Skip to content

339 search results for "certification"

Gird Yourselves

Published by digby on July 30, 2024

The election isn’t going to go smoothly

Trump has been telling everyone who will listen that he doesn’t need a get out the vote program because he will personally get his people out. He told the RNC and his campaign that they need to concentrate on stopping the “cheating” (by which he means Democrats voting.) The strategy is to suppress the vote wherever possible and contest the vote no matter how close the election is if he loses. There is no Democratic margin of victory that he will declare legitimate. (After all, even when he won in 2016 he said that he actually won the popular vote which he lost by 2 million votes.)

Rolling Stone took a look at how some of the red dominated swing states have set up a system to deny the election results if Trump doesn’t win and it’s sobering:

WHEN ELECTION NIGHT comes in November, it will be up to thousands of local election officials to certify election results in their counties. Among those election officials are scores of Donald Trump supporters who believe his lies and conspiracies about stolen elections — and will be in prime position to act on those beliefs to try to aid his campaign in November.

In the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, Rolling Stone and American Doom identified at least 70 pro-Trump election conspiracists currently working as county election officials who have questioned the validity of elections or delayed or refused to certify results. At least 22 of these county election officials have refused or delayed certification in recent years.

Certification of election results is what legal experts consider a “ministerial task,” and one required by state and local law. But as Trump’s lies about the 2020 election have taken hold, Republicans nationwide have decided that certification provides them an opportunity to hear fraud allegations — and refuse to officially count their local votes. Republicans have refused to certify election results at least 25 times since Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden. 

“I think we are going to see mass refusals to certify the election” in November, says Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias. “Everything we are seeing about this election is that the other side is more organized, more ruthless, and more prepared.”

The article goes on to lay out the details. This is a huge threat and with the Supreme Court having shown its cards in the immunity case I don’t think we can necessarily count on the judiciary to be fair this time.

The Democrats have to win. And then they have to be prepared to defend the win. Elias is not sure they totally understand the danger.

ICYW What The Plan Is

Published by digby on July 19, 2024

They’re going to stop certification of the votes

I said a couple of weeks ago that if President Biden decided to withdraw from the race it would awesome if he would do it on the night Donald Trump accepted the GOP nomination. That didn’t come to pass last night but the news media did spend the whole day speculating that it was about to happen which no doubt irritated Trump almost as much since he always wants to be the center of attention even when his opponents are doing his job for him.

It’s obviously helpful to him that the Democrats fighting each other over the fate of their candidate just three months from the election but the drama around Biden potentially withdrawing from the race has stepped on Trump’s martyr story line even as he’s ostentatiously sporting a bizarrely large bandage on his right ear and cynically playing the sympathy card. But he made up for it with a smarmy opening to his acceptance speech in which he gave a mournful minute by minute recitation of the assassination attempt. At one point he indulged in some truly embarrassing schmaltz by kissing the helmet of the fireman who was killed at that rally on Saturday which just seemed …. weird. One suspects that he’s been talking about this non-stop ever since it happened and is obviously still very much obsessed by the event.

That part of the speech was reportedly written by Trump himself and I think that’s obviously true. He’s been dying to share the dramatic story of his allegedly brave reaction to the terrifying experience and this was his chance to take as long as he wanted to do it. (Brushing it off and saying “”honey I forgot to duck” as Reagan did isn’t exactly his style).

Unfortunately, he also had to talk about other stuff. It was a major political event after all. And despite the billing of the speech as a call for unity, the rest of it was a flat rendition of his usual rally speech although he did curtail the profanity, eschewed the crude impressions of his political opponents and managed not to insult too many Republicans seeing as it was the RNC and all.

If social media is any indication, the speech seemed to shock many observers who have forgotten that Trump lies constantly and is incoherent and ignorant even when he’s at his best. And he was definitely not at his best. Despite the long winded delivery of all his greatest hits going back to 2016, he’s definitely lost a step.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes astutely described what we all saw last night:

“This is not a colossus, this is not the big bad wolf, this is not a vigorous and incredibly deft political communicator. This is an old man in decline who’s been doing the same schtick for a very long time and it’s really wearing thin.”

The substance, to the extent there was any, was delusional and frightening. From bragging that when he was president he “could end wars with a phone call” to the endless lies about his accomplishments while in office, he assiduously avoided speaking specifically about 95% of his agenda as laid out in Project 2025 and his own Agenda 47. But he did say one thing that caught my attention and should catch the attention of every American. After admonishing Joe Biden for saying he’s a threat to democracy earlier in the speech, he said in passing “we had that horrible, horrible result that we’ll never let happen again, the election result, we’re never gonna let that happen again.”

One might think that was just another example of Trump’s cognitive decline. But that was actually a very straightforward comment and one that is backed up by ample evidence. The Republicans who are backing Trump (virtually all of them) have a fully developed plan to ensure that if the Democrats win in November, they will contest the results regardless of any evidence of fraud. When Trump says “we’re never going to let that happen again” he means we’re never going to let the Democrats win again.

And he’s not talking about getting out the vote. Trump has been quoted repeatedly telling his troops:

[W]e don’t need votes. We got more votes than anybody’s ever had. We need to watch the vote. We need to guard the vote. We need to stop the steal. We don’t need votes. We have to stop — focus, don’t worry about votes. We’ve got all the votes. I was in Florida yesterday — every house has a Trump sign. Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. We have to guard the vote.

The NY Times took a long look at the Republican plan and it’s not good news.

Mr. Trump’s allies have followed a two-pronged approach: restricting voting for partisan advantage ahead of Election Day and short-circuiting the process of ratifying the winner afterward, if Mr. Trump loses. The latter strategy involves an ambitious — and legally dubious — attempt to reimagine decades of settled law dictating how results are officially certified in the weeks before the transfer of power.

At the heart of the strategy is a drive to convince voters that the election is about to be stolen, even without evidence.

The article quotes numerous GOP officials saying that fair elections are impossible under the current laws so they have set out challenge and change them in the swing states that are decisive in our bizarre electoral college system. Most concerning is their plan to give local elections officials the power to hold up certification of the vote.

Certification was never a matter of contention before 2020 having always been seen as a largely ceremonial non-partisan part of the process. But the Republicans and their allies have decided this is a useful tactic to disqualify results that don’t go their way. In some states, like Georgia, they’ve even empowered right wing activists who are now members of the election boards to “investigate” voters to determine if the votes are legal. In Nevada a similar law has already caused chaos in primary elections which are still in limbo due to board members contesting the reseults. These cases are wending their way into the courts, delaying the certifications.

At the RNC this week, Chris LaCivita, Trump’s campaign manager, made it clear that they don’t plan to accept any loss or concede the race even after the votes are counted:

Donald Trump Jr says it more plainly even than that:

This is the assault on democracy that the Biden campaign is talking about. It’s not just rhetorical. They are literally assaulting the democratic process by changing laws at the local and state level that will make it possible for them to contest the certification of the election results all the way up until January 6th and, apparently, beyond.

Trump is beatable as demonstrated by that bizarre performance at the RNC. He is not a well man. It’s clear that he and his team know this which is why they are pulling out all the stops to contest the results of an election that hasn’t even happened yet. These are not the actions of a confident campaign. But keep in mind that this now goes way beyond Trump and his massive ego. He’s shown the Republicans the weaknesses in the system and they’re going to exploit them. As he said “we’re never going to let that happen again.” This problem will exist long after 2024 whether Trump ultimately gets back into the White House or not.

Salon

Not Sanguine About Tonight

Published by Tom Sullivan on June 27, 2024

Rules. Yeah rules ought to hold him.

So CNN believes it can keep Donald John Trump under control during tonight’s debate. They have rules. Rules will tame him. And no live audience to mug for. They’ll mute the candidates’ mics when their answer periods are up.

Slate’s Molly Olmstead wonders:

Will all those rules keep this exercise on the rails? CNN has said that moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash “will use all tools at their disposal to enforce timing and ensure a civilized discussion” (emphasis mine).

But it remains to be seen what that means. If Trump begins stalking the stage menacingly or either candidate starts interrupting (or even yelling), will Tapper and Bash open up a trapdoor? Whip out a lasso or old-timey shepherd’s crook to yank the candidates offstage? Pull a fire alarm?

And there’s no plan for live fact-checking. How will any falsehoods be curtailed?

They won’t be. Trump is a firehose of falsehoods.

CNN CEO Chris Licht was fired a month after a town hall with Trump moderated by Kaitlan Collins last May became an “opportunity to spew lies, smear enemies, and insult the moderator.” No one (here) needs reminding that Trump lost the 2020 election yet incited a mob to storm the Capitol on his behalf. Rules are for suckers and always “rigged.”

“I also expect that CNN is going to rig it as much as possible and make it as favorable as they possibly can for President [Joe] Biden, but I don’t think it’s going to work,” Speaker Mike Johnson told Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

Team Trump is pre-spinning the debate every which way so Trump can claim victory whatever happens tonight. Heads he wins, tails Biden loses. They’re pre-spinning November as well.

Still, the big question of the night is: Will CNN be able to keep things civil? Cutting the mics will certainly help, but presumably, the moderators won’t be able to physically restrain Trump from, say, wandering up and talking into Biden’s microphone. Less dramatically, a candidate’s mic might still pick up another candidate’s shouting. Plus, the reality is, they’ll be in the same room. Trump yelling at Biden, calling him crooked or sleepy or accusing him of being on drugs, might prove distracting enough to derail the debate, even if viewers at home can’t hear it. CNN may have removed the unpredictability of a live studio audience, but it can’t remove the unpredictability of Donald Trump.

No flashbulbs, please. They upset the big gorilla.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

Texas Is Just The beginning

Published by digby on May 29, 2024

The anti-democracy movement is gaining steam

With all the violence and vandalism on January 6th it’s easy to forget that Trump and his henchmen’s real game plan was to send the election to the House and let them decide the winner as the constitution anticipated would happen in case of a tie. This was to be accomplished by submitting competing sets of electors to the VP who would throw up his hands and say that he didn’t know how to count the votes so the congress would have to decide the election. According to Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, they had hoped that in the event Pence didn’t cooperate, having the mob storm the Capitol could have caused a delay which would have allowed Justice Samuel Alito time to stop the certification but they were thwarted when Speaker Nancy Pelosi reconvened Congress that night. (There is no word on whether Justice Alito had been apprised of his role but it’s not a stretch to think he would have been happy to oblige considering his history of flying insurrectionist flags during that period.)

Had they persuaded Pence to twist the constitutional process for a tie vote into a process for resolving (fake) competing slates of electoral votes and had the House taken it up, Trump would have won because votes are counted by state delegation and there are more Republican delegations than Democratic. There was a whole group of Republicans ready and willing to declare Trump the winner under this unprecedented, unconstitutional plot and let the courts and anyone else try and stop them. This was the coup.

Essentially, they were willing to stretch their undemocratic electoral college advantage in controlling rural, lower populated states to an even more undemocratic electoral advantage in the House of Representatives to steal the election. If Pence had cooperated, they might have pulled it off.

It’s obvious that the framers made a huge error with this silly process of having the House delegations decide the election in case of a tie. It should be the popular vote winner. (It should be the popular vote winner in all cases but for some reason we seem to be stuck with this antediluvian artifact of a compromise that should have been fixed over a century ago.)

There has long been a belief among a certain set of American white elites that democracy is good in theory and a very nice idea, but really we can’t let the riff raff have the last word. Our history of denying the voting franchise to vast numbers of citizens goes all the way back to the beginning and we’re still fighting over it. That’s also why we’re stuck with the US Senate which gives two senators to states which have more cows than people and two senators to states which have many more people than cows. They did finally manage to allow direct election of those senators which was a step in the right direction but really, the senate is an undemocratic institution.

And after the debacles of 2000 and 2016 in which Republicans won the presidency with victories in the electoral college while losing the popular vote, it’s not necessary to make any argument that our presidential elections have a very serious, potentially fatal flaw for a modern democracy. It’s really no wonder that the Republican Party, faced with the fact that it is a minority party, has decided to push the envelope even farther.

Vote suppression and disenfranchisement are no longer enough. They have discovered that they can change the system itself in their favor now. The latest example comes from Texas which held its GOP convention last week. Aside from the odious culture war issues they installed in their platform such as labeling gender-affirming care as child abuse, requiring the Bible to be taught in public schools and calling for “equal protection for the preborn” which means abortion can be punishable as a homicide, they are proposing to create an electoral college system in their state:

“The State Legislature shall cause to be enacted a State Constitutional Amendment to add the additional criteria for election to a statewide office to include the majority vote of the counties with each individual county being assigned one vote allocated to the popular majority vote winner of each individual county.”

In other words, they want to create a system in which every county has exactly the same vote, whether the county has 20 people in it or 5 million. As Paul Waldman wrote in his newsletter The Cross Section, this would be the equivalent of California and Wyoming each having one electoral vote for president. Waldman ran some numbers and the outcome is astonishing:

In the 2020 election, 11,315,056 votes were cast for president in Texas. Fifty percent plus one of the votes cast  in the smallest 178 counties (almost all of which Trump won) produces a total of 481,548 votes. Which means that under the GOP proposal, a candidate could win a statewide race with just 4 percent of the vote. 

That’s right: You could get blown out 96%-4% and become governor, attorney general, or any of the other statewide offices. The candidates who did this would inevitably be Republicans, because they’d be the ones winning all those small rural counties. Which of course is the point.

Texas isn’t the only red state to attempt such an end run around democracy and majority rule. In Missouri where their ballot system was allowing some progressive policies to be passed by a majority of citizens, they tried to change the law to require that not only do they need a majority of voters to pass, but they must have a majority in five of their eight congressional districts which gives rural GOP districts the upper hand. Arizona has proposed a similar initiative. So far they haven’t had any luck enacting any of these changes, and the Texas proposals are just part of the GOP platform for now, but does anyone think that MAGAfied parties in red states won’t do it if they get the chance?

The old saw that “states are the laboratories of democracy” has long been one of the rationales for states’ rights adherents to excuse their anti-democratic behavior. Donald Trump’s Big Lie and coup attempt has given permission to these same political actors to experiment with ways to permanently advantage their shrinking constituency by corrupting the election systems in the states. And because of the electoral college, that will likely permanently advantage them in presidential elections as well.

Donald Trump will not win the popular vote next November but he might be able to eke out another win in the electoral college. The opposition which is fighting so energetically to save democracy is already fighting with one hand tied behind its back and it’s only going to get worse.

Salon

Update: Paul Waldman corrected some numbers in his post. The above quote should read:

In the 2020 election, 11,315,056 votes were cast for president in Texas. Fifty percent plus one of the votes cast  in the smallest 128 counties (almost all of which Trump won) produces a total of 191,978 votes. Which means that under the GOP proposal, a candidate could win a statewide race with less than 2 percent of the vote. 

That’s right: You could get blown out 98%-2% and become governor, attorney general, or any of the other statewide offices. The candidates who did this would inevitably be Republicans, because they’d be the ones winning all those small rural counties. Which of course is the point.

He Calls Him “My Peter”

Published by digby on May 18, 2024

Seriously?

I don’t know what to say:

Over the past several months, Donald Trump has told some of his advisers and friends that federal clemency for [Peter] Navarro, if Trump is back in office, is a “very good idea,” according to a person familiar with the matter and another source briefed on it. The former president, as some of his former staff say, often speaks in vague and thinly-coded terms that they refer to as “mob speak.” 

Like a number of former Trump advisers, Navarro received a subpoena to testify before the House Jan 6. Committee about his work attempting to delay Congress’ certification of the 2020 election results, and his role in producing a series of reports with bogus allegations of mass voter fraud during the election. Unlike most of his former colleagues, however, Navarro openly defied the subpoena, leading to a criminal referral by the committee, an indictment from a federal grand jury in June 2022, and his conviction in September last year. He received a four-month prison sentence, which began in March.

In the years since Biden’s inauguration, Navarro has surfaced on Trump and the MAGA elite’s informal shortlist of who should expect job offers for senior roles in a second Trump administration, according to numerous people familiar with the vast government-in-waiting preparations. 

As Navarro’s legal odyssey has unfolded, Trump has privately marveled at the extreme loyalty of the former White House trade adviser whom Trump has affectionately referred to as “my Peter.” The former president has said that once Navarro is out of prison, “we’re going to take care of him,” a source with direct knowledge of this comment says. The ex-president has also repeatedly asked confidants how Navarro is doing behind bars, this source, and another person briefed on the situation, add.

Trump has dangled pardons from the beginning and he followed through. He pardoned Bannon, Manafort, Stone etc., all stand-up guys who never flipped. He’s promising to pardon all the January 6th insurrectionists. He’ll not only pardon Navarro, he’ll give him a powerful job in the administration if he wins.

And all I can say about “my Peter” is that I’m not sure it’s quite the compliment he probably thinks it is…

QOTD: Justice Sotomayor

Published by digby on April 25, 2024

“There is no failsafe system of government, meaning, we have a judicial system that has layers and layers of protection for the accused in the hopes that the innocent will go free. We fail. Routinely. But we succeed more often than not. In the vast majority of cases, the innocent do go free. But we still fail. We’ve executed innocent people. Having said that, Alito went through a step by step of all the mechanisms that could potentially fail. In the end, if it fails completely, it’s because we’ve destroyed our democracy on our own.

The argument today was depressing. It seems clear that the cult of Unitary Executive is very intrigued by the idea of granting full immunity to a president. That cult is a majority of the court.

He seriously said that.

This was a terrifying Supreme Court argument. It’s clear that the majority actually favors Trump’s argument that a president must have immunity. Whether they are willing to go that far remains to be seen but it’s almost certain now that the J6 trial will likely not likely see the light of day before the election.

We are in big trouble, people. Big. Trouble.

Update:

Judge Michael Luttig wrote:

As with the three-hour argument in Trump v. Anderson, a disconcertingly precious little of the two-hour argument today was even devoted to the specific and only question presented for decision. 

The Court and the parties discussed everything but the specific question presented. 

That question is simply whether a former President of the United States may be prosecuted for attempting to remain in power notwithstanding the election of his successor by the American People. 

thereby also depriving his lawfully elected successor of the powers of the presidency to which that successor became entitled upon his rightful election by the American People — and preventing the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history. 

It is not even arguably a core power or function of the President of the United States to ensure the fairness, accuracy, and integrity of a presidential election. 

Let alone is it a core power or function of the President of the United States to ensure the proper certification of the next president by the Congress of the United States. Neither of these is a power or function of the president at all. 

In fact, the Framers of the Constitution well understood the enormous potential for self-interested conflict were the President to have a role in these fundamental constitutional functions. 

Consequently, they purposely and pointedly withheld from the President any role in these fundamental constitutional functions. 

To whatever extent the Framers implicitly provided in the Executive any role whatsoever in these fundamental constitutional functions, it was a limited role for the Executive Branch, 

through the Department of Justice, to inquire into allegations of fraud in presidential elections and ensure that the election was free, fair, and accurate. 

The former president’s Department of Justice did just that and found that there was no fraud sufficient to draw into question the results of the 2020 presidential election. 

The former president of course has refused to this day to accept that finding by not only his own Department of Justice, but also countless others of his closest advisors. 

Whether undertaken in his or her “official,” “candidate,” or “personal” capacity, a President of the United States has never been and can never be immune from prosecution (after leaving office), 

for having attempted to remain in power notwithstanding the election of that President’s successor by the American People. 

Consequently, there is no reason whatsoever for the Supreme Court to remand to the lower courts for a determination of which of the alleged criminal acts might have been personal and which might have been official. 

Neither is a clear statement from Congress that a president is subject to prosecution under the statutes with which the former president has been charged necessary in this particular case. 

As applied to the former president for the criminal conduct with which he has been charged, there can be no question but that Congress intended a President of the United States to come within the ambit of the statutory offenses with which he has been charged. 

For the same reason, it would be ludicrous to contend that the former president was not on sufficient notice that if he committed the criminal acts charged, he would be subject to criminal prosecution by the United States of America. 

To hold otherwise would make a mockery out of the “plain statement” rule. 

I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Will The Supremes Give Trump Another Break?

Published by digby on April 16, 2024

Here’s the rundown from Ian Millhiser:

The Supreme Court spent about an hour and a half on Tuesday morning arguing over whether to make it much harder for the Justice Department to prosecute hundreds of people who joined the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

It appears, after Tuesday’s arguments, that a majority of the justices will side with the insurrectionists — though it is far from clear how those justices will justify such an outcome.

The case, known as Fischer v. United States, involved a federal law which provides that anyone who “obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so” commits a very serious federal felony and can be imprisoned for up to 20 years — although, as Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar pointed out during Tuesday’s argument, actual sentences against January 6 defendants convicted under this statute have been much shorter, normally ranging from a little less than one year to slightly over two years.

According to the Justice Department, more than 1,265 people have been arrested for playing some role in the attack on the Capitol. Approximately 330 of them have been charged under the obstruction statute at issue in Fischer. One of them is Donald Trump.

As a federal appeals court held in its decision in this case, the obstruction statute is pretty darn clear that it applies to an effort to obstruct any congressional proceeding intended to certify the result of a presidential election — like the proceeding that the January 6 rioters attacked. And very few of the justices seemed to agree with Jeffrey Green, the lawyer representing a January 6 defendant, who proposed one way to read the statute more narrowly.

Nevertheless, many of the justices expressed concerns that the law sweeps too broadly and that it must be narrowed to prevent people who engage in relatively benign activity from being prosecuted.

Justice Samuel Alito, for example, expressed uncharacteristic sympathy for hecklers who interrupt a Supreme Court hearing — suggesting that prosecuting them under a statute that can carry a 20-year sentence goes too far. Justice Neil Gorsuch expressed similar concerns about prosecuting someone who peacefully conducts a sit-in to delay a court hearing, or someone who pulls a fire alarm to disrupt an official proceeding.

Indeed, Tuesday’s argument had a bit of a split personality. During Green’s time at the podium, most of the justices took turns criticizing his attempts to read the ban on obstructing an official proceeding narrowly. Even Alito, who is normally the Court’s most reliable vote for any outcome preferred by the Republican Party, got in on the game — telling Green that he “may be biting off more than [he] can chew” by arguing that the statute must be read to benefit his client.

By the time Green sat down, it appeared that he could lose in a 9–0 decision.

But any optimism that the Justice Department might have had early on in the argument must have been shattered almost as soon as Prelogar began her argument. Most of the justices peppered her with skeptical questions, although the justices who seemed to want to limit the obstruction statute struggled to agree on a single legal theory that would allow them to do so.

So the bottom line is that this case is probably going to end well for many January 6 defendants, but it is far from clear how the Court will justify such an outcome.

It appears that Trump may be spared having to pardon some of those J6 “hostages” after all. (The ones currently in jail for long terms were convicted of other crimes as well.)

Millhiser goes on to lay out the obstruction law in detail and then writes:

 [W]hile it is hard to read the obstruction law in a way that doesn’t apply to rioters who invaded a government building for the purpose of disrupting the election certification process — forcing the entire Congress to flee for safety — many of the justices were concerned with other, hypothetical cases where this law might be used to target less troubling activity.

As Alito put it at one point, “What happened on January 6 was very, very serious,” but we need to figure out the “outer reaches” of the statute.

And so Prelogar faced a blizzard of hypothetical applications of the obstruction statutes, along with vague allegations that the government was applying the law selectively to pro-Trump rioters. Justice Clarence Thomas, for example, asked her if this law has ever been applied to a violent protest in the past (Prelogar conceded that it has not, but attributed that to the fact that the January 6 attack is unprecedented).

Meanwhile, several justices expressed concerns about people being charged with a felony for what Alito called “minor impediments,” such as if a heckler forced a proceeding to be delayed for a few minutes or if street protesters made it more difficult for members of Congress to drive to the Capitol. The concern appeared to be that people who engage in minimally disruptive political protests could be charged with a very serious felony.

There are several potential ways out of this trap. Prelogar pointed out that the statute prohibits behavior that “obstructs” a proceeding, and a minimal disruption might not rise to that level — though that theory did little to quiet the many skeptical questions she received.

One of the appellate judges who heard this case, Trump-appointed Judge Justin Walker, also suggested another way to limit the law. Walker homed in on the fact that the statute only applies to someone who “corruptly” obstructs a proceeding, and he wrote in an opinion that this word should be read to only apply to defendants who acted “with an intent to procure an unlawful benefit either for himself or for some other person.”

That interpretation, which Sotomayor and Kavanaugh both alluded to during Tuesday’s argument, would allow the January 6 insurrectionists to be prosecuted — because the whole point of that insurrection was to procure an unlawful benefit for Donald Trump: a second presidential term. But it would prevent the obstruction statute from being applied to minor heckling and the like.

Among the Court’s Republican appointees, Justice Amy Coney Barrett seemed the least sympathetic to the insurrectionists. Though she asked Prelogar whether she could “be comfortable with the breadth” of the obstruction statute, she also suggested that overaggressive prosecutions could be culled because the defendants in those cases could raise First Amendment challenges.

Still, even if the Court’s three Democrats hang together, and even if Barrett joins them, it is unclear whether they can find a fifth vote to hold the January 6 insurrectionists accountable under this particular statute.

Millhiser points out that the conservative judges appear to be very “selective” when it comes to protection for protesters. Yeah.

Let’s hope they can at least cobble together a majority to narrowly agree that the law should apply to Trump. But I won’t be surprised if they let him off the hook. That would mean that two charges will be dropped but he’ll still be on the hook for two others. But it’s obvious that he should be tried under this law.

Anticipate Stochastic Terrorism

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 10, 2024

Fool me twice, etc.

Electrical substation photo via Wikipedia.

“No one in law enforcement should be caught off guard if trouble breaks out before, during, or after the November presidential election,” Juliette Kayyem begins in The Atlantic.

It is not too soon for the Biden administration and the Department of Justice to start what-iffing a response, and to take seriously recommendations made by the January 6th Committee . It appears the administration means to get ahead of the next insurrection. “A show of readiness,” Kayyem writes, “can also deter people who might have learned the wrong lesson from the Capitol riot: that just a bit more violence might have changed the outcome of the 2020 election.” Because the most hardcore MAGA soldiers not already in jail (especially those with military training) will have learned from Jan. 6 how to do a coup and how not to.

Kayyem adds:

Any attempts to shore up the nation’s defenses against political violence might be misinterpreted—or intentionally misconstrued—by some of Trump’s supporters as an attempt by a Democratic administration to use federal power to interfere in the 2024 election. But the fact that everything Biden does at this stage will be seen through a politicized lens shouldn’t scare him into inaction.

If Trump and his supporters want to quibble with plans to protect election officials from external pressure during vote counts in Georgia and Wisconsin, or to protect members of Congress from rioters during the certification process, then they should do so out loud, before the election. But preparing for election turmoil shouldn’t be a partisan issue. The right keeps warning us of the potential for left-wing antifa violence; surely conservatives would want the executive branch to prevent it from affecting the vote certification if Trump wins. The best course is to lay out transparent plans to safeguard the electoral process no matter who is ultimately sworn in.

On one level, we all want to forget about the death and disruptions of COVID-19 pandemic that dominated 2020. It was a worldwide trauma. But people as committed as the Proud Boys and the Roger Stones and Christian nationalists will not go away. The figureheads will keep more distance from overt planning. But they may not need to do more than feed the desire of the fringe right for direct action. Trump, as Michael Cohen testified, knows well how to make his desires plain without stating them plainiy. His followers will take it upon themselves to give the Boss the violence he craves. Even MAGA judges know what the Boss wants:

In his sentencing memo Thursday, U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney made it clear why he was letting Tyler Laube off lightly.

It wasn’t just because of what Laube did or didn’t do – the defendant had already confessed to beating a journalist at a 2017 Southern California rally and pleaded guilty to violating riot laws as part of a white supremacist gang. 

Laube deserved a light sentence, Carney said, because prosecutors should have focused on leftist groups. 

In a 22-page memo, Carney repeatedly said prosecutors have “ignored” violence committed by Antifa and instead focused on targeting people like Laube – Trump supporters and members of the far right.

Ninety miles away on the same day, USA Today reminds readers, ANTIFA members were on trial:

In San Diego, the last two defendants in the “San Diego 11” – members of Antifa charged with committing violence against Trump supporters in January 2021 – were sitting before a jury. Their nine co-defendants have already been sentenced, some of them to years in prison, for their crimes. 

Strongmen rise out of chaos, a friend noted yesterday. Provide enough chaos and people will demand one. It need not be as localized as the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Yes, some of these clowns are itching to “go to guns” with the left and the gummint. But direct confrontation and frontal assault may not be the only way to introduce chaos. For those unwilling to martyr themselves in a glorious shootout, attacks on utilities have already been field-tested and not all the terrorists prosecuted. 

Some of the perps in the N.C. substation attacks may have been trained at Fort Bragg,  
North Carolina and elsewhere.

We’ve looked at such attacks here, here, and here.

The FBI is still looking for the perps behind the Aug, 2023 Torrance, California substation attack. To my knowledge, the 2013 Metcalf, Calif. sniper attack on a substation remains unsolved. This is chaos on the cheap for armed RW reactionaries. The “how to” is in circulation. You know it is. 

Lucklily for us, Trump will not be in control of the executive branch on Jan. 6 next year, or on Inauguration Day, win or lose. Better that the Biden adminstration is braced for whatever comes.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

Tuberville’s Latest

Published by digby on February 12, 2024

People are worried about Biden’s mental acuity but this man is on the Armed Services Committee

Steve Benen points out that this man has access to very important defense information. I think that’s a big mistake:

Over the course of just three years, Sen. Tommy Tuberville has made quite a name for himself. The Alabama Republican is perhaps best known for launching an unprecedented, 10-month blockade, preventing confirmation of U.S. military leaders, but that’s not the right-wing senator’s only notable contribution.

Tuberville has also made headlines for embracing Donald Trump’s “Big Lie,” for example, and voting against certification of the 2020 election results. He’s also disputed the racism of white nationalists and presented an unsubtle argument that “inner city” school teachers are lazy and possibly illiterate. He’s also struggled with basic details related to civics and modern American history.

But let’s also not forget that Tuberville has shared a variety of curious thoughts about foreign policy in general and Russia’s attack on Ukraine in specific. Two years ago this month, the Alabaman insisted that Vladimir Putin launched an invasion in order to acquire “more farmland,” because “he can’t feed his people.” The idea that Russia was incapable of feeding its population was plainly wrong, though the GOP senator apparently didn’t know that. (In the same public appearance, Tuberville complained that China’s economy has surpassed the United States’, which also wasn’t even close to being true.)

Two years later, Tuberville is taking a firm stand against U.S. security aid to our Ukrainian allies, and he turned to social media last week to explain why:

“Last night’s [Tucker Carlson’s] interview with Putin shows that Russia is open to a peace agreement, while it is DC warmongers who want to prolong the war. That is why I’m voting to stop 60 BILLION MORE of our tax dollars to this conflict.”

Right off the bat, it’s worth pausing to appreciate the apparent fact that Tuberville considers Russia’s authoritarian leader a credible source. Putin said he’s open to peace, and Tuberville, relying on his vast expertise, is inclined to take the dictator’s rhetoric at face value and give him the benefit of the doubt.

As truly ridiculous as this was, however, let’s not brush past the fact that, according to the senior senator from Alabama, “it is DC warmongers,” and not the Kremlin, “who want to prolong the war.” In other words, Tuberville could hold Putin responsible for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but instead, the Republican is inclined to blame officials in his own country.

All of which leaves me with a lingering question: Why, exactly, is Tommy Tuberville still on the Senate Armed Services Committee?

The man is intellectually challenged and I’m not just being snarky. He’s really dumb and he seems to get dumber every day. I honestly think he’s capable of anything simply because he’s clueless. He’s not the first brain dead Senator but I think he may be the first one who is completely uncontrollable by his staff or any of the other Senators. What can be done about it I don’t know but this is a bad situation.

Election Interference Hits Keep Coming

Published by Tom Sullivan on December 22, 2023

Trump caught in another recording

“Tomorrow’s news tonight,” Detroit News posted Thursday evening.

Motown’s Berry Gordy might have set the recording to music but Detroit News got there first:

Then-President Donald Trump personally pressured two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers not to sign the certification of the 2020 presidential election, according to recordings reviewed by The Detroit News and revealed publicly for the first time.

On a Nov. 17, 2020, phone call, which also involved Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Trump told Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, the two GOP Wayne County canvassers, they’d look “terrible” if they signed the documents after they first voted in opposition and then later in the same meeting voted to approve certification of the county’s election results, according to the recordings.

“We’ve got to fight for our country,” said Trump on the recordings, made by a person who was present for the call with Palmer and Hartmann. “We can’t let these people take our country away from us.”

Trump didn’t insist they “find 11,780 votes,” but you get the idea. Special prosecutor Jack Smith and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel will too. Nessel had best increase her personal security before expressing her interest publicly.

McDaniel, a Michigan native and the leader of the Republican Party nationally, said at another point in the call, “If you can go home tonight, do not sign it. … We will get you attorneys.”

To which Trump added: “We’ll take care of that.”

Help me Ronna | Help, help me Ronna

Is it time for McDaniel to lawyer up?

Palmer and Hartmann left the meeting without signing the Wayne County certification. The next day, they tried and failed to rescind their votes for certification, Detroit News adds.

McDaniel, a Wayne County resident, said she stood by her past push for an audit of the election in Michigan, a request she and then-Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman Laura Cox made in a Nov. 21, 2020, letter to the Board of State Canvassers.

“What I said publicly and repeatedly at the time, as referenced in my letter on Nov. 21, 2020, is that there was ample evidence that warranted an audit,” McDaniel said in a statement.

But Jonathan Kinloch, who was a Democratic member of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers in November 2020, said what happened on the call with Trump was “insane.”

“It’s just shocking that the president of the United States was at the most minute level trying to stop the election process from happening,” said Kinloch, a Wayne County commissioner.

At another point in the conversation, McDaniel told the pair that if they certified without demanding an audit, people would “never know what happened in Detroit.”

Trump leveled similar fraud accusations against heavily Black communities in Atlanta, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. Trump insisted on social media that in Detroit there were more votes than people. “I win Michigan!” he insisted.

Detroit News reminds readers that Trump’s statement was incorrect.

“If ballots had been illegally counted, there would be substantially more, not slightly fewer, ballots tabulated than names in the poll books,” Jonathan Brater, the director of the state Bureau of Elections, wrote in a 2020 affidavit submitted in response to a lawsuit filed by Sidney Powell of “Kraken” fame.

A spokesman for the RNC declined Politico’s request for comment on the Detroit News story:

“All of President Trump’s actions were taken in furtherance of his duty as President of the United States to faithfully take care of the laws and ensure election integrity, including investigating the rigged and stolen 2020 Presidential Election. President Trump and the American people have the Constitutional right to free and fair elections,” Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the former president, said in a statement to POLITICO.

Comparisons with Trump’s recorded call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger are obvious. Mark Meadows has insisted his participation on the Georgia call was simply part of his role as the president’s chief of staff. Election integrity and all that.

So much criming

Conservative attorney George Conway told CNN on Thursday that the report could lead to additional charges against Trump (Raw Story):

“I mean, there is no factual basis given for the claim there was fraud, and there was intimidation involved,” Conway continued. “And according to the Detroit News article, it’s suggested by a former elections official there that in essence what was happening here, he suggests, is that they were being induced by the — by the promise of legal protection, by the promise of getting attorneys for them to violate their official duties, which potentially could be an additional crime under Michigan law.”

And possibly charges for McDaniel:

“It’s one big fix”

If someone has set “Everthing Trump Touches Dies” to music, I haven’t seen it. In the meantime….

Update: Fallout

Happy Hollandaise!

Can't find what you're looking for? Try refining your search: