Tag: 2020 election

Trump’s last days: Report says president personally pressured more than 150 Republicans to overturn election

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President Donald Trump’s last days are filled with chaos, erratic decisions and impulsive behavior, according to insiders familiar with his battle to overturn the outcome of the election. 

According to Politico, many of the president’s advisors have repeatedly urged him to concede and let go of his losing battle, but he has adamantly pushed back. It has been reported that Trump has now shut down his campaign team and ignored White House staff only relying on the advice of those who have no problem pushing his dangerous agenda.

Now, he has reportedly spoken to more than 150 Republican leaders across all of the battleground states he lost as he attempts to pressure and strong-arm them into overturning the presidential election. Although the Electoral College has already cast its votes solidifying Biden’s win, Trump is still working to overturn the election without substantial evidence of widespread voter fraud. Continue reading.

Trump Campaign Files Supreme Court Appeal Warning Of ‘Disruption’ If ‘Unfairness’ Persists

President Trump is urging the Supreme Court to reverse three election challenges already ruled on by the Pennsylvania’s highest court, according to a motion filed by the Trump re-election campaign. 

Trump is challenging Pennsylvania’s own Supreme Court’s ruling on the verification of absentee ballot signatures, as well as two cases pertaining to canvassing, according to the petition for certification, or “cert petition.”

“Here’s a tell about the bonkers Trump cert petition,” tweeted Rick Hasen, a University of California legal scholar who specializes in election law. “…If they were serious they would have filed emergency motion for injunction. They don’t want another loss before Jan. 6 or 20.” He also drew attention to the ominous wording of the Trump lawyers’ appeal, which warns of the “disruption that may well follow if the uncertainty and unfairness shrouding this election are allowed to persist.” Continue reading.

House Republicans meet with Trump to discuss overturning election results

Trump loyalists are planning a last stand Jan. 6.

President Donald Trump huddled with a group of congressional Republicans at the White House on Monday, where they strategized over a last-ditch effort to overturn the election results next month, according to several members who attended the meeting.

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) — who is spearheading the long-shot push to overturn the election results in Congress — organized the trio of White House meetings, which lasted over three hours and included roughly a dozen lawmakers. The group also met with Vice President Mike Pence, who will be presiding over the joint session of Congress when lawmakers officially certify the Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, as well as members of Trump’s legal team.

“It was a back-and-forth concerning the planning and strategy for January the 6th,” Brooks said in a phone interview. Continue reading.

Trump trashes McConnell to fellow Republicans

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President Trump lashed out at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday night for acknowledging Joe Biden won the election, sending a slide to Republican lawmakers taking credit for saving McConnell’s career with a tweet and robocall.

Why it matters: It’s an extraordinary broadside against McConnell by the sitting president and most popular Republican in the party, ahead of a crucial runoff election in Georgia on Jan. 5 that will determine control of the Senate.

  • “Sadly, Mitch forgot,” reads the top of the slide sent to Republican senators by Trump’s personal assistant, written in red for emphasis. “He was the first one off the ship.”

Between the lines: While both the message and its delivery targeted McConnell, they also carried a subtle warning to other Republicans who may follow suit as the president grasps at the last straws of his election-fraud claim. Continue reading.

Barr: No need for special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, election fraud

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Attorney General William Barr on Monday said he saw no reason to tap a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden’s finances or claims of election fraud.

Barr, speaking at a Justice Department press conference about new charges in the Lockerbie bombing case, did not comment extensively on the Hunter Biden investigation but said it was being handled “appropriately.”

“I think to the extent that there’s an investigation I think that it’s being handled responsibly and professionally currently within the department,” Barr, who is leaving office this week, told reporters. “To this point, I have not seen a reason to appoint a special counsel and I have no plan to do so before I leave.” Continue reading.

Undercutting Trump, Barr says there’s no basis for seizing voting machines, using special counsels for election fraud, Hunter Biden

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Outgoing Attorney General William P. Barr said Monday that he saw no basis for the federal government seizing voting machines and that he did not intend to appoint a special counsel to investigate allegations of voter fraud — again breaking with President Trump as the commander in chief entertains increasingly desperate measures to overturn the election.

At a news conference to announce charges in a decades-old terrorism case, Barr — who has just two days left in office — was peppered with questions about whether he would consider steps proposed by allies of the president to advance Trump’s claims of massive voter fraud.

Barr said that while he was “sure there was fraud in this election,” he had not seen evidence that it was so “systemic or broad-based” that it would change the result. He asserted he saw “no basis now for seizing machines by the federal government,” and he would not name a special counsel to explore the allegations of Trump and his allies. Continue reading.

There is no middle ground between fact and fiction on the election results

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AS PRESIDENT Trump continues to lie about last month’s election, national Republican leaders are trying to stake out what they imagine as a middle ground: While Joe Biden is the president-elect, the 2020 election was marred by substantial fraud and election irregularities. In fact, this is also a lie, and their dishonesty damages U.S. democracy.

At a Wednesday Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) declared that it is “not sustainable” for a large proportion of Americans to believe the election results are illegitimate. He then set about encouraging this false belief by dignifying debunked attacks on the vote’s integrity. Mr. Johnson insisted that pro-Trump forces have raised “legitimate concerns” about “violations of election laws,” “fraudulent votes and ballot stuffing,” and “corruption of voting machines and software that might be programmed to add or switch votes.”

Former Trump election security chief Christopher Krebs told the panel that the election was highly secure and that attacks on local voting officials were deeply unfair. Yet Mr. Johnson trotted out Trump lawyers who alleged massive numbers of illegal votes and blamed losses in court on negligent judges refusing to look at their so-called evidence. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) declared that “the fraud happened.” Other GOP senators emphasized that their constituents thought the vote was rigged. The overall message, about perhaps the cleanest presidential election ever run in the United States: We cannot prove that fraud changed the outcome, but we cannot rule it out, and Americans should be angry regardless. Continue reading.

How Trump drove the lie that the election was stolen, undermining voter trust in the outcome

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Elena Parent, a Democratic state lawmaker from the Atlanta area, listened incredulously in a small hearing room in early December as a stream of witnesses spun fantastical tales of alleged election fraud before the Georgia Senate’s Judiciary Committee.

A retired Army colonel claimed the state’s voting machines were controlled by Communists from Venezuela. A volunteer lawyer with President Trump’s campaign shared surveillance video that she said showed election workers in Atlanta counting “suitcases” of phony ballots that swung Georgia’s election to former vice president Joe Biden. The president’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, told the panel: “Every single vote should be taken away from Biden.”

“Since this has been debunked repeatedly, what evidence can you give to us that counters what our elections officials presented us with only an hour ago?” Parent asked one of the witnesses, her voice rising in exasperation. When she tried to ask a follow-up question, the Republican committee chairman cut her off. Continue reading.

Inside Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn the election

No president has ever made such expansive and individualized pleas. 

It started with a phone call.

In mid-November, President Donald Trump rang Monica Palmer, the Republican chair of an obscure board in Michigan that had just declared Joe Biden winner of the state’s most populous county.

Within 24 hours, Palmer announced she wanted to “rescind” her vote. Her reasoning mirrored Trump’s public and private rants: The Nov. 3 election may have been rife with fraud. Continue reading.

Is Trump Cracking Under the Weight of Losing?

Getting the boot from the White House is an undeniable ego blow for a man who has never admitted defeat.

Donald Trump has never had a week like the week he just had. On the heels of the Supreme Court’s knock-back and the Electoral College’s knockout, some of his most reliable supporters—Mitch McConnell, Vladimir Putin, Newsmax—acknowledged and affirmed the actual fact of the matter. Trump is a loser.

Consequently, he is plainly out of sorts, say former close associates, longtime Trump watchers and mental health experts.

It’s not just his odd behavior—the testy, tiny desk session with the press, the stilted Medal of Freedom ceremony that ended with his awkward exit, the cut-short trip to the Army-Navy football game. It’s even more pointedly his conspicuous and ongoing absences. The narcissistic Trump has spent the last half a century—but especially the last half a decade—making himself and keeping himself the most paid-attention-to person on the planet. But in the month and a half since Election Day, Trump has been seen and heard relatively sparingly and sporadically. No–showing unexpectedly at a Christmas party, sticking to consistently sparse public schedules and speaking mainly through his increasingly manic Twitter feed, he’s been fixated more than anything else on his baseless insistence that he won the election when he did not. Continue reading.