BLOGGER’S NOTE: Throughout this post, we will insert little pictures of Trump (above) every time you are required, if you choose to believe in the fairy tale of a stolen election, to accept a ridiculously unbelievable statement, swallow an absurdity as fact, overlook an outright lie, refuse to consider evidence to the contrary or ignore common sense. In honor of his bone spurs, we use this symbol (reduced in size), a picture of a younger, less blubbery Trump leaping in the air on one of his golf courses.
There is no fairy in Donald Trump’s fairy tale of the “Stolen Election.” You will find herein, however, that there was a plethora of toadies and sycophants, and (very likely) lawbreakers, all at work, trying to Donald a second term even he (if he could face reality) and they knew he didn’t deserve.
Fourth
Hearing:
“We
just don’t have the evidence.”
__________
The
fairy tale of a “suitcase” filled with Biden ballots.
__________
If possible, the fourth day of hearings was worse than the first three. Consider, as you read, that none of the witnesses for the day have been or ever will be charged with crimes for their “roles” in the January 6 insurrection.
Four main witnesses appeared to testify – all, of course, under oath. None of the four ever felt the urge to plead the Fifth. Tape of former-Attorney General Bill Barr was again shown. Rusty Bowers, Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, was sworn in, along with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. A second Georgia official, Gabriel Sterling, and a Fulton County voting supervisor, Shaye Freeman Moss, also agreed to appear. If you were watching (and if nothing else you should look up a few short clips of the testimony), Ms. Moss gulped hard when first asked a question.
Rep. Liz Cheney, speaking as the ranking Republican on the committee (there are only two) made it clear from the start. The House investigation has revealed that then-President Trump had a “direct and personal role” in trying to reverse the results of the 2020 election. He was told and told again, by his own attorney general, multiple advisors, campaign and White House lawyers, and others, that he had lost the ballot battle against Biden. Mr. Trump was warned of potential legal trouble if he pursued his scheme. He didn’t care. As Attorney General Barr had already noted, there was never any sign that he cared “what the actual facts were.” Ignoring harsh realities, Team Trump made multiple attempts at the state and even local level, “each serious,” Cheney said, and potentially criminal, to pressure elected officials to change the voting results.
__________
The fairy tale of a “suitcase” filled with Biden ballots.
__________
Former Attorney General Barr showed up once more, on video, testifying under oath, responding to questioning. A key story line was set early on, on Day 4. Had the voting in Fulton County, Georgia been rigged, as Trump insisted then, and insists even today? Those allegations, Barr said, “had no merit.” The Department of Justice investigated hundreds of allegations – found no evidence of significant voter fraud. President Trump became fixated on a “suitcase” full of 18,000 ballots in Fulton County – and claimed those ballots had been brought out secretly from under a table, counted three times, all faked, filled out for Joe Biden. Barr explained: “the ballots under the table were legitimate ballots, they weren’t in a suitcase, they had been pre-opened, for eventual feeding into the machine…we didn’t see any evidence of fraud in the Fulton County episode,” he concluded.
Both Raffensperger and Sterling would later testify to the same effect, as had two U.S. District Attorneys, both Trump appointees, who had had jurisdiction that included Fulton County. Both Bjay Pak and Bobby Christine investigated the same lame story. They too came up short when it came to finding the fairy.
Sterling talked in some detail about the president’s wild claims – and how those claims led to death threats for multiple election officials. Joe diGenova, a Trump toady, suggested that Chris Krebs should be shot in the head. A young poll worker, “caught” on video, transferring votes in routine fashion was subject to death threats and calls that he be hanged. Secretary Raffensperger’s home address was made public and angry Trump supporters started showing up on his front lawn. “You are a tyrant,” one protester howled. “You are a felon and you must turn yourself into authorities immediately.”
If you had any doubt why Dr. John Eastman, one of the leaders in the plan to steal the election and hand victory over to Trump, had decided (as revealed on Day 3) that he might need to be added to the list of people seeking pardons before Trump left office, Day 4 made it clear. At one point, Eastman insisted that Georgia lawmakers had a “duty” to decertify the Georgia electoral votes. Governor Kemp was forced to issue a declaration. “Any attempt by the legislature to retroactively change the process for the November 3 election would be unconstitutional,” he said.
“Unconstitutional,” remember that word.
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When forced, under subpoena, to testify, Eastman took the Fifth 146 times. |
Speaker Bowers was perhaps the strongest witness to appear before the Committee, so far. Pressed repeatedly by Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, another pro-Trump lawyer, and by the president himself, Bowers refused to agree to overturn the results of the Arizona vote. In fact, he made emphatically clear, he had no legal course which would have allowed him to do so. By the time of the 2020 election, he had spent 27 years in the state legislature. He said he had voted for Trump. When pressed to hold a legislative hearing, and somehow overturn election results, he would not. “It would violate the oath, the basic principles of republican government, and the rule of law,” he said, “if we attempted to nullify the people’s vote based on unsupported theories of fraud.”
Two other state officials, pressed also to overturn their election results, testified briefly on video. Mike Shirkey, Majority Leader of the Michigan Senate, was pressed to overturn the Michigan vote. As for Trump’s closest advisors, the worst of the remaining worst, Shirkey said “they were believing things that were untrue.” Pennsylvania House Speaker Brian Cutler admitted that in the wake of the November election he was getting daily calls from Rudy Giuliani, from the president, and others. Finally, he told his lawyers to tell Rudy those calls were “inappropriate,” and should stop.
They did not.
A clip of Nick Fuentes played next. Fuentes, a leading voice in white nationalist circles, posited this question: “What can we do to a state legislator?” In other words, what pressure could the average Trump-loving, white nationalist bring to bear, to force lawmakers to cave? Then he supplied his answer. “What can you and I do to a state legislator, besides kill the…although we should not do that…I’m not advising that, but, I mean, what else can you do, right?”
With that he gave a disingenuous shrug and a smile – not unlike President Trump, who was stirring up the hatred himself.
__________
“You wanted Trump to win?”
__________
Chairman Adam Schiff did most of the questioning on the day. At one point, he asked Speaker Bowers, “You wanted Trump to win?”
“Yes,” he responded. Bowers, then, was not some Democratic hack, some “Never Trumper,” or some RINO. He was, until pressed to ignore his oath, a Trump man.
Schiff asked the witness if he had had time to consider a statement, issued by the former president earlier in the day. Bowers said he had. In that statement, Trump claimed that Bowers had told him during one November conversation, shortly after the election, that he had won the state of Arizona, and that the election had been rigged. Bowers responded sharply, “Anywhere, anyone, anytime…says I said the election was rigged, that would not be true.”
Chairman Schiff wondered. Did he ever tell Trump he won Arizona?
“That is also false,” Speaker Bowers said.
At one point, Bowers explained, he took a call from Giuliani. Rudy offered up a long list of wild allegations. Five thousand dead people voted in Arizona. More than 200,000 undocumented individuals cast illegal ballots. Bowers asked him to provide evidence. Rudy said he would. To this day, Bowers testified, he never has. He said that he had had no desire to be used as “a pawn.” Team Trump wanted him to replace the sworn slate of presidential electors, on the flimsiest possible grounds.
He explained to the Committee why he would not:
You are asking me to do something that is counter to my oath, when I swore to the [U.S.] Constitution to uphold it, and I also swore to the constitution and laws of the State of Arizona, and this is totally foreign as an idea, or a theory to me, and I would never do anything of such magnitude.
He said it was a “fundamental right of the people” to have their votes tallied and to have electors vote for the president of their choice, in their name. Bowers turned red in the face and nearly teared up. “It is a tenant of my faith,” he added, “that the Constitution was divinely inspired.” He wasn’t going ignore that.
__________
“We have got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence.”
__________
It also caught this blogger’s attention that twice, Speaker Bowers said he, his counsel, and three others were listening to Giuliani’s call. He and several Republican senators from the state met with Rudy on another occasion. In other words, there were others who could testify to the truth of what he said. Bowers said he and they pressed the president’s lawyer “aggressively” at that time. If Team Trump had evidence of voter fraud effecting his state, Bowers needed to see it.
Jenna Ellis assured him that they did. They didn’t bring it to the meeting (which seems odd). She said they would provide it soon.
Bowers said that Rudy actually admitted, “We have got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence.” Bowers said that might have been a slip of the tongue, but he and his colleagues did have a laugh.
Not to be denied, Trump called Bowers in late December 2020, and personally asked for his help. Bowers said he made it clear he would do nothing “illegal.” He was at pains again to note that he had his counsel and others listening to that call. Then Eastman contacted him. He again urged Bowers to decertify Arizona’s electoral slate. “Just do it and let the courts sort it out,” Eastman plead.
So, the plot to overturn the results of the election in seven key states ground on. Slates of alternative electors were drawn up in all those battleground states. As a news junky, the blogger already knew that. What he didn’t know is that the people who agreed to be enlisted as alternate electors were told their votes would only be used if the president’s legal challenges in the courts prevailed.
In more than sixty cases they did not. Yet, the president, Eastman, Giuliani, Ellis, and others continued to press the case that was really no case. Rona McDaniel, head of the Republican National Committee, admitted under oath, that the RNC was asked to help. Justin Clark, a Trump campaign lawyer, said that he told others, “unless we have litigation pending supporting” such challenges to the vote, “I don’t think this is appropriate or the right thing to do.” Matt Morgan, general counsel for the Trump 2020 campaign, had had enough. He said he refused to have anything to do with the schemes, and messaged Kenneth Chesebro, who was pushing to create a slate of alternate electors for Wisconsin, that, “This is your task.”
We shouldn’t need to reiterate this point, but for Trump fans we must. Almost all of these witnesses were once Trump supporters themselves. Any fool can build a case against the other party, by quoting Democrats against Republicans, or the reverse. These were Republicans testifying. And if you were Donald J. Trump, you had to start to sweat. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, was clear. She was present during a meeting, when the White House legal office was warning that Eastman’s scheme, if carried out, would likely break the law. Laura Cox, former chair of the Michigan Republican Party, said via video that at one point, the fake electors in her state planned to hide overnight in the Senate building. That way, they could fulfill a legal requirement and cast alternative votes. Cox called that plan “insane and inappropriate.” In fact, the legality of the plan was so tenuous that fake electors were assured, “indemnification by the [Trump] campaign” would be made “available if someone gets sued or worse.”
Or worse: meaning charged with a crime.
Bowers was a powerful witness, explaining at one point, that the Trump legal team reminded him of the story of the “Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight.” He had wanted Trump to prevail in the election. Now, he said, “I did not want to be a winner by cheating.” He said he would not “play with laws I swore allegiance to.” It was “God’s will,” that led him, he said, to take a stand. His “conscience” would not allow him to break Arizona law. He would not “show himself to be a coward,” in service to Donald J. Trump. He had paid a price, of course, for his principled stand.
Even now, on Saturdays, he said, Trump supporters show up outside his house. They call him a pedophile, and threaten his wife. And yet, to this day, Rudy has never delivered evidence of significant fraud in the Arizona election.
__________
Trump’s lies were getting into “people’s hearts.”
__________
Both Bowers in Arizona, and Raffensperger in Georgia, had to confront the same kind of wild allegations. Raffensperger testified that a hand recount of Georgia ballots showed an almost perfect match to numbers recorded by the voting machines. Like Bowers, he voted for Trump.
The story of the “suitcase” full of votes for Biden came up. Sterling testified that investigators had watched 48 straight hours of video tape. The story of the magic suitcase, brought out in secret, full Biden votes, had been debunked. Yet, he admitted, facts didn’t matter. Trump’s lies were getting into “people’s hearts.”
Trump also called Francis Watson, who was investigating stories of voter fraud for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. It was totally inappropriate, of course, but the president told her, “Hopefully, when the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised.” The right answer, of course, would be that she “found” enough “evidence” to overturn the state’s vote. “Whatever you can do,” Trump told her.
Whatever she could do to help gift him a win.
It was also fun to learn that White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows considered sending Watson’s office a “shitload” of Trump challenge coins, and signed MAGA gear. Then sensible heads prevailed. Sending gifts to Georgia investigators might not pass the smell test, or the eyeball test, or the sense of touch test, for that matter.
The plan was shelved.
The matter of Trump’s phone call, on January 2, 2021, to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, was highlighted next. This blogger had listened to it before, so there was little new to report (save that Chairman Schiff said it lasted 67 minutes, whereas the blogger had read that the call lasted 62).
__________
The real number was zero.
__________
In short, sharp responses, Raffensperger blew Team Trump’s claims of voter fraud in Georgia to smithereens. A lawsuit filed to challenge the Georgia vote alleged that 10,315 dead people casts votes. His office investigated that claim. They initially found that two dead people had voted. Later they found two more. Team Trump would claim, including during the president’s phone call, that 66,000 underage Georgians cast ballots. The real number was zero. Seventeen-year-olds could register to vote if they would turn 18 by the time of the next election. And they had. Trump lawyers claimed that 2,423 non-registered voters had showed up at the polls. Raffensperger’s office investigated and found that the real number (again) was zero. Yet, on January 2, 2021, the President of the United States called and claimed he won Georgia by “hundreds of thousands of votes.”
All Trump needed, he said (and you can hear him on tape) was for Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes, one more than he needed to take Georgia’s electoral votes out of Biden’s column and add them to his. “We didn’t have any votes to find,” Raffensperger told lawmakers and anyone watching. “I had to be faithful to the Constitution,” he said. He would not agree to “find” votes where they did not exist. As a result, he was subjected to a barrage of death threats. His wife started getting “sexualized threats.” His son had passed; but his daughter-in-law’s house was broken into – he suspected by Trump fans.
The panel showed a clip of Trump’s speech on January 6, in the hours just before the riot in Washington D.C. exploded. Once again, he claimed that a “suitcase” full of bogus votes for Biden had been rolled out. He had been cheated out of the Georgia win. Yet, by that time, Attorney General Barr, investigators for the F.B.I., the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Secretary Raffensperger, and two U.S. District Attorneys had looked into the allegation had declared it false. The president didn’t care about facts. Suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder, as this blogger believes he is, evidence shows that Donald J. Trump could not accept his defeat.
__________
“Do you know how it feels to have the President of the United States target you?”
__________
In perhaps his most reckless tweet in this regard, he had fallen back on the suitcase story before. Only in this tweet, he had named names. He told his millions of supporters that a poll worker named “Shaye” Freeman Moss, and her mother, Ruby Freeman, had played a key roll in perpetrating election fraud. Ms. Moss took a deep breathe before telling her story – again, under oath. She had been a poll worker for ten years, she said. Her grandmother had told her how important the vote always was, and reminded her that African Americans in Georgia had not always had the chance. Ms. Moss said she had always taken pride in her work. She testified that she once drove to a hospital to drop off an absentee vote. The committee rolled tape of Rudy Giuliani claiming that Moss and Freeman had stolen the election from President Trump. Moss had trouble speaking then. She had received threats, she said, “wishing death upon me.” One caller told her to “be glad it’s 2020, and not 1920,” in Georgia, when white mobs could lynch a black person with impunity. At one point, conspiracy theorists “unearthed” video, showing her mother passing what they said was a USB drive, purportedly full of bogus votes for Biden. Moss said it was actually a “ginger mint.”
Mom spoke, but on videotape. She said she had to go into hiding for two months. People showed up at Shaye’s grandmother’s house, rang the doorbell, and when she answered, barged past. They were there, they shouted, to make citizens’ arrest. Shaye said she rarely goes out anymore. She’s still afraid; and she has gained sixty pounds. “Do you know how it feels to have the President of the United States target you?” her mother wondered, during her testimony. “The President of the United State is supposed to represent every American,” she added, “not to target one.”
With that, and a little more summary, the hearing concluded for the day. Next session will be begin at 3 p.m. on Thursday.
Hope more Americans watch.
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Moss, left, Freeman, right: Both were targeted by President Trump |
POSTCRIPT: In Delaware, today, a judge ruled that Dominion Voting Machines could go forward with a defamation lawsuit, alleging that the heads of Fox News knew claims that the company had helped rig the vote in 2020 were false. Yet, Fox had repeatedly allowed its on-air hosts to claim that the system was rigged.
In other Fox-related news, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andy McCarthy, a regular analysist for the channel, admitted that testimony today proved Trump’s “unfitness” for office, and that the former president might be “guilty of a crime.”
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