Tag: 2020 election litigation
Giuliani Testifies In Georgia Grand Jury On Illegal ​​2020 Election Meddling

Giuliani Testifies In Georgia Grand Jury On Illegal ​​2020 Election Meddling

(Reuters) - Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump's onetime personal lawyer, arrived at an Atlanta courthouse on Wednesday to testify in a Georgia criminal probe examining attempts by the former U.S. president and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results.

Giuliani, who helped lead Trump's election challenges, was due to testify before a special grand jury in Fulton County after a judge ordered him to comply with a subpoena. His lawyers say he will refuse to answer questions that violate attorney-client privilege.

The former New York City mayor, 78, appeared before Georgia state lawmakers in December 2020, echoing Trump's false conspiracy theories about stolen ballots and urging them not to certify Democratic President Joe Biden's victory over the Republican Trump.

"It's a grand jury and grand juries, as I recall, are secret," Giuliani told CNN on his arrival at the courthouse, when asked to comment on his testimony. "They ask the questions and we'll see."

The Fulton County probe began after a January 2021 recorded phone call in which Trump urged the state's top election official to "find" enough votes to alter the outcome. The former president has asserted falsely that he won Georgia, as well as the 2020 presidential contest.

The special grand jury was convened in May at the request of county District Attorney Fani Willis.

Giuliani, a former crime-fighting U.S. Attorney, was among several Trump advisers and lawyers who received subpoenas from the grand jury last month, including Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

(Reporting by Rami Ayyub, editing by Ross Colvin and Howard Goller)


Wisconsin's Biden Electors Sue Fakers Over Attempt To Deceive Congress

Wisconsin's Biden Electors Sue Fakers Over Attempt To Deceive Congress

On Monday morning, two of Wisconsin’s presidential electors and a voter sued a group of “fake electors” who sought to deceive Congress in an attempt to help then-President Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

The lawsuit, a first of its kind, was filed in state circuit court in Madison, the state’s capital, and named as defendants 10 Republicans and two others "who conspired with, aided, and abetted them," according to CBS News.

The two, according to the New York Times, are James R. Troupis, a Trump campaign lawyer, and Kenneth Chesebro, an attorney from Massachusetts who authored a memo in 2020 that proposed the fake elector scheme to Troupis.

Law Forward and Georgetown Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) sued the sham electors on behalf of the legitimate electors.

The plaintiffs are asking a Dane County judge to ban the Republicans from serving as electors in the future and order each of them to pay a $2,000 fine and up to $200,000 in damages to the Democratic electors.

“I don’t know that you can put a price on trying to steal democracy,” said Khary Penebaker, one of the plaintiffs and a Wisconsin Democratic National Committee member. “There has to be some kind of penalty. It has to be something. There has to be pure accountability for this. We cannot have this happen again.”

Wisconsin is one of seven states Trump lost in the last election where allies brought fought a slate of fake electors to cast electoral votes for him, anyway, to subvert the 2020 elections.

In the lawsuit, the defendants were accused of helping to “lay the foundation for a nationwide scheme to override the results of the 2020 election” and “the groundwork for the events of January 6, 2021.”

"They did so even though they knew that Biden and Harris had won the election in Wisconsin; even though those results had been recounted and certified; and even though Trump and Pence had exhausted all available legal mechanisms for challenging the outcome," the lawsuit alleged, according to CBS News.

“Although Defendants were unsuccessful in having their fake ballots counted, they caused significant harm simply by trying, and there is every reason to believe that they will try again if given the opportunity,” the lawsuit read, according to the Guardian. “Defendants’ actions also violated a host of state and federal laws. Thus far, however, none of the fraudulent electors has been held accountable. This lawsuit seeks to change that.”

None of the defendants in the lawsuit face criminal charges for their attempt to overturn the last election. Still, of the 84 sham GOP electors in the seven states that Trump lost to face civic penalties, the Wisconsin group is the first to face civic penalties.

In January, Michigan’s Democratic Attorney General, Dana Nessel, announced she had asked federal prosecutors to launch an investigation into 16 Republicans in the state who presented themselves as lawful electors and sought to cast electoral votes for Trump in a state Joe Biden won.

A week later, U.S. Deputy Attorney General, Lisa O. Monaco, told CNN that the Department of Justice was looking into the battleground states’ fake electors who falsely declared Trump victorious, despite Biden winning all states by a narrow margin.

Many of the fake electors have been subpoenaed by the House Select Committee, the congressional panel investigating the Capitol riot. Among the list is Robert F. Spindell Jr., a Republican and member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, who tried to get Trump elected in Wisconsin, a state he lost by over 20,000 votes.

Louie Gohmert

GOP Rep. Gohmert Openly Calls For Violence In The Streets After Losing In Court

Reprinted with permission from DailyKos

At this point, Republicans might as well just open fire on Fort Sumter and be done with it. That's the only way they could show more evidence of their "patriotism" and love for the Constitution. The only question is: Who's going to be first? The whole right-of-center portion of the American political spectrum has fallen into a system where the selective pressure is all about being the most outrageous, the most extreme, the most willing to trample all the meaning of the American system into the mud while waving the symbols of that system overhead. It's not a race to the bottom, because there is no bottom. But there is a point of no return, and Republicans have gone way, way past that point.

Read NowShow less
Rudy Giuliani

The Year Of Rudy Giuliani, Human Hand Grenade

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters

In 1998, The New York Timesdescribed Rudy Giuliani, mayor of New York City at the time, as a "human hand grenade" because of his aggressive grip over the city government. Former national security adviser John Bolton used the same description during President Donald Trump's impeachment. Today, I would like to add my name to this list, one that may extend beyond those enumerated here.

The year 2020 was a disaster for Giuliani. He repeatedly used the media, to varying degrees of success, to expose his own close contacts with foreign agents of disinformation and to create and spread baseless conspiracy theories. He also pushed coronavirus misinformation so outrageous that Twitter actually took it down, single-handedly shut down Arizona's and Michigan's legislatures, and tried and failed to start a coup. This is the part where I should mention his dripping hair dye, but I also want to remind you that he farted into a microphone at a meeting of Michigan Republicans seeking to overturn the election.

Read NowShow less