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Ivanka Trump says she does not believe father’s claim 2020 election was stolenEx-president’s daughter tells House January 6 panel she accepted William Barr’s view that voter fraud claims had ‘zero basis’
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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
Trump’s ‘big lie’ hits cinemas: the film claiming to investigate voter fraud2000 Mules has been resoundingly debunked by factcheckers, but the film has earned praise from Trump and other Republicans The atrium of Cinemark Fairfax Corner could not be described as characterful. The yellow walls, arcade games and rows of snacks and popcorn might be any bland multiplex cinema anywhere. But the digital dashboard of films currently playing merits a second glance.Along with Bad Guys, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Everything Everywhere All at Once, there is the title 2000 Mules. Anyone hoping for a superhero blockbuster about an army of horse-donkey hybrids will be disappointed.Republican primaries offer look into future of Trumpism without TrumpRead moreInstead, Donald Trump’s “big lie” has arrived at a cinema near you.2000 Mules claims to be an investigation of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. It purports to show that Democratic-aligned ballot “mules“ were paid to illegally collect and drop off ballots in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, tipping swing states in favour of Joe Biden against Trump.The “documentary” has been resoundingly debunked by factcheckers who point out that its supposed smoking gun – $2m worth of anonymised mobile phone geolocation data that allegedly tracks the “mules” visiting drop boxes – is based on false assumptions about the accuracy of such technology.But that has not prevented 2000 Mules earning praise from Trump and other Republicans, gaining a limited cinema release and becoming something of a sacred text in the discredited “Stop the steal” conspiracy theory narrative.So it was that on a quiet Wednesday afternoon, a dozen people – most of them white and middle-aged or elderly – took their seats at Cinemark Fairfax Corner for a screening. Unusually and perhaps tellingly as the lights went down, there were no trailers for other movies.The main feature turned out to be more restrained than critics of the big lie might expect. Far-right film-maker and provocateur Dinesh D’Souza seeks to present himself as curious, innocent and reasonable – just asking questions – as he interviews commentators and “experts” about the conduct of the 2020 election.In fact, D’Souza is so determined to avoid the raucous tone of Trump’s rallies or Fox News’s opinion hosts that at times the 88-minute film is, surprisingly, just plain dull. But by the end he does emphatically conclude that the election was rigged and stolen by Democrats as an ominous, plaintive version of The Star-Spangled Banner swells.Among this group of cinemagoers, at least, D’Souza was preaching to the converted. All had gone in convinced that Biden is not legitimately elected president. The film, like a social media echo chamber, delivered a satisfying dose of confirmation bias.“I thought it was spectacular,” said Joe Hughes, 67, who is self-employed. “Trump never stood a chance in that election.”Joyce Gould, 69, an accounting administrator, agreed: “When Trump talked about stuff that was going to happen, I didn’t have any reason to doubt him. I figured there was a lot of cheating going on. But when you actually see the details in the film as far as the geo-technology and all that kind of stuff? Sure.“I’m just surprised at the evil that is out there in the world. You always know it’s there, but when you actually hear the details of it, it’s just very astounding to me.”A man who gave his name only as Bill, and his age as above 50, described the film as “nauseating and extremely compelling if you have an open mind”. He insisted: “I’m a very objective person. If my own children were charged with a crime, I’d be on the jury. That’s how objective I am.”But he added: “My frustration is with Trump. He knew it was going to happen. He did nothing to stop it. That’s also very nauseating to me.”Will this film actually change minds? Bill’s wife, Anna, 63, who works for an airline, commented: “It might wake up some people that aren’t woken but I don’t know who will come to watch it. I doubt some with a certain political affiliation are willing to because they don’t want to see it or hear it.”2000 Mules was produced by D’Souza and uses research from the Texas-based non-profit True the Vote, which has spent months lobbying states to use its findings to change voting laws.A special screening at Trump’s luxury Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, was attended by prominent supporters of his assault on democracy: Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and MyPillow entrepreneur Mike Lindell.Clips from the film have regularly featured at Trump’s campaign rallies and it was shown in full before he took the stage in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. The former president has praised 2000 Mules for exposing “great election fraud”.There are signs that it could become a cultural touchstone for Republicans, granting a patina of gravitas and respectability to the big lie that does not come from rumors, speeches or internet chatrooms.Ronny Jackson, the White House’s former top physician who is now a member of Congress, tweeted: “If you don’t think there was MASSIVE voter fraud in the 2020 election after seeing 2000 Mules, then NOTHING can convince you. The amount of criminal fraud all caught ON CAMERA will SHOCK you! 2020 was NOT “free & fair” at ALL. GO SEE 2000 MULES!!”Kandiss Taylor, who ran for governor of Georgia in this week’s Republican primary election, bemoaned the lack of investigations into voter fraud: “There’s been none in Georgia outside 2000 Mules that just came out, outside of data teams all over the state that are private citizens.”However, factcheckers have eviscerated the movie, noting its flawed analysis of mobile phone location data, which is not precise enough to confirm that someone deposited a ballot into a drop box as opposed to merely walking or driving nearby.Aaron Striegel, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame, told the Associated Press: “You could use cellular evidence to say this person was in that area, but to say they were at the ballot box, you’re stretching it a lot. There’s always a pretty healthy amount of uncertainty that comes with this.”2000 Mules also contains drop-box surveillance footage that showed voters depositing multiple ballots into the boxes. But it is impossible to tell whether those voters were the same people as the ones whose mobile phones were anonymously tracked.Critics also point out that D’Souza has form. He has spent years promoting disinformation. In 2007 he wrote wrote that “the cultural left is responsible for causing 9/11”. In 2014 he was convicted of violating federal election law by making illegal donations to a US Senate campaign only to be pardoned by Trump in 2018.Yet 2000 Mules has been released in more than 270 cinemas across the US with most distribution provided by Cinemark, the third biggest chain in the country. The Popular Information website pointed out that Cinemark’s founder and board chairman, Lee Roy Mitchell, “is a major financial backer of Trump and rightwing misinformation platforms”.Given Trump’s obsession with ratings, it would not be a huge surprise if he now claims to have rescued the American box office. But the release of 2000 Mules is very modest compared to the typical Hollywood blockbuster.Dan Cassino, a government and politics professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, in Madison, New Jersey, said: “It’s not a widespread release. This is not Doctor Strange. This exists because there is a market for it.“It’s hard to believe that this sort of very blatant propaganda that doesn’t address the question it’s supposed to is going to convince anyone who didn’t already believe that this was real. This is a way of giving additional talking points to people who already believe that the election was stolen.”Purveyors of Trump’s false election claims took a hammering in this week’s Republican primary elections in Georgia. But some watchdogs warn that, about 18 months after the presidential election, the mere existence of 2000 Mules could yet breathe new life into the big lie.Gunner Ramer, political director of the Republican Accountability Project, said: “We get angry emails in our inbox all the time – we’re dumb, terrible RINOs [Republicans In Name Only] or whatever – and one thing I have noticed is that people do mention 2000 Mules.“Among the still-can’t-get-over-the-2020-election-loss crowd, they are watching this. It has made an impact with them and reinforced the big lie.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2020US politicsfeaturesReuse this content More
Here’s the Deal review: Kellyanne Conway on Trump – with plenty of alternative facts The former White House counselor’s memoir is tart, readable and thoroughly selective when it comes to inconvenient truthsKellyanne Conway joined Donald Trump’s orbit after Ted Cruz’s presidential bid collapsed and Paul Manafort wore out his welcome. The Trump White House was a snake pit. Like most Trump memoirs, Conway’s book revels in selective recall as well as settling scores. After all, this is the woman who coined the term “alternative facts”.A Sacred Oath review: Mark Esper on Trump, missiles for Mexico and more Read moreConway strafes Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner and Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff. Her disdain is unvarnished, her language tart. Her book? Readable.Conway labels Bannon a “leaking dirigible” and an “unpaternal, paternalistic bore of a boor”. She dings his aesthetics and questions his stability. Confronted with the possibility Bannon might receive a presidential pardon, Conway says, she told him Trump didn’t owe him anything.“You were a leaker,” she remembers saying. “You were terrible to [Trump] in the press … You were the only source for at least two books riddled with lies.”He got the pardon anyway.Some who feel Conway’s sting are very close to home. She sticks a knife in her own husband, George, for trashing Trump and embarrassing her. Between the two men, Conway posits that Trump was the one who remained loyal. She may wish to reconsider. Her book has kindled Trump’s wrath.“I may have been the first person Donald Trump trusted in his inner circle who told him that he had come up short this time,” Conway writes, about the 2020 defeat Trump has refused to admit. But Trump denies she said any such thing.“If she had I wouldn’t have dealt with her any longer – she would have been wrong – could go back to her crazy husband,” he “truthed” on Thursday on his own ersatz Twitter, Truth Social.But Trump can’t say he wasn’t warned. The Devil’s Bargain, Joshua Green’s 2016 campaign exposé, captures Conway both badmouthing Trump’s chances and playing the sycophant.In 2019, Cliff Sims, once a junior White House staffer, framed things this way in his memoir, Team of Vipers: “Kellyanne stood in a class of own in terms of her machinations – I had to admire her sheer gall.”In Here’s the Deal, Kellyanne soft-pedals Green but is far less charitable to Sims. She rehashes his departure from the White House, dismisses him as a lightweight and gloats over Trump targeting him with a “brutal” takedown on Twitter.Left unsaid is that Sims played a significant role at the 2020 Republican convention, drafting speeches for two Trump children. And whatever his sins, he came to be re-embraced by senior Trump staff even after he challenged a Trump-induced non-disclosure agreement in court.On a matter of greater importance, Conway lauds Bob Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, the conservative mega-donors who invested in Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct psychographic profiling company which was linked to Bannon.Rebekah Mercer allegedly provided connective tissue for the January 6 insurrection, via Parler. Conway omits such details. Not surprisingly, she also ignores Bob Mercer’s tax woes. In 2021, with his business partners, Mercer reportedly entered into a $7bn settlement with the IRS.Like many in Trumpworld, Conway hits Facebook for its role in the 2020 election. But she omits the nexus between Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant and Cambridge Analytica, in 2016 and beyond. The two businesses shared more than a passing acquaintance.Cambridge Analytica illegally harvested personal data from Facebook. Conway takes Bannon to task for profiting from his investment in Cambridge Analytica but stays mum about the Mercers’ ownership.In 2016, the Cruz campaign spent more than $5.8m on Cambridge Analytica services. That same year, the unseen hand of the company put it sticky fingers on the scales of Brexit. This past week, the attorney general for the District of Columbia launched a lawsuit against Facebook in connection with the Cambridge Analytica data breach.Here’s the Deal also contains its fair share of semi-veiled ethnic reductionism. Conway writes of how she “made her bones” – a term with mafia origins – in Trump’s 2016 campaign. Elsewhere, she deploys “clever”, “shrewd” and “calculating” to describe Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who is Jewish. At the same time, she shares a desire to keep things “classy”.Some realities cut too close to the bone. Despite acknowledging Trump’s loss in 2020, Conway is silent on his infamous post-election call with Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, in which he sought to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” Trump said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you’ve recalculated.”The only thing missing was the president telling Raffensperger he was receiving an offer he couldn’t refuse. Unsurprisingly, Conway has few kind words for Biden. She recounts the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and rightly tags his administration for inflation. But she also blames the president for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and for Iran threatening nuclear breakout.This Will Not Pass review: Trump-Biden blockbuster is dire reading for DemocratsRead moreHello, alternative facts. In February, Trump praised Vladimir Putin as smart and denigrated Nato. These days, Putin is under siege and Nato is the club to join. This somehow escapes Conway’s attention.As for Tehran, Axios reports that senior Israeli military officials now view Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal as having “brought Iran closer to a nuclear weapon and created a worse situation”. An attempt to placate Trump’s base had a cost.Conway remains in the arena. Here’s the Deal doubles as an audition for a campaign slot in 2024. In Trumpworld, few are ever permanently banished. Conway should ask Steve Bannon. He could tell her some things.
Here’s the Deal is published in the US by Simon & Schuster
TopicsBooksKellyanne ConwayUS politicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationRepublicansUS elections 2016reviewsReuse this content More
Capitol attack panel to hold six public hearings as it aims to show how Trump broke law Panel aims to publicly outline the potentially unlawful schemes that tried to keep the former president in office despite his defeatThe House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol is expected to stage six public hearings in June on how Donald Trump and some allies broke the law as they sought to overturn the 2020 election results, according to sources familiar with the inquiry.The hearings are set to be a pivotal political moment for the country as the panel aims to publicly outline the potentially unlawful schemes that tried to keep the former president in office despite his defeat at the hands of Joe Biden.According to a draft schedule reviewed by the Guardian, the select committee intends to hold six hearings, with the first and last in prime time, where its lawyers will run through how Trump’s schemes took shape before the election and culminated with the Capitol attack.Subpoenas of Trump allies by January 6 panel set up high-stakes showdownRead more“We want to paint a picture as clear as possible as to what occurred,” the chairman of the select committee, Congressman Bennie Thompson, recently told reporters. “The public needs to know what to think. We just have to show clearly what happened on January 6.”The select committee has already alleged that Trump violated multiple federal laws to overturn the 2020 election, including obstructing Congress and defrauding the United States. But the hearings are where the panel intends to show how they reached those conclusions.According to the draft schedule, the June public hearings will explore Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, starting and ending with prime time hearings at 8pm on the 9th and the 23rd. In between, the panel will hold 10am hearings on the 13th, 15th, 16th and 21st.The select committee appears to be planning for the hearings to be extensive affairs. The prime time hearings are currently scheduled to last between 1.5 and 2 hours and the morning hearings between 2 and 2.5 hours.A select committee member will lead each of the hearings, the sources said, but top investigative lawyers who are intimately familiar with the material will primarily conduct the questioning of witnesses to keep testimony tightly on track.As the witnesses – most of whom are being subpoenaed to appear at the hearings – give evidence that the panel believes will show how Trump and some allies violated the law, committee attorneys will simultaneously flash texts, photos and videos to illustrate the testimony, the sources said.Rudy Giuliani poised to cooperate with January 6 committeeRead moreWhile the exact content and timings of the hearings are still subject to change, the sources said, the panel intends to lay out how the efforts to reverse Trump’s defeat crystallized over a critical 65-day period from the time he falsely declared he won the 2020 election until 6 January.The select committee is expected, for instance, to run through how the Trump White House appeared to coordinate the illegal plan to send fake electors to Congress, the plot to seize voting machines, and the unlawful plan to delay the certification of Biden’s win.The panel is also expected to chart the reactivation of the Stop the Steal movement by Trump activist Ali Alexander and associates, and how he applied for a permit to protest near the Capitol on January 6 but never held the “Wild Protest” and instead went up the Capitol steps.The select committee additionally intends to address the question of intent, such as why Trump deliberately misled the crowd that he would march with them to the Capitol, and why he resisted entreaties to call off the rioters from obstructing the joint session on January 6.“The president’s rhetoric persuaded thousands of Americans to travel to Washington for January 6, some of whom marched on the Capitol, breached security, and took other illegal actions,” the panel said in a March court filing. “Hearings will address those issues in detail.”Capping off the six hearings under the current schedule, the sources said, will be a close examination of video footage of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys militia groups’ leaders meeting in a parking garage the day before the deadly riots, and their movements at the Capitol.That final hearing is notable, the sources said, because the select committee is attempting to connect Trump’s political plan for January 6 and the militia groups’ violence at the Capitol in what could form evidence that Trump oversaw an unlawful conspiracy.The video footage of the militia group leaders at a rendezvous the day before the Capitol attack that the select committee intends to review has also already been referenced in seditious conspiracy indictments, including against the Oath Keepers’ chief Stewart Rhodes.January 6 ‘was a coup organized by the president’, says Jamie RaskinRead moreThe way that the select committee packages and presents each of the hearings isn’t yet final. For example, the final session about the militia groups planning and executing the Capitol attack could be moved around to become the first of the six hearings, the sources said.But the panel’s attorneys have been told which hearings they will lead. Sean Tonolli, who led the inquiry into the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, will be chief counsel for the militia hearings, supported by “gold” team counsel Alejandra Apecechea, and others.The “purple” team has focused on the militia groups, while the “gold” team has examined Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. The “red” team has looked at Stop the Steal, the “green” team at the financing for January 6, and the “blue” team at the government response.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS elections 2020US politicsDonald TrumpDonald Trump JrJoe BidennewsReuse this content More
Ginni Thomas urged Arizona Republicans to overturn 2020 result – reportWife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas emailed six days after election already called for Joe Biden Ginni Thomas, the wife of the US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, pressed Republicans in Arizona to overturn Joe Biden’s victory there in 2020, the Washington Post reported.The Trump loyalist who could be a major threat to US democracyRead moreRepeating Donald Trump’s lie that the vote had been marred by fraud, Thomas wrote: “Please stand strong in the face of political and media pressure. Please reflect on the awesome authority granted to you by our constitution. And then please take action to ensure that a clean slate of electors is chosen for our state.”Thomas did not mention Biden or Trump. But, the Post said, “the context was clear”.Biden won Arizona, a swing state vital to the contest, by about 10,000 votes. The call was first made by Fox News, enraging Trump.Ginni Thomas is an activist with deep ties on the Republican far right. Reports of her involvement in Trump’s attempt to hold on to power have led to calls for her husband’s impeachment and removal, or at least recusal from election-related cases.In January, Thomas was the only justice to say Trump should be able to withhold from the House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack documents which turned out to include texts sent by his wife to Trump’s chief of staff.On Friday, the Post said Ginni Thomas emailed two Arizona Republicans on 9 November, six days after election day and two days after Biden’s win was called.She also requested a live or online meeting “so I can learn more about what you are doing to ensure our state’s vote is audited and our certification is clean”.One of the lawmakers, Shawnna Bolick, replied, saying, “I hope you and Clarence are doing great!” but deflecting the demand for a meeting.The Post said Thomas replied: “Fun that this came to you! Just part of our campaign to help states feel America’s eyes!!!”The Post also reported that Thomas emailed the same Republicans on 13 December, a day before the electoral college met to confirm Biden’s victory.That email said: “Before you choose your state’s electors … consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you don’t stand up and lead.”The Post said the email contained a link to a video of a man who appeared to be Geoffrey Botkin, an activist, “delivering a message meant for swing-state lawmakers, urging them to ‘put things right’ and ‘not give in to cowardice’ [and saying] ‘You have only hours to act’.”The video is no longer available. Botkin did not comment to the newspaper. Nor did Ginni Thomas. The Post said a supreme court spokesperson did not respond.On 14 December, the day the electoral college confirmed Biden’s win, Bolick signed a letter calling for Arizona’s electoral votes to go to Trump or “be nullified completely until a full forensic audit can be conducted”.In 2021, Arizona Republicans conducted a controversial vote audit. It did not reveal substantial electoral fraud. It did increase Biden’s margin of victory.Time for Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from election cases – his wife’s texts prove itRead moreAlso in 2021, the New Yorker reported that Bolick had introduced a bill that “would enable a majority of the legislature to override the popular vote … and dictate the state’s electoral college votes itself”.Like Trump loyalists elsewhere, Bolick is now running for secretary of state, the office which runs elections.On Friday, the New Yorker reporter Jane Meyer tweeted “one additional detail”, linking Ginni Thomas’s moves in Arizona back to her husband.Clarence Thomas, Meyer said, is godfather “to Clint Bolick’s child, and Bolick’s wife is the Arizona lawmaker who Ginni Thomas pressured to overturn the 2020 election.“No conflicts of interest?”TopicsUS elections 2020Clarence ThomasUS politicsArizonanewsReuse this content More
Wisconsin electors and voter file lawsuit against fraudulent 2020 Trump electors Suit seeks fines and damages from those casting fake ballots and prohibition from serving the future Two of Wisconsin’s presidential electors and a voter in the state filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to punish a group of Republicans who tried to cast fake electoral votes for Donald Trump in 2020, asking a state court to order them to pay up to $2.4m collectively in damages and bar them from ever serving as legitimate electors in a presidential election.Biden tells Buffalo shooting mourners: ‘Evil will not win. Hate will not prevail’ – liveRead moreWisconsin was one of seven states Trump lost in 2020 where allies cast an alternative set of electoral votes as part of his effort to overturn the election. The suit, filed by Law Forward and the Georgetown Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (Icap) on behalf of the legitimate electors, is the first of its kind seeking civil punishments against the electors. Federal prosecutors and the January 6 commission are reportedly also reviewing the fake slates.The lawsuit, filed in Dane county, targets the 10 Republicans who served as the fake elector slate, as well as Jim Troupis, an attorney for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, and Kenneth Chesebro, a Boston-area attorney who aided their efforts. It asks a judge to order each of them to pay a $2,000 fine as well as up to $200,000 each in damages in addition to blocking them from ever being able to serve as electors.“Although Defendants were unsuccessful in having their fake ballots counted, they caused significant harm simply by trying, and there is every reason to believe that they will try again if given the opportunity,” the complaint says. “Defendants actions also violated a host of state and federal laws. Thus far, however, none of the fraudulent electors has been held accountable. This lawsuit seeks to change that.”Chesebro sent Troupis a memo in November 2020, two weeks after election day, laying out the rationale for why alternate slates of electors should meet and cast votes for Trump in states he lost. “It may seem odd that the electors pledged to Trump and [Vice-President Mike] Pence might meet and cast their votes, even if, at that juncture, the Trump-Pence ticket is behind in the vote count,” he wrote in the memo. “However, a fair reading of the federal statutes suggests that this is a reasonable course of action.”The Trump campaign endorsed the effort and electors in Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and New Mexico all met on 14 December 2020, the day the electoral college met, to cast their votes for Trump. They sent certificates of their votes to the National Archives in Washington.“Their fraudulently submitted electoral votes fed into the false narrative that was relied on by those who violently attacked the US Capitol on January 6, halting the counting of the legitimate Electoral College votes,” Mary McCord, executive director of Icap said in a statement. “As important as it is that we hold accountable those responsible for that attack, it’s just as vital that we demand accountability for those whose fraudulent activity undermined the electoral process and weakened our democracy.”In March, the Wisconsin Elections Commission, the six-member body that oversees elections in the state, unanimously voted to reject a complaint against the fake electors alleging they broke state law. The commission relied on an analysis from the Wisconsin Department of Justice finding that the electors didn’t run afoul of state statutes and were trying to keep their legal options open, according to WisPolitics.com. Law Forward, one of the groups behind Tuesday’s lawsuit, also backed that complaint.The Wisconsin case is the latest in a number of cases filed across the US over the last year seeking to hold people who aided efforts to overturn the election accountable. Two election workers in Georgia, for example, recently reached a settlement in a defamation suit with One America News (OAN), which falsely accused the pair of counting illegal ballots. The network said shortly after the settlement there was “no widespread voter fraud.”Dominion, the voting machine company targeted by election conspiracy theorists, has also filed a number of defamation lawsuits. Other groups have sought sanctions against Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and other lawyers who promoted Trump’s baseless conspiracies about the election.TopicsUS elections 2020WisconsinUS politicsnewsReuse this content More
Subpoenas of Trump allies by January 6 panel set up high-stakes showdownBefore taking its decision, the select committee gamed out scenarios: what happens if Republicans defy the subpoenas? The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack made a political and legal gambit when it issued unprecedented subpoenas that compelled five Republican members of Congress to reveal inside information about Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.The move sets into motion an extraordinary high-stakes showdown of response and counter-response for both the subpoenaed House Republicans – the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry, Andy Biggs and Mo Brooks – and the panel itself.Congressman Bennie Thompson, the Democrat chair of the select committee, authorized the subpoenas on Wednesday after the panel convened for final talks about whether to proceed with subpoenas, with House investigators needing to wrap up work before June public hearings.“We inquired to most of them via letter to come forward, and when they told us they would not come, we issued the subpoena,” Thompson said of McCarthy and his colleagues. “It’s a process. And the process was clearly one that required debate and discussion.”The decision came after a recognition that their investigation into January 6 would not have been complete if they did not at least attempt to force the cooperation of some of the House Republicans most deeply involved in Trump’s unlawful schemes to return himself to office.But the subpoenas are about deploying a political and legal power play in the crucial final moments of the investigation as much as they are about an effort to gain new information for the inquiry into efforts to stop Joe Biden’s certification in time for public hearings.That is evident in the conundrum faced by the subpoenaed House Republicans – with the knowledge that how they respond to the orders seeking testimony about their contacts with Trump will determine the future of the investigation and of congressional subpoena power.In the days before the select committee assented to Thompson signing off on the subpoenas, the members on the panel gamed out the scenarios and reached the conclusion that subpoenas were actually a win-win situation, according to sources familiar with the discussions.If the subpoenaed House Republicans decided to comply and provide cooperation to the select committee as the subpoenas are designed to do, then the panel would obviously benefit from their testimony, the sources recounted of the panel’s discussion.If the subpoenaed House Republicans promised retaliatory subpoenas against Democrats should they take the House majority next year then they were going to do that anyway, the select committee reasoned, and they should issue the subpoenas.If the subpoenaed House Republicans simply ignored the orders, then they would only be undercutting their ability to subpoena Democrats in partisan investigations should the GOP take the House majority next year, since they would have set a precedent for non-compliance.The extent of cooperation by the five Republican members of Congress will also set an additional precedent: if McCarthy and his colleagues appear for a deposition but stonewall the inquiry, then Democrats would surely reciprocate in kind when they get subpoenaed.The select committee left their final meeting before Thompson signed off on the subpoenas hopeful of cooperation, but not really expecting anything, the sources said. If the House Republicans agreed to testify, it would be a welcome surprise.But that final point was key, the sources said, and the panel realised the subpoenas in that sense were almost self-enforcing.The issue at play is that House Republicans have been fantasising about subpoenaing Democrats in partisan investigations should they take the House majority. But those subpoenas would have power only if Republicans did not first undercut congressional subpoena power by defying them.The “precedent” question is often derided by Democrats as foolish since they believe Republicans would happily defy their subpoenas, only to then force Democrats to comply regardless of how Republicans previously behaved, but it got some consideration on Thursday.At least one of the subpoenaed House Republicans was seriously consulting about the precedent issue with his staff, according to staffers in that member’s office. And after the subpoenas were released, none of the five Republicans notably said they would defy them.The immediate and reflexive reaction on Capitol Hill to the subpoenas centred on how the select committee intended to enforce the subpoenas, but the panel has no real interest in pursuing any legal enforcement, the sources said.If the subpoenaed House Republicans sued to block the subpoenas in court, the select committee in that instance would probably have the House counsel, Doug Letter, contest the injunctions on behalf of the panel though only as a formality, the sources said.But if the subpoenaed House Republicans ignored the orders, the select committee would probably rely on the “self-enforcing” mechanism since any effort to have a court uphold the subpoena could take months and would outlast the panel’s existence, the sources said.The panel also told itself it could always decide whether to punish for non-compliance and refer the five Republican members of Congress for criminal contempt of Congress, though it was not clear whether the justice department would take up such a referral.Congressman Jamie Raskin, a Democrat member of the select committee, told reporters that he had little patience for Republicans’ complaints about the unprecedented nature of the subpoenas – and the binds faced by the five House Republicans.“If we have continued violence waged against the Congress, the vice-president, the peaceful transfer of power, and members of Congress have information, they should come and testify voluntarily,” Raskin said. “If they don’t, all of us should come to expect they could be subpoenaed.”TopicsUS elections 2020US Capitol attackUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More
