In private call, GOP senator admitted the real reason he refuses to acknowledge President-elect Biden: report

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A former local official in Wisconsin exposed Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), revealing the real reason why he refuses to acknowledge President-elect Joe Biden as the next President of the United States.

In an editorial published for the anti-Trump conservative site The Bulwark, Mark Becker — a former Brown County, WI, supervisor, and former chairman of the county’s Republican Party, shed light on a private call between him and the Republican senator. The call reportedly occurred on Nov. 14.

According to Becker, Johnson described the situation as “political suicide” as he admitted that it is the reason why he and most Republican lawmakers refuse to publicly admit that President Donald Trump lost the presidential election. Continue reading.

List of Republicans breaking with Trump grows longer

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The list of Republicans who are breaking with President Trump over his wild assertions about widespread voter fraud and acknowledging the reality of President-elect Joe Biden’s election win is growing longer.

So is the list of the president’s targets as he refuses to concede and rages against allies who, in his eyes, have shown insufficient loyalty.

The developments have divided Trump and some of his allies in the final weeks of his administration and raised concerns about the negative impact his attacks on the electoral process could have on the Senate runoff elections in Georgia that will decide if Republicans hold the majority. Continue reading.

Trump fired me for saying this, but I’ll say it again: The election wasn’t rigged

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Christopher Krebs is the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Post columnist David Ignatius interviewed Krebs Dec. 2 about the 2020 election on Washington Post Live.

On Nov. 17, I was dismissed as director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a Senate-confirmed post, in a tweet from President Trump after my team and other election security experts rebutted claims of hacking in the 2020 election. On Monday, a lawyer for the president’s campaign plainly stated that I should be executed. I am not going to be intimidated by these threats from telling the truth to the American people.

Three years ago, I left a comfortable private-sector job to join, in the spirit of public service, the Department of Homeland Security. At the time, the national security community was reeling from the fallout of the brazen Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. I wanted to help.

Across the nation’s security agencies, there was universal acknowledgment that such foreign election interference could not be allowed to happen again. The mission was clear: Defend democracy and protect U.S. elections from threats foreign and domestic. Continue reading.

To boost voter-fraud claims, Trump advocate Sidney Powell turns to unusual source: The longtime operator of QAnon’s Internet home

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In her legal quest to reverse the reality of last month’s election, President Trump’s recently disavowed attorney Sidney Powell has gained a strange new ally: the longtime administrator of the message board 8kun, the QAnon conspiracy theory’s Internet home.

Powell on Tuesday filed an affidavit from Ron Watkins, the son of 8kun’s owner Jim Watkins, in a Georgia lawsuit alleging that Dominion Voting Systems machines used in the election had been corrupted as part of a sprawling voter-fraud conspiracy.

Powell has claimed that a diabolical scheme backed by global communists had invisibly shifted votes with help from a mysterious computer algorithm pioneered by the long-dead Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez — a wild story debunked by fact-checkers as a “fantasy parade” and devoid of proof. Continue reading.

‘It Has to Stop’: Georgia Election Official Lashes Trump

Gabriel Sterling, a voting system official in Georgia, harshly criticized the president for failing to condemn threats of violence against people overseeing the election in his state.

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ATLANTA — In one of the most striking rebukes to President Trump since he launched his baseless attacks on the American electoral process, a top-ranking Georgia election official lashed out at the president on Tuesday for failing to condemn threats of violence against people overseeing the voting system in his state.

“It has to stop,” Gabriel Sterling, a Republican and Georgia’s voting system implementation manager, said at an afternoon news conference at the state Capitol, his voice shaking with emotion. “Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language.”

He added: “This is elections. This is the backbone of democracy, and all of you who have not said a damn word are complicit in this. It’s too much.” Continue reading.

Barr says DOJ hasn’t uncovered widespread voter fraud in 2020 election

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Attorney General William Barr on Tuesday said there has been no evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the election, undercutting President Trump‘s repeated baseless claims to the contrary.

“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told The Associated Press in an interview.

Barr told the wire service that U.S. attorneys and FBI agents have been following up on specific complaints following the election but have yet to discover anything on a scale that would overturn President-elect Joe Biden‘s victory. Continue reading.

‘All about the grift’: Trump raises over $150 million for ‘election defense fund’

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After bombarding supporters daily with emails blaring lies about the election and soliciting donations to overcome virtually non-existent voter fraud, President Donald Trump’s political operation has reportedly raised more than $150 million since November 3, a staggering windfall that is being funneled into a Republican joint fundraising committee and a Trump PAC established to fuel his post-White House activities.

While the Trump team’s aggressive emails—sometimes as many as 15 per day—purport to be raising money for an “Official Election Defense Fund” set up to finance the president’s flailing legal effort to overturn the election, the fund does not exist.

“There is no such account,” the Washington Post reported late Monday. “The fundraising requests are being made by the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, a joint fundraising committee that raises money for the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee. As of November 18, that committee also shares its funds with Save America, a new leadership PAC that Trump set up in early November and which he can use to fund his post-presidency activities.” Continue reading.

Trump Lawyer DiGenova Calls For Execution Of DHS Whistleblower

Trump lawyer Joe diGenova yestreday called for the execution of DHS whistleblower Chris Krebs, who was the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) until he was fired by tweet by President Donald Trump for debunking conspiracy theories about the results of the 2020 elections.

As Tim Miller reported:

On Monday President Trump’s campaign lawyer and former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova said that fired Trump cybersecurity chief Chris Krebs should be executed for saying that the election was the “most secure in United States history.”
DiGenova, appearing on the Howie Carr show, which simulcasts on Newsmax, took aim at Krebs as an aside during a wheels-off segment full of false claims about how the United States election had been rigged.
“Anybody who thinks the election went well, like that idiot Krebs who used to be the head of cybersecurity [for Trump]. That guy is a class A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot,” diGenova said.
This is not just a random Parler troll trying to get attention. This is an attorney speaking on behalf of the President of the United States’ re-election campaign. And while it may read like a macabre joke, the direct nature of diGenova’s comments make it impossible to interpret as anything other than a real wish/threat against a public servant for offering truthful testimony.

But diGenova’s call for violence did not just broadcast on the radio and on Newsmax. Carr’s show also streams on YouTube, and the diGenova interview has already been uploaded to Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Continue reading.

Here’s when Biden’s win becomes official — and how Trump has been trying to prevent that

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The president has failed to halt the certification of the vote in all six states in which he tried to challenge the results, falsely claiming they were the work of widespread fraud.

President Trump and his allies have tried to undo the results of the 2020 election with falsehoods about voting security, lawsuits and direct pressure on Republican legislators and officials — an effort critics have denounced as an unprecedented subversion of democracy.

One of Trump’s immediate goals has been to delay or derail formal certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s win in key battleground states, either by persuading judges to block the process or compelling officials not to certify results, based on false claims that the election was tainted by massive voter fraud.

That effort has failed. All six battleground states in which Trump was challenging the results — Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Wisconsin — have formally certified Biden’s win. Continue reading.

National Review editors bash Trump’s ‘disgraceful conduct since losing’ reelection

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The National Review editorial board is drawing attention online for its sharp rebuke of President Trump’s actions challenging the results of the presidential election, which he lost to President-elect Joe Biden.

In a Monday editorial titled “Trump’s Disgraceful Endgame,” the conservative publication’s senior editorial staff referred to the president’s continued efforts to undermine the results as “disgraceful” and said “almost nothing that the Trump team has alleged has withstood the slightest scrutiny.” 

Trump immediately moved to challenge the results of the election in multiple courts after media outlets called the race in favor of his Democratic opponent on the Saturday after Election Day. Multiple legal efforts launched by his team and other Republicans have been thrown out even as the president has continued to repeat unsubstantiated claims about the race being “rigged.” Continue reading.