Tag: 2020 election

Trump Allies Eye Long-Shot Election Reversal in Congress, Testing Pence

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Some House Republicans plan to try to use Congress’s tallying of electoral results on Jan. 6 to tip the election to President Trump. The attempt will put Republicans in a pinch.

President Trump lost key swing states by clear margins. His barrage of lawsuits claiming widespread voting fraud has been almost universally dismissed, most recently by the Supreme Court. And on Monday, the Electoral College will formally cast a majority of its votes for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

But as the president continues to refuse to concede, a small group of his most loyal backers in Congress is plotting a final-stage challenge on the floor of the House of Representatives in early January to try to reverse Mr. Biden’s victory.

Constitutional scholars and even members of the president’s own party say the effort is all but certain to fail. But the looming battle on Jan. 6 is likely to culminate in a messy and deeply divisive spectacle that could thrust Vice President Mike Pence into the excruciating position of having to declare once and for all that Mr. Trump has indeed lost the election. Continue reading.

Challenges persist for Biden after delayed transition start

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Former Obama administration officials and outside groups say a growing list of challenges in the transition process are likely to impede President-elect Joe Biden‘s entry into office.

The transition itself started later than usual after the General Services Administration waited for weeks to authorize it. Since then, there have been reports of political appointees sitting in on Biden transition meetings with career staff, blocking of information and reports to Biden’s team, and other unusual involvement by political officials.

Biden’s transition officials haven’t been vocal about the issues, and some say his team doesn’t want to exacerbate matters by publicizing them. Continue reading.

Republicans faced a simple choice: For or against democracy.

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HOUSE REPUBLICANS have faced what amounts to a choice between standing for or against democracy: whether to sign on to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s delusional lawsuit to overturn the presidential election. A large majority of them failed the test. More House Republicans, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), on Friday signed an amicus brief supporting Mr. Paxton, just hours before the Supreme Court unceremoniously rejected the suit. This is a disheartening signal about what these members of Congress might do on Jan. 6, when at least some Republicans probably will object to the counting of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral votes.

Mr. McCarthy and the other extremists and toadies who have signed their names to President Trump’s antidemocratic plot may think their complicity is costless, because the Supreme Court was bound to reject the Paxton lawsuit, as it did on Friday, and there are enough Democrats on Capitol Hill to foil any GOP mischief during the electoral vote counting. They are wrong. Their recklessness raises the once-unthinkable possibility that a Congress controlled by one party might one day flip a presidential election to its candidate in defiance of the voters’ will, citing claims of mass fraud just as bogus as the ones Republicans have hyped up this year.

Some Republicans described the Paxton lawsuit honestly, including two senior Texas lawmakers. “I frankly struggle to understand the legal theory of it,” said Sen. John Cornyn. “I’m not convinced.” “I’m not supporting it,” said Rep. Kay Granger. “It’s a distraction.” Continue reading.

‘Irrelevant to the course of justice’: CNN reports Bill Barr dismissed Trump’s tweets as ‘the deposed king ranting’

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Attorney General Bill Barr is dismissing President Donald Trump’s tweets, according to a new report by CNN.

Barr reportedly said, according to CNN’s Jaimie Gangel, “none of this matters— it’s the deposed King ranting. Irrelevant to the course of justice and to Trump’s election loss.”

The report came after Trump had repeatedly lashed out at Barr on Twitter on Saturday. Continue reading.

‘The last wall’: How dozens of judges across the political spectrum rejected Trump’s efforts to overturn the election

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They are both elected and appointed, selected by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Some have served for decades — while others took the bench only months ago.

One is a former high school teacher, another the first Native American woman appointed to a federal judgeship. A third worked for years for a Republican governor who has been a vocal supporter of President Trump. Continue reading.

Ron Johnson to bring Ken Starr to testify at controversial hearing on 2020 elections

Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has invited former independent counsel Ken Starr and attorneys in key battleground states to testify at a controversial hearing next week where he plans to probe the 2020 election that President-elect Joe Biden won.

The hearing, which has prompted sharp criticism from senators in both parties over concerns that Johnson is peddling in debunked conspiracy theories, is moving ahead despite calls from Democrats that he scrap it.

But Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who has not yet said if he’ll run for reelection in 2022, says his hearing is geared at “trying to restore confidence in the system” and says it is he who is “trying to debunk” questions about “suspicious activities” that occurred in the elections. He also says the hearings will help him decide whether to join House Republicans to challenge the electoral results on the floor in January, as he’s met with one of those conservatives — Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan — to help prepare for next week’s hearing. Continue reading.

House Democrat Calls To Exclude 126 Republicans From Next Congress For Supporting Texas Lawsuit

TOPLINE Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) on Friday urged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to refuse to seat any of the 126 Republican House members who signed an amicus brief supporting a lawsuit aimed at overturning the results of the presidential election.

KEY FACTS

  • Pascrell, who has been among the most vocal proponents in Congress of investigations into President Trump, called on Pelosi in a letter to “exclude” any members who signed the brief, claiming they want to “tear the United States government apart.”
  • Pascrell cites Section 3 of the 14th amendment – which states that anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” cannot serve in federal office – claiming the lawsuit seeks to “obliterate public confidence in our democratic system” and that those who signed it committed “unbecoming acts that reflect poorly on our chamber.” Continue reading.

Texas GOP actually suggests secession after Trump’s Supreme Court election challenge fails

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After the Supreme Court decisively shut down a lawsuit attempting to overturn the 2020 election, Texas GOP Chair Allen West issued a disturbing statement floating the idea of possible secession over the result.

The case was brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, though it was widely panned by legal experts. Some believed that Paxton, currently under investigation by the FBI, was using the lawsuit as a vehicle to win President Donald Trump’s favor and obtain a presidential pardon. Despite the lack of merits, the president and his allies rallied behind the lawsuit, with Trump himself calling it “the big one” — apparently trying to distinguish it from the more than 50 additional failed election lawsuits filed on his behalf.

From the start, the lawsuit never had the chance. Paxton tried to exploit a feature of the constitutional system that allows states to sue each other before the Supreme Court. But Paxton’s arguments that four key swing states had violated the Constitution in conducting their elections were specious, and there was no reason to take them seriously. The court concluded, unsurprisingly, that Texas didn’t even have the standing to bring a challenge to other states on this ground and rejected the argument without it even being officially filed. Continue reading.

Manhattan D.A. Intensifies Investigation of Trump

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Prosecutors have recently interviewed employees of President Trump’s lender and insurance brokerage, in the latest indication that he still faces the potential threat of criminal charges once he leaves office.

State prosecutors in Manhattan have interviewed several employees of President Trump’s bank and insurance broker in recent weeks, according to people with knowledge of the matter, significantly escalating an investigation into the president that he is powerless to stop.

The interviews with people who work for the lender, Deutsche Bank, and the insurance brokerage, Aon, are the latest indication that once Mr. Trump leaves office, he still faces the potential threat of criminal charges that would be beyond the reach of federal pardons.

It remains unclear whether the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., will ultimately bring charges. The prosecutors have been fighting in court for more than a year to obtain Mr. Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns, which they have called central to their investigation. The issue now rests with the Supreme Court. Continue reading.

Sidney Powell’s secret ‘military intelligence expert,’ key to fraud claims in election lawsuits, never worked in military intelligence

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The witness is code-named “Spyder.” Or sometimes “Spider.” His identity is so closely guarded that lawyer Sidney Powell has sought to keep it even from opposing counsel. And his account of vulnerability to international sabotage is a key part of Powell’s failing multistate effort to invalidate President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

Powell describes Spyder in court filings as a former “Military Intelligence expert,” and his testimony is offered to support one of her central claims. In a declaration filed in four states, Spyder alleges that publicly available data about server traffic shows that voting systems in the United States were “certainly compromised by rogue actors, such as Iran and China.”

Spyder, it turns out, is Joshua Merritt, a 43-year-old information technology consultant in the Dallas area. Merritt confirmed his role as Powell’s secret witness in phone interviews this week with The Washington Post. Continue reading.