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    Californian bombarded after Trump shares wrong number for Michigan lawmaker

    A California resident confirmed they had been bombarded with calls and texts after the campaign team for Donald Trump erroneously shared the Michigan native’s phone number instead of that for a Michigan state senator.In the president’s latest attempt to overturn the results of the presidential election, campaign officials called on Twitter and Facebook users to contact the Michigan state senate majority leader, Mike Shirkey, and former state house speaker Lee Chatfield to decertify its presidential election ballets and threaten Joe Biden’s victory. Biden won the state by more than 150,000 votes.The campaign posted what they believed to be Chatfield’s phone number. Instead, they had mistakenly given the phone number for O Rose, who goes by a shortened first name. Rose told the Petoskey News-Review their phone began ringing nonstop soon after.“I told them I was not Lee Chatfield, but they would still not believe me,” they said. “It was just a string of people progressively denying reality.”The post also misidentified Chatfield as the current speaker. Still, Trump re-shared it to more than 35 million followers on his own Facebook page, amplifying the incorrect contact information for his angry supporters. Rose later confirmed to the Washington Post they received thousands of calls and text messages from outraged Trump voters across the country.“My phone can’t even take it anymore. It’s breaking,” they said. “I was getting so many calls it was impossible to do anything with my phone.”Rose learned of the error after a friend of their father, who believed they had contacted the Michigan state representative, sent them a text instead. At times, Rose attempted to politely correct misinformed callers, but many became aggressive, they said.Soon, Rose said they were receiving photos of rabbits, pie recipes and threats. A screenshot shared with the News-Review showed Rose responding that “this is NOT representative Lee’s number” to a user, adding they are “a random citizen”.After being reassured the wrong numbers was posted by the Trump campaign, the sender replied “so you say”.“They still think I’m [Chatfield] and keep trying to tell me what they want and they say, ‘I’m sending this to the president!’” Rose told the Post.Contacting the Trump campaign to have the posts removed has proven unsuccessful, but Rose has also since sent messages to Chatfield’s Facebook page. Despite the efforts, the original posts questioning the legitimacy of the election remain up.“I’m being personally affected by a decision that [the Trump team] made without fact-checking, and that’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard,” Rose added, confirming plans to change their phone number.A native of a Petoskey, Michigan, the former customer service representative relocated to the west coast to escape the midwest, saying “it still follows me, apparently”. More

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    Josh Hawley Puts Republican Party in a Bind With Objection to Biden's Win

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    Georgia Runoff

    Full Results

    Electoral College Votes

    Biden Transition Updates

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    Trump’s Fraud Claims Died in Court, But the Myth of Stolen Elections Lives On

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    Electoral College Results

    Election Disinformation

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    States targeted in Texas election fraud lawsuit condemn 'cacophony of bogus claims'

    Attorneys general from both parties reject baseless allegations in case filed with US supreme courtGeorgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on Thursday urged the US supreme court to reject a lawsuit filed by Texas and backed by Donald Trump seeking to undo Joe Biden’s victory, saying the case has no factual or legal grounds and makes “bogus” claims.“What Texas is doing in this proceeding is to ask this court to reconsider a mass of baseless claims about problems with the election that have already been considered, and rejected, by this court and other courts,” Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s Democratic attorney general, wrote in a filing to the nine justices. Continue reading… More

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    Trump thought courts would help him win but judges were his harshest critics

    Donald Trump and his allies say their lawsuits aimed at subverting the 2020 election and reversing his loss to Joe Biden would be substantiated, if only judges were allowed to hear the cases.There is a central flaw in the argument. Judges have heard the cases and have been among the harshest critics of the legal arguments put forth by Trump’s legal team, often dismissing them with scathing language of repudiation.This has been true whether the judge has been appointed by a Democrat or a Republican, including those named by Trump himself.The judicial rulings that have rejected Trump’s unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud have underscored not only the futility of the lame-duck president’s brazen attempt to sabotage the people’s will but also the role of the courts in checking his unprecedented efforts to stay in power.On Monday, US district judge Linda Parker threw out a lawsuit challenging Michigan’s election results that had been filed two days after the state certified the results for Biden. Parker, appointed by Barack Obama, said the case embodied the phrase “This ship has sailed.”“This lawsuit seems to be less about achieving the relief plaintiffs seek … and more about the impact of their allegations on people’s faith in the democratic process and their trust in our government,” she said.The lawsuit filed on behalf of a group of voters claimed Biden benefited from fraud, alleging, as in much of the other litigation, a massive Democrat-run conspiracy to shift the results. It sought to reverse the certification and impound all voting machines for inspection – “relief that is stunning in its scope and breathtaking in its reach,” the judge said.“Plaintiffs ask this court to ignore the orderly statutory scheme established to challenge elections and to ignore the will of millions of voters. This, the court cannot, and will not, do,” she said.“The people have spoken.”Her ruling stands alongside others in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada that have a common thread: they all rejected Trump’s claims.Even in the face of these losses in court, Trump has dangerously contended that, in fact, he won the election. And he’s moved out of the courts to directly appeal to lawmakers as his losses mount.He brought Michigan lawmakers to the White House in a failed bid to set aside the vote tally, and phoned Georgia governor Brian Kemp, asking him to order a special legislative session to overturn the states results. Kemp refused. Trump also called the Pennsylvania Republican House speaker, Bryan Cutler, who said state law did not give the legislature the power to overturn the will of voters.And Trump tweeted in all caps, “I WON THE ELECTION, BIG.”While that is not the case, what is true is that Trump is rapidly running out of legal runway. Out of roughly 50 lawsuits filed, more than 35 have been dropped or dismissed. The US supreme court was expected to weigh in later this week in a case from Pennsylvania.In Georgia, US district judge Timothy Batten, appointed by George W Bush, dismissed a lawsuit filed by attorney Sidney Powell, who was dropped from the Trump legal team a few weeks ago but has still continued to spread faulty election claims.The lawsuit claimed widespread fraud meant to illegally manipulate the vote count in favor of Biden. The suit said the scheme was carried out in different ways, including ballot stuffing, votes flipped by the election system from Trump to Biden and problems with absentee ballots. The judge summarily rejected those claims.Batten said the lawsuit sought “perhaps the most extraordinary relief ever sought in any federal court in connection with an election.”He said the lawsuit sought to ignore the will of voters in Georgia, which certified the state for Biden again Monday after three vote counts.“They want this court to substitute its judgment for that of two-and-a-half million Georgia voters who voted for Joe Biden and this I am unwilling to do,” Batten said.Trump has appointed more than 150 federal court judges who have been confirmed by the Senate and pushed through three supreme court justices.Much like Trump, his lawyers try to blame the political leanings of the judge after their legal arguments are flayed.When a federal appeals panel in Philadelphia rejected Trump’s election challenge just five days after it reached the court, Trump legal advisor Jenna Ellis called their work a product of “the activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania”.But Trump appointed the judge who wrote the 27 November opinion.“Voters, not lawyers, choose the president. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections,” the judge, Stephanos Bibas, who wrote as the third US circuit panel refused to stop the state from certifying its results for Democrat Joe Biden, a demand he called “breathtaking.”All three of the panel members were appointed by Republican presidents.And they were upholding the decision of a fourth Republican, US district judge Matthew Brann, a conservative jurist and Federalist Society member. Brann had called the campaign’s legal case, which was argued in court by Rudy Giuliani, a “haphazard” jumble that resembled “Frankenstein’s monster.”In state courts, too, the lawsuits have failed. More

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    Trump says 'Rudy's doing well' after Giuliani taken to hospital with Covid

    Donald Trump has said that the former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was admitted to hospital on Sunday after being diagnosed with Covid-19, was “doing well” with the virus.“Rudy’s doing well,” Trump said in response to a question from reporters at the White House. “He’s doing very well. No temperature and he actually called me earlier this morning. Was the first call I got.”Neither the White House nor doctors for Giuliani released information about Giuliani’s condition, and the basics of Giuliani’s health status remained unknown. He was admitted to Georgetown University hospital on Sunday.Giuliani, 76, who has kept up a schedule of constant public appearances in recent weeks as the spearhead of Trump’s campaign to spread conspiracy theories about the US election, announced his Covid diagnosis on Twitter on Sunday.“I’m getting great care and feeling good,” Giuliani tweeted. “Recovering quickly and keeping up with everything.”Giuliani has appeared frequently in public recently closely surrounded by people not wearing masks or observing the social distancing measures health officials recommend to prevent the spread of coronavirus.The Giuliani appearances, which have included press conferences as well as video-streamed meetings with Republican legislators in Michigan and Pennsylvania, are part of an improvised traveling show that Trump has put together to challenge the election result.Following one such appearance, at the offices of the Republican National Committee in November, multiple attendees announced Covid diagnoses, including Giuliani’s son, Andrew, who appears to have had a mild case.For years, Giuliani has worked to build and feed conspiracy theories designed to help Trump politically. Before the impeachment inquiry that concluded earlier this year, Giuliani tried to get Ukrainian officials to make public statements the Trump campaign hoped would be damaging to Joe Biden.But Giuliani’s remit has changed since Trump lost the presidency, shifting from weaving complicated stories about a shady conspiracy in a former Soviet republic to weaving similar – entirely false – stories about a shady conspiracy among US elections officials.While he has made a great show of his fraud allegations for the cameras, with likely corrosive effects on US democracy, Giuliani did not dare advance fraud allegations in a court appearance last month, where lying could come with a price in the form of disbarment or other sanction.“It’s not fraud,” Giuliani told a district judge in Pennsylvania of the Trump campaign’s case. “This is not a fraud case.”As one of the highest-profile members of Trump’s inner circle, Giuliani had previously served as a significant source of misinformation about coronavirus. In one Fox News appearance, he mocked contact tracing, asking why it was not used to fight obesity and heart disease.Trump, 74, was hospitalized in early October at Walter Reed medical center in Maryland. He spent three days in the hospital. More