Tag: Trump election fraud lie

Justice Department: Arizona Senate Audit, Recount May Violate Federal Law

The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday expressed concerns that a controversial audit and recount of the November election in Arizona’s Maricopa County may be out of compliance with federal laws.

Pamela Karlan, the principal deputy assistant attorney general with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, wrote in a letter that federal officials see two issues with the election review ordered by the Republican-led state Senate. 

One issue is that ballots, voting systems and other election materials are no longer in the custody of election officials — a possible violation of federal law, which requires state and local election workers to store and safeguard federal voting records. Continue reading.

Florida’s new voting law immediately hit with lawsuits

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Voting rights groups on Thursday filed a pair of lawsuits targeting a restrictive GOP-crafted voting bill, just moments after it was signed into law by Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

The complaints, both filed in federal court in Tallahassee, claim the law, SB 90, illegally restricts access to the ballot box, with one of the suits alleging the measure will result in illegal discrimination against voters of color.

“SB 90 is a bill that purports to solve problems that do not exist,” reads one of the suits. “[It] caters to a dangerous lie about the 2020 election that threatens our most basic democratic values, and, in the end, makes it harder to vote without adequate justification for doing so.” Continue reading.

What? Arizona ‘Audit’ Observers Required To Sign Non-Disclosure Agreements

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Volunteers who observed the Republican-backed audit in Maricopa County, Ariz., were required to sign non-disclosure agreements, according to ABC-15.

The news outlet reports that the terms of the agreement, provided by Cyber Ninjas, Inc., which is overseeing the audit, require volunteers to refrain from sharing details about anything they observed or heard while the audit was taking place. Volunteers are only allowed to speak under one condition: They are given permission to do so by the company.

“I agree that unless I am authorized in writing by Cyber Ninjas, Inc. and the Arizona State Senate, I will not disclose any Confidential Information to any person who is not conducting the Audit…,” the agreement reads. “Furthermore, I agree that during the course of the audit to refrain from making any public statements, social media posts, or similar public disclosures about the audit or its findings until such a time as the results from the audit are made public…” Continue reading.

Cheney fight stokes cries of GOP double standard for women

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Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) remains safe as the minority leader. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) survived a recent censure vote at home. And few on Capitol Hill are going after the likes of Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Anthony Gonzalez (R-Ohio) or John Katko (R-N.Y.).

Yet for Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), the No. 3 House Republican, the cost of denouncing former President Trump appears almost certain to be her expulsion from leadership, perhaps as early as next week. And that’s sparking a backlash from some Republicans who see a vicious double standard in the GOP’s hard-charging effort to demote the most powerful woman in the party’s ranks.

“The women don’t get the same slack that the men get,” former Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.), a Cheney ally, said this week by phone. “And I think a lot of the men are attacking her because they resent that she’s got guts and they don’t.  Continue reading.

Observers report ballots and laptop computers have been left unattended in Arizona recount, according to secretary of state

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Ballots have been left unattended on counting tables.

Laptop computers sit abandoned, at times — open, unlocked and unmonitored.

Procedures are constantly shifting, with untrained workers using different rules to count ballots.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) on Wednesday sent a letter outlining a string of problems that she said observers from her office have witnessed at a Republican-led recount of the 2020 presidential election results in Arizona’s largest county. Continue reading.

In Turning on Liz Cheney, G.O.P. Bows to Trump’s Election Lies

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House Republicans were lobbying to replace Representative Liz Cheney, who has vocally called out Donald J. Trump’s lies, with Representative Elise Stefanik, who has embraced them.

WASHINGTON — Top Republicans moved swiftly on Wednesday to purge Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming from their leadership ranks for vocally rejecting Donald J. Trump’s election lies, laying the groundwork to install a replacement who has embraced his false claims of voting fraud.

The move to push out Ms. Cheney as the No. 3 House Republican in favor of Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, a Trump loyalist who voted to overturn President Biden’s victory in key states, reflected how thoroughly the party’s orthodoxy has come to be defined by fealty to the former president and a tolerance for misinformation, rather than policy principles.

“The Republican Party is at a turning point, and Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the Constitution,” Ms. Cheney wrote in a searing opinion piece published in the Washington Post on Wednesday evening. She framed her fate as a referendum on the party’s future and warned that Republicans must “steer away from the dangerous and anti-democratic Trump cult of personality.” Continue reading.

Biden sparked outrage calling Jan. 6 ‘the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War’ — he was right

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In his first address to a joint session of Congress, President Joe Biden called the January 6 insurrection “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” This is an apt comparison. The insurrection was the worst attack on our democracy since the shelling of Fort Sumter, because the president of the United States schemed to overturn a free and fair election and remain in power against the will of the people, a high crime for which he was impeached. It was pure luck that the insurgents didn’t assassinate the vice president for refusing the president’s order to steal the election.

Revisionists are already trying to memory-hole the full significance of the attack and cast it as a mere riot rather than as a coordinated assault on American democracy orchestrated by a sitting president. While the out-and-out hacks allege January 6 was a false-flag operation masterminded by BLM, the more intellectually respectable apologists are trying to muddy the waters with spurious historical objections. 

Bloomberg Opinion columnist Eli Lake tweeted: “The Capitol Hill riot was terrible. All of this is true. At the same time, what happened on January 6 is not the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. Some perspective would be nice here.” Continue reading.

Opinion: The GOP is at a turning point. History is watching us.

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Liz Cheney, a Republican, represents Wyoming’s at-large congressional district in the U.S. House.

In public statements again this week, former president Donald Trump has repeated his claims that the 2020 election was a fraud and was stolen. His message: I am still the rightful president, and President Biden is illegitimate. Trump repeats these words now with full knowledge that exactly this type of language provoked violence on Jan. 6. And, as the Justice Department and multiple federal judges have suggested, there is good reason to believe that Trump’s language can provoke violence again. Trump is seeking to unravel critical elements of our constitutional structure that make democracy work — confidence in the result of elections and the rule of law. No other American president has ever done this.

The Republican Party is at a turning point, and Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the Constitution. In the immediate wake of the violence of Jan. 6, almost all of us knew the gravity and the cause of what had just happened — we had witnessed it firsthand.

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) left no doubt in his public remarks. On the floor of the House on Jan. 13, McCarthy said: “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding.” Now, McCarthy has changed his story. Continue reading.

‘It should alarm every American’: GOP secretary of state rips her own party’s election ‘audit’ in Arizona

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On CNN Wednesday, Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman, a moderate Republican, tore into the Arizona GOP’s ballot “audit” scheme in Maricopa County, and warned it would set a dangerous precedent for the integrity of elections.

“Madam Secretary, you see like flashing, you know, red warning signs and sirens here based on what’s happening in Arizona,” said anchor John Berman. “Why?”

“Well, because we’re witnessing an event that has absolutely unprecedented movement in elections,” said Wyman. “We’ve never seen a private company be able to come in and take command and control of live ballots that were used in an election, and the precedence of this is just unnerving for election officials across the country. And it should alarm every American in the country because we don’t want people to be able to just walk into a crime scene and contaminate evidence for a future trial. That’s what this is.” Continue reading.

Trump told Facebook board his supporters were ‘law abiding’ during Capitol riot

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Former President Donald Trump defended his supporters as “law abiding” the day of the Capitol insurrection, while insisting his social media posts making false claims about the election did nothing to incite violence on January 6, when an angry mob breached the Capitol to stop the count of President Biden‘s Electoral College victory.

The defense by Trump was made to the Facebook Oversight Board, which was reviewing whether his account on the social media platform should be restored.

In comments submitted on the former president’s behalf, Trump said his supporters were “law-abiding” when they stormed into the building and that nothing he posted on Jan, 6 could “reasonably be interpreted as a threat to public safety.” Continue reading.