A Liberal in Trumpistan: Part VIII: No Fairy in the Fairy Tale of the "Stolen Election"

No Fairy in the Fairy Tale of the “Stolen Election.”

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“You can’t live in a world where the incumbent administration stays in power based on its view, unsupported by specific evidence that there was fraud in the election.”

Attorney General Bill Barr

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FOR OUR NEXT TRICK, we will do our best to help Donald’s loyal, but critically misinformed fans glimpse the truth, through sworn testimony before the January 6 Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.

We want them to see: Donald tried his best to steal the election that he claimed had been stolen from him.

For those of us who know there’s no fairy in the in the fairy tale of the “Stolen Election,” we must do what we can to help those who think they see the fairy to see the light. We need to point out all the lies they must swallow, and all the cold, hard facts they must ignore to remain as delusional as Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy.

In the weeks following the 2020 election, in days leading up to the Biden inauguration, Lindell, who believes in QAnon theory, kept insisting that “Reinstatement Day” was coming. And soon. When Biden was inaugurated, much to Mike’s amaze, he changed his sights. Trump would be back in office on August 13, 2021!

When nothing exciting happened that day, Mike made another prediction. Trump would be back as president by Thanksgiving 2021. The U.S. Supreme Court was going to issue a blockbuster ruling.

And…nothing happened again.

(Have I mentioned: These poor fools are nuts?)

So, what happened when a congressional committee began to examine what happened, after Donald Trump lost the 2020 vote?

Let’s pile up the facts:

Angry to have been beaten by Mr. Biden, in December 2020 President Trump vehemently claimed: “NO CANDIDATE who ever lost both Ohio and Florida, was ever elected president.”

That was wrong. John F. Kennedy lost both states in 1960. Yet, on January 20, 1961, there he was, taking the oath of office.

President John F. Kennedy.
(You would think Trump could get his facts straight.)

Trump’s “bullshit” claims.

For those who didn’t watch the hearings – pretty much all of Trump’s base – let’s start with what his own attorney general said. Under oath, Bill Barr testified that he met with his boss three times in the wake of his defeat, on November 23, December 1, and December 13, 2020. On that final occasion, he told the president that his endless claims of a stolen election were “bullshit.”

(Word for the day.)

As for his decision, at that time, to step down from the cabinet, Barr explained, “You can’t live in a world where the incumbent administration stays in power based on its view, unsupported by specific evidence that there was fraud in the election.”

Barr also told lawyers for the January 6 Committee that there was “zero basis for the allegations [emphasis added unless otherwise noted]” that Dominion Voting Machines had been rigged to steal millions of votes. Such claims, he said, were “complete nonsense,” “crazy stuff.”

Making such claims, he added, represented a “grave disservice to the country.”

Former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann was asked about claims of rigged machines. “The Dominion stuff was…I never saw any evidence to sustain those allegations,” he testified.

As for claims regarding Dominion, put forward by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who became the face of the Trump legal team fighting to overturn the vote, Herschmann was blunt. “What they were proposing, I thought was nuts.”

(We won’t know this until later, but Giuliani and Powell will be indicted in the Georgia election fraud case – which is aimed at exposing Team Trump’s plot to steal the election themselves. Powell has already pled guilty and agreed to testify against other defendants, including Rudy and Don. Kenneth Chesebro, another Trump lawyer, has also pled guilty in the Georgia case. So has Jenna Ellis, a third Trump lawyer, if you’re not keeping track.)

During one press conference, Giuliani appeared to be melting,
as sweat made his hair dye run.

Matthew Morgan, former general counsel for the Trump 2020 campaign, told congressional investigators that he tracked down all allegations of voting fraud as they came to him, in weeks following the election. He found nothing that would have been “outcome determinative.”

During one meeting of top campaign people, Morgan testified that everyone in the room – “at least among the staff” agreed. No tangible evidence of voter fraud was to be found. (We would number them all, if only we knew how many other Trump staffers understood the truth that day.)

Not “honest or professional.”

Bill Stepien, who took over a foundering Trump reelection effort with only 115 days left, testified via video. On Election Night, he said Rudy Giuliani began telling Trump he should declare victory – and not wait for votes to be tallied in every state. Stepien explained why he opposed such a declaration. “It was far too early…ballots were still going to be counted for days,” if not weeks. “I always told the president the truth,” he said. “We’re going to have to wait to see how it turned out.”

Despite this advice, in the early morning hours of November 4, Trump did just what Rudy suggested. Appearing before a gathering of supporters, he angrily proclaimed, “Frankly, we did win this election.”

Stepien described all kinds of accusations of fraud. One: that illegal votes from other countries were coming in by the thousands. What had happened, he explained, was ballots from Americans living overseas were still being tallied. He told investigators he believed, almost immediately, that the president had lost. The real numbers, he said, were “very, very, very bleak.” He said, at best, he believed Trump had a 5-10% chance of contesting results, and securing a win.

In the aftermath of the election, voices of reason were drowned out. Giuliani appeared on television, screaming about hundreds of thousands of fake ballots being brought in in “garbage cans” and “shopping carts.” Sidney Powell was unleashed to make all sorts of wild claims on TV.

Stepien, himself, left his post. “I didn’t think that what was happening at that point was honest or professional.”

(He ran the Trump campaign!)

Barr concurred. He described “an avalanche of accusations,” and said the Department of Justice tried to track down any credible claims. Most proved “completely bogus,” and “silly,” he said.

And then he gave a laugh.

Never any “indication of interest in what the actual facts were.”

Trump was implacable. He was going to do whatever was necessary to secure a win. He insisted that he had seen “boxes” of bogus votes being delivered in Detroit, in the dark hours after polls closed on November 3.

Barr explained that no fraud was involved. Detroit, he said, had 630 voting precincts. It was standard procedure for precincts to deliver ballots to a central location, so they could be tallied. “The stuff that his people were shoveling out to the public,” Barr testified again, was “bullshit.”

Even more damning, the former attorney general said that on the part of the president there was never any “indication of interest in what the actual facts were.”

Like so many others, Derek Lyons, a former counsel to President Trump, bolstered the case for a clean election. He said that “Eric and Pat” told him allegations of fraud didn’t hold up. (“Eric” was Herschmann. “Pat” was Pat Cipollone, Chief White House Counsel at the time.)

Alex Cannon, a lawyer for the Trump campaign, could see no proof of systemic fraud. When he refused to say that he did, and cited a report by Chris Krebs, Peter Navarro, a Trump toady, stormed into his office and accused him of being an “agent of the Deep State.”

Mr. Krebs was, at the time of the 2020 election, head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) at the Department of Homeland Security. He was chosen for the job, by Donald J. Trump. CISA released a statement soon after, calling the election “the most secure in American history.”

Well, what did Navarro say, when he was ordered to testify himself? He refused to appear before the Committee and ignored a subpoena. A jury convicted him of contempt. On January 25, 2024, a judge sentenced him to four months in jail, and chastised the defendant for doing all he could to derail the January 6 investigation.

(Navarro appealed his sentence all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.)

(He kept losing – and on March 19, he’s headed to jail.)

Once Barr stepped down at DOJ, Trump upped the pressure on the Department to do his bidding. Richard Donoghue and other top DOJ officers met with Trump at the White House. Trump claimed at one point, that votes in places in Michigan had an error rate of 68%. Donoghue demurred. The actual rate, he said, was “0.0063,” or one error for every 15,000 votes.

Trump switched examples and threw out another bold bogus claim. What about the “suitcase” full of votes in Georgia? What about that!! The president insisted votes had been rolled out from under a table – and counted three times – something like 54,000 fake votes, all going to Biden.

Donoghue told Mr. Trump that accusation was false.

Bjay Pak, who had been the U.S. District Attorney with jurisdiction over the matter, spoke via video next. He said his team had looked into the story, and found the “suitcase” was an “official lock box.” The F.B.I. and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had both looked into the matter.

“Nothing irregular” had been found.

(These are not “commie” Democrats testifying.)

Republican official’s family target of death threats.

Al Schmidt was up next. The only Republican on the board that oversaw voting in Philadelphia, he, too, said claims of fraud were untrue – and untrue by a factor of a thousand. Rudy Giuliani was out there, claiming that 8,021 dead people had voted in Pennsylvania. Schmidt said that “there wasn’t evidence of eight.”

No matter how “fantastical or absurd,” he said election officials had tracked down such claims and found them false.

Trump insisted that more people had voted in Philadelphia than there were people living in the city. Schmidt said that this was patently false. Barr, before he resigned, called that claim “absolute rubbish.”

The president attacked Schmidt by name in a tweet. After that, Schmidt said, the kinds of death threats he was getting changed. Before, they had been generalized. Now, threats included his family’s address, the names of his wife, of his children, their ages, and where they went to school.

(Trump has never condemned any of this.)

Trump has never cared that his language has fueled death threats.

Rejected by scores of judges – including many he appointed himself.

In terms of court battles, as a dutiful blogger, I knew Trump’s lawyers had filed five dozen challenges to the vote in various state and federal courts. The January 6 Committee provided details: 62 cases had been filed, and 61 losses had been the result. (The lone exception was a temporary “victory,” soon negated by events.) Nor were the courts “rigged” against the president – although, of course, he insisted they were. Twenty-two federal judges appointed by Republican presidents, including ten appointed by Trump, rejected his various claims.

At least two dozen elected Republican state judges refused to provide the president relief – for the simple reason that there was no evidence to support the claims his lawyers were carrying into court.

To believe that all these judges missed all the truths Team Trump was trying to sell – instead, realizing they were lies – you have to stand Mr. Logic on his head, and then wallop Mr. Logic in the nuts with a crowbar.

(Somehow, Trump-lovers can’t figure this out.)

Red mirage.

Finally, Trump and his team should have known what was coming, long before the election. Chris Stirewalt, in charge of explaining voting numbers to Fox News viewers, said it was clear before November 3. This battle for the White House would be different. Early balloting had increased by 50%. Stirewalt and his team knew that in-person voting would trend red, favoring Mr. Trump. That would be the “red mirage,” the illusion that the incumbent was piling up a huge lead, on the way to a win. Trump’s people knew it too, and they told Trump as much.

It would be a mirage.

Stirewalt explained that in every election for the last fifty years, Democratic votes in cities came in late, whereas red rural districts count far fewer votes first and report. “People had been talking for weeks, and everyone understood for weeks, that that was going to be what happened on Election Night.”

After Stirewalt told the truth, Fox News canned him for telling the truth. Executives didn’t want to rile up the ill-informed Trump base.

NOTE ON METHODOLOGY: These posts are based almost exclusively on the testimony of Republicans, conservatives, and former Trump lawyers and aides. Names in bold are persons or groups who know that Trump is a liar, in particular when lying about winning the 2020 election. They know he’s still lying now.

So we have in this brief post alone: Trump’s second attorney general, Bill Barr. Also: White House lawyer Eric Herschmann, Matthew Morgan, former general counsel for the Trump 2020 campaign, and, according to Morgan, “everyone in the room,” when staff in the wake of Trump’s defeat, agreed their boss lost. Bill Stepien led Trump’s campaign, Alex Cannon was a lawyer for the campaign, and Derek Lyons was counsel to President Trump. The judge and jury that sentenced Navarro thought Navarro (and his boss, Donald) were lying. Richard Donoghue and other top DOJ officers, and Bjay Pak, the federal prosecutor in Georgia knew Trump was lying. The F.B.I. and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had looked into the “rigged” vote in that state. They too discovered that Trump was lying. So did Al Schmidt, the only Republican on the board that oversaw voting in Philadelphia. Finally, twenty-two federal judges appointed by Republican presidents, including ten appointed by Trump, shot down his “Stolen Election” lies in court. So did at least two dozen elected Republican state judges, who refused to provide the president relief, and Chris Stirewalt, the voting expert at Fox News.