Tag: 2020 presidential election
Ranting Cruz Votes No On Bipartisan Bill To Stop Electoral Coup (VIDEO)

Ranting Cruz Votes No On Bipartisan Bill To Stop Electoral Coup (VIDEO)

The Senate Rules Committee voted 14-1 to advance the Electoral Count Act, legislation designed to prevent another coup like the one led by defeated President Donald Trump, and Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, on January 6, 2021. Every Democrat and every Republican except the junior GOP Senator from Texas voted for the legislation.

The bill is even supported by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

But according to Sen. Cruz, who once bragged he was “leading the charge” to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, the bill is “all about” Donald Trump.

With so many stories published about the GOP’s efforts to keep Trump in the White House despite Joe Biden winning both the popular vote and the Electoral College by large margins, some may have missed The Washington Posts reporting back in March the shows “just how deeply” Cruz “was involved, working directly with Trump to concoct a plan that came closer than widely realized to keeping him in power.”

“As Cruz went to extraordinary lengths to court Trump’s base and lay the groundwork for his own potential 2024 presidential bid, he also alienated close allies and longtime friends who accused him of abandoning his principles,” the Post notes.

“Cruz’s efforts are of interest to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, in particular whether Cruz was in contact with Trump lawyer John Eastman, a conservative attorney who has been his friend for decades and who wrote key legal memos aimed at denying Biden’s victory.”

On Tuesday Cruz railed against the Electoral Count Act, which would make the January 6 attempt to overturn the election at least more difficult, as his fellow Republicans seemed to ignore his outburst.

“This bill is all about Donald J. Trump,” Cruz declared, not realizing that he was indicting the former president by saying so. “And nobody in our lifetimes has driven Democrats in this body more out of their mind than President Trump.”

“This bill is a bad bill, this bill is bad law,” Cruz complained. “It’s bad policy and it’s bad for democracy,” he added, despite every other Republican on the committee voting for it and several Republicans voting for the House version.

What he did not say is that no Democrat has ever conspired to overturn an election and execute a coup.

Senator Angus King (I-ME) after Cruz’s rant, reminded the committee the bill does not “come out of the blue,” saying it is “a modification of a 150-year old law.”

“It’s not a new effort of Congress to intrude into the electoral process,” he said, taking a gentle swipe at Cruz.

“I watched this,” NPR’s Peter Sagal said of Cruz’s remarks, “and what’s remarkable is to the extent to which all the other Senators (with the exception of a mild correction from Sen King) simply ignore him.”

He went on to note the bill “merely intended to clarify” the existing law, “which virtually everyone … has agreed is archaic and confusing.”

Despite all his bravado, the bill did advance out of committee almost unanimously, with the exception of Cruz’s lone no vote.

Watch below or at this link.


Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Republican 'Election Integrity' Official Eyed For Role In Fake Elector Scheme

Republican 'Election Integrity' Official Eyed For Role In Fake Elector Scheme

The rapidly expanding federal probe into the events of January 6, 2021 appears to be focused on a senior Republican National Committee official, Politico reports.

The Justice Department, according to reports, has issued subpoenas in the seven battleground states where former President Donald Trump’s campaign and his allies pushed slates of fake electors as part of a failed campaign to subvert the electoral count.

Subpoenas issued to some witnesses in the DOJ fake elector investigation include the name of Joshua Findlay, the RNC’s national "director for election integrity."

Three witnesses — two in Arizona and one in Georgia — received subpoenas from the DOJ demanding that they turn over all correspondence “[t]o, from, with, or including” Findlay, whom the report notes served Trump’s 2020 campaign in various capacities, including as a lawyer on the campaign’s legal team, before joining the RNC.

According to RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Findlay’s role is to ensure “voters have confidence in future election processes" -- an ironic description for an official who promoted fake electors.

Findlay is not a central figure in the House Select Committee’s January 6 investigation. However, the head of the Trump campaign’s legal team, Matt Morgan, mentioned Findlay in his testimony to the congressional panel.

“At that point, I had Josh Findlay email Mr. Chesebro politely to say, ‘This is your task,’” Morgan said in taped testimony aired by the committee at a January 6 hearing last month. “‘You are responsible for the Electoral College issues moving forward.’ And this was my way of taking that responsibility to zero,” Morgan added.

Last December, Findlay received an email from the head of the Georgia Republican Party — who himself was a fake elector — “directing one of his subordinates to contact Findlay about the alternate elector plans,” Politico reported.

Findlay’s participation in the alternate elector scheme went well beyond Election Day 2020, explaining the DOJ’s interest in his communications as it ramps up its January 6 investigation.

“Election integrity” director Findlay assumed his position at the RNC after President Biden’s inauguration, a time rife with false allegations of voter fraud repeatedly disseminated by Trump and his inner circle, as well as his other allies at all levels of government.

Last Tuesday, Findlay touted his party’s plans to “train and build the largest, most well-prepared election integrity organization in the history of the Republican Party.”

“We need to put eyes on every part of this election process,” Findlay said. He also stated that the RNC plans to “recruit and train and place volunteers to watch every aspect of every election to make sure that Democrats aren’t committing fraud, that election administrators are not abusing their position, and just to make sure that there’s no mistake in what’s happening across the board.”

Bannon's Bluster Exposed The Trump Coup Before It Even Began

Bannon's Bluster Exposed The Trump Coup Before It Even Began

In the world according to former President Donald Trump and his apologists, the former president sincerely believed — and still believes — that election fraud and "irregular" voting deprived him of victory in the 2020 election. They will tell you that he never thought those he had summoned to Washington on January 6 would physically attack the Capitol, and that rather than inciting violence, he tried to send the mob home "in peace."

But the evidence that continues to emerge is vaporizing that fabricated version of events, despite the increasingly frantic and obscene repetition of his insulting lies. As the true story of Trump's attempted coup unfolds, it is more and more obvious that he not only knew the fraud claims were false, but that he and his criminal gang had planned their election deception for months in advance.

The latest proof comes directly from the mouth of Steve Bannon, the crypto-fascist agitator who formerly served Trump as his 2016 campaign manager and White House political strategist.

On July 12, Mother Jones magazine published an audiotape of Bannon boasting privately about Trump's strategy of deception on Oct. 31, 2020, a few days before the election. Speaking to a group of right-wing Chinese immigrants sponsored by Guo Wengui, a dubious business figure who backs Bannon's political ventures, he predicted in accurate detail how Trump would behave on Election Night.

After noting that Republicans would tend to vote in person while Democrats were more likely to vote by mail, Bannon explained why this meant a delay in counting ballots that afforded Trump a "natural advantage... And Trump's going to take advantage of it. That's our strategy. He's gonna declare himself a winner."

Their simple plan was to exploit the "red mirage" of an early lead.

"What Trump's gonna do is just declare victory. Right? He's gonna declare victory. But that doesn't mean he's a winner," Bannon chortled. "He's just gonna say he's a winner." Describing what would happen when, as Bannon expected, Trump amassed an early lead in key states, he added, "As it sits here today," at 10 or 11 o'clock Trump's gonna walk in the Oval, tweet out, 'I'm the winner. Game over. Suck on that.'"

Of course, there was no way for Bannon or Trump to know on Election Night how many votes would ultimately accrue to either candidate, or whether any irregularity or "fraud" swayed the outcome. Nor did any of that matter to them at all. Days before a single vote was tallied, Bannon knew that his candidate would claim victory, ignore the actual votes of Americans and deny the peaceful transfer of power, possibly by instigating violence.

At no point on the hourlong tape does Bannon proffer any complaints about actual Democratic "fraud," the Big Lie he and Trump and their claque have since shrieked so insistently. No, there isn't even a hint of the usual fake indignation that is a favorite GOP propaganda tactic. Instead, he laughs about the very real and cold-blooded fraud that his old boss is about to perpetrate on American democracy — and the bloody response that he hopes will ensue.

Those remarks were the ranting of a criminal conspirator, in Bannon's case a remorseless crook whose monetizing of political extremism earned him a federal fraud indictment for swindling Trump's gullible donors in his "We Build the Wall" scheme. According to The Washington Post, Trump pardoned him (though not his co-conspirators) because of his ardent advocacy of the Big Lie and support for the attempted January 6 coup. He was in frequent contact with Trump, speaking to the then-president on January 5 and 6, 2021, and was present in the Trump campaign "war room" at the Willard Hotel on those days leading up to the coup and insurrection.

But now he is under indictment again, for defying a House select committee subpoena, and he has been trying to worm his way out of that difficulty by promising to testify. It's too late for that, however. He will almost certainly be convicted of contempt, with a potential sentence of two years in prison and large fines. The gravity of his offenses makes a maximum penalty imperative — unless he finally abandons his authoritarian daydreams, turns over every document and testifies fully and honestly.

Bannon knows much more about the plot against America than he has revealed so far. The Justice Department's constitutional duty is to squeeze the truth out of him — and all of the treacherous gang around Trump.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Georgia Judge Orders 'Necessary And Material Witness' Graham To Testify

Georgia Judge Orders 'Necessary And Material Witness' Graham To Testify

Despite promising to fight the subpoena, Sen Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has been ordered to obey the Fulton County, Georgia special criminal grand jury’s order to testify

“Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled Monday that Graham will be required to testify on August 2 after Graham said he would fight a subpoena to testify, citing executive privilege,” WSBTV reports.

Graham reportedly had asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “to reexamine ‘certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump.”

Last week Graham’s attorneys defiantly declared the subpoena was “all politics.”

“Fulton County is engaged in a fishing expedition and working in concert with the January 6 Committee in Washington,” the attorneys for the Republican Senator said in a statement. “Any information from an interview or deposition with Senator Graham would immediately be shared with the January 6 Committee. Should it stand, the subpoena issued today would erode the constitutional balance of power and the ability of a Member of Congress to do their job.”