Tag: Donald Trump

Oklahoma Election Board Secretary Shoots Down Republican’s Request For Audit Of 2020 Results

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Saying Oklahoma’s election system is “among the most accurate and secure anywhere in the entire world,” the state’s top election official on Tuesday rejected a call by a Republican state representative to audit the results of the 2020 general election.

“There is no controversy surrounding the 2020 General Election in Oklahoma,” Oklahoma State Election Board Secretary Paul Ziriax wrote in response to a letter from Rep. Sean Roberts (R-Hominy) which requested an investigation into last year’s election despite no evidence of any wrongdoing or inaccuracies. “Because of the strong protections our state has in place for the security and integrity of elections, there is no credible suspicion or evidence of pervasive fraud here. In fact, our state successfully defended a lawsuit against our election integrity laws in 2020. Furthermore, evidence suggests that voter suppression is virtually non-existent in our state.”

Ziriax said such an audit would be unnecessarily time-consuming and expensive, as well as potentially unlawful. Continue reading.

Trump gets caught plagiarizing in his endorsement of an ally’s book

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Former President Donald Trump issued a statement on Wednesday encouraging his fans to buy a recently released book by Fox News host Jesse Watters — and it immediately drew skepticism due to its coherence and post-fifth-grade vocabulary.

The statement, which was flagged by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, promotes Watters’s new book using vocabulary that is highly sophisticated compared to most other Trump statements.

“Interspersed are [Watters’s] thoughtful suggestions for overcoming left-wing radicalism, maintaining American democracy, moving beyond aging hippies (like his long-suffering, loving parents), saving the world from social justice warriors and the deep state — all while smirking his way through life in only the nicest way,” read the former president’s statement.

Haberman immediately wanted to know “who wrote this” statement, as did many of her followers. Continue reading.

Select committee on Capitol attack to hear police testimony July 27

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The special congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack of Jan. 6 will hold its first hearing on July 27, Democratic leaders announced Wednesday.

The much-anticipated public hearing will feature testimony from police officers who defended the Capitol complex from the pro-Trump mob attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The extraordinary episode prompted House Democrats, joined by 10 Republicans, to impeach Trump just a week later for inciting the violence. And last month, the House created the select committee to investigate the causes and security lapses surrounding the rampage. Continue reading.

WATCH: Marjorie Taylor Greene absurdly rants ‘there were no court cases’ challenging 2020 election results

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Republican Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene falsely claimed “there were no court cases” challenging the results of the 2020 presidential contest, during an “election integrity town hall” in Georgia on Tuesday night.

“Here is the issue I have: Joe Biden was in Pennsylvania today talking about oh, how all these court cases have proven that there was no voter fraud,'” Taylor Greene told attendees at the event in Rome sponsored by Women for America First. “Let’s be real, there weren’t any court cases, were there? No, because they were dropped based on standing, so the evidence has not been heard.”

According to USA Today, Trump and his allies filed 62 lawsuits challenging the results of the election. While some were dismissed due to lack of standing, many were thrown out “based on the merits of the voter fraud allegations.” PolitiFact adds: “More than 60 lawsuits brought by Trump and his allies failed because they were unable to prove their allegations. Some lawsuits were dismissed due to errors in the filings and other procedural issues.” Continue reading.

Mike Lindell pushes election fantasies at CPAC — and accuses reporter of destroying the country

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MyPillow CEO turned 2020 election truther Mike Lindell, whom I have interviewed many times by phone, got his first chance to meet me in person on Sunday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gathering here. He did not waste the opportunity, accusing me of being “evil” and “destroying the country” 

While taking in the carnivalesque sights and of CPAC early on Sunday afternoon, I noticed Lindell by his booth on the conference floor. I approached and introduced myself, beginning to ask some of the questions he has avoided answering during our multiple phone conversations.

Much of the following exchange was captured on video and later posted by Raw Story. “I’m going to tell you something, and I’m going to tell everybody,” Lindell began. “In our country’s history, every single election official, if there’s fraud involved, there’s not a statute of limitations. They take the guy that won, and they put him back in office, and it’s just never happened at the presidential level.” (In fact, cases of courts overturning certified elections at any level are vanishingly rare. At the federal level, it is likely a legal and constitutional impossibility.) Continue reading.

Top credit rating agency warns Trump’s ‘failure to concede’ and GOP voter suppression could tank US AAA status

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One of the “Big Three” credit reporting agencies that rate government bonds and securities on Tuesday issued a warning that the U.S. could lose its coveted AAA status over issues currently hanging over American democracy.

In a “rating action commentary” published just minutes after markets closed Fitch Ratings said it “has affirmed the United States’ Long-Term Foreign Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) at ‘AAA,'” but warned: “The Rating Outlook is Negative.”

Why? Continue reading.

Trump Justice Dept. effort to learn source of leaks for Post stories came in Barr’s final days as AG, court documents show

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Newly unsealed court documents show the Trump Justice Department sought a court order for the communications records of three Washington Post reporters in the final days of William P. Barr’s tenure as attorney general in 2020, as prosecutors sought to identify sources for three articles written in 2017.

The papers also reveal the service provider that was the recipient of the secret court order: Proofpoint Corporation, a firm that supplies data security services. Using Proofpoint as a means of trying to get the reporters’ email records suggests prosecutors were thinking creatively about where they might be able to find reporters’ data, beyond just standard email providers like Google or Microsoft. Representatives for Proofpoint did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In addition, the documents indicate the extent to which federal investigators strongly suspected the disclosures of classified information were coming from Congress. Continue reading.

Barr shoots down former prosecutor’s election-fraud claims

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In an interview, the former attorney general rejected a pro-Trump former U.S. attorney’s allegation that the Justice Department stifled vote-tampering investigations.

Former Attorney General William Barr pushed back Tuesday against suggestions from former President Donald Trump and a former federal prosecutor in Pennsylvania that federal authorities were ordered not to aggressively investigate claims of fraud during the 2020 presidential election.

Trump declared in a statement sent to reporters Monday evening that the former U.S. attorney in Philadelphia, William McSwain, was blocked from pursuing assertions of election tampering.

“U.S. Attorney from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania was precluded from investigating election fraud allegations. Outrageous!” Trump said in the statement, which was accompanied by a two-page letter from McSwain seeking Trump’s endorsement in the Keystone State governor’s race. Continue reading.

‘I was there’: Reporters sharply rebuke Megyn Kelly for claiming the media exaggerated the insurrection

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Megyn Kelly is under fire after telling a Trump-voting comedian on her podcast that the “media represented” the January 6 attack on the Capitol “as so much worse than it actually was.”

Kelly, who also claimed on Monday it “wasn’t an insurrection,” was not in the Capitol that day. Her guest, who was at the Capitol January 6 described it as, “like, mostly the, the most chill thing ever, just like people have blankets and picnics and families.”

But an actual reporter who was at the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection made sure to correct the record. Continue reading.

Biden rips Trump’s ‘big lie’ in voting rights address

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President Biden on Tuesday decried inflammatory and false claims from former President Trump and his allies about the 2020 election and broader efforts to restrict access to the ballot in a major speech on voting rights.

Biden blasted efforts from Trump and others to sow doubt about the election months after it concluded, which have spurred action from GOP-led state legislatures to push new elections laws that would limit absentee voting and make it more difficult for certain groups to vote.

“It’s clear, for those who challenge the results or question the integrity of the election, no other election has ever been held under such scrutiny or such high standards. ‘The big lie’ is just that, a big lie,” Biden said at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Continue reading.