12/14/20: This has been a hard day for the President of the United States. The trouble begins when the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejects his fourth and final appeal to overturn the state’s November results. Two hours later Wisconsin electors cast their votes (10) for Joseph R. Biden Jr.
That has to sting. And the hornets keep stinging. Georgia’s votes (16) also go for Biden; then Pennsylvania’s (20). Michigan electors ignore “credible threats” of violence and record their votes (16) for the former Vice President. One elector wears a bulletproof vest on the way to vote.
New York’s electors, including Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, tally 29 votes for Joe Biden.
Just before dinner time in Washington
D.C., the State of California’s electors certify their votes (55), giving Mr.
Biden 302 total, more than the 270 needed to become the next President
of the United States.
 |
Jeffrey Clark of the Department of Justice. |
*
AS FOR THE PRESIDENT, he spends most of his day tweeting angrily about how the election was rigged; and he won by a mile.
It gives him something to do with all his free time (see: 12/13/20). A winter storm is threatening the Eastern U.S., and it’s too cold for golfing.
POSTSCRIPT: Here’s an oddity of a minor sort. Since Election Night, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany has devoted most of her efforts to turning up on Fox News and insisting her boss actually won.
She’s paid by taxpayers, like you and me. Yet, in her paid role, she has talked with reporters only twice in six weeks.
Rather, she has devoted her time to
appearing on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News (19 visits) to make the case Trump was robbed.
Asked by one well-known political blogger to justify this imbalance, McEnany replied via email: “As White House Press Secretary, there are a variety of ways to communicate with the American People that don’t involve being shouted at by activists, including the manner in which I’m communicating with you right now.”
So, if you think Trump is unworthy of a second term, you are paying this banshee to claim that he is.
BLOGGER’S NOTE: We won’t learn this until two
days after Joe Biden takes over, but four top Department of Justice officials
inform The New York Times that in the waning days of the Trump
presidency, a new plot was afoot. On December 14, Attorney General Bill Barr
resigned his position, rather than push unfounded “stolen election”
investigations, as the president said he must. Not to be denied the chance to
deny he had been thumped at the polls, Trump called in Acting AG Jeffrey A.
Rosen and Deputy
Attorney General Richard P. Donoghue, the following day. Again, he made
it clear. He wanted investigations. He wanted DOJ to fight harder for him.
For justice?
No. Him.
When Rosen balked – because, you know – the U.S. Constitution
– Trump began working out a way to get rid of him, and put a more malleable
lawyer, Jeffrey Clark, in charge of DOJ. With storm clouds gathering, top
officials at Justice decided to hold a conference call and determine what they
would do if Rosen were fired. The agreed unanimously. They would resign.
Mr. Clark insisted, in talking with the Times
later, that he had not been part of any plot to get rid of Rosen; but a Trump
advisor did comment. Trump, the advisor insisted, had been talking about
combating “rampant
election fraud that has plagued our system for years.”
He complained to Justice Department leaders that the U.S. attorney in
Atlanta, Byung J. Pak, was not trying hard enough to find evidence for false
election claims pushed by Mr. Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and others.
Mr. Donoghue warned Mr. Pak that the president was fixated on his office, and
that it might not be tenable for him to continue to lead it.
Mr. Clark was also focused on Georgia. He drafted a letter that he
wanted Mr. Rosen to send to Georgia state legislators. That letter stated wrongly
that the Justice Department was investigating serious accusations of voter
fraud in their state, and that they should move to void Mr. Biden’s win.
Clark met separately with Trump, who said he planned to replace Rosen -with Clark. Clark told Rosen about the plan, but said he could stay on as his deputy.
A meeting was eventually arranged at the White House. Steven Engel, head
of the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel was there. By this time,
Trump’s illegal phone call to Georgia officials had been revealed by the free
press. Engel and Donahue were blunt. If Rosen were fired, they would quit, as
would others, leaving Clark to run DOJ by himself.
White House Council Pat Cipollone also advised Trump not to fire Rosen.
After three hours of discussion, the president backed off his plan.
As for Clark, he seemed miffed, not because Trump had wanted to trample
the rule of law into the turf, but because others involved in the meeting had
talked about it openly. “There was a candid discussion of options and pros and
cons with the president,” he admitted. Then he added, “It is unfortunate that
those who were part of a privileged legal conversation would comment in public
about such internal deliberations, while also distorting any discussions.”
BLOGGER’S NOTE #2: We learn once again, if we need to learn,
that The New
York Times does not deal in “Fake News.”
The above account is verified in all important details when, in the fall
of 2021, a Senate Judiciary Committee report is released.
This blogger is still digesting the report, but the Washington Post does provide
insight. Rosen, Clark, and Donoghue had a tense meeting in the Oval Office on
January 3. The president made clear he wanted to replace Rosen with Clark.
Donoghue was brutal in response:
At some point
during the meeting, Donoghue ... made clear that all of the Assistant Attorneys
General would resign if Trump replaced Rosen with Clark. Donoghue added that
the mass resignations likely would not end there, and that U.S. Attorneys and
other DOJ officials might also resign en masse.
As the Post explains, “Not only that, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy
said that they, too, would resign. Cipollone called Clark’s [proposed] letter
to legislatures [asking them to appoint new slates of electors] a
‘murder-suicide pact.’”
Trump finally backed down.
Still, he had a
plan. He shifted, over the next three days, to pressuring Vice President Pence
to thwart the final electoral count.
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