Tag: Trump fake voter fraud crisis

‘Traitors to the president’: Conservatives fear public preparation for Biden term

Because Trump won’t concede, many conservatives have found they can’t be open about their plans to counter Biden’s agenda. Some have already faced blowback.

The conservative movement has become handicapped.

Organizations can’t sound the alarm about President-elect Joe Biden’s agenda. Conservative reporters won’t take pitches about Biden’s rumored Cabinet contenders, insistent on covering evidence-deficient claims of voter fraud instead. One conservative group involved in policy advocacy backed off from hiring two soon-to-depart Trump administration officials after growing concerned about the consequences.

And it’s all because of an unspoken rule set by President Donald Trump: Do not acknowledge Biden’s imminent White House takeover. Continue reading.

Trump and Tucker Carlson got caught falsely accusing a living woman of voting while dead

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As decisive a victory as President-elect Joe Biden has enjoyed — 306 electoral votes and a nationwide lead of at least 5.8 million in the popular vote — President Donald Trump and his allies are still hoping to overturn the election results in key battleground states. One of them is Georgia, where Trump’s campaign and Fox News’ Tucker Carlson wrongly accused a voter named Deborah Jean Christiansen of voting fraudulently. But CNN interviewed Christiansen, ascertaining that her vote was perfectly legitimate.

Trump’s campaign and Carlson both accused Christiansen of voting in the name of a dead woman. However, CNN reporters Konstantin Toropin, Daniel Dale and Amara Walker explain that in Georgia, there were two different women named Deborah Jean Christiansen. One of them died in 2019, but the other is alive and well and had every right to vote in the 2020 presidential election.

The two Georgia-based women, according to CNN, were “born in the same year and month but on a different day.” And CNN interviewed the Deborah Jean Christiansen who is still living and voted for Biden. Continue reading.

GOP breaks with Trump firing of cyber chief: Adds to ‘confusion and chaos’

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Several Senate Republicans are pushing back on President Trump‘s decision to fire Chris Krebs, a top cybersecurity official, in a rare break with the administration.

The reactions from GOP senators, who generally are careful to stick closely to Trump, range from those offering support for Krebs to those openly breaking with Trump’s decision to fire him.

“It’s the president’s prerogative but I think it just adds to the confusion and chaos, and I’m sure I’m not the only one that would like some return to a little bit more of a — I don’t even know what’s normal anymore. We’ll call it the next normal,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and an adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Continue reading.

Wayne County Republican who asked to ‘rescind’ her vote certifying election results says Trump called her

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DETROIT — President Trump called a GOP canvassing board member in Wayne County who announced Wednesday she wanted to rescind her decision to certify the results of the presidential election, the member said in a message to The Washington Post on Thursday.

“I did receive a call from President Trump, late Tuesday evening, after the meeting,” Monica Palmer, one of two Republican members of the four-member Wayne County canvassing board, told The Post. “He was checking in to make sure I was safe after hearing the threats and doxing that had occurred.”

The call came after an hours-long meeting Tuesday in which the four-member canvassing board voted to certify the results of the Nov. 3 election, a key step toward finalizing President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state. Continue reading.

Top cybersecurity official ousted by Trump

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President Trump ousted Christopher Krebs, the top U.S. cybersecurity official, on Tuesday evening, disagreeing with Krebs’s statement affirming the security of the 2020 election.

Trump, who has refused to accept his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the presidential election earlier this month, said on Twitter that Krebs had been terminated “effective immediately.” Trump said a recent statement by the cyber chief about the security of the election was “highly inaccurate” and claimed, without evidence, that “there were massive improprieties and fraud — including dead people voting.”

“Poll Watchers not allowed into polling locations, ‘glitches’ in the voting machines which changed votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more,” the president wrote. “Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.” Continue reading.

Trump allies fear Giuliani may be conning the president into a doomed legal fight: report

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No attorney has done more to fight the results of the 2020 presidential election than former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has been claiming that President Donald Trump — not President-elect Joe Biden — is the real winner. He says Trump was deprived of a victory by rampant voter fraud, which Giuliani has offered no credible proof of. The fees that Giuliani charges as Trump’s personal attorney are not cheap, and according to New York Times reporters Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman, Giuliani recently asked for $20,000 per day.

Schmidt and Haberman report, “The request stirred opposition from some of Mr. Trump’s aides and advisers, who appear to have ruled out paying that much…. A $20,000-a-day rate would have made Mr. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who has been Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer for several years, among the most highly compensated attorneys anywhere.”

Giuliani, however, flatly denies asking for that amount. The Trump attorney told the Times, “I never asked for $20,000. The arrangement is, we’ll work it out at the end.” And Giuliani insists that anyone who told the Times that he wanted $20,000 per day “is a liar, a complete liar.” Continue reading.

Murphy’s choice: Fed official has say on transition launch

The head of an obscure federal agency that is holding up the presidential transition knew well before Election Day that she might soon have a messy situation on her hands.

Before Nov. 3, Emily Murphy, the head of the General Services Administration, held a Zoom call with Dave Barram, the man who was in her shoes 20 years earlier. 

The conversation, set up by mutual friends, was a chance for Barram, 77, to tell Murphy a little about his torturous experience with “ascertainment” — the task of determining the expected winner of the presidential election, which launches the official transition process. Continue reading.

The longer Republicans cower to Trump, the more damage they do to democracy

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IN AN ordinary time, none of these comments from Republican officials would be noteworthy. “I expect Joe Biden to be the next president of the United States,” Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Sunday. President Trump has every right to challenge the results in court, said Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, but “Joe Biden is the president-elect.” In Michigan, state Sen. Ruth Johnson said that “I don’t believe that enough votes are in question in Michigan to change the outcome, so I think we need to move forward.” In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said, “People are just going to have to accept the results. . . . I’m a Republican. I believe in fair and secure elections.”

Unfortunately, the Republican Party’s national leadership now stands squarely against fair and secure elections — or accepting results, for that matter. Both Georgia GOP senators competing in runoff elections Jan. 5 called for Mr. Raffensperger’s resignation, while offering absolutely no evidence of misconduct. Mr. Trump called him a “RINO” (Republican in Name Only) — because he competently oversaw an election that Mr. Trump lost. Mr. Trump also threatened Mr. DeWine on Monday, suggesting he would stymie the governor’s 2022 reelection.

Republican so-called leaders in Congress continue to quail before this bullying, indulging Mr. Trump’s toxic lies about a stolen election. Privately they speak of the president as though he were a petulant toddler who can’t face the hard truth all at once; or they argue that so many voters are suspicious of the results that Mr. Trump should have time to challenge them, unsuccessfully, in court. But why are so many people suspicious in the first place? Because Mr. Trump has been sowing doubt about the nation’s democratic institutions since before the election, and his enablers excuse and amplify his lies. As Mr. Trump has lost case after case in court since Election Day, his claims that the vote was rigged have only gotten more brazen. Continue reading.

Lawsuits that tried to disrupt Biden’s wins in four states are withdrawn

Voters in four states who had brought longshot lawsuits to disrupt President-elect Joe Biden’s win and went nowhere in court dropped their cases Monday morning. 

The cases were short-lived in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania federal courts, and fed into a pro-Donald Trump legal strategy to block Biden’s presidential win before the Electoral College formalizes it.

That effort is almost certain to fail — even more so now. Cases seeking to block battleground states’ popular vote wins for Biden are getting fewer by the day, with two from the Trump campaign before federal judges in Michigan and Pennsylvania, one from an elector in Georgia, and one from pollwatchers in Michigan. Continue reading.

Giuliani’s fantasy parade of false voter-fraud claims

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In interviews with sympathetic Fox News hosts, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani has made several wild claims alleging that election fraud and malfeasance was responsible for Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election. His claims have been echoed in weekend tweets by President Trump, accusing a software company of somehow manipulating the vote in favor of Biden. These presidential tweets have been flagged by Twitter as misleading.

Moreover, this nonsense has already been debunked by Trump’s own government. In a statement issued Nov. 12, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, and partners such as the National Association of Secretaries of State declared: “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

That sentence was posted in boldface, just to make it clear. The statement added: “While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too. When you have questions, turn to elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections.” Continue reading.