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      Watch out for this misinformation when Congress meets to certify the election.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyTracking Viral MisinformationWatch out for this misinformation when Congress meets to certify the election.Jan. 6, 2021, 6:00 a.m. ETJan. 6, 2021, 6:00 a.m. ETDavey Alba and An audit of election ballots in Atlanta in mid-November.Credit…Brynn Anderson/Associated PressAs Congress meets on Wednesday to certify Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the November election, President Trump and his supporters continue to spread rumors, conspiracy theories and misinformation about the vote.Here are six false voter fraud claims that may be repeated during the proceedings on Wednesday.No, ‘glitches’ in Dominion Voting Machines did not change vote tallies.Claim: Dominion Voting Systems, which makes software that local governments around the nation use to help run their elections, deleted votes for President Trump.Fact: There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, including the machines with Dominion software, according to the federal agency that oversees election security.Background: In the weeks after the election, President Trump and his supporters spread baseless claims about Dominion. The claims included theories that “software glitches” changed vote tallies in several states, including Michigan and Georgia. No such changes were ever found.Mr. Trump and his supporters subsequently claimed that Dominion had hidden evidence of voter fraud, both by destroying machines or removing parts within the machines. Mr. Trump repeated those claims during a call with Georgia’s secretary of state last weekend. Gabriel Sterling, a top election official in Georgia, said Monday of the claims of election fraud in the state, “This is all easily, provably false.”No, politicians in Georgia did not prevent an analysis of absentee ballots.Claim: President Trump and his supporters have claimed that absentee ballots in Georgia were rife with fraud and that state officials have not fully investigated.Fact: Election officials have audited absentee ballots and found “no fraudulent absentee ballots.”Background: The Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, ordered law enforcement and election investigators to conduct an audit of more than 15,000 absentee ballot envelopes in Cobb County, based on a complaint that signatures were not adequately checked there. The audit found no fraud. Mr. Raffensperger has said that he also plans a statewide audit of each county’s signature-match policies and procedures.Georgia has already conducted two recounts, both by hand and machine, of all five million ballots cast in the state. No voting fraud was found.No, thousands of votes in Arizona were not changed to favor Biden.Claim: In an interview on the conservative cable channel Newsmax in December, the Arizona Republican chairwoman, Kelli Ward, said 200,000 ballots were digitally changed to give the victory to Mr. Biden, and Representative Paul Gosar amplified the falsehood on Twitter.Fact: Audits in Arizona have found no evidence of voter fraud, or changed vote tallies.Background: While early results in Arizona showed a close race, the final count revealed that Mr. Biden had won the state by more than 10,000 votes.Audits in Arizona’s four largest counties, which make up 86 percent of all votes in the state, turned up no evidence of systematic voter fraud.No, election workers didn’t stuff fraudulent ballots into suitcases.Claim: President Trump’s supporters have pointed to a video as proof that ballots were pulled from a “suitcase” at a vote-counting center in Atlanta.Fact: Election officials have said the surveillance video shows normal ballot processing. It is not unusual practice for poll workers to store ballots that still need to be counted on-site at the polling center.Background: As reported by The New York Times, late on Nov. 3, election workers in Fulton County, Ga., heard that they would be allowed to stop the vote-counting and retire for the evening. So they packed uncounted ballots into suitcases and prepared to lock up. When word came that they couldn’t leave yet, they dragged the suitcases back out and began counting the ballots again.But that scene of election workers taking out suitcases of ballots was selectively edited and pushed by allies of President Trump as one of the many false theories purportedly proving widespread election fraud. The conspiracists also named the election worker Ruby Freeman as a specific player in this false conspiracy event.No, there isn’t evidence that Pennsylvania election officials violated state law.Claim: President Trump’s campaign has claimed that Pennsylvania election officials improperly handled tens of thousands of mail-in ballots in violation of state election law.Fact: The Trump campaign’s legal efforts to disqualify votes in Pennsylvania have been unsupported by evidence.Background: The Trump campaign filed several claims in court seeking to invalidate Pennsylvania’s election results, and one ally of Mr. Trump, Senator Josh Hawley, has said he would challenge the results because he believed “some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws.”But the Trump campaign has included no evidence that any vote had been cast illegally.In a hearing on Nov. 17, President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, acknowledged he had no proof to back up his claims of voter fraud in Pennsylvania. “This is not a fraud case,” Mr. Giuliani said.Four days later, the judge overseeing the case dismissed the lawsuit. It was also shot down last month by Judge Stephanos Bibas, a Trump appointee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, who said in a ruling, “Calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”No, Pence does not have the power to change the election result.Claim: Vice President Mike Pence can reject state electors in the Electoral College.Fact: Federal law stipulates that the vice president’s role is to count Electoral College votes, not decide whether they are valid.Background: President Trump on Tuesday falsely claimed on Twitter that Mr. Pence has the power to reject electors when the Electoral College vote is certified.As president of the Senate, Mr. Pence is expected to preside over the pro forma certification of the Electoral College vote count in front of a joint session of Congress. The only electoral certifications available for Vice President Pence to preside over are the ones approved by each state.Ben Decker and Jacob Silver contributed research.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Trump's Georgia Call Was Brought to You by Q

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyWith One Presidential Phone Call, QAnon Shows Its PowerThe sprawling online conspiracy network is at the center of Trump’s attempt to overturn the election.Opinion ColumnistJan. 6, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Illustration by Mike McQuade; photograph by Doug Mills/The New York TimesForgive me for failing, at first, to find much news in the news that President Trump had pressured officials in Georgia to overturn the election results. That he had been caught doing so on tape was even more dog-bites-man.Not many people remember this, but we once had a lengthy impeachment hearing centered on a corrupt Trump phone call. It’s only natural that he’d reprise his biggest hit — “Perfect Call Feat. Senate Toadies” — in his grand finale as president.Then I spent an hour listening to the full recording of Trump’s call, and my stomach sank. What got me was how thoroughly Trump’s arguments involved conspiracy theories hatched or spread by QAnon, the online cultlike thing that seems to be gaining a death grip on the American right.In that phone call, I heard a president who is somehow both rabbit and rabbit hole — as much a rabid consumer of online conspiracy propaganda as he is a producer of it. The plot to undo the 2020 election isn’t Trump’s alone — it is also the product of a sprawling online phenomenon whose goals, logic and methods are as unpredictable as the internet itself.Trump will soon step out of office, but that won’t diminish his standing with a conspiracy-media apparatus that has become so adept at transforming rumor into political reality. Through QAnon, the mendacity that has defined the Trump era will remain an enduring feature of right-wing politics, long after Trump slinks away.QAnon originated in 2017 as an exceptionally bizarre conspiracy theory, centered around the premise that the country is run by a cabal of pedophiles whom Trump is bringing down. It has since morphed into something even stranger. More than a single conspiracy theory, QAnon is best regarded as a general-purpose conspiracy infrastructure, spreading lies across a range of subjects, from coronavirus denial to mask and vaccine skepticism and, now, to a grab bag of theories about election fraud.The conspiracy theories seem ridiculous, but the consequences are real.The movement’s acolytes take inspiration and guidance from the eponymous Q, an anonymous figure who has posted cryptic notes on the troll-infested internet forums 4Chan and 8Kun. But QAnon’s theories don’t come down fully formed from Q, nor from Trump; in a manner that resembles an online game, they are created collectively, giving the movement a flexible, almost religious quality.QAnon’s participatory thrill has alarmed misinformation researchers. Because every pronouncement from Q can spark endless “research” and commentary, new adherents are made to feel like they have a role in uncovering the deepest secrets about the world. “It is insufficient to be persuaded by the anti-vax or QAnon movements — those who’ve joined the movement feel an obligation to share the ‘truth’ with those who’ve yet to be enlightened,” the media scholar Ethan Zuckerman wrote in 2019. “Those who are most successful in converting others are rewarded with attention, a commodity that is easily convertible into other currencies.”In the Church of Q, Donald Trump is the one and only messiah. But the Georgia call shows how fully he participates in it, too.Travis View, a co-host of the excellent Q-tracking podcast “QAnon Anonymous,” told me that when Trump was rattling off his litany of false claims on the call, “he was sounding a lot like a thread on the Q research board, on which people spit out ideas, conspiracy theories and snippets, and people sort of build upon them.”View described a symbiotic relationship between Trump, QAnon message boards and pro-Trump news outlets like One America News and Newsmax. It’s a bit like jazz musicians improvising, each one punching up the other’s riff.“We’ve seen OAN and Newsmax basically regurgitate baseless conspiracy theories from QAnon world,” View said. The stories from pro-Trump outlets “get into Trump’s brain, and then he regurgitates them back, and of course because he’s regurgitating the conspiracy theories he heard on the internet, all the internet conspiracy theorists believe that their conspiracy theory is validated, because Trump repeated it.”On the call, Trump claimed that voting machines made by a company called Dominion Voting Systems were rigged to help Biden win. The theory has been debunked; it is also moot, because officials in Georgia confirmed Biden’s victory through a hand recount of paper ballots.The Dominion idea was one of several stolen-election theories that started on QAnon-friendly forums. Pro-Trump outlets then echoed the theory — as NBC News recently pointed out, Ron Watkins, the administrator of 8Kun, has been featured on One America News as a voting-systems expert, which he is not. When Trump inevitably tweeted out the OAN segment, the circle was complete: OAN had given its aggrieved audience “news” that confirmed its belief in the conspiracy. Trump promoted self-serving misinformation, and QAnon grew just a little bit more powerful.The atmosphere of fear and mistrust that has pervaded America’s response to the pandemic has been very good for QAnon, and now this dangerous movement holds real political power.In November, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a QAnon supporter, won a seat representing Georgia’s 14th District in the House of Representatives. Some Republican officials have attempted to downplay Greene’s political success and distance themselves from her ideas, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Greene becomes a G.O.P. star. On Monday, at Trump’s rally to support the two Republicans running in Georgia’s Senate runoffs, the crowd’s wildest cheers came when Greene took the stage. The audience sounded much more enthusiastic about Greene than about Kelly Loeffler, one of the actual Republican candidates.If the Republican Party has given up entirely on fighting QAnon’s influence, it might be because Q has grown too big to tame. Late last month, NPR and Ipsos published the disturbing results of a poll assessing QAnon’s hold on the nation. People who responded to the survey were asked whether it was true or false that “a group of Satan-worshiping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media,” QAnon’s central lie. Seventeen percent said “true,” and 37 percent more said they didn’t know. In other words, a majority of Americans think it is at least possible that QAnon’s nuttiest theory might be fact. A third of respondents also said that voter fraud had helped Biden win.This level of influence isn’t going to disappear at noon on Jan. 20. QAnon’s vast reach, and Trump’s deep hold on it, are here to stay.Office Hours With Farhad ManjooFarhad wants to chat with readers on the phone. If you’re interested in talking to a New York Times columnist about anything that’s on your mind, please fill out this form. Farhad will select a few readers to call.[embedded content]The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How Trump Could Affect Loeffler and Perdue in Georgia Race

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      Fact-Checking Trump's Debunked Election Claims in Georgia Call

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyTracking Viral MisinformationTrump Repeats Debunked Election Claims in Call With Georgia OfficialJan. 3, 2021, 8:34 p.m. ETJan. 3, 2021, 8:34 p.m. ETPresident Trump has made a litany of false claims about election results in Georgia.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesPresident Trump, in an hourlong telephone call with Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, repeated a number of false and misleading claims about election results in the state that have been circulating on social media. Here’s a fact check.What Mr. Trump Said“Then it was stuffed with votes. They weren’t in an official voter box, they were in what looked to be suitcases or trunks, suitcases but they weren’t in voter boxes. The minimum number it could be because we watched it and they watched it certified in slow motion instant replay if you can believe it, but it had slow motion and it was magnified many times over, and the minimum it was 18,000 ballots, all for Biden.”False. Mr. Trump was most likely referring to debunked claims that a water leak at a vote counting location in Fulton County forced an evacuation and made it possible for trunks full of ballots to be rolled in. Election officials have said and surveillance videos show that this did not happen.A water leak caused a delay for about two hours in vote counting at the State Farm Arena, but no ballots or equipment were damaged. Georgia’s chief election investigator, Frances Watson, testified that a “review of the entire security footage revealed that there were no mystery ballots that were brought in from an unknown location and hidden under tables.”Throughout the phone call, Mr. Trump also repeatedly suggested that an election worker seen in the surveillance videos “stuffed the boxes” and “they thought she’d be in jail” — referring to a baseless conspiracy theory promoted on social media.What Mr. Trump Said“There were no poll watchers there. There were no Democrats or Republicans. There was no security there.”This is misleading. Election observers and journalists were present at State Farm Arena when the water leak occurred. They were not asked to leave, Ms. Watson said, but simply “left on their own” when they saw one group of workers, who had completed their task, leave.What Mr. Trump Said“So dead people voted. And I think the number is close to 5,000 people.”False. The actual number was two, Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, told the president in the call.What Mr. Trump Said“You had out-of-state voters — they voted in Georgia but they were from out of state — of 4,925.”This is misleading. Ryan Germany, the chief counsel for Mr. Raffensperger’s office, refuted this description in the call.“Everyone we’ve been through are people that lived in Georgia, moved to a different state, but then moved back to Georgia legitimately,” he said. “They moved back in years ago. This was not like something just before the election. So there’s something about that data that, it’s just not accurate.”What Mr. Trump Said“In Fulton County and other areas — and this may or may not be true, because this just came up this morning — that they are burning their ballots, that they are shredding ballots, shredding ballots and removing equipment. They are changing the equipment on the Dominion machines, and you know that’s not legal.”False. Mr. Trump was likely referring to images of Fulton County ballots that circulated on social media and posted by a supporter, Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.The photos showed piles of ballots that were visibly not filled out and wrapped in plastic. Mr. Byrne characterized the ballots as “counterfeit” and said they were later shredded.But those images were simply of emergency backup ballots, said Gabriel Sterling, a Republican official who is the voting system implementation manager in Georgia. State law requires counties to prepare additional paper ballots in case voting machines cannot be used.Dominion Voting Systems, which has been the subject of countless conspiracy theories and false rumors, did not remove any machinery from Fulton County, Mr. Germany told the president.What Mr. Trump Said“In Detroit, we had 139 percent of the people voted. That’s not too good. In Pennsylvania, they had well over 200,000 more votes than they had people voting.”False. About 51 percent of registered voters and 38 percent of the entire population cast a ballot in Detroit.The figure for Pennsylvania was a reference to faulty analysis conducted by state Republican lawmakers. The analysis relied on a voter registration database that Pennsylvania’s Department of State said was incomplete as a few counties — including Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties, the two largest in the state — had yet to fully upload their data. The department called the analysis “obvious misinformation.”What Mr. Trump Said“She got you to sign a totally unconstitutional agreement, which is a disastrous agreement. You can’t check signatures. I can’t imagine you’re allowed to do harvesting, I guess, in that agreement.”False. This was an inaccurate reference to a settlement between Georgia and the Democratic Party. Under the March settlement, officials must notify voters whose signatures were rejected within three business days and give them the chance to correct issues. It does not bar officials from verifying signatures and does not allow “harvesting,” or collecting and dropping off ballots in bulk.“Harvesting is still illegal in the state of Georgia. And that settlement agreement did not change that one iota,” Mr. Raffensperger said in the call.Curious about the accuracy of a claim? Email factcheck@nytimes.com.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Trump Repeats Debunked Election Claims in Call With Georgia Official

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFact CheckTrump Repeats Debunked Election Claims in Call With Georgia OfficialThe president recited a number of viral online falsehoods involving dead voters, Dominion voting machines, shredded ballots and a water leak, among other baseless claims of fraud.President Trump has made a litany of false claims about election results in Georgia.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesJan. 3, 2021Updated 10:14 p.m. ETPresident Trump, in an hourlong telephone call with Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, repeated a number of false and misleading claims about election results in the state that have been circulating on social media. Here’s a fact check.What Mr. Trump Said“Then it was stuffed with votes. They weren’t in an official voter box, they were in what looked to be suitcases or trunks, suitcases but they weren’t in voter boxes. The minimum number it could be because we watched it and they watched it certified in slow motion instant replay if you can believe it, but it had slow motion and it was magnified many times over, and the minimum it was 18,000 ballots, all for Biden.”False. Mr. Trump was most likely referring to debunked claims that a water leak at a vote counting location in Fulton County forced an evacuation and made it possible for trunks full of ballots to be rolled in. Election officials have said and surveillance videos show that this did not happen.A water leak caused a delay for about two hours in vote counting at the State Farm Arena, but no ballots or equipment were damaged. Georgia’s chief election investigator, Frances Watson, testified that a “review of the entire security footage revealed that there were no mystery ballots that were brought in from an unknown location and hidden under tables.”Throughout the phone call, Mr. Trump also repeatedly suggested that an election worker seen in the surveillance videos “stuffed the boxes” and “they thought she’d be in jail” — referring to a baseless conspiracy theory promoted on social media.What Mr. Trump Said“There were no poll watchers there. There were no Democrats or Republicans. There was no security there.”This is misleading. Election observers and journalists were present at State Farm Arena when the water leak occurred. They were not asked to leave, Ms. Watson said, but simply “left on their own” when they saw one group of workers, who had completed their task, leave.What Mr. Trump Said“So dead people voted. And I think the number is close to 5,000 people.”False. The actual number was two, Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, told the president in the call.What Mr. Trump Said“You had out-of-state voters — they voted in Georgia but they were from out of state — of 4,925.”This is misleading. Ryan Germany, the chief counsel for Mr. Raffensperger’s office, refuted this description in the call.“Everyone we’ve been through are people that lived in Georgia, moved to a different state, but then moved back to Georgia legitimately,” he said. “They moved back in years ago. This was not like something just before the election. So there’s something about that data that, it’s just not accurate.”What Mr. Trump Said“In Fulton County and other areas — and this may or may not be true, because this just came up this morning — that they are burning their ballots, that they are shredding ballots, shredding ballots and removing equipment. They are changing the equipment on the Dominion machines, and you know that’s not legal.”False. Mr. Trump was likely referring to images of Fulton County ballots that circulated on social media and posted by a supporter, Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.The photos showed piles of ballots that were visibly not filled out and wrapped in plastic. Mr. Byrne characterized the ballots as “counterfeit” and said they were later shredded.But those images were simply of emergency backup ballots, said Gabriel Sterling, a Republican official who is the voting system implementation manager in Georgia. State law requires counties to prepare additional paper ballots in case voting machines cannot be used.Dominion Voting Systems, which has been the subject of countless conspiracy theories and false rumors, did not remove any machinery from Fulton County, Mr. Germany told the president.What Mr. Trump Said“In Detroit, we had 139 percent of the people voted. That’s not too good. In Pennsylvania, they had well over 200,000 more votes than they had people voting.”False. About 51 percent of registered voters and 38 percent of the entire population cast a ballot in Detroit.The figure for Pennsylvania was a reference to faulty analysis conducted by state Republican lawmakers. The analysis relied on a voter registration database that Pennsylvania’s Department of State said was incomplete as a few counties — including Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties, the two largest in the state — had yet to fully upload their data. The department called the analysis “obvious misinformation.”What Mr. Trump Said“She got you to sign a totally unconstitutional agreement, which is a disastrous agreement. You can’t check signatures. I can’t imagine you’re allowed to do harvesting, I guess, in that agreement.”False. This was an inaccurate reference to a settlement between Georgia and the Democratic Party. Under the March settlement, officials must notify voters whose signatures were rejected within three business days and give them the chance to correct issues. It does not bar officials from verifying signatures and does not allow “harvesting,” or collecting and dropping off ballots in bulk.“Harvesting is still illegal in the state of Georgia. And that settlement agreement did not change that one iota,” Mr. Raffensperger said in the call.Curious about the accuracy of a claim? Email factcheck@nytimes.com.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Trump Call to Georgia Official Might Violate State and Federal Law

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump Call to Georgia Official Might Violate State and Federal LawThe president’s demand for action to overturn the result of the election in the state raised questions about whether he violated election fraud statutes, lawyers said, though a charge is unlikely.President Trump and Melania Trump, the first lady, last week outside the White House. On Saturday, the president held an hourlong call with Georgia’s secretary of state, urging him to “find” the votes necessary to swing the state to Mr. Trump.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesJan. 3, 2021Updated 9:53 p.m. ETThe call by President Trump on Saturday to Georgia’s secretary of state raised the prospect that Mr. Trump may have violated laws that prohibit interference in federal or state elections, but lawyers said on Sunday that it would be difficult to pursue such a charge.The recording of the conversation between Mr. Trump and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of Georgia, first reported by The Washington Post, led a number of election and criminal defense lawyers to conclude that by pressuring Mr. Raffensperger to “find” the votes he would need to reverse the election outcome in the state, Mr. Trump either broke the law or came close to it.“It seems to me like what he did clearly violates Georgia statutes,” said Leigh Ann Webster, an Atlanta criminal defense lawyer, citing a state law that makes it illegal for anyone who “solicits, requests, commands, importunes or otherwise attempts to cause the other person to engage” in election fraud.At the federal level, anyone who “knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds or attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a state of a fair and impartially conducted election process” is breaking the law.Matthew T. Sanderson, a Republican election lawyer who has worked on several presidential campaigns — including those of Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Rick Perry, the former Texas governor — said that while it did appear that Mr. Trump was trying to intimidate Mr. Raffensperger, it was not clear that he violated the law.That is because while Mr. Trump clearly implied that Mr. Raffensperger might suffer legal consequences if he did not find additional votes for the president in Georgia, Mr. Trump stopped short of saying he would deliver on the threat himself against Mr. Raffensperger and his legal counsel, Ryan Germany, Mr. Sanderson said. “You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” the president said during the call, referring to his baseless assertions of widespread election fraud. “That’s a criminal — that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. And that’s a big risk.”Lacking additional clear evidence of Mr. Trump’s intent to follow up on any apparent threat, including the potential criminal charges he suggested Mr. Raffensperger or his office might face, Mr. Sanderson said, “Ultimately, I doubt this is behavior that would be prosecuted.”Michael R. Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general and lawyer who represented clients that have been critical of Mr. Trump, said he believed Mr. Trump violated federal law.But the meandering nature of the phone call and the fact that the president made no apparent attempt to conceal his actions as other call participants listened could allow Mr. Trump to argue that he did not intend to break the law or to argue that he did not know that a federal law existed apparently prohibiting his actions.The federal law would also most likely require that Mr. Trump knew that he was pushing Mr. Raffensperger to fraudulently change the vote count, meaning prosecutors would have to prove that Mr. Trump knew he was lying in asserting that he was confident he had won the election in Georgia.“It is unlikely federal prosecutors would bring such a case,” Mr. Bromwich said. “But it certainly was god awful and unbelievable. But prosecuting a federal crime is obviously a very different thing.”David Worley, a Democrat and a supporter of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. who is a member of the State Election Board in Georgia, wrote Sunday evening to Mr. Raffensperger and other members of the board asking the secretary of state, who is the board chairman, to open an investigation into the phone call to see if it violated state law, including a provision prohibiting conspiracy to commit election fraud.If the board concludes a law has been broken, Mr. Worley said, it could ask state law enforcement authorities to consider filing criminal charges or a civil case against Mr. Trump.“To say that I am troubled by President Trump’s attempt to manipulate the votes of Georgians would be an understatement,” Mr. Worley, who is the sole Democrat on the five-member board, wrote in the email. “Once we have received your investigative report, it will be the board’s duty to determine whether probable cause exists to refer this matter.”State officials in Georgia might also face a challenge in bringing a case against a federal official, or even a former federal official, said Ms. Webster and Ryan C. Locke, a second Atlanta criminal defense lawyer.Trevor Potter, a Republican former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, said the question would largely be up to the Justice Department in the Biden administration.“There is a good argument that Trump is seeking to procure a fraudulent vote count by stating that he needs exactly 11,780 votes and is threatening the secretary of state if he does not produce them,” Mr. Potter said. “But even if the Biden Justice Department thinks they have a good case, is that how they want to start off the Biden presidency? That is a policy decision.”Congressional Democrats suggested they would examine the legal implications of the call. Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the call raised new legal questions for Mr. Trump even if it was not a clear violation of the law.“In threatening these officials with vague ‘criminal’ consequences, and in encouraging them to ‘find’ additional votes and hire investigators who ‘want to find answers,’ the president may have also subjected himself to additional criminal liability,” Mr. Nadler said in a statement.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Pence Welcomes Futile Bid by G.O.P. Lawmakers to Overturn Election

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPence Welcomes Futile Bid by G.O.P. Lawmakers to Overturn ElectionVice President Mike Pence signaled his support as 11 Republican senators and senators-elect said that they would vote to reject President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.The group, led by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, brings to nearly one-quarter the proportion of Senate Republicans who have broken with their leaders to join the effort to invalidate the victory of Joseph R. Biden Jr.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesJan. 2, 2021Updated 8:35 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Vice President Mike Pence signaled support on Saturday for a futile Republican bid to overturn the election in Congress next week, after 11 Republican senators and senators-elect said that they would vote to reject President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory when the House and Senate meet to formally certify it.The announcement by the senators — and Mr. Pence’s move to endorse it — reflected a groundswell among Republicans to defy the unambiguous results of the election and indulge President Trump’s attempts to remain in power with false claims of voting fraud.Every state in the country has certified the election results after verifying their accuracy, many following postelection audits or hand counts. Judges across the country, and a Supreme Court with a conservative majority, have rejected nearly 60 attempts by Mr. Trump and his allies to challenge the results.And neither Mr. Pence nor any of the senators who said they would vote to invalidate the election has made a specific allegation of fraud, instead offering vague suggestions that some wrongdoing might have occurred and asserting that many of their supporters believe that it has.The senators’ opposition to certifying Mr. Biden’s election will not change the outcome. But it guarantees that what would normally be a perfunctory session on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to ratify the results of the presidential election will instead become a partisan brawl, in which Republicans amplify specious claims of widespread election rigging that have been debunked and dismissed for weeks even as Mr. Trump has stoked them.The spectacle promises to set a caustic backdrop for Mr. Biden’s inauguration in the coming weeks and reflects the polarized politics on Capitol Hill that will be among his greatest challenges.It will also pose a political dilemma for Republicans, forcing them to choose between accepting the results of a democratic election — even if it means angering supporters who dislike the outcome and could punish them at the polls — and joining their colleagues in displaying unflinching loyalty to Mr. Trump, who has demanded in increasingly angry fashion that they back his bid to cling to the presidency.The conundrum is especially acute for Mr. Pence, who as president of the Senate has the task of presiding over Wednesday’s proceedings and declaring Mr. Biden the winner, but has his own future political aspirations to consider as well. On Friday, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by House Republicans to pressure Mr. Pence to do otherwise, and instead unilaterally overturn the results.But on Saturday evening, Marc Short, his chief of staff, issued a statement saying that Mr. Pence “shares the concerns of millions of Americans about voter fraud and irregularities in the last election.”The vice president, the statement continued, “welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on Jan. 6th.”Vice President Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, has the task of presiding over Wednesday’s proceedings and declaring Mr. Biden the winner.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesIn a joint statement on Saturday, the Senate Republicans — including seven senators and four who are to be sworn in on Sunday — called for a 10-day audit of election returns in “disputed states,” and said they would vote to reject the electors from those states until one was completed. They did not elaborate on which states.The group is led by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and includes Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Steve Daines of Montana, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Mike Braun of Indiana, and Senators-elect Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.Together with Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who announced this week that he would object to Congress’s certification of the election results, they bring to nearly one-quarter the proportion of Senate Republicans who have broken with their leaders to join the effort to invalidate Mr. Biden’s victory. In the House, where a band of conservatives has been plotting the last-ditch election objection for weeks, more than half of Republicans joined a failed lawsuit seeking to overturn the will of the voters, and more are expected to support the effort to challenge the results in Congress next week.Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, has said he will object to certifying the results, and with Mr. Hawley’s support, that challenge would hold weight, prompting senators and representatives to retreat to their chambers on opposite sides of the Capitol for a two-hour debate and then a vote on whether to disqualify a state’s votes. Both the Democratic-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate would have to agree to toss out a state’s electoral votes — something that has not happened since the 19th century and is not expected to this time.In their statement, the Republicans cited poll results showing most members of their party believe the election was “rigged,” an assertion that Mr. Trump has made for months, and which has been repeated in the right-wing news media and by many Republican members of Congress.“A fair and credible audit — conducted expeditiously and completed well before Jan. 20 — would dramatically improve Americans’ faith in our electoral process and would significantly enhance the legitimacy of whoever becomes our next president,” they wrote. “We are acting not to thwart the democratic process, but rather to protect it.”They also acknowledged that their effort was likely to be unsuccessful, given that any such challenge must be sustained by both the House, where Democrats hold the majority, and the Senate, where top Republicans including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, have tried to shut it down.“We fully expect most if not all Democrats, and perhaps more than a few Republicans, to vote otherwise,” the senators wrote.Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee with jurisdiction over federal elections, called the Republican effort a “publicity stunt” that would ultimately fail, but said it was dangerous nevertheless, amounting to “an attempt to subvert the will of the voters.” She noted in an interview that hundreds of millions of votes had already been “counted, recounted, litigated and state-certified” across the country.“These baseless claims have already been examined and dismissed by Trump’s own attorney general, dozens of courts and election officials from both parties,” said Mike Gwin, a spokesman for Mr. Biden’s campaign.While lawmakers have sought to register their opposition to past presidential election results by challenging Congress’s certification, the move has generally been more symbolic than substantive, given that the loser had already conceded and senators rarely joined with members of the House to force a vote. But as Mr. Trump continues to perpetuate the myth of widespread voter fraud, a growing number of Republicans in Congress have been eager to challenge the results, either out of devotion to the president or out of fear of enraging the base of their party that still reveres him even in defeat.That is the case even though the vast majority of them just won elections in the very same balloting they are now claiming was fraudulently administered.Mr. McConnell has discouraged senators from joining the House effort, and Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican, told reporters the challenge to the election results would fail in the Senate “like a shot dog,” prompting a Twitter rebuke from Mr. Trump.Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, on Thursday condemned the attempt, calling it a “dangerous ploy” intended to “disenfranchise millions of Americans.” He accused fellow Republicans of making a political calculation to try to further their careers at the expense of the truth by tapping into Mr. Trump’s “populist base.”But Josh Holmes, a Republican strategist and Mr. McConnell’s former chief of staff, warned that those involved in the effort would come to regret their stance.“Rarely can you predict with 100% assurance that years from now everyone who went down this road will wish they had a mulligan,” Mr. Holmes wrote on Twitter.Senator Patrick J. Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican who has announced that he will not seek re-election in 2022, also blasted the effort, saying that Mr. Hawley, Mr. Cruz and others were “directly” undermining the “right of the people to elect their own leaders.”For years, Mr. Trump has railed against contests in which he lost, disliked the outcome or feared he might be defeated. He objected to the results of the Emmys, falsely claimed President Barack Obama did not win the popular vote, asserted that Mr. Cruz “stole” a primary victory from him in Iowa in 2016 and predicted that the election in which he defeated the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would be “rigged.” In the months leading up to November’s election, he also warned that he would be cheated out of a victory, and refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.As Mr. Biden racked up victories in November, Mr. Trump indulged in increasingly outlandish fictions, spreading disinformation about the election’s results and encouraging his followers to challenge the vote at every step. In recent weeks, as his legal defeats have stacked up, the president has become more vitriolic in his condemnations of Republicans who fail to support his false claims of having been the true victor in the election, and has lavished praise on those who parrot his accusations.On Saturday, Mr. Trump cheered on the Republican senators who announced they would object to certifying the election, writing on Twitter: “Our country will love them for it!”The vote tally and procedures in every battleground state that Mr. Trump contests have been affirmed through multiple postelection audits. Mr. Biden won the election with over seven million more votes than Mr. Trump and with 306 Electoral College votes, surpassing the threshold of 270 needed to win the presidency.Nevertheless, more than a month after Mr. Biden’s victory, with increasing numbers in their party marching in lock step with Mr. Trump, some Republicans felt the need on Saturday to explain why they planned to vote to uphold the results of a democratic election.“I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and that is what I will do Jan. 6,” Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said in a statement. She is to face voters next November.Senator Mitt Romney of Utah warned of the consequences of backing a bid to subvert the election’s outcome.“I could never have imagined seeing these things in the greatest democracy in the world,” he said in a statement. “Has ambition so eclipsed principle?”Maggie Haberman More

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      Pennsylvania man is accused of casting Trump vote for his dead mother.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyTracking Viral MisinformationPennsylvania man is accused of casting Trump vote for his dead mother.Dec. 23, 2020, 2:36 p.m. ETDec. 23, 2020, 2:36 p.m. ETShortly after the November election, the Trump campaign circulated on its Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as its website, the names of seven dead Americans in the battleground states of Georgia and Pennsylvania. The dead people were used to cast votes in last month’s election, the campaign claimed, pointing to the incidents as evidence of widespread voter fraud that enabled President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.Local officials have debunked several of the dead-voter claims, and there remains no evidence of widespread voter fraud. But now, Pennsylvania officials say one of the names held up by the Trump campaign was used to cast a vote in the election.Here’s the catch: Authorities say the fraudulent vote was cast for Mr. Trump.This week, Jack Stollsteimer, the district attorney of Delaware County, accused Bruce Bartman of Marple Township, Pa., of illegally voting in place of his deceased mother in the general election. In addition to his mother, Mr. Bartman registered his mother-in-law, Elizabeth Weihman, who died in 2019, as a voter, according to the district attorney’s office, but is not accused of voting for her. He also cast a ballot under his own name.The Trump campaign circulated claims of voter fraud on its social media accounts. Local officials have debunked several of the claims.“This is the only known case of a ‘dead person’ voting in our county, conspiracy theories notwithstanding,” Mr. Stollsteimer said in a statement. “The prompt prosecution of this case shows that law enforcement will continue to uphold our election laws whenever presented with actual evidence of fraud and that we will continue to investigate every allegation that comes our way.”Samuel Stretton, a lawyer for Mr. Bartman, said: “He’s admitted everything. He’s cooperated.” Mr. Stretton added that he was negotiating a guilty plea, and that Mr. Bartman had no criminal record.“He’s a good man,” Mr. Stretton said. “He did something very stupid under some misguided theory that this was his form of protest.”In an interview with The New York Times in November after the Trump campaign first made its claims, Mr. Bartman said he did not recall seeing a mail-in ballot for his mother. “Oh, no, no, I haven’t gotten anything,” he said. “Occasionally I would get some junk mail for her. But not in several years.”He added that he did not hear of the Trump campaign’s allegation because he did not use social media much and only infrequently logged on to Facebook to see pictures of his grandchildren.Asked whether he knew why a vote for his mother would have been recorded despite her having passed away, he said the state’s governor, Tom Wolf, “doesn’t know anything or what’s going on in the city of Philadelphia, or the surrounding counties in the middle part of the state.”“Some of the stuff that has gone on in Philadelphia is just atrocious,” Mr. Bartman added.Mr. Stretton, his lawyer, said, “He was wrong in saying that, he admits he was wrong, and since he was approached by the detectives, he has cooperated and told the truth.”The claim that a vote was fraudulently cast using Elizabeth Bartman’s name and that it was emblematic of systemic voter fraud helping Mr. Biden spread widely online. On Facebook, articles with the claim from the conservative websites ZeroHedge and The Epoch Times were shared 1,800 times and reached up to 61 million followers, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned social media analytics tool.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More