Voter Suppression & Election Theft by the Republican Party

[LFC]

Little Lindsey immediately played the victim. Raise your hand if you're surprised. Hello? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

Lawyers for Sen. Lindsey Graham say the South Carolina Republican intends to go to court to challenge a subpoena from a Fulton County, Georgia, grand jury seeking his testimony about interference in the 2020 election. In a statement released early Wednesday, attorneys Bart Daniel and Matt Austin dismissed the subpoena as “all politics.” Graham was one of several Trump allies to receive subpoenas in connection with their claims of election fraud. Graham was accused of twice calling Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger after the election to ask him if there was a way to toss mail-in ballots, a claim Graham has called “ridiculous.” His lawyers responded to the subpoena by saying, “Fulton County is engaged in a fishing expedition and working in concert with the Jan. 6 Committee in Washington. Any information from an interview or deposition with Sen. Graham would immediately be shared with the Jan. 6 Committee.”

[goldenvalley]

Jul 6, 2022 16:35:23 GMT LFC said:

Little Lindsey immediately played the victim. Raise your hand if you're surprised. Hello? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

Lawyers for Sen. Lindsey Graham say the South Carolina Republican intends to go to court to challenge a subpoena from a Fulton County, Georgia, grand jury seeking his testimony about interference in the 2020 election. In a statement released early Wednesday, attorneys Bart Daniel and Matt Austin dismissed the subpoena as “all politics.” Graham was one of several Trump allies to receive subpoenas in connection with their claims of election fraud. Graham was accused of twice calling Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger after the election to ask him if there was a way to toss mail-in ballots, a claim Graham has called “ridiculous.” His lawyers responded to the subpoena by saying, “Fulton County is engaged in a fishing expedition and working in concert with the Jan. 6 Committee in Washington. Any information from an interview or deposition with Sen. Graham would immediately be shared with the Jan. 6 Committee.”

That is a fundraising appeal to those who are giving to legal defense funds of Trump acolytes.

[LFC]

Interesting legal theory that Little Lindsey's refusal to comply with his subpoena could make it easier to subpoena Trump himself.

Specifically, he argued, Graham is one of the only people who could testify in Trump's favor, and his refusal could force the former president to answer more questions of his own.

"I wonder if there's a sense that ... there are some Republicans who might be kind of rooting for this [investigation]," said anchor Joy Reid. "I'm thinking about Mitch McConnell who said — there was this quote, this was about the impeachment, that Mitch McConnell allegedly said, and this is a quote from the book 'This Shall Not Pass' — 'The Democrats are going to take care of this son of a bitch for us,' referring to his imminent impeachment. It's schadenfreude, because not it wouldn't be the January 6 Committee. It would be the Black lady in Georgia."

"Quite ironic," said Jolly. "You know who can help solve the threats of violence and racism? Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham. He should be the first to condemn the epithets coming toward the prosecutor in Fulton County, but he's not. He's hiding from her. It's almost comical how perfectly Lindsey Graham this moment is, the guy that lights the fire wants to run from it."

"Here is the other great irony in Lindsey Graham's behavior in this moment," added Jolly. "You know what ultimately will lead to the subpoena of Donald Trump? Lindsey Graham's lack of cooperation. If he said there was a legitimate legislative purpose, I wasn't doing this on behalf of the president — if he wanted to go under oath and say that was the nature of my phone call, it gets very hard for the Fulton County prosecutor to then subpoena Donald Trump. But it's very easy, without Lindsey Graham, for the Fulton County prosecutor to say, you know what, judge, because of the lack of cooperation of Lindsey Graham, we have reason to believe that we need to bring under oath the former president of the United States. It is perfectly Lindsey Graham, it's all about the senior senator from South Carolina, and it's about nobody else."

[LFC]

A whole merry band of Trump's election theft snapperheads, including Rudy "Four Seasons / Hand Down My Pants" Giuliani, have been subpoenaed in Georgia.

The Donald Trump adviser who was arguably responsible for both of the former president's impeachments could be the most valuable witness to investigators in Georgia, where the former president pressed state officials to help him overturn his election loss.

Rudy Giuliani was among eight Trump allies who were subpoenaed by a special grand jury in Fulton County as part of district attorney Fanni Willis' investigation into the twice-impeached former president's phone call to secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, and the former New York City mayor could provide the most damning evidence, according to MSNBC columnist Hayes Brown.

"There’s already ample evidence from the Jan. 6 committee’s public hearings that Trump likely solicited election fraud in Georgia," Brown wrote. "Much of that effort was undertaken with the help of Giuliani and the legal team he wrangled into place. It’s fitting that the same band of misfits is now poised to help prosecutors in Georgia make the case that Trump’s bid to remain in power broke state law."

"This is the team that Rudy built, a collection of fringe legal analysts and committed partisan warriors," Brown wrote. "All of them fully backed the worst of Trump’s instincts, even as others on the campaign and in the White House tried to restrain them. Each of them has been ordered to appear before the grand jury in Georgia this month and remain until the end of August or when the prosecutors are done with them, whichever comes first."

Many of them will try to avoid testifying, as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is trying to do, but Brown said some of them will be compelled to tell investigators what they know about Trump's scheme to overturn Georgia's presidential election results.

"I’m looking forward to seeing which of them will have their words appear in any indictment handed up against Trump when the grand jury concludes its work," Brown wrote.

[LFC]

A group in Pennsylvania is going after lawyers who pushed The Big Lie.

A legal advocacy group seeking to disbar lawyers who advocated for Donald Trump's 2020 election conspiracy theories filed complaints Thursday with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court against seven lawyers worked to overturn the election's results, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

The group, The 65 Project, filed complaints against Marc A. Scaringi, Ronald Hicks, Carolyn McGee, and Jenna Ellis, among others. The group says the lawyers lent their “law license and the legal profession’s integrity and power to an orchestrated effort to undermine our nation’s elections.”

“It has now become part of the political toolbox for a candidate to allege fraud and seek to … undermine people’s faith in the outcome of elections any time they lose. We need to take that away,” said Michael Teter, managing director of The 65 Project, which is named after the 65 lawsuits filed in 2020 seeking to overturn the election. “The best way to do that with lawyers is to ensure there are personal or professional consequences to the actions they take.”

“This effort is not just about the past,” Teter said. “Trump supporters are fighting to seize control of [Pennsylvania] and local election process and the courts are a key part of their strategy to sabotage current and future elections.”

[LFC]

Gee, somebody "investigating" voter fraud who is systematically destroying his own records. THAT's no suspicious at all.

A third Dane County Circuit Court judge ordered the former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice running a partisan review of the 2020 election to stop deleting records related to his investigation on Tuesday.

The order, issued by Judge Jacob Frost, requires Gableman to preserve all records related to his review, even if they haven’t been requested under the state’s public records law.

Frost is overseeing the fourth lawsuit against Gableman for his disregarding of state public records laws, which require government entities to retain certain records and provide them to members of the public once requested.

Earlier this year, a lawyer for Gableman admitted that the former justice regularly destroyed records he deemed “irrelevant” to his review and two other Dane County judges have already ordered him to stop deleting his records.

Government watchdog group American Oversight has filed four lawsuits against Gableman because of his refusal to comply with open records requests. He has repeatedly ignored, denied or only partially complied with the law governing public records, according to the lawsuits.

Last month, Dane County Judge Frank Remington found Gableman in contempt of court and ordered him to pay $2,000 a day for his refusal to comply with American Oversight’s requests.

Gableman has made a number of claims as to why he doesn’t need to comply with the requests. He has said that his investigation is still ongoing and, like a police investigation, does not require disclosure until it is closed — even though he’s not acting as a law enforcement officer. Recently, he argued that because his “office of special counsel” is overseen by the Legislature, he’s allowed to delete emails because individual legislators are able to do so. The Legislature’s own attorneys have disagreed with that statement.

[goldenvalley]

The Wisconsin Supreme Court doesn't like drop boxes for ballots.

The 4-3 ruling came a month before the state’s Aug. 9 primaries, when voters will narrow the fields for governor and U.S. senator. Both contests in this battleground state are being closely watched nationally.

For years, ballot drop boxes were used without controversy across Wisconsin. Election clerks greatly expanded their use in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic as absentee voting hit unprecedented levels.

By the time of the presidential election, more than 500 ballot drop boxes were in place across Wisconsin. Some Republicans balked at their use, pointing to a state law that says an absentee ballot must “be mailed by the elector, or delivered in person, to the municipal clerk issuing the ballot or ballots.”

The state’s high court on Friday ruled that means voters themselves must return absentee ballots and cannot use drop boxes.

“The key phrase is ‘in person’ and it must be assigned its natural meaning,” Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote for the majority.

This argument drives me crazy:

The case started last year when the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty brought a lawsuit over the use of drop boxes on behalf of two suburban Milwaukee men. State law does not mention ballot drop boxes and the lawsuit argued their use “causes doubts about the fairness of the elections and erodes voter confidence in the electoral process,” and that the two men “are entitled to have the elections in which they participate administered properly under the law.”

If voter confidence is eroded by the use of drop boxes it's because groups like the Institute for Law & Liberty have been howling about them for the last two years.  

I'd be interested to see the number of ballots cast in a drop box v. the number mailed in Wisconsin.  In CA at least the drop boxes are used far more by voters.

[LFC]

The Jan 6 Committee's work may be making things easier for Georgia to push for prosecutions.

Thanks to Georgia’s court system rules, the damning testimony of several former Trump administration officials—now being televised by the Jan. 6 Committee—could very well bolster the Fulton County District Attorney’s criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump’s menacing phone call to the state’s top elections official last year.

Georgia is a state where prosecutors seeking an indictment can present hearsay evidence to grand juries. That means the special grand jury currently underway in Atlanta can be shown how former Attorney General Bill Barr and others repeatedly told Trump that his election conspiracy theories were absolute nonsense—laying the groundwork to prove that he knowingly cited false accusations of election fraud when he intimidated Georgia’s secretary of state on Jan. 2, 2021.

I wonder if the allowance of hearsay evidence is a leftover of Jim Crow when clearly any white person was more believable than any black person.

[jackd]

Hearsay ia allowed before grand juries in most states.

[LFC]

Jul 8, 2022 17:21:12 GMT jackd said:

Hearsay ia allowed before grand juries in most states.

Interesting. Is this because they're somewhat preliminary and only hand down indictments?

[jackd]

Probably. Ultimately, direct evidence is needed to try the cases.

[LFC]

The Big Lie people are screeching they are vindicated because the right-wing dominated Wisconsin state supreme court said that providing drop off ballot boxes were illegal. Got that? Their big "victory" is that their team said that the state shouldn't have made voting more safe and accessible during a pandemic. That's about as Republican as an opinion gets.

The conservative majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Friday that ballot drop boxes were illegal in the state, and it didn’t take long for right wing election lie evangelists to declare the decision proof of a fraudulent 2020 vote, and even to demand again that the election results be overturned.

The COVID-19 pandemic moved Wisconsin election officials, backed by a memo from the state’s Election Commission, to install hundreds of drop boxes across the state. Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote for the court’s 4-3 majority Friday that “Ballot drop boxes appear nowhere in the detailed statutory system for absentee voting.”

Plenty of the MAGAts are prancing about like this is yuuuuge but they failed to mention one thing, and that one thing is absolutely key to their original claims.

The article presented no evidence of the use of drop boxes leading to the counting of fraudulent votes — there is none. Instead, it argued that the decision was “evidence that a widely used mechanism for the 2020 election was illegal, undercutting Democratic claims that any irregularities in the contest were insufficient to sway outcomes.”

[goldenvalley]

Jul 11, 2022 21:36:38 GMT LFC said:

The Big Lie people are screeching they are vindicated because the right-wing dominated Wisconsin state supreme court said that providing drop off ballot boxes were illegal. Got that? Their big "victory" is that their team said that the state shouldn't have made voting more safe and accessible during a pandemic. That's about as Republican as an opinion gets.

The conservative majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Friday that ballot drop boxes were illegal in the state, and it didn’t take long for right wing election lie evangelists to declare the decision proof of a fraudulent 2020 vote, and even to demand again that the election results be overturned.

The COVID-19 pandemic moved Wisconsin election officials, backed by a memo from the state’s Election Commission, to install hundreds of drop boxes across the state. Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote for the court’s 4-3 majority Friday that “Ballot drop boxes appear nowhere in the detailed statutory system for absentee voting.”

Plenty of the MAGAts are prancing about like this is yuuuuge but they failed to mention one thing, and that one thing is absolutely key to their original claims.

The article presented no evidence of the use of drop boxes leading to the counting of fraudulent votes — there is none. Instead, it argued that the decision was “evidence that a widely used mechanism for the 2020 election was illegal, undercutting Democratic claims that any irregularities in the contest were insufficient to sway outcomes.”

Drop boxes iz bad.  That's the only message they need or want.  Talking about actual fraud didn't serve them well. Time to return to simple.

[andydp]

Jul 6, 2022 16:35:23 GMT LFC said:

Little Lindsey immediately played the victim. Raise your hand if you're surprised. Hello? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

Lawyers for Sen. Lindsey Graham say the South Carolina Republican intends to go to court to challenge a subpoena from a Fulton County, Georgia, grand jury seeking his testimony about interference in the 2020 election. In a statement released early Wednesday, attorneys Bart Daniel and Matt Austin dismissed the subpoena as “all politics.” Graham was one of several Trump allies to receive subpoenas in connection with their claims of election fraud. Graham was accused of twice calling Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger after the election to ask him if there was a way to toss mail-in ballots, a claim Graham has called “ridiculous.” His lawyers responded to the subpoena by saying, “Fulton County is engaged in a fishing expedition and working in concert with the Jan. 6 Committee in Washington. Any information from an interview or deposition with Sen. Graham would immediately be shared with the Jan. 6 Committee.”

Didn't he see this coming ?  I'm sure Sen Graham knows he can't put a "Federal" spin on this.  Either he testifies or they send out a sheriff to arrest him.  There's no separation of powers US Constitution argument here.  This is a state issue.

Senator Graham ordered to testify in front of grand jury in Trump election probe

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A judge ordered U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham to testify in front of a special grand jury in Georgia investigating former President Donald Trump's alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ordered that Graham will be required to testify on Aug. 2. The judge's certification filed on Monday described Graham as a "necessary and material witness" to the grand jury probe. The development was reported earlier by WSB-TV.

Graham's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The senator's attorneys said last week he would not comply with a subpoena issued by the grand jury.

The grand jury also subpoenaed members of Trump's former legal team, including personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/senator-graham-ordered-to-testify-in-front-of-grand-jury-in-trump-election-probe/ar-AAZsY5P?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=55de69ce6e304481a2b127fd8e7b1183
   

[LFC]

The words "nationally coordinate", "multi-year", and "multi-faceted" are ominous and all too accurate.

Election administrators are worried about "insider threats" to the election system from local officials who remain loyal to Donald Trump.

Officials who gathered for the National Association of Secretaries of State’s summer conference told Politico that cases in Colorado, where a county clerk was indicted for giving unauthorized access to voting machines, and others in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio had raised concerns about upcoming efforts to undermine election security.

“What’s clear is this is a nationally coordinated effort,” said Michigan secretary of state Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat. “It’s multi-year, multi-faceted … not just pressuring election officials, but pressuring local elected officials as well.”

New Mexico secretary of state Maggie Toulouse Oliver, also a Democrat and former president of NASS, cited a vote last month by a heavily Republican county to refuse to certify election results in her state, saying it could set off a "domino effect," which Kentucky's secretary of state Michael Adams confirmed.

“I read something in Politico about what’s going on in some other state and then three days later, we get the same thing in our state,” said Adams, a Republican.

Election officials are already moving to improve security, especially in states that experienced breaches in the past, and they're also circulating new guidance about who is authorized to access voting equipment to prevent accidental breaches.

[LFC]

Bimboebert's former campaign manager appears to have been involved with Tina Peters in an attempt to steal election data. Birds of a corrupt feather, eh?

New arrest documents in a criminal case over leaked voting machine data make repeated allegations about the involvement of Sherronna Bishop, Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-CO) former campaign manager.

Bishop is a major voice in the election conspiracy theory scene in Colorado, and she’s a confidante of Tina Peters, the clerk of Mesa County who now faces multiple federal charges for allegedly stealing a local man’s identity in a plot to violate her county’s election security protocols. As a result of the alleged scheme, sensitive election information from the county’s voting machines leaked online and has been cast, falsely, by election theft evangelists as evidence as they continue to claim that the 2020 election was stolen.

The latest details come in the form of an affidavit supporting the arrest of Mesa County’s former elections manager, Sandra Brown, who turned herself in Monday on new state charges in the same case. The affidavit describes Bishop’s alleged involvement in the scheme. It was first reported by the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel Tuesday; the Colorado Sun later published the document.

Bishop has not been charged with a crime.

[LFC]

Colorado's election official who violated multiple laws in trying to "prove" fraud just had her bail revoked for traveling out of state to speak to a bunch of other utter nutters in Las Vegas. Buh-bye, Tina! Hope you enjoy living in a cell until, at the very least, your trial is over and maybe for well after that.

A Colorado judge issued an arrest warrant for Mesa County, Colorado clerk Tina Peters Thursday after she attended a far-right conference in Las Vegas earlier in the week, saying Peters had violated the terms of her release, which required the court’s permission to travel out of state.

“Upon review of the People’s Verified Motion to Revoke Bond I find a sufficient basis to grant the same,” Matthew David Barrett, a Colorado judge, wrote in a filing Thursday. “A no bond warrant issued for Defendant’s arrest pending a hearing before me to address the matters set forth in the motion.”

Peters has been charged with multiple felonies for her role in allegedly violating the security protocols in her office in order to allow an unauthorized person to make copies of her county’s voting machines, which were subsequently leaked online. Peters is also accused of stealing a local man’s identity to use as the basis for a security badge for the unauthorized person.

Here's a little bit of drama involving Lauren Bimboebert that I don't remember hearing.

In her speech to the group, Peters discussed her recent campaign, the investigation into her activities as clerk, and her apparent dislike of Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO).

Peters has claimed that Boebert encouraged her to make digital copies of the voting machines, and on Tuesday claimed Boebert had met with her, Boebert’s former campaign manager and the unauthorized person who prosecutors contend copied the machines as part of the scheme, the former professional surfer Conan Hayes. A spokesperson for Boebert denied both claims to The New York Times. The Colorado Times Recorder first reported Peters’ comments in Las Vegas.

[LFC]

Another Republican is pulled in to testify about his role in the attempted Georgia election theft. Notice how quickly this asshat is to throw away a state's right to handle their own elections because he's desperate for a more sympathetic court.

A new court filing reveals that Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis subpoenaed Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) last month to appear before a special grand jury in the Fulton County investigation into former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the battleground state.

Attached to the new filing is Hice’s subpoena, which instructs him to appear before the grand jury on this coming Tuesday morning. Hice’s request, filed on Monday morning in Fulton County Superior Court, says the GOP congressman seeks to move the proceedings from state court to federal court because he is a member of Congress.

The grand jury’s probe led by Willis focuses on the former president’s efforts to subvert the election results in Georgia, particularly Trump’s infamous phone call to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger in which he urged the Georgia official to “find” enough votes to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state.

Hice was among a group of Trump allies who pushed the Big Lie of a stolen election and voted to overturn the election results hours after the deadly Capitol insurrection. Witnesses testified to the Jan. 6 Select Committee that Hice attended a Dec. 21, 2020 meeting at the White House with other members of the House Freedom Caucus as they planned to challenge the election results on the day of the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6.

[LFC]

This is a good piece on the Independent State Legislature Theory, separating what it is and what it is not. The author said that it most definitely does not support the concept of changing the results after the election.

What Independent State Legislature Theory Is Not

In Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, one of the most outlandish ideas was cooked up by conservative academic John Eastman. Couched in language superficially similar to ISL theory, Eastman asserted that state legislatures have a plenary power to convene after the election, set aside the results, and appoint slates of Trump electors instead of the Biden electors that had been chosen by voters.

No state legislature acted on this wild idea. Leaders such as the Arizona House speaker and the governor of Georgia rejected it as flagrantly unconstitutional. Vice President Mike Pence, too, refused to obstruct the joint session of Congress and follow Trump’s demand that he “send [the electoral votes] back to the States” for legislatures to reconsider them.

The superficial similarity of this plan to the ISL theory comes from the Constitution’s Electors Clause, which is phrased similarly to the congressional Elections Clause: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors,” who then meet as the Electoral College and formally elect the next president and vice president.

The power granted to state lawmakers by this provision is very broad, broader even than for congressional elections. The Constitution does not require states to hold popular elections at all to pick their presidential electors. States can, if they want, have the legislature itself choose the members of the Electoral College. Or they could theoretically use any number of other methods, including drawing names out of a hat. But in every state, the longstanding practice has been to give the choice to the voters, who pick from among slates of elector candidates nominated by each party. No state has done it any other way since 1876 and there’s no serious move afoot to change that.

While this power is broad, there is a crucial limit on it. The Constitution also says that, “The Congress may determine the Time of chusing [sic] the Electors.” That time is set by 3 USC §1 as “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November.” In other words, Election Day.

States have the freedom to decide how their electors will be chosen. They’ve always had that ability and they don’t need ISL theory to invoke it. But what they can’t do—ISL or no ISL—is hold an election, decide they don’t like the results, and only then choose a different method.

Election Day is the inherent deadline for a state to determine how it will choose electors and implement the method chosen. After that, the legislature, however that term is interpreted, plays no further role in the matter. This isn’t a question of constitutional ambiguity or serious dispute: a state can’t decide how it will do something after the time for doing it has already passed.

State legislatures overturning presidential elections in this manner is not a part of the independent state legislature theory as advocated by credible scholars and embraced by at least some conservatives on the Supreme Court. It is, simply put, nonsense that was made up by Eastman and other Trump sycophants in 2020. No judge on any court, anywhere in the country, has ever endorsed it. Nothing about Moore will change that.

To the degree there is any wiggle room on this point, it’s not because of ISL theory. Rather, it’s the unfortunately unclear provision of federal law which covers the possibility of “failed” elections. This provision needs to be reformed as part of an overhaul of the Electoral Count Act. But even as it stands and properly interpreted, it does not give legislatures a blank check to overturn elections whenever they want. Any attempt to invoke it for that purpose would rest on a statutory argument, not ISL theory as a constitutional matter.

But if you’ve followed any of the media coverage and commentary about Moore, you’d easily get the opposite impression. Mainstream outlets and public figures have repeatedly asserted, without any hint of why this is wrong, that the ISL theory is one and the same as Eastman’s crackpot gambit.

With the current SCOTUS and their proven ability to justify whatever they wish I am less optimistic. Think Bush v. Gore and how effortlessly a less corrupt court justified that outcome. Maybe it won't be an ISL argument, as the author notes, but if the difference between a Republican or a Democrat becoming president was one purple state with a red legislature then all they'd have to do is screech "FRAUD!", without any evidence just as today, and partisan hack SCOTUS would fall in line in a nanosecond. Sure they'd wring their hands and wrap it in bullshit but the outcome would be a given before the case ever reached them.

[LFC]

Trump continues to beg that Republicans overturn the election. He must be scared shitless of prosecution.

If At First You Don’t Succeed…

Wisconsin state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) told local outlet WISN12 on Tuesday that the ex-president called him within the last week to demand that the GOP leader magically get the 2020 election decertified, which Vos described as “very consistent” of Trump.

• Vos characterized the demand as Trump wanting “us to do something different.”

• And naturally, Trump called Vos a “RINO” (Republican In Name Only) on his fake Twitter app when the Wisconsin Republican told him no.

[LFC]

Excellent! Now let's add charges and prosecution for the rest of those directly involved in this aspect of the coup so fascists will think twice about trying to overthrow our democracy.

All Fake Georgia Trump Electors Told They Could Face Criminal Charges

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office has sent all 16 of Trump’s sham electors in Georgia a notice telling them that they’re now targets of her 2020 election investigation and therefore could face prosecution.

• Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) accepted the subpoena in Willis’ probe on Tuesday. The GOP senator and Willis have agreed to contest his challenge of the subpoena in state or federal court in Georgia.

• Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) is trying to quash the grand jury’s subpoena to him.

[LFC]

From the Department of I'll Believe It When I See It.

News broke Wednesday afternoon, in reports from The Washington Post, NBC News and Politico, that a bipartisan group of senators had come up with a legislative package to safeguard election results from another Trumpian coup attempt.

The primary focus of the reported package is the Electoral Count Act, the vague 135-year-law that Trump, lawyer John Eastman and others targeted to argue that Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to overturn the 2020 election results. Efforts to update the law have, before now, proceeded very slowly.

Unlike past attempts to reform the law, this one appears to have significant bipartisan support: The Post’s report counted nine Republican senators as part of a negotiating group working on the proposal. That’s in addition to the potential support of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who along with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) reportedly gave the group “a long leash,” indicating a possible embrace from Senate leadership.

The negotiating effort was reportedly led by Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Joe Manchin (D-WV).

Manchin and Collins. Now there's a pair to put your faith in.

[LFC]

Giuliani must appear in Georgia since he failed to show up and justify why he shouldn't have to go.

Rudy Giuliani was ordered on Wednesday to testify before a Fulton County special grand jury next month in its investigation into former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results in Georgia.

The order was made after the former New York City mayor didn’t show up to a hearing in his hometown to challenge the subpoena.

A Wednesday court filing indicated Giuliani did not appear before New York Supreme Court Justice Thomas Farber last week to make his case against the Georgia subpoena, which deemed him as a “necessary and material witness” in the grand jury’s investigation.

Farber has now ordered Giuliani to testify before the grand jury beginning on Aug. 9 “and on any such other dates as this Court may order.”

[LFC]

Florida keeps Jim Crow alive and well by ensuring often near insurmountable barriers for felons to regain their right to vote, despite the people overwhelmingly voting for that right to be restored. This is truly evil.

Supporters applauded the law as restoring voting rights to what experts estimate is over 1 million people in Florida, about 5% of the population of the state.

But the state’s dominant Republican lawmakers quickly installed a financial hurdle to those new rights. The following year, they passed a law to clarify that people convicted of felonies could only vote if they first paid off any money they owed for committing their crimes. The penalty for registering or voting without doing so: a felony charge for voter fraud.

On the surface, the mandate seemed reasonable: Even advocates for Amendment 4 agreed that requiring paying off fines and restitution to victims was just. In Florida, however, that task proved a sometimes insurmountable challenge — one that disproportionately hit Black people. Florida has no centralized database to allow people to figure out what legal financial obligations they owe to the state. Instead, its 67 counties and various state agencies each maintain their own databases. The state also does not track information for federal or out-of-state convictions, which people are also required to pay off before voting.

On top of the fines and restitution, Florida layers on court fees that can run into the hundreds of dollars. Together, a voter’s debt can run into the thousands, a financial hole that some may never climb out of.

“That’s kind of the bottom line of the absurdity of this — it’s Kafkaesque,” said Dan Smith, chair of the political science department at the University of Florida. “It’s very troubling that we would have state attorneys prosecuting individuals who did not know their status, and there was no way for them to determine their status.”

Florida’s voting hurdles are part of a national pattern. For years across the country, Republican state lawmakers have been implementing new restrictive voting laws, including reducing access to vote-by-mail ballots, stricter voter identification rules and limits on early voting. These efforts have accelerated since Donald Trump promoted the false claims that Joe Biden stole the 2020 presidential election. Democrats, meanwhile, have pushed to expand voting access.

[LFC]

Emails showed that Trump advisers knew that their "fake electors" scheme was, indeed, fake.

A month after Election Day, a lawyer working on Donald Trump’s bid to steal a second term in office was brutally honest — if only in private — about the effort to submit fraudulent slates of Electoral College votes from several states around the country.

“We would just be sending in ‘fake’ electoral votes to Pence so that ‘someone’ in Congress can make an objection when they start counting votes, and start arguing that the ‘fake’ votes should be counted,” said the Arizona lawyer Jack Wilenchik, in an email to trump advisor Boris Epshteyn.

Wilenchik then had second thoughts.

“‘alternative’ votes is probably a better term than ‘fake’ votes,” he said in a follow-up email, alongside a smiley face emoji.

The emails — reported by The New York Times Tuesday — show the frantic, sometimes bumbling nature of the Trumpian effort to steal power and subvert democracy.

The drive to have Pence reject legitimate Electoral College votes relied on the fraudulent electors scheme, which Trump’s advisors hoped would inject doubt into what was meant to be a ceremonial certification. In reality, it ended with a mob of Trump supporters sacking Congress and calling for Pence’s head. The Times’ newly reported records show how, in the days ahead of that attack, the scheme came together in misspelled emails and the murmurs of attorneys and advisors.

In the same follow-up email, on Dec. 8, Wilenchik relayed that it sounded like Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward “would be very much into the idea” of using fake electors. But she had some thoughts about timing, he said.

“Kelli’s thought it [sic] to try to keep it under wraps until Congress counts the vote Jan. 6th (so we can try to ‘surprise’ the Dems and media with it) — I tend to agree with her,” he wrote.

The Times noted the emails weren’t shared with the White House Counsel’s office or even some lawyers on the Trump campaign, and that much of the organizing legwork behind the scheme fell to Epshteyn and Mike Roman, the Trump campaign’s Election Day operations director.