Trump’s claim he’ll send sheriffs to polling places is revealing in a lot of unintended ways

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On repeated occasions, President Trump has embraced a contentious idea following a question posed by a journalist. Sometimes, too, he will seize on one presented by someone like Fox News’s Sean Hannity, as he did on Thursday.

The two were discussing Trump’s favorite subject of late, his untrue allegations that the 2020 election will be subject to massive electoral and voter fraud. While Trump’s recent focus has been mail-in balloting, Hannity mentioned an older favorite: the idea that in-person voting is suspect.

“Are you going to have poll watchers?” Hannity asked his friend during an interview clearly aimed at pulling viewers away from simultaneous coverage of the Democratic convention. “Are you going to have an ability to monitor, to avoid fraud and cross check whether or not these are registered voters? Whether or not there’s been identification to know that it’s a real vote from a real American?” Continue reading.

Trump lashes out with a dangerous lie at the federal judge overseeing Roger Stone’s case

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump lashed out Tuesday night at Amy Berman Jackson, a federal judge who has overseen several key cases that arose from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. She is currently presiding over the case against longtime Trump friend Roger Stone, who is due to be sentenced soon after being found guilty of lying to Congress and attempting to impede its Russia investigation.

In response to a tweet naming Jackson, Trump tweeted: “Is this the Judge that put Paul Manafort in SOLITARY CONFINEMENT, something that not even mobster Al Capone had to endure? How did she treat Crooked Hillary Clinton? Just asking!”

Judge Jackson did send Manafort to prison ahead of his trial in the summer of 2018, finding that he had violated the terms of his release. But judges do not determine the conditions prisoners are kept in; those decisions are made by the prisons and jails that house inmates. Continue reading.