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      in US Politics

      Fake Trump electors told to operate in ‘complete secrecy’, email reveals

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      Fake Trump electors told to operate in ‘complete secrecy’, email revealsStartling direction from Trump campaign to Georgia operatives contained in email that is part of US DoJ investigation, reports say Donald Trump’s campaign directed Republican party operatives named as “alternate” electors in Georgia to operate with “complete secrecy and discretion” as the then president attempted to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden.Buffalo shooting victim’s son condemns ‘cancer of white supremacy’ at Senate hearing – liveRead moreThe startling direction was contained in an email which is part of a US justice department investigation, CNN and the Washington Post reported.Trump lost to Biden by more than 7m ballots in the popular vote and by 302-236 in the electoral college – the same margin Trump called a landslide when it was in his favour over Hillary Clinton (who won the popular vote by nearly 3 million) in 2016.Pursuing the lie that Biden’s win was the result of fraud, the Trump campaign sought to overturn its electoral college defeat in part by appointing its own electors in seven key states.On 13 December 2020, a Georgia campaign official, Robert Sinners, emailed alternate electors due to gather the next day.He wrote: “I must ask for your complete discretion in this process. Your duties are imperative to ensure the end result – a win in Georgia for President Trump – but will be hampered unless we have complete secrecy and discretion.”The alternate electors were to gather at the statehouse in Atlanta.Sinners told them: “Please, at no point should you mention anything to do with presidential electors or speak to media.”The meeting did not take place in secret as local media filmed it.A lawyer for the chairman of the Georgia Republican party, David Shafer, told the Post and CNN: “None of these communications, nor his testimony, suggest that Mr Shafer requested or wished for confidentiality surrounding the provisional electors.“Quite to the contrary, Chairman Shafer invited TV news cameras into the proceedings and both issued a statement and gave a televised news interview immediately afterward.”At the time, Schafer said the meeting was necessary in case Trump won any legal challenges in key states.But Trump failed in his attempt to hold on to power, whether through slates of alternate electors, court challenges or the deadly attack on the US Capitol by his supporters on 6 January 2021, an attempt to stop certification of electoral college results.Speaking to the Post, Norm Eisen, a former ethics tsar under Barack Obama, counsel to House Democrats in Trump’s first impeachment and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said of the email to Georgia alternate electors: “If there was nothing wrong with it, why go through such extraordinary lengths to hide what you’re doing?”Sinners told CNN and the Post he worked at Shafer’s direction, and “was advised by attorneys that [secrecy] was necessary in order to preserve the pending legal challenge”.He added: “Following the former president’s refusal to accept the results of the election and allow a peaceful transition of power, my views on this matter have changed significantly from where they were on 13 December” 2020.Sinners now works for Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state who resisted Trump’s demand he “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s win in Georgia – a win recounts confirmed.Trump’s call to Raffensperger is under criminal investigation in Georgia. The district attorney in question is also investigating the alternate electors scheme. So is the House January 6 committee, which will hold public hearings this week. US networks to air January 6 hearings – but Fox News sticks with Tucker CarlsonRead moreIn the federal investigation, Jason Shepherd, a former chairman of the Republican party in Cobb county, Georgia, told the Post he had been interviewed by the FBI.“They seem the most interested in Shafer’s role and any communications from the White House or members of Congress,” he said.Trump advisers under scrutiny include Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York who became Trump’s personal attorney.Patrick Gartland, a would-be alternate elector who ultimately did not take part in the scheme, told the Post he too had been questioned by FBI agents.“They wanted to know if I had talked to Giuliani,” he said.TopicsGeorgiaUS elections 2020Donald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      A Georgia Mystery: How Many Democrats Voted in the G.O.P. Primary?

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      ATLANTA — One look at the results of Georgia’s primary election last week led many Republicans to believe it was the product of Democratic meddling. Former President Donald J. Trump’s recruited challengers lost in grand fashion in his most sought-after races: David Perdue was routed by Gov. Brian Kemp by more than 50 percentage points, while Representative Jody Hice fell to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger by nearly 20.Mr. Trump and his allies pointed to so-called Democratic crossover voters as the cause of their shellackings. In Georgia’s open primary system, Democrats and Republicans can vote in the other party’s primary if they wish, and more than 37,000 people cast early ballots in this year’s Republican primary election after voting in the Democratic primary in 2020.Some Democrats, for their part, staked a claim to these voters, arguing that they had crossed over to strategically support candidates who reject Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election. Most of the crossover voters, the Democrats said, would return to the party in November.But a closer look at these voters paints a more complicated picture. Just 7 percent of those who voted early during last month’s Republican primary cast ballots for Democrats in that party’s 2020 primary election, according to the data firm L2. And 70 percent of this year’s crossover voters who cast early ballots in the G.O.P. primary had participated in both Democratic and Republican primaries over the last decade.These voters, data suggests, are less Republican traitors or stalwart Democrats aiming to stop Trump loyalists than they are highly sought-after — and unpredictable — swing voters.“I didn’t want any of the Trumpsters becoming a candidate,” said Frances Cooper, 43, who voted in Columbia County, two hours east of Atlanta.A self-described moderate, Ms. Cooper said that she had voted in both Democratic and Republican primaries in the past, and that she could often vote “either way.” This time, she said, Mr. Kemp had been “pretty good, and was the best of our options.” She was undecided about the November general election for governor, but “if anything leaning toward Kemp.”Understand the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarAfter key races in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other states, here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Invincibility in Doubt: With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates failing to win, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.G.O.P. Governors Emboldened: Many Republican governors are in strong political shape. And some are openly opposing Mr. Trump.Voter Fraud Claims Fade: Republicans have been accepting their primary victories with little concern about the voter fraud they once falsely claimed caused Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss.The Politics of Guns: Republicans have been far more likely than Democrats to use messaging about guns to galvanize their base in the midterms. Here’s why.Voters like Ms. Cooper base their choices in every election on multiple variables: their political leanings, how competitive one party’s primary might be or the overall environment in any given election year, among others. Some Democratic voters in deep-red counties opted for a Republican ballot because they believed it would be a more effective vote. Others, frustrated with leadership in Washington, voted according to their misgivings.Many unknowns still remain. The current data on crossover voters includes only those who cast ballots during Georgia’s three-week early voting period, when the most politically engaged people tend to vote. In addition to traditional swing voters or disaffected Democrats, a portion of those who crossed over were indeed probably Democratic voters switching strategically to the Republican primary to spite the former president.Yet the crossover voters who cast early ballots in last month’s Republican primary are not demographically representative of Georgia’s multiracial Democratic base, which also includes a growing number of young voters. Fifty-five percent of these early crossover voters were above the age of 65, and 85 percent were white, according to voter registration data. Less than 3 percent were between the ages of 18 and 29.It is unclear whether a majority of these voters will return to support Democrats this November, as some in the party expect, or whether they will vote again for Republicans in large numbers.“I think there’s a real danger on the part of Democrats in Georgia to just assume that they aren’t going to lose some of those voters from 2020,” said Erik Iverson, a Republican pollster who works with Georgia campaigns.Crossing the runoff thresholdNo race has attracted more debate about crossover voting than the Republican primary for secretary of state, in which Mr. Raffensperger, the incumbent, who had rejected attempts to subvert the 2020 election, defeated Mr. Hice, a Trump-endorsed challenger.Though Mr. Raffensperger won by almost 20 points, he escaped being forced into a runoff election by finishing with 52.3 percent of the vote, or 2.3 percent above the majority threshold that would have prompted a runoff.Operatives on both sides of the aisle have speculated that crossover voting was a chief reason that Mr. Raffensperger avoided a runoff. But drawing such a conclusion ignores the many reasons for crossover voting in Georgia, and probably overestimates the number of true Democrats voting for Mr. Raffensperger.“That would be an awful lot of crossover voting,” said Scott H. Ainsworth, a professor of political science at the University of Georgia, adding that Mr. Raffensperger’s nearly 30,000-vote margin to avoid a runoff had most likely been spurred by more than just meandering former Democratic primary voters.Still, that hasn’t dissuaded some from pointing to crossover voters as a root cause of Mr. Raffensperger’s success.Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger at a campaign event in Atlanta. In 2020, he refused to help President Donald J. Trump overturn Georgia’s presidential election results.Audra Melton for The New York TimesRepresentative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a Republican who founded the group Country First, which supports pro-democracy G.O.P. candidates, cited the Georgia secretary of state’s victory as proof of his organization’s effectiveness.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More