Part VIII: Election Denial - A Republican Sport (Steps 648-707)

Part VIII: Election Denial – A Republican Sport.

(Steps #648 – 707.)

 

__________ 

“This case should never have been brought. Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it.” 

Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks.

__________

Lycoming County: Hey, is that an illegal voter hiding behind that tree?

 

WITH THE DAWN of a new year, we pick up the non-story of the “Stolen Election/s” once more. By this time, it has become reflexive on the right to claim that those of us on the left steal every vote and cheat on every win. 

There’s just one glaring problem. 

No f**king evidence. 

By comparison, there is massive evidence to show that voter fraud is rare, that stealing elections is nearly impossible, and if Donald loses in November, there will be no cause for shooting. Frankly, the man the MAGA faithful plan to vote for is an epic liar – and a dangerous man.

___ 

 

January 1, 2023: Rejected-President Trump closes out 2022, and begins a New Year, still  lying about winning his second race to the White House. This blogger predicts – with the highest degree of confidence – that Donald will keep lying all year, on into 2024. 

And beyond. 

 

648. January 7: The former president diddles away his days at Mar-a-Lago, ranting about mail-in voting, and battering the “caps” button on his phone. 

On Truth Social he posts:

 

All Republican Governors should immediately begin the process of ENDING MAIL IN BALLOTS (which are fraught with corruption, and always will be!) EXCEPT FOR FAR AWAY MILITARY AND PEOPLE WITH A PROVEN ILLNESS, GETTING VOTER I.D. AND SAME DAY VOTING WITH ALL PAPER BALLOTS. This effort should be all out and start immediately. Governors have the power and authority to do this. GET IT DONE, or we will never have honest elections in our Country again!

 

Apparently, Donald forgot he always votes by mail in Florida, and that works fine. 

 

649. January 13: The Stolen Election Myth will not die – partly because former president Trump keeps shouting about it every day. In Pennsylvania, Republican officials in Lycoming County decide to calm the nuts and check the machines – and maybe prove Donald was right. If there were Biden spirits in the machines, as Donald insisted, the sleuths in Lycoming would find them. 

With that, the hand recount of 59,374 ballots was on! 

In the end, at significant cost to the taxpayers, it was found that Trump netted eight (8) more votes. Or one vote for every 7,422 ballots hand counted. 

 

January 14: Mr. Blogger keeps searching for proof of massive voter fraud, perpetrated by evil Democrats. 

650. Out in Iowa, another Republican cheat turns up. Kim Phuong Taylor was arrested and charged with 52 felonies. Authorities say she filled out dozens of false forms, and submitted illegal ballots in an effort to help her husband win a primary race to be elected to Congress. 

Mr. Blogger is growing desperate in his search for the Moby Dick of voter fraud. He decides to google: “Texas man convicted of voter fraud” and “Texas woman convicted of voter fraud.” I mean, if Democrats wanted to steal an election, Texas in 2020, would have been the white whale to harpoon. 

651. First, I get “Hervis Rogers,” arrested for voting while on parole. That scuzbag! No. Wait. His case was dismissed. 

652. Monica Mendez got nailed on 26 felony counts – after harvesting votes to influence the outcome of … a utility board election. She was sentenced to five years busting up rocks in the  … um … She was sentenced to probation. 

Then there was the case of Crystal Rogers, who thought she had the right to vote, and cast a provisional ballot in 2016. She had voted before, at the same voting place, but had just been released from prison on a tax fraud case. She was charged and convicted and sentenced to five fresh years in prison. 

(Some examples have been used in previous posts; we don’t number them again.) 

 

Next, I saw that KXAN television in Austin was reporting that 150 people in Texas had been charged with voter fraud. That sounded promising if you wanted to prove something big about American elections. But that was spread over every Texas election, for every position, and on every issue, starting with 2004.

  

She believed the election was going to be rigged. 

652. One case led me to track down another. Next up, we had another Iowan, Terry Lynn Rote, who voted twice, absentee, for Donald Trump, in the same election. She explained that she broke the law because she believed the election was going to be rigged – and she decided to do her own part in boosting Donald’s chances. She got two years’ probation, and had to pay a $750 fine. Of course, she was white, and lived in Iowa. And Rogers was black, and lived in Texas. 

653. Then you had the case of Justice of the Peace Russ Casey, called a “rising star in the Republican Party,” of Tarrant County – again in Texas. After he became ensnared in an office sex scandal, he had trouble garnering support to run for reelection. So, in 2018, he forged more than a hundred signatures on a petition so he could run. 

And lost anyway. 

 

Sixty-one convictions. 

Finally, I found another story from Texas, from October 2022: “Verify: 171 People Have Been Investigated for Voter Fraud in Texas since 2018.” KHOU 11 in Houston decided to do a little checking. So I won’t have to. They asked the Texas attorney general to provide records – and got the 171 cases. 

654. Those could be reduced to 61 convictions, with 41 cases pending. (That would mean 69 cases had already been dismissed in some fashion or resulted in “not guilty” determinations.) The reporter for KHOU is a little bit lazy, noting that ten million Texans voted in 2020. She calls that level of fraud “far less than 1%.” I am determined to be more precise. Even if the state gets 41 more convictions, you have only one hundred and two (102) convictions in 11,000,000 votes (The reporter had the total vote wrong.)  That would = 1 illegal vote for every 107,843 ballots. 

(Not exactly rampant.) 

 

Only the math would be much worse. We’d have to add in all the votes cast in the 2018 midterms. We’d have primary elections, and elections for sheriff. Texas has 254 counties. People could cheat while voting for county coroners, county auditors, and county treasurers. They could cast illegal votes for mayors, and members of village councils. The attorney general – who guards against election fraud – is elected. Let’s see how the vote turned out in that race. Ken Paxton won a second term in 2018, and another 8.2 million ballots were cast. If we counted all the elections for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018, that would be another eight million chances for a voter to cheat. Finally, we could toss in all the votes from Loving County, Texas, the least populated county in the nation. In 2018, 66 voters turned up at the polls, with that figure rising to 79 in 2020.

Even imaginary voter fraud is bigger in Texas.

  

655. January 19, 2023: Election denial is now a GOP sport, but no denier has been quite so dedicated to winning as Solomon Pena. His political career was snuffed out by New Mexico voters in the 2022 midterms. In the battle for a seat in the New Mexico House of Representatives, from District 14, Pena tallied a measly 2,005 votes – 26.4%. His Democratic opponent piled up 5,558, or 73.6%. 

Pena didn’t take losing well. He’s alleged to have paid several accomplices to shoot into the homes of Democratic lawmakers and election officials who certified his loss. In one case, bullets broke up plaster in a 10-year-old girl’s room. Pena is said to have complained to the shooters, asking them to strike earlier in the evening when people were still up and about. He also wanted them to shoot lower.

Campaign slogan: "Vote for Pena, or he may shoot you."
(Pena is holding the sign.)

 

“To advance a political narrative.” 

656. January 23: Team Trump can’t help losing in court. U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks sanctions Trump and his lawyers today, in a case filed against Hillary Clinton – complaining that she wrongly accused Donald of being aided in the 2016 election by Russians. Basically, Middlebrooks rules that Team Trump has a history of abusing the U.S. court system. 

“This case should never have been brought,” Middlebrooks explains. “It’s inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it.” 

He accuses the former president and his lawyers of “bad faith,” and “what amounts to  obstruction of justice,” and orders Trump and his lawyer, Alina Habba, to pay more than $937,000 in legal costs for Mrs. Clinton. 

657. Previously, Middlebrooks had sanctioned Habba, for filing another case riddled with errors. In that filing Habba described a gentleman named Charles Dolan as “a Clinton campaign official and a chairman of a national Democratic party organization.” Middlebrooks found that Dolan was a humble “door knocker,” and no officer in any organization. He described that particular suit as an effort “to advance a political narrative through lawsuits without factual basis or any cognizable legal theory.” Team Trump was ordered to pay Mr. Dolan’s legal fees. 

658. Also sanctioned were Trump lawyers Michael T. Madaio, Peter Ticktin, and Jamie Alan Sasson. 

(Add four lawyer’s names to the Team Trump “Wall of Shame.”)

Anyone want to guess why Donald hired Habba?

 

659. VALENTINE’S DAY – 2023: The former president gets a lovely card when a New York court upholds a $110,000 fine assessed against him. Trump had originally been found in contempt for failing to do an adequate search of his records in a tax fraud case. The court also ruled that the fine would grow by $10,000 every day until Donald got the picture. 

 

Only one county in the USA. 

660. In other news, the courts allow a second lawsuit seeking $2.7 billion in damages for defamation to go forward against Fox News. The plaintiff, Smartmatic, accuses Fox of lying about voter fraud, claiming Smartmatic helped Team Biden steal the 2020 presidential election. 

Smartmatic has countered such claims, noting that it supplied election technology for only one county in the USA – Los Angeles County, California, a Democratic bastion, which Biden carried with ease. 

In a 5-0 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second District agreed that Smartmatic had successfully laid out, in “detailed fashion” how Fox anchors and guests “effectively endorsed and participated in [defamation] with reckless disregard for, or serious doubts about” whether the company engaged in election fraud. Targets of the suit include Fox News, and hosts Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro. 

 

“Total exoneration.” 

661. February 16, 2023: A judge releases nine pages from the Georgia grand jury report, looking into election fraud – perpetrated by Team Trump. 

Former President Donald J. Trump, apparently lacking basic reading skills, “truths” on Truth Social: “Thank you to the Special Grand Jury in the Great State of Georgia for your Patriotism & Courage. Total exoneration. The USA is very proud of you!!!” (That post comes at 3:21 p.m.) 

After some aide – or possibly Melania – explains what the nine pages mean, Trump “truths” once more. This time, he’s not as cheery:

 

The Georgia case is ridiculous, a strictly political continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt of all time. Now you have an extremely energetic young woman, the (get this!) “foreperson” of the Racist D.A.’s Special Grand Jury, go going around and doing a Media Tour revealing, incredibly, the Grand Jury’s inner workings & thoughts. This is not JUSTICE, this is an illegal Kangaroo Court [emphasis added]. Atlanta is leading the Nation in Murder and other Violent Crimes. All I did is make TWO PERFECT PHONE CALLS!!!

 

No telling why he’s so mad – since he has already claimed that the report provided “total exoneration.”

The man is confused.

  

662. February 17, 2023: Republican strategist Jesse Benton will be watching the next eighteen months of sunrises and sunsets (and elections) from the confines of a jail. Benton has been convicted of soliciting illegal campaign donations – from a Russian business tycoon, no less! For a cool $100,000 the tycoon would get a ticket to a Republican National Committee event in 2016, and be photographed with none other than the Trumpster himself. 

663. Benton had also been convicted of campaign finance violations related to the 2012 election; but President Trump pardoned him for that crime, before leaving office. Because of course he would. 

(Add another felon to the Team Trump “Wall of Shame.”) 

 

664. February 28: In sad news, for election deniers everywhere, the U.S. Supreme Court turns down a legal challenge in Brunson v. Adams, asking justices to have Trump reinstated as president. This is the second time the high court passed on the chance, in a suit filed by three Utah brothers, Raland, Deron, and Loy Brunson. Raland says they’re not giving up, however, and it’s on to “Plan C.” 

665. March 2, 2023: Court news comes thick and fast, where Donald is concerned. To get the month off to a solid start, the Department of Justice has said that it does not believe the former president is immune from lawsuits filed by police officers injured during the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill. If his words, after he lost the 2020 election, were found to have been an “incitement of imminent private violence” he could be liable for damages. 

And before the MAGA folk can begin barking at the moon about “DOJ weaponization,” they should remember: the DOJ is saying that presidents cannot claim total immunity. That would include Joe Biden. 

(And maybe Kamala Harris!) 

 

Rudy faces real legal danger. 

That suit might not even be Donald’s biggest exposure to civil damages. Two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, are suing Rudy Giuliani for defamation, after he repeatedly accused them of counting tens of thousands of illegal ballots in 2020. I predict Rudy will lose in court – and his loss, or the trial involved, will expose Trump to greater peril. 

666. To compound the former president’s troubles, Freeman and Moss are seeking any and all communications between Giuliani and Trump that pertain to their case. Trump also cited the two women by name, claiming they were instrumental in cheating him out of a win in Georgia. And let’s be clear. Rudy and Donald have serious problems. Both the F.B.I. and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation looked into claims against the women and absolved them of wrongdoing.

 

667. In related news, a Special Grand Jury in Georgia, which recently wrapped up its report, has called for indictments, undoubtedly of thus-far unnamed members of Team Trump. And that Grand Jury also found that there was no evidence of significant voter fraud in the 2020 Georgia election. 

Whereas there was evidence that thus-far unnamed members of Team Trump, called to testify, lied under oath. 

 

“What happened that day was a disgrace.”

668. March 11, 2023: At the Gridiron Dinner, former Vice President Mike Pence, says again that he had no right under the U.S. Constitution, to refuse to count the electoral votes on January 6, 2021. Nor has he forgiven Trump’s attacks that day. “I had no right to overturn the election, and his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted] and I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable,” Pence told the audience. 

“What happened that day was a disgrace. And it mocks decency to portray it any other way. For as long as I live, I will never, ever diminish the injuries sustained, the lives lost, or the heroism of law enforcement on that tragic day.”

 

669. March 17: Mr. Trump runs into fresh troubles when U.S. District Chief Judge Beryl Howell orders Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran to appear before a grand jury for a second time, and answer additional questions. This order falls under what is known as the “crime-fraud” exception. 

Under ordinary circumstances anything Corcoran and Trump discussed would be shielded by client-attorney privilege. But where evidence of intent to perpetrate fresh crimes or frauds may be found, testimony can be demanded.  

(Get used to that term, “crime-fraud” exception, Trump fans.) 

 

The Porn Star and the President

(The first indictment – covered separately.)

Trump and Stormy Daniels, the porn star.

WITH all the losing in court, it can be hard to keep track of every legal problem confronting the former president. As we have shown above, and in this entire series of posts, there’s a mountain of lies building – and an avalanche of falsehoods threatens to bury Donald at trial. 

His first indictment, revealed in Manhattan, on April 4, 2023, in the Hush Money Case, sets the tone for 2023. 

We have covered this case in a series of posts, “The Porn Star and the President.” There’s a porta potty truckload of lying there, too. But this string is focused on Trump’s lying about the 2020 election. 

So, back to all the election denying. 

 

Fox News and Trump lawyers get hammered in court. 

April 14, 2023: You may not recall, but in the immediate wake of Trump’s 2020 defeat, Rudy Giuliani, and two other lawyers, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, held a press conference. Ellis referred to efforts to prove massive voter fraud in Georgia and elsewhere as work that must be performed by an “elite strike force.” Namely, she, Rudy, and Sidney. 

Powell described the plot to “steal votes” as the work of communists in Venezuela, Cuba and probably China, and blamed it all on Dominion voting machines. 

670. On Fox News, Sean Hannity continued to make it clear where he stood (publicly). During one of his nightly harangues, he claimed, “There’s no doubt this [election] was stolen. No doubt whatsoever.” 

Behind the scenes, as we now know, Hannity and other top hosts at Fox are parroting the “Stolen Election” narrative because they fear ratings will crash if they don’t feed listeners the fattening junk food “news” they crave. The top people at the network know Team Trump is peddling lies. 

671. Fox News, which did more to spread the lie that stealing was involved in the 2020 election – and that Dominion was key to the thievery – has to settle a defamation suit filed by Dominion. The plaintiffs win: 

$787.5 million. 

(Dear MAGA fans: That’s a lot of dough – because there was a lot of lying.)

 

FUN FACT: By the time Fox News gets crushed in court, Ms. Ellis had already been forced to admit, during a disciplinary hearing in Colorado, that she was lying about the 2020 election being stolen. She had to cop to ten very specific lies, including my favorite. On December 5, 2020, on Judge Jeanine’s dopey Fox News show, Ellis claimed, “We have over 500,000 votes [in Arizona] that were cast illegally . . .” In the end, she agrees to give up her license to practice law in Colorado for three years. 

She will also cop to a felony, for her part in a conspiracy to steal Georgia’s electoral votes for Trump. 

Then she completes the trifecta. She agrees to cooperate with prosecutors in Arizona, looking into efforts by Team Trump to create fake electors in 2020, and steal that state’s votes, too. 

Ms. Powell will cop to six misdemeanors, in the same Georgia case, and be fined and placed on probation for six years. 

When called to testify before a congressional committee, examining events surrounding the January 6 attack on Congress, Rudy will have no other option to avoid legal jeopardy than to invoke the Fifth Amendment more than 400 times. 

(We have covered many of these lies in previous posts, so they’re not numbered again.) 

(Just a helpful reminder for the MAGA folk.) 

 

672. Giuliani’s problems only cascade. He soon finds himself barred from practicing law in New York. A panel of judges rules that “there is uncontroverted evidence that respondent communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large.” 

673. Other Team Trump lawyers also splash around in legal hot water. Kenneth Chesebro is also indicted in Georgia. He ponders his options, realizes none are good, and pleads guilty to a single felony, rather than risk conviction on six more. Scott Hall, another one of the co-conspirators, admits he committed five misdemeanors, and is ordered to complete five years’ probation without sinning anew. He is fined $5,000, a grand for each crime, and may no longer work on any elections. 

Good call – that last – by the judge! 

 

674.We would be remiss if we failed to mention another Trump lawyer in the case: Ray Stallings Smith III. Facing a barrage of thirteen felony charges, Mr. Smith is also asked to testify as part of Rudy’s defamation suit. Just to be safe, he invokes the Fifth Amendment another four hundred times. 

675. April 27, 2023: The Washington Post reports that in the waning days of the Trump presidency, Team Trump secretly hired two software firms to prove claims of massive voter fraud. Now we know what those firms found. 

The Post explains:

 

Ken Block, founder of the firm Simpatico Software Systems, studied more than a dozen voter fraud theories and allegations for Trump’s campaign in late 2020 and found they were “all false,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post.

 

“No substantive voter fraud was uncovered in my investigations looking for it, nor was I able to confirm any of the outside claims of voter fraud that I was asked to look at,” he said. “Every fraud claim I was asked to investigate was false.”

 

Block was recently subpoenaed to give testimony in an investigation into possible crimes related to the January 6, 2021, effort to block the counting of the electoral votes. Records show his firm was paid $750,000; but Block says he found nothing, and let Team Trump know by late 2020. 

 

As for the other firm hired to prove fraud, the Post continues:

 

Separately, prosecutors have interviewed multiple employees from the Berkeley Research Group in recent weeks, another Trump-paid firm that produced a 29-page report ultimately undermining many of Trump’s fraud claims, according to three people familiar with the matter. Berkeley’s study contradicted claims made by Trump and his advisers that there were extensive numbers of dead voters and cases of fraud in states such as Georgia and Nevada.

 

676. Trump himself was briefed on what Berkeley found – or didn’t find – as the case might be. For example: Team Trump claimed 5,000 dead people voted in Georgia. (Other times, they jacked that figure up to 10,000 or more.) Berkeley’s investigations placed the maximum possible number at 23.

 

677. In Nevada, Team Trump said 1,506 dead persons voted; Berkeley put the high-end number at 20. 

678. Team Trump also insisted that 42,284 Nevadans had voted twice. Berkeley warned that the low end number could be only 45, and the high end number, 9,063, would still not be enough to change the outcome – even assuming every one of those double votes went for Joe and not for Sore Looser Donald. According to the Post, reporters had seen the documents, and Berkeley had been paid $600,000 for its report. 

For obvious reasons that report was never released by President Trump to prove the election was stolen. 

 

679. May 5, 2023: Eight of the sixteen fake electors in Georgia have accepted an immunity deal from the Fulton County district attorney. Two have been notified that they are targets of the investigation. 

680. May 10: In a “Town Hall” meeting hosted by CNN, Rejected-President Trump trots out all of his old claims of voter fraud and adds a new one even this blogger had never heard. Responding to a question from moderator Kaitlan Collins, he said, of course, that he was cheated out of the win in 2020.

 

If you look at what happened in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, if you look at what happened in Detroit, Michigan, if you look at what happened in Atlanta, millions of votes, and all you have to do is take a look at government cameras. You will see them, people going to 28 different voting booths to vote, to put in seven ballots apiece. I mean, and they’re all on camera.

 

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: If anyone can locate these places – and prove Trump’s claims in court, this liberal fellow will buy them a drink. Maybe seven!!!!!!! I will also dress in twenty-eight different disguises, at least one in drag. 

 

681. May 30: Reports out today, by Salon, suggest that Rejected-President Trump’s problems in the investigation into his possession of highly classified documents at Mar-a-Lago – and his likely obstruction in an effort to keep them – may be intensifying. Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran, tasked with leading the hunt for any missing documents at the property, has told investigators that he was “waved off” when he tried to search Donald’s office at his Florida home last summer. 

Several Trump aides told the lawyer to search a storage room, where 38 classified documents were found. But another 102 were later uncovered, during an F.B.I. raid, in the former president’s office. 

Corcoran, who was forced to provide testimony before a grand jury, did say that Trump never told him where to search – or not search – but admitted his boss might have “effectively mislead his legal team.” 

Salon further noted:

 

Corcoran turned the 38 classified documents he found in the storage room to the DOJ, telling investigators that “records that came from the White House were stored within one location at Mar-a-Lago, the storage room … [and] he was not advised there were any records in any private office space.”

 

682. This comes on the heels of a recent report in the Washington Post. According to reporters, workers at Mar-a-Lago moved several boxes out of the storage room the day before DOJ came to look in June. Even more damning (if proven), workers have said a “dress rehearsal” was held in May 2022. How would materials be moved in the event investigators came for a look? 

Stymied by such tactics, the F.B.I. arrived unannounced for what Trump loyalists howled was “a raid” last August 8. 

 

683. Even Donald now seems nervous. He has taken to escalating his attacks on the judicial branch. He made a point of calling the judge in the E. Jean Carroll case a “Clinton-appointed judge,” and claimed the jurist “hated President Donald J. Trump more than is humanly possible.”  

684. Another judge, hearing a hush money case against him, also “hates me,” the former president whined. 

685. As The Hill has reported, this kind of attack is not new. Trump once claimed a judge couldn’t be fair in a case because he was Mexican – even though the judge was born in Indiana. 

(The blogger is fairly sure that’s part of the USA.) 

Yep: There it is, right next to Ohio, where the blogger lives!

 

686. The president also  called a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which went against his claims of election fraud in 2020, a “legal disgrace.” 

687. All of this might be written off as the bluster of a buffoon; but tens of millions of Americans believe Trump is telling the truth. That makes his language increasingly dangerous.

 

“Irresponsible attacks in social media, that are based on misinformation or untruths or merely designed for partisan gain … do damage to our justice system. They undermine the rule of law and the system we have in place to provide justice for all,” said Marcy Kahn, who spent more than 30 years on the bench and now is the head of the New York City bar’s Task Force on the Rule of Law.

 

“There’s a huge cost to the people who are caught up in this and who are the focus of the untrue statements. And this is really, really dangerous when there is no effort to be restrained about it, and when the person speaking has great influence over a great number of people who, for whatever reason, feel aggrieved and angry and are looking for some target to displace their anger on.”

 

688. As might have been expected, one of the judges Trump attacked by name, and the judge’s daughter, have been the target of death threats. 

(How long before some Trump fan acts on such threats?) 

 

689. June 2, 2023: Kari Lake, Imaginary Governor of Arizona, is out with a new theory on Friday. She believes Trump actually won the State of California in 2020. Even though he lost by…(sound of calculator buttons)…5,103,821 votes. 

690. June 4: On Fox News, where election deniers go to spew drivel for profit, Newt Gingrich appears as guest on Maria Bartiromo’s show. He tells her that fair elections in this country are no longer possible. “Democrats,” he insists, “have a passion for stealing them.” 

According to Newt, union workers (he also hates union workers) have been intimidating people in nursing homes and forcing them to vote for people like Joe Biden.

 

691. Since Bartiromo is already a defendant in a defamation suit, having alleged voter fraud against Dominion Voting Systems, neither she nor Newt dare cite specific unions or locations where these bouts of fraud occurred. If this claim of dastardly workers could be proven in court, however, this blogger would be all for arresting the offenders, holding a fair trial, and jailing them if convicted. 

Considering the track record of the election deniers so far – zero proof of significant voter fraud in the 2016, 2018, 2020 or 2022 elections proven in court – let’s just say we are dubious. 

 

692. June 5: Lawyers for Mr. Trump met this morning with U.S. Department of Justice officials, in an effort to convince prosecutors not to indict the former president for mishandling highly classified documents and – as a felon’s bonus – committing perjury and engaging in obstruction of justice. 

Yesterday, on Truth Social, the former president blew a social media gasket:

 

Reports are the Marxist Special Prosecutor, DOJ, & FBI, want to Indict me on the BOXES HOAX, despite all of the wrongdoing that they have done for SEVEN YEARS, including SPYING ON MY CAMPAIGN. Biden Crimes go unpunished, including that he had Boxes in Chinatown, in his garage by the ‘Corvette,’ & 1,850  Boxes in Delaware that he won’t allow anyone to see. That is real OBSTRUCTION!

 

“They seek retribution for Republicans looking into Biden’s CRIMES!” Trump added. “I HAVE DONE NOTHING WRONG. ELECTION INTERFERENCE!” 

This afternoon he appears to have heard even worse news from his lawyers. He blows a second gasket:

 

HOW CAN DOJ POSSIBLY CHARGE ME, WHO DID NOTHING WRONG, WHEN NO OTHER PRESIDENT’S WERE CHARGED, WHEN JOE BIDEN WON’T BE CHARGED FOR ANYTHING, INCLUDING THE FACT THAT HE HAS 1,850 BOXES, MUCH OF IT CLASSIFIED, AND SOME DATING BACK TO HIS SENATE DAY WHEN EVEN DEMOCRAT SENATORS ARE SHOCKED. ALSO, PRESIDENT CLINTON HAD DOCUMENTS, AND WON IN COURT. CROOKED HILLARY DELETED 33,000 EMAILS, MANY CLASSIFIED, AND WASN’T EVEN CLOSE TO BEING CHARGED! ONLY TRUMP – THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!

 

Speaking of “witch hunts,” we will need to see what DOJ does, regarding this newest investigation. 

“Innocent until proven guilty,” is the rule at this blog. No yelping, “Lock him up” until the fat lady sings, the chickens come home to roost, the judge’s gavel bangs down, and he or she sends the malefactor to prison. 

 

Real voter fraud! 

693. At any rate, we finally have real voter fraud to report. The Federal Communications Commission announced a $5.1 million fine against conservative activists Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl and J.M. Burkman & Associates. The two right-wingers schemed to depress the vote for Joe Biden and the Democrats in 2020, and admitted to making 1,141 unlawful robocalls to dupe or scare black voters. Burkman and Wohl told potential voters that if they voted by mail, their “personal information will be part of a public database that will be used by police departments to track down old warrants and be used by credit card companies to collect outstanding debts.” 

 

 

The Classified Documents Indictment.

(The second indictment – handled separately.)

 

TRUMP’S second criminal indictment was revealed on June 9, 2023, involving his mishandling of highly classified documents. If you love Trump, you should brace yourself, because chances of your favorite president being convicted in this case look good. Mr. Trump now faces charges of mishandling documents, obstruction of justice, witness intimidation, and perjury. 

Special Counsel Jack Smith already has cooperating witnesses and taped evidence, and Team Trump lawyers are doing all they can to delay trial until after the next presidential election. Clearly, they hope he can win a second term, keep delaying till he’s inaugurated, and then pardon himself. 

We will cover “The Classified Documents Case” separately, since this series of posts is about election denying, and election lying. 

(These details go to the matter of Trump’s truthfulness – the heart of our story.)

 

That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement.” 

694. June 10, 2023: Now that we know Donald has been indicted, regarding mishandling of top secret documents at Mar-a-Lago, the woman who dreams of being anointed governor of Arizona wants to be clear. Ballots aren’t the only way to achieve victory. “If you want to get to President Trump,” Kari Lake tells a Georgia crowd, “you’re going to have to go through me, and 75 million Americans just like me. And most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA. That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement.” 

It’s also crazy talk; but the MAGA faithful love it. 

(No doubt so does Vladimir Putin.) 

 

June 30: The bad news for Team Trump, regarding an expanding investigation into the plot to steal the 2020 election, continues to build. There are reports that Giuliani met with Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, and may be trying to cut a deal, in hopes of avoiding spending his golden years in prison. 

695. Another report says that Smith has an email in his possession, from top Trump aide Jason Miller, who worked for him while he was president and works for him still. It reads: “The campaign’s legal team and data experts cannot verify the b…s… being beamed down from the mothership.” That is: the “Stolen Election” lies coming from the president in the wake of his 2020 defeat. 

 

The character of a conspiracy. 

696. Mike Roman, a top campaign official, has already had his phone seized by the F.B.I. Now he’s said to have signed a proffer agreement. Prosecutors will let a person who may have legal exposure avoid going before a grand jury. In return, they wave their Fifth Amendment rights and provide testimony, knowing that nothing they say will be used against them unless they lie. 

Roman was another cog in Trump’s Rube Goldberg machine, built to grab a second term in the same way he used to grab pussy without permission. 

We also know Roman’s former top deputy, Gary Michael Brown, testified before a grand jury last week. 

697. If Mr. Miller (like so many others) was telling the top people on Team Trump that they had no legal basis for challenging election results (which is what Trump’s top officials at the Department of Justice, including Attorney General Bill Barr, had been telling him all along), then efforts to overturn the vote take on the character of a conspiracy. People like Giuliani, Roman, and others become accomplices, guided by the Orange Dumpling of Mar-a-Lago. It appears highly likely that the former president will be indicted, along with a number of members of his pirate crew. 

698. Those rumored to be cooperating with prosecutors already include Owen Shroyer, who was part of a gathering on the night of January 5, 2021, in the Willard Hotel in D.C., to plan for the day ahead. Even Mark Meadows, Trump’s last White House Chief of Staff, could be talking to prosecutors. He would be in a position to tell where the bodies are buried, who dug the holes, and who closed the coffin lids. Special Prosecutor Jack Smith is rumored to be considering slapping Trump with up to 30 to 45 new charges, related to his various, allegedly illegal schemes. 

 

Rudy “claimed massive election fraud but had no evidence.” 

699. July 5, 2023: Rudy Giuliani’s losing streak continues. He learns that he is a near-lock to have his license to practice law in the District of Columbia revoked. He has been found to have pushed a “Stolen Election” narrative despite the absence of evidence to support his claims. The D.C. Board of Professional Responsibility has issued a preliminary filing, regarding Giuliani’s efforts to get the 2020 vote in Pennsylvania overturned. His court filings, according to a three-member disciplinary panel were “frivolous,” and “destructive.” After a week of hearings, the panel concluded, “He claimed massive election fraud but had no evidence of it,” which they explain in a 38-page decision. 

“By prosecuting that destructive case Mr. Giuliani, a sworn officer of the Court, forfeited his right to practice law.” 

700. As Politico notes, the disciplinary report continued:

 

His hyperbolic claims of election fraud and the core thesis of the Pennsylvania litigation were utterly false, and recklessly so. Mr. Giuliani’s rash overstatement claiming that the election was stolen had no evidence to support it.

 

Respondent … commenced litigation without evidence that its core factual claim was true. 

 

701. July 10: Team Trump player Steve “I Got a Pardon, You Didn’t” Bannon is ordered by a judge to pay his lawyers the $480,487.87 they billed him for his losing fight to ignore a congressional subpoena.  

July 13, 2023: This is the 982^nd day since the 2020 election. In a clip from an upcoming interview on CNN, Ronna McDaniel, head of the Republican National Committee, cannot tell Chris Wallace that Joe Biden won the race fairly. 

Wallace tries to pin Ronna down. He asks her if Biden is president. She deflects to talk about the “process.” 

“I think there were a lot of problems,” she says. 

Wallace keeps prodding. Finally, she agrees – sort of – that Biden “ultimately” won the election. “But I don’t think he won it fair. I don’t, I’m not going to say that.” 

Wallace tries again: “You’re saying you’re not sure, as the Republican Party chair, that he was the legitimately elected president?”

 

702. “I’m saying there were lots of problems with the 2020 election and we need to fix it going forward,” McDaniel replies. 

(No one has found those “problems” and proved them in court yet.) 

 

703. July 18: As of today, sixteen “fake electors” in Michigan face multiple felony charges, related to their cameo roles in the plot to steal the 2020 election for President Trump. For some odd reason, the sixteen met in the basement of the Michigan Republican Party headquarters on December 14, and signed documents claiming to be the “duly elected and qualified” electors for their state. 

This despite the minor detail – that Joe Biden prevailed in the popular vote in Michigan by more than 154,000. 

 

Rudy does not contest the fact that he lied. 

704. July 26: The myth of the “Stolen 2020 Election” takes a fresh pummeling. Rudy Giuliani is forced to admit in court that he made false statements about the two Georgia poll workers, Freeman and Moss. Namely: Rudy insisted that Freeman and Moss had a hidden “suitcase” of votes that they pulled out when no one was looking (except eagle-eyed Trump supporters). Out spilled 18,000 ballots and mother and daughter ran them through the voting machines three times. 

Rudy now insists that his lies were covered by “free speech,” and his defamatory statements did not harm the women, who are suing his dumb ass. But he does not contest the fact that he lied.  

Moss, center, Freeman, in red.
They testified under oath before Congress.
Rudy pleaded the Fifth.

705. Who else accused the poor women, on the basis of the same “evidence?” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton stuck that claim in a lawsuit he tried to advance to the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump peddled the same lie and right-wing news outlets amplified it and spread it to the dimmest corners of MAGA Land. 

(In MAGA Land the MAGA faithful still believe the MAGA claim was proven.) 

 

707-708. July 29, 2023: Donald can’t stop losing in court. On Friday, a judge he appointed throws out a defamation suit he filed against CNN, after hosts on that channel accused him of telling “The Big Lie.” Since that phrase has long been associated with Hitler, Donald was demanding a bazillion dollars, because, how dare CNN accuse him of being like the Nazi psycho. Did he even have a moustache? 

Trump’s “Big Lie” didn’t involve murdering Jews and gays and disabled children, but did involve murdering democracy. Again and again he dinned in his followers’ ears the fairy tale of the “Stolen Election.” As one frequent CNN contributor, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, explained, “Trump’s big lie wouldn’t have worked without his thousands of little lies. This is Trump’s ‘Big Lie,’ a brazen falsehood with momentous consequences.” 

In case you missed it, Mr. Trump was asking for “damages in excess of $75,000,” and “punitive damages in the amount of $475 million, pre- and post-judgment interest, taxable costs, and trial by jury.” 

Judge Raag Singhal cited numerous cases, establishing various precedents, then summed up: “Complaint alleges no false statements of fact.” CNN was offering opinions. Just because Donald didn’t like what CNN was saying, that didn’t mean he could sue for defamation. Case dismissed. 

And so, more money wasted on lawyers – most of that cash siphoned out of a fund filled by campaign donations from MAGA suckers. 

(Tithing to the Church of St. Donald can be expensive.)