occurs in the first minute of the video with 13 more to come. It leads to Sanger’s ominous rhetorical question, “Could the Russians actually affect the vote?” The cat burglar will of course return. Suitably alarmed, the viewer is now prepared to hear the heroic story that will follow of a brave woman in Texas who is about to save the nation from the Russian threat.

      Apart from the sophisticated video editing worthy of Madison Avenue, the heavy-handed messaging of this video can best be compared to… Soviet propaganda. (What else, since it’s all about Russia?) The opening sequence alone merits careful rhetorical analysis. It plays on questions asking with no answers, suppositions with no evidence and speculation that things not only could have gone awry in the past but might go awry in the future, while neglecting the real history of US elections manipulated not by Russians, but by Americans.

      The voiceover mentions dire interference by the Russians in 2015, suggesting that it can explain Trump’s election in November 2016. Sanger had previously called this “one of the most successful intelligence operations in modern history.” But the voiceover also admits that this hadn’t changed any votes. How could one of the most successful operations in history have produced no result? No matter. The point was simply to justify the alarming question: “Could the Russians actually affect the vote?” Though no answer is given, we assume that it should be yes.

      The rest of the video turns around the premise that voting machines may be unreliable, which means that Russians (and only Russians) could hack them. The idea that Republicans, Democrats or mafiosi might hack them is never raised.

      The video then goes on to develop the moral tale of a brave woman in Texas who fought for new technology with a “voter-verified paper trail.” She tells us about “a rough world out there in the elections voting system business” without noticing that the problem may have something to do with mixing business and election procedures. We learn about how the established actors, sharing a monopoly on technology designed to exclude a paper trail, successfully stifled competitive innovation, until the dramatic moment when the forces of good succeeded in imposing a better technology now in use in some places (but not everywhere).

      At this point, the voiceover reminds us of an essential truth proving that all’s well that ends well: “It took Russia’s hacking to improve our voting technology.”

      Historical Note

      Over the past two decades, the investigative journalist Greg Palast has done more focused work than anyone in the public eye to expose the scandal of election manipulation in the US. Unlike The New York Times, he didn’t wait for Russian manipulation of the 2016 presidential election to get to work.

      In December 2003, Palast clearly identified the danger that was emerging. It stemmed from President George W. Bush’s 2002 reform — the Help America Vote Act that imposed voting machines as the national norm for elections. Bush, a Republican, hoped for something more manageable than Florida’s controversial hanging chads as the means for turning future elections in his party’s favor. Democrats voted for the bill. Since then, in election after election, including Democratic primaries, Palast and others (including Robert F. Kennedy Jr.), have provided documented evidence of both parties finding ways of exploiting the technologies for their particular needs.

      Back in 2003, Palast correctly predicted that the machines would be conducive to rigging and highlighted the critical factor: “The administration has put to death any plan that would allow you to have some type of backup paper ballot or receipt.” Seventeen years later, The New York Times — always abreast of the latest news fit to print — attributes this insight to an election clerk in Austin, Texas, who, after 18 years of using the paperless machines, came to the conclusion that what was missing was “a paper trail.”

      David Sanger’s claim that “the Russians managed to get us paranoid” is only half-true. The evidence clearly shows that The New York Times is paranoid. Even in yesterday’s edition, The Times revived a debunked theory about Russian interference with US diplomacy across the globe. For the past four years, The NYT has demonstrated its unbending fixation on blaming Russia for every problem in the US, starting with the unanticipated election of Donald Trump in 2016.

      What is untrue is the idea that the Russians are responsible for The Times’ paranoia. It’s more likely that The Times’ paranoia was a preexisting condition. But a third hypothesis may be closer to the truth. It was the Democratic Party seeking an excuse for Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump that encouraged The NYT to go paranoid.

      Or maybe it isn’t about paranoia at all, but cynicism. In today’s hyperreal news cycles, even the Gray Lady needs sensationalism and false drama to sell their reporting. The mere presence of Trump created a permanent background of sensationalism. For The Times, in its service to the Democratic establishment, the idea of grafting evil Russia onto the Trump pantomime could only be a godsend.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More