"Where you can find almost anything with A Click A Pick!"
Go to content
Election Interference Page 3
Tracking interference into our elections
In 2016, we had to worry about the Russians interfering in our elections. In 2020 we worried that the Russians would interfere again never did we think that the President of the Untied States would be the one inferring in our elections and attempting to steal the election. Some Republicans are now helping Donald J. Trump interfere with, subvert the law and the will of the people, and steal the election depriving 80,000,000 of their votes. Trump will fail in his attempt to steal the election however, the damage that he and his enablers have done to our democracy will be long lasting.
by John Kruzel

Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, urged Arizona lawmakers to intervene after former President Trump’s 2020 electoral defeat in the state, pressing them to set aside Joe Biden’s slate of electors and put forth “a clean slate of Electors,” according to The Washington Post. The newly revealed communications came in emails Ginni Thomas sent on Nov. 9, 2020 — six days after the election — to a pair of lawmakers, pressing them to work on Trump’s behalf and “fight back against fraud,” according to the Post. The explosive revelation adds a new layer of detail to previous reporting on Thomas’s efforts in the weeks after the 2020 election. The Post previously reported that she strategized with Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows over how to bypass the will of American voters to install Trump for a second White House term despite his loss to Biden, an outcome she described as an “obvious fraud” and “the greatest heist of our history.”
Rachel Olding

President Donald Trump was so deeply involved in the desperate, last-ditch effort to overturn the 2020 election results that he hand-wrote strategy notes, hired at least ten lawyers to work on just one court case, and spoke regularly with one of his lead lawyers both directly and through six conduits. John Eastman, the law professor tapped by Trump to craft a legal strategy to keep him in power, detailed those extensive communications in a new court filing late Thursday as he argued it should all be shielded from the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection because of attorney-client privilege or attorney work product protections. Eastman has been battling the House Committee in California federal court in an effort to prevent it accessing tens of thousands of pages of emails from his email address with Chapman University, where he worked as a law professor until shortly after the Capitol riot. But U.S. District Court Judge David Carter has not been impressed with Eastman’s arguments thus far. In one blistering ruling from March in which he ordered Eastman to hand over 101 emails, Carter found that Eastman and Trump “more likely than not” committed a felony by trying to obstruct Congress and overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The court filing describes the direct role of Trump himself in developing strategy, detailing “two hand-written notes from former President Trump about information that he thought might be useful for the anticipated litigation.”
By Kyle Cheney

John Eastman, the attorney who architected Donald Trump’s last-ditch legal strategy to overturn the 2020 election, revealed Friday that he routinely communicated with Trump either directly or via “six conduits” during the chaotic weeks that preceded the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. In a late-night court filing urging a federal judge to maintain the confidentiality of his work for Trump, Eastman provided the clearest insight yet into the blizzard of communications between Trump, his top aides, his campaign lawyers and the army of outside attorneys who were working to help reverse the outcome in a handful of states won by Joe Biden. The filing also describes the direct role of Trump himself in developing strategy, detailing “two hand-written notes from former President Trump about information that he thought might be useful for the anticipated litigation.” Those notes are among the documents Eastman is seeking to shield via attorney-client privilege. Eastman said he would also speak directly with Trump by phone throughout his legal challenges to the election. Eastman described these contacts and records as part of an effort to prevent the Jan. 6 select committee from accessing 600 emails that describe his efforts to build Trump’s legal gambit to reverse the 2020 election outcome — and, when that failed, urge state legislatures to simply overturn the results themselves. He argues that the documents are protected by attorney-client and attorney work product privileges that Congress has no business probing, even as the panel investigates the circumstances that led a mob of Trump supporters to attack the Capitol.
Georgia election official allowed conspiracist to breach voting system in search of "fraud": report
Jon Skolnik

A former Georgia county elections supervisor opened her offices to an election-denying businessman shortly after the 2020 presidential election, granting access to voting equipment that election-deniers claim was vital to rigging the election, according to a Washington Post report. Misty Hampton told the Post that she cannot remember when the walkthrough took place or what was done during the visit but recalled giving access to Scott Hall, the owner of a Georgia bail bond business. "I'm not a babysitter," she reportedly said of her past role in the Coffee County office. In an interview with Post, Hampton said that she was unaware that the visit might contravene the state's guidance barring voting equipment from being released to the public. "I don't see why anything that is dealing with elections is not open to the public," Hampton said. "Why would you want to hide anything?" Even though Donald Trump had won the county by a 40-point margin, many election officials "voiced suspicions of fraud" after the 2020 election, according to the Post. Hampton reportedly spread the baseless notion that "rogue" administrators might have tampered with the ballots in order to give then-President-elect Biden a bigger edge.
By Bob Brigham | Raw Story

The efforts by Trump lawyer John Eastman to attempt to overturn the 2020 election in Pennsylvania, a former federal prosecutor explained on Wednesday. "Even by the standards of other ideas promoted by the conservative lawyer John Eastman to keep President Donald J. Trump in the White House after his election loss in 2020, a newly revealed strategy he proposed to take votes from Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Pennsylvania stands out as especially brazen," The New York Times reported Wednesday. "Mr. Eastman pressed a Pennsylvania state lawmaker in December 2020 to carry out a plan to strip Mr. Biden of his win in that state by applying a mathematical equation to accepting the validity of mail ballots, which were most heavily used by Democrats during the pandemic, according to emails from Mr. Eastman released under a public records request by the University of Colorado Boulder, which employed him at the time." The emails were sent to Republican state Rep. Russell Diamond. "The emails were the latest evidence of just how far Mr. Trump and his allies were willing to go in the weeks after Election Day to keep him in power — complete with anti-democratic plans to install fake pro-Trump electors and reject the votes of Biden supporters. Mr. Eastman would go on to champion the idea that Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally block congressional certification of Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory, an idea Mr. Pence rejected even as Mr. Trump was promoting the protests that turned into the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol," the newspaper reported.
Lee Moran

Aretired conservative federal judge appointed by former President George H.W. Bush warned in an opinion piece published by CNN on Wednesday that Republicans are “already a long way toward recapturing the White House in 2024, whether Trump or another Republican candidate wins the election or not.” In his essay, J. Michael Luttig broke down what he called the “Republican blueprint” to steal the 2024 election ― the cornerstone of which, he said, was the Supreme Court’s embrace of the “independent state legislature” doctrine.
by Opinion by J. Michael Luttig

Nearly a year and a half later, surprisingly few understand what January 6 was all about. Fewer still understand why former President Donald Trump and Republicans persist in their long-disproven claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Much less why they are obsessed about making the 2024 race a referendum on the "stolen" election of 2020, which even they know was not stolen. January 6 was never about a stolen election or even about actual voting fraud. It was always and only about an election that Trump lost fair and square, under legislatively promulgated election rules in a handful of swing states that he and other Republicans contend were unlawfully changed by state election officials and state courts to expand the right and opportunity to vote, largely in response to the Covid pandemic. The Republicans' mystifying claim to this day that Trump did, or would have, received more votes than Joe Biden in 2020 were it not for actual voting fraud, is but the shiny object that Republicans have tauntingly and disingenuously dangled before the American public for almost a year and a half now to distract attention from their far more ambitious objective.
by Dean Obeidallah

Acoup. That's what Donald Trump Jr. was advocating for in a text message to his father's then-chief of staff Mark Meadows that laid out ways to subvert the Electoral College process and keep his father in power. There are many alarming -- and even bone-chilling -- aspects of Trump Jr.'s November 5, 2020, text message.  But the most jaw-dropping is that the text was sent just two days after the 2020 election, when the result was still too close to call. That Trump Jr. was already pushing for several strategies -- from pressing Republican state legislators to put forward slates of fake "Trump electors," to firing the FBI Director and replacing him with a loyalist who would do Trump's bidding -- reveals the level of preparation and dogged determination within Trump's inner circle to keep him in power, no matter the outcome.
By Katelyn Polantz, CNN Reporter, Crime and Justice, Reporter, Crime and Justice

CNN — A federal judge said Monday that former President Donald Trump and right-wing attorney John Eastman may have been planning a crime as they sought to disrupt the January 6 congressional certification of the presidential election. “Based on the evidence, the Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021,” Judge David Carter wrote Monday. Carter, a federal judge in California, ordered Eastman to turn over 101 emails from around January 6, 2021, that he has tried to keep secret from the House select committee investigating the US Capitol attack.
MSNBC

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti analyzes Trump aide Peter Navarro's newsworthy comments on MSNBC about his new subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee, including several denials and evasions about election plots now under investigation. Mariotti talks with MSNBC’s Ari Melber, who conducted the interview.
"Do you realize you are describing a coup?" Ari Melber told Peter Navarro
By Aaron Parsley

MSNBC host Ari Melber brought Peter Navarro, former President Donald Trump's senior economic adviser, on his show The Beat on Tuesday to discuss a plan to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election that Navarro describes in his new book, In Trump Time. After Navarro detailed "Green Bay Sweep," the name of a plot to keep Trump in office despite his electoral defeat to Joe Biden, Melber told his guest that Navarro had just described a "coup." So what was the Green Bay Sweep? "The plan was simply this: We had over 100 congressman and senators on Capitol Hill to implement the sweep. We were going to challenge the results of the election in the six battleground states," Navarro said. Those included Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
By Jackie CalmesColumnist

What Donald Trump is saying is bad enough: For 13 months, history’s sorest loser has been repeating his lie that he was robbed of reelection, and undermining the faith of millions of Americans in their democracy, including three out of four Republicans who buy his poison. What Trump and his allies are doing, however, is perhaps worse: They’re working to rig the next presidential election for him. This activity, while mostly out in the open, has been little noted because seeing the full picture requires connecting dots in swing states nationwide, each dot representing interventions by Trump or his minions to affect some of the country’s most obscure public offices, like county vote-canvassing boards and precinct judgeships.
One message threatened, “You can’t run for governor when you’re already dead. We are going to hang you for treason, you fucking bitch.”
By William Vaillancourt

The GOP spent much of the past year chipping away at the authority of state and local election officials as part of the party’s ongoing efforts to destroy faith in US democracy, following the failed re-election of Donald Trump. With Trump and his supporters continuing to lie about the 2020 presidential election and criticize election officials who refused to go along with attempts to overthrow the results, it shouldn’t be terribly surprising that, according to a report published by Reuters on Thursday, these local officials have been subject to a steady stream of abuse and threats since the 2020 presidential election. The report contains more than 850 threatening and hostile messages spanning 30 jurisdictions in 16 states. Law professors and attorneys say that about 110 of them appear to warrant federal prosecution.
Trump backers push election change that would make counting slower, costlier and less accurate
Ditching machine tabulators and replacing them with people counting votes by hand has become a new fixation on the right.
By Zach Montellaro

Trump supporters are pushing to prohibit machine counting of ballots in future elections around the country, which election officials say could make vote-counting slower, more expensive and — most importantly — less accurate. Legislators in at least six states this year have introduced proposals to prohibit the use of ballot tabulating machines. Local jurisdictions in Nevada, New Hampshire and elsewhere have also been considering similar measures. The proposals stem from baseless conspiracy theories stoked by former President Donald Trump since the 2020 election, in which he and others contended that election machines around the country were hacked and votes were flipped.
Martin Pengelly in New York

The Alabama Republican congressman Mo Brooks said on Tuesday Donald Trump asked him to “rescind” the 2020 election, remove Joe Biden from the White House and reinstate Trump. The extraordinary statement came in an angry response to a withdrawn endorsement in a US Senate race. Trump was angered that Brooks was insufficiently toeing his line on calling the 2020 election a fraud. Brooks’ statement is likely to be of interest to the January 6 committee. The panel is investigating Trump’s lie about electoral fraud in his defeat by Biden, efforts to marshal members of Congress to object to election results, a rally near the White House on 6 January 2021 which Trump and Brooks addressed, and the deadly attack on the US Capitol that followed.
By Katelyn Polantz and Ryan Nobles, CNN

(CNN) Former President Donald Trump and a right-wing lawyer were part of a "criminal conspiracy" to overturn the 2020 presidential election, the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot alleges in a court filing Wednesday. The filing is part of an attempt to convince a judge to allow the panel access to emails from lawyer John Eastman, who is claiming attorney-client privilege. The committee said he helped to orchestrate the plot. The filing is the most extensive release to date from the House's January 6 investigators as they try to obtain Eastman's emails -- and comes well before the House select committee releases its final report on its findings on Trump. House members have also signaled they may make a criminal referral to the Justice Department about Trump, depending on their findings, and the House's arguments Wednesday could be seen as a preview of a case that could be made by federal prosecutors. more...
Molly Beck Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and the former Supreme Court justice he hired to review the 2020 election violated the state's public records law by refusing to turn over some documents to a liberal group that requested them and delaying the release of others, a judge ruled Wednesday. The ruling from Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington was issued a day after a report was issued by Michael Gableman, the former justice who is leading the Assembly Republicans' taxpayer-funded review of the last presidential election. more...
Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman for months has been conducting a probe of the 2020 election.
By Zach Montellaro

A draft report for a GOP-run investigation of the 2020 election in Wisconsin, authored by a former state Supreme Court justice, embraces the fringe theory that election results could be decertified after the fact — advancing former President Donald Trump’s calls to overturn an election he lost well over a year ago. Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman for months has been conducting a probe of the 2020 election, authorized by state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, one of the most powerful Republicans in the state. more...
If Republicans really wanted to stop the steal, they should have told Trump and his minions to stop trying to steal the election.

The Beat with Ari

In a bombshell statement, Donald Trump has admitted that he wanted Pence to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Trump said “Pence did have the right to change the outcome… Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!” At the same time, Trump is also saying he will consider pardoning the Jan. 6 rioters if he wins the 2024 election. video...
Ed Pilkington

More than 1,000 Americans in positions of public trust acted as accomplices in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election result, participating in the violent insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January or spreading the “big lie” that the vote count had been rigged. The startling figure underlines the extent to which Trump’s attempt to undermine the foundations of presidential legitimacy has metastasized across the US. Individuals who engaged in arguably the most serious attempt to subvert democracy since the civil war are now inveigling themselves into all levels of government, from Congress and state legislatures down to school boards and other local public bodies. The finding that 1,011 individuals in the public realm played a role in election subversion around the 2020 presidential race comes from a new pro-democracy initiative that launched on Wednesday. more...
By Jason Lemon

The nonpartisan States United Democracy Center outlined Republican efforts to "subvert" free and fair elections, highlighting that more than 260 bills to interfere with elections have been put forward in states across the country, in a year-end report released this week. Former President Donald Trump and right-wing allies falsely claim that the 2020 election was "rigged" or "stolen" in favor of President Joe Biden. Pro-Trump Republicans have used that conspiracy theory to justify new voting and election reform legislation, which critics have warned could undermine the democratic process. more...
By Isabel van Brugen

Mark Meadows, former chief of staff to Donald Trump , allegedly worked on creating a fake electoral college following the 2020 presidential election. That's according to a contempt report released Sunday night by the House of Representatives panel investigating the January 6 Capitol riot. The report comes just days after Meadows launched legal proceedings against the panel and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi . Meadows filed a lawsuit in a Washington, D.C. federal court on December 8 after the committee said it would proceed with a contempt case against him for his refusal to appear for a deposition. Among other issues, the committee said Meadows sent emails and texts about sending "alternate electors" to Congress in November 2020, allegedly saying "I love it" about the idea to an unidentified member of Congress. more...
Former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows handed over a trove of pre-Jan. 6 documentation. It’s damning stuff
By Ryan Bort

The House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the Capitol on Thursday released slides from a PowerPoint calling for former President Trump to declare a national security emergency in order to delay the certification of the results of the 2020 election. The presentation, headlined was referred to in an email provided to the committee by Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff who’s had a rough couple of weeks, to say the least. The revelation is the latest piece of evidence that Trump and his inner circle, including his allies in Congress, were very actively and very aggressively trying to overturn the results of the election, which Trump lost handily. The PowerPoint presentation, which spanned 38 pages and was titled “Election fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN,” was part of an email sent on Jan. 5, the day before the attack on the Capitol. more...
David Edwards

Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who is leading a partisan investigation into the 2020 election, clashed with state Rep. Mark Spreitzer (D) on Wednesday. At a hearing before the Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections, Spreitzer challenged Gableman for hiring investigators with a history of working to overturn the 2020 election. Gableman has been previously criticized over the "shamefully biased" investigation. "It seems that you are firmly in the lane of suggesting that the outcome of the election should have been overturned," Spreitzer pointed out. more...
By Marshall Cohen

Washington (CNN) A full year after the 2020 presidential election, new details are still emerging about former President Donald Trump's unprecedented effort to overturn the results. Many of Trump's actions were done in public view, including dozens of ill-fated lawsuits and tweets that undermined the electoral process. But congressional inquiries and news reports have shed new light on what happened behind the scenes as Trump tried to cling to power. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Trump's attempted coup was how he relentlessly tried to weaponize the Justice Department to nullify President Joe Biden's victory. The Democratic-run Senate Judiciary Committee investigated Trump's conduct and concluded in a recent report that he "grossly abused the power of the presidency." more...
By Jeremy Herb, Jake Tapper and Michelle Rozsa, CNN

(CNN) Retiring Rep. Anthony Gonzalez has a warning for his fellow Republicans: former President Donald Trump will try to steal the next election. Gonzalez was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in the wake of the January 6 attack on the Capitol. In the face of relentless attacks and threats directed toward him and his family afterward, the Ohio Republican chose to retire from Congress at the end of his term and avoid facing off with a Trump-backed primary challenger next year. With Trump appearing to prepare for another presidential run in 2024, Gonzalez told CNN he will try to stop Trump from running the same 2020 playbook to overturn another election, but he warned that Trump could have more help next time from those in charge of running -- and certifying -- elections. more...
By Sara Murray and Jason Morris, CNN

(CNN) When former President Donald Trump fired off a letter in September demanding that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger decertify the election, investigators in Georgia were paying attention. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis made clear to her staff she wanted that letter -- the original copy, complete with the envelope -- as part of her probe into Trump's efforts to upend Georgia's 2020 election results, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Trump, still stewing over his 2020 loss and eying a run in 2024, has continued to bellow complaints about the results of the last presidential election and insert himself into Peach State politics. And his antics have provided new fodder for Fulton County investigators as they examine whether his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results were criminal. more...

(CNN) John Eastman, a conservative lawyer working with then-President Donald Trump's legal team, outlined in a two-page memo a scheme to try to persuade then-Vice President Mike Pence to subvert the Constitution and throw out the 2020 election results on January 6. The memo was obtained by The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, the authors of "Peril," and which was subsequently obtained by CNN. Read the memo: more...
New York Times: Trump campaign was aware attorneys' voting conspiracy theories were baseless, court documents show
By Paul LeBlanc, CNN

Washington (CNN) Officials working for then-President Donald Trump's reelection campaign were aware that the voting machine claims being pushed by pro-Trump attorneys were baseless, court documents obtained by The New York Times show.

The documents -- which were filed last week as part of a defamation lawsuit from a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems -- reveal that the Trump campaign's then-deputy director of communications, Zach Parkinson, had reached out to campaign staffers on November 13 asking them to "substantiate or debunk" claims related to Dominion, the Times reported Tuesday. more...
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large

(CNN) It is 100% true that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. And that Donald Trump lost it. Unfortunately, in recent months, the Big Lie -- that Trump somehow was defrauded out of the election -- has gained increasing amounts of traction, according to a new CNN poll.

In January, 59% said they have confidence that elections in this country reflect the will of the people, while 40% said they lacked that confidence. Today? A majority of Americans -- 52% -- say they do not have confidence that elections reflect the will of the people, while 48% say they do. more...
The Fulton County investigators have interviewed state elections officials about attempts to overturn Georgia’s election results by President Trump and Senator Lindsey Graham.
Jose Pagliery Political Investigations Reporter, Asawin Suebsaeng Senior Political Reporter

A local criminal investigation into then-President Donald Trump’s attempt to meddle with Georgia’s 2020 election recount is inching forward, as Fulton County investigators have interviewed elections officials and received documents from the agency, according to three people with direct knowledge of the probe. “They’ve asked us for documents, they’ve talked to some of our folks, and we’ll cooperate fully,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told The Daily Beast this week. more...
Amanda Macias

WASHINGTON – Dominion Voting Systems on Tuesday filed defamation suits against One America News Network, Herring Networks’ Newsmax Media and the founder and former CEO of Overstock.com over claims by the defendants that the company rigged the 2020 U.S. election for President Joe Biden. Also named in the complaint are OAN personalities Chanel Rion and Christina Bobb, and Herring Networks owners Robert Herring and Charles Herring. OAN didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. more...
By Marshall Cohen, Jason Morris and Christopher Hickey, CNN

Washington (CNN) – Prosecutors in Georgia are still investigating whether former President Donald Trump broke any laws when he tried to overturn his 2020 defeat in the hotly contested state. The probe ramped up earlier this year, with a grand jury convening in Atlanta. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has said the criminal investigation includes potential “solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the election’s administration.” more...
Martin Pengelly

Donald Trump insisted on Saturday that when he told senior justice department officials to “Just say that the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me”, he was not attempting to subvert US democracy, but to “uphold the integrity and honesty of elections and the sanctity of our vote”. Trump at a rally in Sarasota earlier this month. Trump has fought hard to keep his tax returns from public view. The former president’s restatement of his lie that his defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud came a day after Washington was rocked by news of his December call with acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Donoghue, a senior DoJ official. Trump’s pressure on federal and state officials to overturn his national defeat and state losses to Biden has been well documented. Cases mounted by his campaign claiming electoral fraud were repeatedly thrown out of court. more...
Trump lashed out after documents were released showing him pressuring Justice Department officials to overturn the election
Tom Porter

Former President Donald Trump, in an at times contradictory statement, responded to the release of documents that showed him pressuring officials at the Justice Department to subvert last year's election. In the statement released on Saturday, Trump denied that the documents showed that he sought to overturn last year's election while repeating the baseless voter fraud claims that have been central to his bid to delegitimize Joe Biden's win. The documents were released by the House Oversight Committee Friday. They contained hand-written notes of a call between former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Donald Trump on December 27 taken by Rosen's deputy, Richard Donoghue, who was also present on the call. more...
The Trump way if you cannot win fair then lie, cheat and steal.

Trump urged Justice officials to declare election 'corrupt'
By Eric Tucker | AP

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump urged senior Justice Department officials to declare the 2020 election results “corrupt” in a December phone call, according to handwritten notes from one of the participants in the conversation. The notes of the Dec. 27 call, released Friday by the House Oversight Committee, underscore the lengths to which Trump went to try to overturn the results of the election and to elicit the support of law enforcement officials and other government leaders in that effort. Emails released last month show that Trump and his allies in the last weeks of his presidency pressured the Justice Department to investigate unsubstantiated claims of widespread 2020 election fraud, and the department’s inspector general is looking into whether department officials tried to subvert the results. more...
The Trump way if you cannot win fair then lie, cheat and steal.

Trump to DOJ last December: 'Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me'
By Jeremy Herb, CNN

(CNN) Former President Donald Trump pressured acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to declare that the election was corrupt in an attempt to help Republican members of Congress try to overturn the election result, according to notes of a December 2020 call Trump held with Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue. During the December 27, 2020, call, Trump pressured Rosen and Donoghue to falsely declare the election "illegal" and "corrupt" even after the Justice Department had not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud. "Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen," Trump said on the call, according to Donoghue's notes. more...
By Whitney Wild, Jeremy Herb, Lauren Fox, Zachary Cohen and Ryan Nobles, CNN

(CNN) New emails from Justice Department and White House officials show how President Donald Trump's allies pressured then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to consider false and outlandish allegations that the 2020 election had been stolen at the same time that Rosen was being elevated to lead the Justice Department in December 2020. The emails show how Trump's White House assistant, chief of staff and other allies pressured the Justice Department to investigate claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election -- and how Trump directed allies to push Rosen to join the legal effort to challenge the election result, according to a batch of emails released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday. The documents also offer a window into how Rosen dealt with the political pressure coming from the White House. more...

(CNN) New emails from Justice Department and White House officials show how President Donald Trump's allies pressured then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to consider false and outlandish allegations that the 2020 election had been stolen. The documents were released Tuesday by the House Oversight Committee. Read the documents here: more...
Republicans are trying to rig (steal) future elections.

Countrywide campaigns for secretaries of state underscore new Republican focus to take control of election administration
Sam Levine

Republicans who have embraced baseless claims about the 2020 election being stolen are now running to serve as the chief elections officials in several states, a move that could give them significant power over election processes. The campaigns, first detailed by Politico last week, underscore a new focus to take control of election administration. Secretaries of state, who are elected to office in partisan contests that have long been overlooked, wield enormous power over election rules in their state, are responsible for overseeing election equipment, and are a key player in certifying – making official – election results. Winning secretary of state offices across the country would give conspiracy theorists enormous power to wreak havoc in the 2024 presidential election, including potentially blocking candidates who win the most votes from taking office. more...
Christopher Wilson

False claims, intraparty feuds and the need to potentially replace millions of dollars in equipment are among the issues that continue to plague a partisan election audit ordered by Arizona Republicans seeking to prove that the 2020 presidential race was stolen. After months of court battles, a review of the November election vote in Maricopa County — where the majority of Arizonans reside — was begun at the instruction of the GOP-controlled state Senate late last month. To conduct the audit, Arizona Senate Republicans brought in a private Florida-based company, Cyber Ninjas, whose founder and CEO, Doug Logan, has pushed false claims of fraud in the 2020 election. Numerous Republicans nationwide have followed former President Donald Trump’s lead in recent months to insist that the election was somehow illegitimate — a claim unsupported by facts. more...
The assessment was the intelligence community’s most comprehensive look at foreign efforts to interfere in the election.
By Julian E. Barnes

WASHINGTON — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia authorized extensive efforts to hurt the candidacy of Joseph R. Biden Jr. during last year’s election, including by mounting covert operations to influence people close to former President Donald J. Trump, according to a declassified intelligence report released Tuesday. The report did not name those people but seemed to be a reference to the work of Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, who relentlessly pushed allegations of corruption about Mr. Biden and his family involving Ukraine.

“Russian state and proxy actors who all serve the Kremlin’s interests worked to affect U.S. public perceptions in a consistent manner,” the report said. The declassified report represented the most comprehensive intelligence assessment of foreign efforts to influence the 2020 vote. Besides Russia, Iran and other countries sought to influence the election, the report said. China considered efforts to influence the presidential vote, but ultimately concluded that any such operation would fail and likely backfire, intelligence officials concluded. more...
By Zachary Cohen, CNN

Washington (CNN) The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released its declassified report on foreign threats to 2020 US elections Tuesday, which concludes that foreign adversaries -- including Russia -- did attempt to interfere. Russia's efforts were aimed at "denigrating President Biden's candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US," it says. "Unlike in 2016, we did not see persistent Russian cyber efforts to gain access to election infrastructure," the report notes. The report also stated that there are "no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results." more...
By Jason Morris, CNN

(CNN) Officials in the Georgia Secretary of State's Office located a recently released recording of former President Donald Trump's call to a state investigator in a trash folder on her device, a state official familiar with the situation confirmed to CNN. The discovery of the call comes after state officials originally told CNN that they did not think audio of the call existed. The call added to the examples of Trump's extraordinary efforts to push false claims of widespread voter fraud and influence Georgia election officials as they certified the state's election results. The audio file of the December 23 call between the former President and investigator Frances Watson was discovered as the Georgia Secretary of State's Office responded to a public records request. The personal familiar spoke with CNN on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal process. The Washington Post first reported the details of how the audio of the December phone call emerged. more...
*** Republican cannot win elections fairly so they are trying to rig elections so they can win. ***

By Fredreka Schouten and Kelly Mena, CNN

(CNN) Republican legislators around the country are moving aggressively to strip governors and other officials of their power to change election rules -- after states made it easier to vote last year during the coronavirus pandemic and turnout surged to record levels. The measures have been introduced in at least eight states with Republican-controlled legislatures -- including the key battlegrounds of Georgia and Arizona. Some bills would give more authority to lawmakers to establish the ground rules for voting, in an escalation of the already bitter partisan fights that have erupted following the 2020 presidential contest. The fresh showdowns over who should run elections come as allies of former President Donald Trump continue to try to cast doubt on his loss -- by arguing that election officials and the courts usurped state laws when they relaxed voting rules to overcome challenges posed by the pandemic. And they represent the latest front in the ongoing political warfare over voting rules. As of this month, state legislators in 43 states had introduced 253 bills to restrict voting access, according to an updated tally by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. more...
By Teo Armus

The only Democrat on Georgia’s state election board on Sunday called on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to investigate possible civil and criminal violations committed by President Trump during a phone call over the weekend in which the president pressured Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat. David J. Worley, an Atlanta lawyer, said a transcript of the hour-long call, a recording of which was obtained by The Washington Post, amounted to “probable cause” to believe that Trump had violated Georgia election code. “It’s a crime to solicit election fraud, and asking the secretary to change the votes is a textbook definition of election fraud,” he said in an interview with The Post on Sunday. more...
By Jordan Valinsky, CNN Business

New York (CNN Business) Dominion Voting Systems, the election technology company that has been the focus of debunked conspiracy theories about election fraud, is suing MyPillow and its CEO Mike Lindell. The company is seeking about $1.3 billion in damages for Lindell's numerous unfounded public statements by allies of former President Donald Trump that Dominion rigged its machines in favor of Joe Biden in the 2020 US presidential election. The 115-page lawsuit filed Monday in Washington, DC, cites Lindell's media appearances and social media posts pushing what they called the "Big Lie" about Dominion's machines — including a two-hour film that aired on OAN and was filled with falsehoods about voting irregularities. In the lawsuit, Dominion writes that Lindell "sells the lie to this day because the lie sells pillows" citing promotional discount codes on MyPillow's website, including "FightforTrump,""Proof" and "QAnon." more...
Trump’s attempt to pressure Georgia officials could lead to felony charges.
By Ian Millhiser

Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis took office just over a month ago, and she’s already taking aim at someone who, until very recently, was the most powerful man in the country. On Wednesday, Willis sent letters to four of Georgia’s top officials informing them that her office has “opened an investigation into attempts to influence the administration of the 2020 Georgia General Election.” Though the letters do not mention former President Donald Trump by name, the New York Times reports that they are “related to his intervention in Georgia’s election.” In an additional sign that Trump is the subject of this probe, the letters note that “at this stage, we have no reason to believe that any Georgia official is a target of this investigation.” In early January, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, and suggested that Raffensperger should “find 11,780 votes” for Trump in a state that President Joe Biden won by 11,779 votes. more...
Georgia prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump's January 2 phone call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asking him to find enough votes to surpass Joe Biden and overturn the presidential election result in that state. video...
By Oliver Darcy, CNN Business

New York (CNN) A voting technology company swept up in baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election filed a monster $2.7 billion lawsuit on Thursday against Fox News, some of the network's star hosts, and pro-Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, alleging the parties worked in concert to wage a "disinformation campaign" that has jeopardized its very survival. "We have no choice," Antonio Mugica, the chief executive and founder of Smartmatic, told CNN Business in an interview about the company's decision to file the lawsuit. "The disinformation campaign that was launched against us is an obliterating one. For us, this is existential, and we have to take action." The lawsuit, filed in New York state court, accused Fox, Giuliani, Powell and hosts Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro of intentionally lying about Smartmatic in an effort to mislead the public into the false belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. "They needed a villain," the lawsuit said. "They needed someone to blame. They needed someone whom they could get others to hate. A story of good versus evil, the type that would incite an angry mob, only works if the storyteller provides the audience with someone who personifies evil." more...
Axios reporter Jonathan Swan describes a December 18 meeting between President Donald Trump, White House officials and conspiracy theorists that ended in a profanity-laced shouting match. video...
Back to content