Tag: 2020 election

Intel agencies still see no evidence of foreign attack on mail ballots

“We have nothing new to add to our previous statements,” FBI spokesperson Carol Cratty said.

Donald Trump’s all-caps warning in June — that foreign countries would surely print “millions of mail-in ballots” to upend the U.S. election — appears to have amounted to nothing.

Trump made the claim all summer and fall, but he hasn’t raised the matter in recent days, even as he fights for his political life. And intelligence officials, who for months described no evidence that such a plot was afoot, reaffirmed Friday that their earlier judgment stands.

“Our assessments have not changed,” said Dean Boyd, a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Continue reading.

Trump knows he can’t win — so why is he refusing to concede while fundraising to ‘defend the election’?

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President Donald Trump cannot win re-election. He’s not really even trying. His “legal team” are D-list Fox News TV hosts and far right wing extremists. And in a class of his own, Rudy Giuliani, who reportedly was under DOJ investigation and has been palling around with an actual Russian agent.

Experts say the Trump legal team’s court filings aren’t designed to help him win re-election or keep him in office, and even if they were successful – which the vast majority have not been – would not change the fact that Joe Biden will be declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

So what is he doing? Continue reading.

Advisers urge Trump to prepare for defeat — but maybe without a concession speech

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President Trump vowed on Friday to continue to fight the election results, privately urging allies and advisers to defend him publicly and insisting that he still had a path to victory over former vice president Joe Biden.

But behind the scenes over the past two days, advisers have broached with the president the prospect of an electoral defeat, and how he should handle such an outcome, two people familiar with the discussions said.

Some close to the president are advocating that, if Biden is declared the winner of the presidential election, Trump will ultimately offer public remarks in which he commits to a peaceful transition of power, according to allies and Republican officials, who like others on Friday spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. One senior campaign aide, however, said there had been no discussion of a concession speech. Continue reading.

Biden’s Team Steps Up Transition Plans, Mapping Out a White House

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With Joe Biden leading in several important battleground states, his advisers and allies have moved rapidly to discuss hiring in critical roles, especially those overseeing the coronavirus response.

Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s advisers accelerated their transition planning on Friday as election results showed him with an advantage in battleground states that could hand him the presidency, with the first senior officials in a potential Biden White House possibly named as early as next week.

In Wilmington and Washington, Mr. Biden’s advisers and allies are ramping up their conversations about who might fill critical posts, both in the West Wing and across the agencies, guided heavily by Mr. Biden’s plan to assemble what would be the most diverse cabinet in history.

The behind-the-scenes activity underscored that even as Mr. Biden publicly offered a disciplined message about counting every vote and refrained from claiming victory, he was already mapping out a quick start in office as the nation faces a worsening pandemic and a damaged economy. Continue reading.

Alabama cop calls for the murder of Biden voters: ‘Put a bullet in their skull for treason’

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In the town of Flomation, Alabama, a far-right police captain stepped down following an outcry over a social media post that called for the murder of Joe Biden supporters. 

The 2020 presidential election has turned out to be quite tight in key states and on Thursday, former Vice President Biden had won 253 votes in the Electoral College compared to 214 for President Donald Trump and had a clear shot at victory with the votes remaining to be counted.

As the process continued, a Facebook user posted, “The idiots that voted for Biden hated Trump enough to throw the country away. Thank the lying liberals and Democrats news media.” Flomation Police Capt. Scott Walden, in response to that post, wrote, “They need to line up ev1 of them and put a bullet in their skull for treason.” Continue reading.

Donald Trump Jr. is promoting an authoritarian plan to steal the presidency

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On Thursday, former Vice President Joe Biden had won 253 electoral votes in the U.S. presidential race compared to 214 for President Donald Trump — and as the vote-counting continued in Pennsylvania, Nevada and other battleground states, Biden’s chances of a victory looked better and better. 

In response to this dismal situation for the president, far-right radio host Mark R. Levin responded with a tweet suggesting a plna to overturn the results. Mother Jones’ Tim Murphy denounced the idea as an authoritarian idea for trying to steal the election if Biden is declared the winner, and Murphy noted that Donald Trump, Jr. has signed off on Levin’s idea.

Levin, typing in all caps, tweeted:

Continue reading.

The refrain from state officials is consistent: The Trump campaign’s fraud claims are unfounded

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We should begin any consideration of President Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud with the context that Trump has been making similar claims without evidence for five years and, for months, has telegraphed his intention to claim that any loss in this year’s contest was a function of dishonesty. He is the president who has repeatedly cried wolf — but who also said for months that he was going to cry wolf. And now he is saying there’s a wolf.

The rationale for doing this is obvious. It’s becoming increasingly clear that Trump lost the election, by about the same electoral-vote margin he won four years ago but with a much greater loss of popular vote. If his goal is to stay in office at any cost, he has got to do something to undercut the results. So this is his play, as he said it would be.

His allies and enablers, predictably, are lining up to support him. Instead of demonstrating fraud, though, they’re simply alleging it and using those allegations as their case. Former ambassador Ric Grenell, for example, was asked by MSNBC on Thursday for evidence of his claims about fraud in Nevada, and he insisted that the reporters ask Nevada officials, as though simply because he said something the media was supposed to consider it believable by default. That’s not how such things work. If I say that you are a space alien, it’s not sufficient for me to demand that any skeptics bother you to answer questions about it. Also, Michigan has been called for Biden. Continue reading.

Trump’s path to electoral victory is disappearing. So are his legal avenues.

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In the two-plus days since Election Day, President Trump has combated an increasingly grim electoral map by offering vague, baseless and almost completely nonspecific claims about potential voter fraud. It has been evident for weeks and months that this would be his play if he lost, and now he’s doing the thing we knew he would do. His campaign’s legal adviser on Thursday even pointed to the fact that Trump had appointed three Supreme Court justices while urging them to “step in and do something” — as if they owed Trump favorable legal decisions.

But as the electoral map continues to turn against Trump, so, too, do his chances of overturning the result with lawsuits — even with what he thinks will be an exceedingly compliant Supreme Court.

As of Friday morning, Biden has edged ahead in both Georgia and Pennsylvania, with the latter especially looking close to a done deal for Biden. It alone would put him over the 270 electoral votes he needs. But Biden also leads in Nevada and Arizona, the latter which has been called by some news organizations for Biden. In other words, Biden appears favored to win four of the five remaining key states, with Trump favored in North Carolina. Continue reading.

5 types of misinformation to watch out for while ballots are being counted – and after

With no clear winner yet in the presidential election, there’s an opportunity for partisan activists, conspiracy theorists and others to exploit public uncertainty and anxiety to attempt to delegitimize the election results.

A growing number of narratives alleging electoral wrongdoing have been spreading on social media, shared through millions of tweets, Facebook posts and TikTok videos, often using hashtags like #riggedelection and #StopTheSteal. These types of narratives rely on “evidence” of ballots that are lost or found after the election, dubious statistics, misleading videos and allegations of foreign interference. People seeking to delegitimize election results are weaving real-world events, such as isolated confrontations with poll workers or broken voting machines, into claims of broader malfeasance by nefarious partisans on one side or the other.

As members of the Election Integrity Partnership and researchers who study online misinformation and disinformation, we have been monitoring social media. We are seeing five types of false and misleading narratives that people are spreading and are likely to spread online, wittingly or not. We urge people to be alert for – and to avoid spreading – the following types of misinformation, which erode trust in the electoral process and in one another. Continue reading.

DFL Party Statement on the Election of Joe Biden to be the 46th President of the United States

SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – Yesterday, DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin released the following statement on the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to be the next President and Vice President of the United States of America:

“This is a great day for the United States of America. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris ran a campaign appealing to the best in America and our nation responded by casting more ballots for Biden and Harris than any other presidential ticket in history. When all is said and done, this will be one of the most decisive wins – both in popular vote and in the electoral college – for any presidential ticket. When given the choice, voters opted for hope over fear, unity over division, and love over hate.

“Now that this long presidential election is over, it is time for our nation to come together as one people to address the common challenges we face. I look forward to the work that President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will do to bring an end to the COVID-19 pandemic, build an economy that puts working people first, and tackle systemic injustice. 

“Today’s victory belongs not just to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but to the American people. I eagerly await the day Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are sworn in and moral leadership is restored to the White House. After four long years, America’s allies abroad will have a president they can trust, our children at home will have a role model in the Oval Office, and Americans will have a President of the United States who unifies this country around our shared promise and dreams for the future. Our better days are truly ahead.”