Tag: Trump corruption

Trump Campaign Spent Months Pressing Georgia’s Top Election Official For Endorsement — And He Declined

Long before Republican senators began publicly denouncing how Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger handled the voting there, he withstood pressure from the campaign of Donald Trump to endorse the president for reelection.

Raffensperger, a Republican, declined an offer in January to serve as an honorary co-chair of the Trump campaign in Georgia, according to emails reviewed by ProPublica. He later rejected GOP requests to support Trump publicly, he and his staff said in interviews. Raffensperger said he believed that, because he was overseeing the election, it would be a conflict of interest for him to take sides. Around the country, most secretaries of state remain officially neutral in elections.

The attacks on his job performance are “clear retaliation,” Raffensperger said. “They thought Georgia was a layup shot Republican win. It is not the job of the secretary of state’s office to deliver a win — it is the sole responsibility of the Georgia Republican Party to get out the vote and get its voters to the polls. That is not the job of the secretary of state’s office.” Continue reading.

Trump faces around two dozen legal threats leaving office — and he’s getting desperate

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President Trump has only made one brief public appearance since the election was called for Joe Biden, and his Twitter feed is filled with conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud, which state elections officials have repeatedly rejected. His refusal to concede has complicated President-elect Biden’s transition, and senior Republicans have mostly aligned behind Trump or stayed silent as he continues his desperate legal campaign to overturn the election results in several key states that won Biden the presidency. New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer says Trump has a lot at stake due to the litany of lawsuits and criminal investigations he faces. “He has many reasons to be concerned,” she says. “If he leaves the White House, he’s going to lose the immunity that goes along with being president.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

The number of Americans hospitalized due to COVID-19 has more than a doubled in the past week as infections soar to record numbers across the nation. On Thursday, a staggering 163,000 new cases were reported — a new world-shattering record. The U.S. death toll has topped 242,000. Despite the surge, President Trump is largely ignoring the crisis, letting the virus rip through the country. Continue reading.

Of course Republicans are doing this. It’s who they are.

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No. Not this time. Not again.

We knew that President Trump had no respect for democracy or the Constitution. So we’re not surprised that he’s lying, and lying, and lying again to claim he prevailed in the election that President-elect Joe Biden won decisively, fair and square.

What we did not know for certain was whether the Republican Party would once again bow before Trump’s corruption and his indifference to the fate of our republican institutions. Continue reading.

Trump is in survival mode — and caught in a pardon dilemma with no good alternatives

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Donald Trump is becoming more fearful and anxious by the day. Above everything else, he desperately wants to save his own skin and avoid spending his remaining days outfitted in an orange prison jumpsuit. This is why, as the legal challenges to his humiliating defeat at the polls fail one by one, he will eventually shed his phony tough-guy facade and seek refuge in a presidential pardon for the myriad of federal felonies he may have committed.

The question is not whether Trump will pursue the pardon remedy, but precisely when and how he will do so. Even though a presidential pardon would apply only to federal offensesand leave him exposed to charges under New York law arising from the ongoing probeconducted by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, he has no other viable choice.

One of the few things Trump understands about the Constitution is the plenary nature of the pardon power granted to presidents. The pardon power is the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card. To date, Trump has used his authority to pardon or commute the sentences of 44 individuals convicted of federal crimes. The recipients of his beneficence include such darlings of the unhinged radical right as Joe Arpaio, the notoriously racist former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona; and Dinesh D’Souza, the prominent author, documentary filmmaker and conspiracy theorist. Continue reading.

Why America Needs a Reckoning with the Trump Era

On Saturday evening, President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris gave their victory speeches, reminding Americans and the world what a political leader can sound like: thoughtful rather than ignorant, authoritative rather than arrogant, empathetic rather than callous. They promised healing and spoke of unity. The allure of normalcy was immense.

Biden is poised to take office following the most divisive and destructive Presidency in memory. Speaking to his supporters’ collective desire to leave behind the nightmare of the past four years, he promised to end “this grim era of demonization.” He stressed that, in choosing him, a majority of Americans opted to “marshal the forces of decency and the forces of fairness. To marshal the forces of science and the forces of hope”—the forces of everything good, reliable, and familiar that can help us shake the feeling of living in an unstable and unrelentingly dark reality. Biden promised to “restore the soul of America.”

The soul of America has been battered by a hateful and lying President, by a government intent on destroying itself, and, when the covid-19 pandemic struck, by a government that demonstratively rejected the value of human life. The Trump Administration taught Americans that no one will take care of us, our parents, and our children, because our lives are worthless, disposable. It has taught Americans that this country is a dangerous place. The President kept telling us that we are at risk of being murdered by illegal aliens or overrun by violent protesters—while our lived experience showed us that we are forever on the brink of disaster and that no one will protect us, whether from illness or economic hardship. Even now, Trump, in refusing to accept electoral defeat, has continued to try to bully reality into submission. Continue reading.

USPS data shows thousands of mailed ballots missed Election Day deadlines

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The Postal Service ignored a federal judge’s order to sweep processing plants on Tuesday after more than 300,000 scanned ballots could not be traced.

Nearly 7 percent of ballots in U.S. Postal Service sorting facilities on Tuesday were not processed on time for submission to election officials, according to data the agency filed Wednesday in federal court, potentially leaving tens of thousands of ballots caught in the mail system during an especially tight presidential race.

The Postal Service reported the timely processing — which includes most mail-handling steps outside of pickup and delivery — of 93.3 percent of ballots on Election Day, its best processing score in several days, but still well below the 97-percent target that postal and voting experts say the agency should hit.

The Postal Service processed 115,630 ballots on Tuesday, a volume much lower than in recent days after weeks of warnings about chronic mail delays. Of that number, close to 8,000 ballots were not processed on time, a small proportion but one that could factor heavily in states such as Michigan and Wisconsin, which do not accept ballots after Election Day and could be decided by a few thousand votes. Continue reading.

A brief overview of the many lawsuits Trump is facing right now

We are, incredibly, just days away from what is being billed as the mostconsequential election in American history, an assertion which, no matter how sensationalized the claim may be, only serves to underscore just how serious the stakes are. 

With that in mind, the race between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden has been anything but typical, thanks to everything from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the restrictions it’s placed on how and where candidates can campaign, to the president’s penchant for saying wildly untrue and dangerous things. To quote the comedian John Mulaney, the horse is not only loose in the hospital, but he’s trying desperately — if seemingly unsuccessfully — to convince the patients to let him stay.

One way the president hopes to stay in office, given how close the race is, is if the courts hand him the presidency. And, if you follow Trump’s particularly craven political calculation, the courts are a fairly good bet on his part: He has, after all, spent a lifetime in and out of the judicial system as both plaintiff and defendant. If there’s one thing Trump knows, it’s how to (usually, but not always) torque the courts in his favor. Continue reading.

Scoop: Trump’s plan to declare premature victory

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President Trump has told confidants he’ll declare victory on Tuesday night if it looks like he’s “ahead,” according to three sources familiar with his private comments. That’s even if the Electoral College outcome still hinges on large numbers of uncounted votes in key states like Pennsylvania.

The latest: Speaking to reporters on Sunday evening, Trump denied that he would declare victory prematurely, before adding, “I think it’s a terrible thing when ballots can be collected after an election. I think it’s a terrible thing when states are allowed to tabulate ballots for a long period of time after the election is over.”

  • He continued: “I think it’s terrible that we can’t know the results of an election the night of the election. … We’re going to go in the night of, as soon as that election’s over, we’re going in with our lawyers.” Continue reading.

Exposed Corruption Swamps Trump Campaign In Final Week

It’s been a long, difficult week in Trumpworld with all of the incriminating reports of corruption surrounding President Donald Trump and his administration. With Election Day less than five days away, Trump is likely feeling the pressure as the opposing forces work over time to state their case and prove that he is unfit for the office of the presidency.

Many of the stories raise more questions about Trump’s leadership and the hidden agendas of his White House officials and other members of his administration.

Here’s a breakdown of the stories circulating this week:

1. Trump, Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the Turkish Bank A new report by the New York Times has uncovered details about Trump and U.S. Attorney Bill Barr questionable handling of possible violations of U.S. sanctions involving billions of dollars worth of gold and cash that was funneled to Iran. Continue reading.

Trump officials blur lines on campaigning, governing

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Multiple Trump administration officials have turned into surrogates for the president’s reelection campaign this week, further muddying the distinction between government work and politicking in a White House that has pushed those boundaries for four years.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has appeared on TV multiple times this week as a “Trump 2020 campaign adviser.” Senior White House adviser Stephen Miller and chairman of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow both phoned into Trump campaign calls to tout Trump’s agenda on immigration and the economy, respectively, saying they were acting in their personal capacity.

National security adviser Robert O’Brien this week visited Wisconsin and Minnesota, two battleground states that Trump is spending significant resources targeting and could be critical to his reelection. Continue reading.