Voter Suppression & Election Theft by the Republican Party

[indy]

Of course they knew what they were doing. What was (and is) astounding to me is the number of 'elite' educations that were involved in this. Keli Ward went to Duke. Wilenchik is NYU. Epshteyn is Georgetown. All around this scheme is nothing but so-called top-notch educations. You can believe maybe a few of them got in via some other means, but they all can't be stupid. Ethically challenged, morally bankrupt certainly, but not stupid.

It's most likely that the 'fake' electors will be the ones holding the bag. Again, not stupid.

[LFC]

A judge just called out perpetrators of voter fraud fraud in Wisconsin. It's already siphoned off 7 figures of taxpayer dollars for what amounts to nothing more than political propaganda. Michael Gableman, the corrupt piece of shit being paid for his "investigation", needs to be jailed for contempt and destruction of public records.

A Wisconsin judge ripped into the partisan “investigation” of Wisconsin’s 2020 election Thursday, saying not only had it not uncovered any evidence of voter fraud, but also that the process had “punished” the people of Wisconsin.

In her last hearing as a judge before retiring, Dane County Circuit Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn awarded $98,000 in attorneys fees to the liberal watchdog group American Oversight, which has filed several lawsuits against the election investigators for alleged public records law violations.

Bailey-Rihn said she was not awarding any further punitive damages — which like the lawyers fees would be paid by taxpayers — because “I think the people of the state of Wisconsin have been punished enough for this case.” The Associated Press reported the judge’s remarks.

“I don’t think it does anyone any good to have punitive damages placed on the innocent people of this state,” the judge added. The probe has already crossed the seven-figure mark.

The hearing Thursday concerned one of multiple public records lawsuits — three of which are still pending — against the investigators. Michael Gableman, the former state Supreme Court justice leading the investigation, was ordered to stop deleting investigatory records by another judge earlier this year — Dane County Judge Frank Remington, who Gableman later berated in a courtroom meltdown.

At various points, both Gableman and Robin Vos, the Republican Wisconsin Assembly speaker, have been found to be in contempt for failing to comply with orders regarding public records. Bailey-Rihn said Thursday that the case had shown among other things that Vos and Gableman believed they had no obligation to comply with state records laws.

“That’s one thing the citizens of this state have learned to their detriment,” the judge said.

[LFC]

Classic fascism. Attempt fraud in an election by absentee ballot, get caught, then have an official decide not to charge the fraudsters but instead attack absentee ballots. It's pure Republican in it's obviousness and audacity.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) met Thursday night to discuss a recent announcement from the Racine County Sheriff’s Office that a number of activists had fraudulently requested absentee ballots as a way to prove the state’s online election system is vulnerable to fraud.

The commission decided to wait until next week to consider referring criminal charges against the activists, but did vote 6-0 to send a communication to local municipal clerks to be aware of the issue and remind them of their obligation to refer cases to their local district attorneys if they believe a crime has occurred. The body also voted 6-0 to send postcards to the approximately 4,000 voters they believe might be vulnerable to the strategy — people who requested absentee ballots be sent to an address different from the one they’re registered under.

On Wednesday, Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling — a supporter of former President Donald Trump — wrote in a Facebook post that his office, which has spent nearly two years investigating apparent voter fraud in the 2020 election, had discovered alleged “vulnerabilities” in the state’s MyVote online system. The apparent flaw was discovered when several right-wing activists focused on sussing out election fraud requested absentee ballots on behalf of other people — including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Racine Mayor Cory Mason.

Rather than charge those activists with the crime they’ve admitted to committing, Schmaling wrote in the post that he was calling for the suspension of the MyVote system’s absentee ballot request function, which essentially sends an email to a person’s local clerk requesting that an absentee ballot be sent.

Elections officials have responded by insisting that this isn’t a flaw in the MyVote system, saying that the fact that someone can commit a crime doesn’t make it a flaw.

“Claiming that by committing a crime by submitting false information to obtain an absentee ballot somehow reveals a vulnerability of our system is inaccurate and irresponsible,” WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe said in a statement. “Intentionally using someone else’s identity to subvert the system does not demonstrate a flaw with MyVote, but rather a flaw with that person’s conduct. A nefarious person who chooses to impersonate someone else in order to gain official documents of any kind – whether for election use or any other purpose – is clearly violating state and federal law and could face consequences.”

“The WEC and your local clerk are continually monitoring for any unlawful activity and working with state and federal authorities to investigate any and all attempts to break the law regarding access to absentee ballots,” she continued.

At the meeting Thursday evening, the Democrats on the commission urged the body to take action against the people who had committed the fraud, including Harry Wait, an activist focused on elections who runs HOT (honest, open and transparent) Government. Wait is a supporter of Vos’ primary election opponent, Adam Steen, but successfully ordered an absentee ballot under the speaker’s name.

So much for the "law and order party."

[LFC]

Colorado election criminal Tina Peters managed to raise a quarter million for a recount of the primary election where she managed to place 3rd. Gawd, Republicans are SO f***ing stupid. I can't feel even a little sorry for them being sheared. It's like they're begging to have their pockets picked.

According to a report from the Washington Post, former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters has raised enough donations to pay the $256,000 fee to pay for a recount after coming in third in a recent primary election.

Peters, who was indicted by a grand jury in March on ten counts, including breaching the security of Mesa County elections systems ,has been a major proponent of claiming that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election due to fraud.

Her legal woes and election conspiracy mongering didn't keep her from running for her position again where she came in a distant third to winner Pam Anderson, who received 43 percent of the vote to Peters' 28.3 percent.

Following her election loss, Peters proclaimed, "We didn’t lose, we just found evidence of more fraud … they’re cheating and we’ll prove it once again.”

Making good on her threat to contest the election results,, the former county employee raised the needed $256K needed for the secretary of state to order a recount, with Peters claiming she raised the money legally "from individual donors who complied with the state’s $1,250 political contribution limit."

Peters was late coming up with the money, with the election having been certified on Monday, but the secretary of state is allowing the ballots to be recounted by machine by Aug. 4 providing the fee is paid before then.

[LFC]

The Michigan secretary of state believes that virtually anything is possible in the upcoming primaries. Republicans have been busy replacing sane, honest people with utter nutters who would do anything to make sure their candidates win, justifying in their little fevered brains that it was the right thing to do.

With Michigan’s Tuesday primaries looming on the horizon, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) is preparing for the very real possibility that rogue canvassers may try to hijack the election certification process on the basis of voter fraud lies.

Amid a troubling trend of Michigan county Republicans quietly replacing election board canvassers who voted to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, Benson told the Detroit News in an interview that was published on Sunday that her office was “ready for anything at this point.”

“Any attempts to block the certification of our elections, regardless of the results, will be futile,” the elections official said. “We are confident that the courts will swiftly enforce the law and that at the end of the day, the will of the people will stand.”

Benson said that her office has been making sure canvassers understand that they’re legally obligated to allow the certification process to proceed uninterrupted.

As another safeguard, Benson’s office has also drawn up a “Poll Worker’s Code of Conduct” to prevent a repeat of the chaos brought on by Trump supporters that exploded at Detroit’s convention center the day after the 2020 election as workers were trying to count absentee ballots.

And Benson is ready to get the authorities involved to ensure the code of conduct gets enforced.

“If it is not (followed), we are in touch with local law enforcement, as well as local clerks, to ensure that any disruptions or illegal activity is dealt with swiftly, so we can minimize any potential impact … on the elections,” she told the Detroit News.

Good luck with that if any of the local law enforcement are part of the "constitutional sheriffs" fascists.

[pnwguy]

Aug 1, 2022 16:36:13 GMT LFC said:

The Michigan secretary of state believes that virtually anything is possible in the upcoming primaries. Republicans have been busy replacing sane, honest people with utter nutters who would do anything to make sure their candidates win, justifying in their little fevered brains that it was the right thing to do.

Good luck with that if any of the local law enforcement are part of the "constitutional sheriffs" fascists.

So the next Bannon Plan can be to just organize armed thugs at state election offices to break in and destroy ballot integrity.  Then the GOP henchmen can say the results can't be certified, and the legislature must send in electors for the GOP candidate, whether that's Beetlejuice or DeSatanist or some other fascist who emerges from the 2024 primary.

[LFC]

Republicans are making sure our elections stay as broken as possible. This could have gone into the fascism thread since protecting your own's illegal activity is key to seizing power.

For years, critics have argued the Federal Election Commission has been effectively broken. Now MAGA-land is going to court to make sure it stays that way.

The FEC is charged with civil enforcement of campaign finance laws, but in recent years Republican commissioners have opted not to take action in a slew of cases—even after the agency’s own attorneys have found reason to believe laws were violated. The continual deadlock has led to accusations that the agency is broken and neglecting its duty.

Recently, however, Democratic commissioners found a way around the deadlock, opening a path through the courts if the Republicans fail to act. But it’s a long process, and now three committees with Trumpworld ties—the campaign for Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), the National Rifle Association, and a pro-Trump outside group called the 45Committee—are fighting back with their own lawsuits in hopes of thwarting the thwarters.

Democratic commissioner Ellen Weintraub told The Daily Beast that these Republicans are “perfectly happy” with the status quo.

“Unfortunately, there are some people who want to see it stay broken,” Weintraub said. “They’re perfectly happy with us failing to act. That’s a good thing to them. But they don’t get to control all the outcomes.”

All three of the committees suing the FEC were accused of campaign finance violations, and all three escaped action with a deadlocked vote.

There's a host of cases that the Republicans on the FEC have blocked or simply refused to vote on including dozens of cases filed against Trump and his campaign. No comment, no discussion, just obstruction. Real Americans do, however, have another avenue to open up suits. Of course Republicans desperately want to stop that too. Unfortunately it's a slow process.

“If GOP commissioners have unilateral authority to kill decisions, and are immune from all political and legal checks on their power, it undermines the public’s faith in the law,” McPhail said.

But there is a legal check, and the MAGA lawsuits are trying to block it.

When Congress created the FEC, they intentionally gave the agency six commissioners and required that neither party have a majority. But Congress knew this setup would at times lead to deadlock, so they built what Weintraub calls “an escape hatch” into the law.

“If the commission doesn’t act, people can sue us directly and seek a private right of action in federal court,” she said.

That’s what they’re doing, thanks to a loophole that the Republicans desperately want to close. Because while the FEC needs a majority to enforce the law, it also needs four votes to close those cases.

“One day, the Democrats just said, ‘We’re not going to vote to close these cases,’” McPhail said. “That move allows plaintiffs to take the FEC to court for failing to act, and then the court can authorize you to bypass the FEC and file your own lawsuit directly against the defendant.”

Watchdog groups including CREW have started taking this route, but it’s a long one and none of the suits have made it all the way through to a judgment.

[LFC]

The Republican Party and "Stop the Steal" are working together to train up a corps of plaid shirts on how to steal elections. Bold of fascist voter suppression mine.

The Republican National Committee has been relying on a stable of the party’s most prolific spreaders of false stolen-election theories to pilot a sweeping “election integrity” operation to recruit and coach thousands of poll workers in eight battleground states, according to new recordings of organizing summits held this spring in Florida and Pennsylvania obtained by POLITICO.

On the tapes, RNC National Election Integrity Director Josh Findlay repeatedly characterizes the committee’s role as supporting in-state coalitions — delivering staff, organization and “muscle” in key states to the person they identify as the quarterback of the effort to create a permanent workforce: Conservative elections attorney Cleta Mitchell, who was a central figure in former President Donald Trump’s legal strategy to overturn the 2020 election.

“Cleta Mitchell, she’s like the best election and election law expert out there. We’re not going to tell her what to do,” Findlay told a March 31 Pennsylvania session organized by Mitchell.

Publicly, the RNC has insisted its goal is to ensure there are enough trained poll workers to protect the electoral process and ensure partisan parity at polling centers. The recordings, however, indicated that the RNC is relying heavily on people who have spread false or unproven claims of irregularities and conspiracies. The recordings feature Findlay speaking at a number of Mitchell’s “Election Integrity Network” summits, which her group has hosted in battleground states including Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. The RNC is just “part of the team,” he told a Florida summit the same month.

While Republicans have said the aim of their “election integrity” effort is to ensure there are well-trained poll workers during the next election, the recordings also feature Mitchell speaking openly about the need to challenge efforts by nonprofit groups aligned with Democrats to create a “new American majority” of young voters, people of color and unmarried women.

“It’s a place the left sees as a great target of opportunity, and we have to make sure that doesn’t happen,” she said, referring to Democratic efforts to register voters from traditionally underrepresented voting blocs.

[LFC]

The PA supreme court upheld mail-in voting, the bipartisan created system that Republicans were for before they were against it because the Orange Man told them it was bad. Once again the Democrats are trying to expand the vote and Republicans are trying to suppress it with screeching about near non-existent voter fraud.

Pennsylvania’s mail-voting law is constitutional, the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday, upholding the 2019 measure that allows any voter to use mail ballots and removing a cloud of uncertainty heading into the midterm elections.

The law dramatically expanded mail voting from a method that had been allowed only in a very small number of cases — about 5% of votes in any given election — to one used by millions over the last two years.

It was the product of bipartisan negotiations between Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and Republicans who control the state legislature, the biggest change to Pennsylvania election law in generations. But its implementation in 2020 came during both the first year of the pandemic and a heated presidential election. As massive numbers of voters cast ballots by mail, state and county elections officials tried to build out the system — in some cases triggering Republican outrage and lawsuits over their decisions.

That was further stoked by then-President Donald Trump, who began attacking mail voting months before his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Republicans have continued to try to dismantle the law known as Act 77, with some saying it has been abused in its implementation, and others espousing bogus conspiracy theories about widespread fraud.

The resulting partisan divide over a mail voting law that had been carefully negotiated — and trumpeted — by both Democrats and Republicans was on full display following the ruling Tuesday.

“I will continue to advocate for voting reforms that remove barriers and increase access to voting,” Wolf said in a statement as Democrats and allied groups applauded the court.

House Republicans’ point person on elections, meanwhile, suggested the elected Democrats who make up the court’s majority were acting as partisans. And the spokesperson for Senate Republicans said the ruling “underscores the importance of the actions taken by the General Assembly to strengthen election integrity,” including moving to add strict voter ID requirements to the state Constitution.

All I can say is, "Suck it, Republicans!"

[goldenvalley]

Aug 3, 2022 14:04:46 GMT LFC said:

The PA supreme court upheld mail-in voting, the bipartisan created system that Republicans were for before they were against it because the Orange Man told them it was bad. Once again the Democrats are trying to expand the vote and Republicans are trying to suppress it with screeching about near non-existent voter fraud.

I don't know if changing the language used would help, but I would avoid saying "expand the vote".  That leads suspicious people to think that non eligible people are being allowed to vote.  What is being done is making voting more accessible to eligible voters.   It's time to leave the 19th Century system behind...modern people either don't have or feel they don't have the time to go vote in person in one place on one day.  

[LFC]

As if they couldn't be more transparent about their support of The Big Lie.

Candidates who’ve pushed lies about the 2020 election, and who’ve campaigned on various schemes to limit or subvert democracy, did quite well in Tuesday’s primary elections in several states around the country.

Still, there’s one iron-clad law of lying about elections: Once you start, it’s not easy to stop.

Take Kari Lake, who’s on track to secure the GOP nomination for Arizona’s governor race. Lake alleged fraud before the votes were even counted — a well–worn strategy employed by other Big Liars across the country, because it has no discernible consequences, aside from degrading the democratic process.

“We’re already detecting some stealing going on, but you guys know I’m a fighter right?” she said at a campaign stop Monday. “You haven’t seen me when they try to steal something. I’m gonna go supernova radioactive. We’re not gonna let them steal an election.” Time and again, pressed for any evidence at all that there’d been cheating, Lake simply refused to share details of the alleged crime.

“I’m not telling you about it,” Lake told NBC News’ Vaughn Hillyard on Monday.

Sure enough, at the beginning of the night Tuesday — when she was trailing her opponent — Lake retweeted the account of an anonymous supposed poll worker who claimed “10-15%” of ballots had been “smeared” as a result of the type of pens election officials were using. The Trump-allied pundit and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk referred to the supposed phenomena as “Sharpiegate 2.0,” an homage to the debunked conspiracy theory that ballots were spoiled due to pen type in 2020.

Then… in-person Election Day results started rolling in, bumping up Lake’s support. Eventually, Lake took the lead. Her tone, understandably, changed. “There is no path to victory for my opponent, and we won this race, period,” Lake announced triumphantly at a party, even though she was still technically behind in the ballots counted at that point.

In 2021, Lake scoffed at the idea that Joe Biden could overtake Donald Trump’s lead in several states as ballot-counting continued after Election Day. “It’s magic!” she said. This time around, Lake’s campaign sent a tweet in the wee morning hours Wednesday, showing the moment she “found out she won the election.” (Note: News organizations, including TPM, have not called the election yet, considering it still too close to make a final determination of the winner.)

[LFC]

TPM has a good explanation of how the fake electors fit into the coup scheme.

The fake electors, then, served as an entry point for much of the plotting on how to use the Jan. 6 certification session to throw the election to Trump.

Take Peter Navarro’s so-called “Green Bay Sweep,” for example.

In that plan, Jan. 6 would see repeated objections by GOP members of Congress to different state electoral votes. That would lead to free, televised press for Trump’s election conspiracy allegations, giving time for state legislatures in swing states that Biden won to “de-certify” the results. The fake pro-Trump GOP electors could then step in as the newly certified, supposedly rightful electors

Alternatively, look at the planning for Vice President Mike Pence.

Trump and his acolytes applied intense pressure on Pence to discard the real, Biden electors and, possibly, replace them with the fake Trump electors. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) even tried to pass a list of Wisconsin’s fake slate to Pence.

Pence, then, would be able to singlehandedly invalidate Biden’s win, either by refusing to count his votes, or by subbing in the fake pro-Trump slates.

In that regard, the fake electors’ purpose was clear: open the way to transforming Jan. 6 from the mere formalization of Biden’s win to its theft.

So, why does this matter for how we see the electors themselves?

The people who posed the real choice of their respective states are, by and large, officials from the local Republican establishments. They’re selected before the election itself takes place. In a typical year, they only cast their votes once state officials have certified the election for the candidate to whom they are pledged.

There’s an obvious question here: What – or who – made them act differently in 2020?

The fake certificates that the electors used bear strong similarities across the seven false slates that were submitted. Typically, the certificates vary widely in their language, with each state getting to decide how to submit them to Congress.

That’s led some investigators to suggest a high level of coordination in the slates’ creation, something that may have come from above.

Federal prosecutors have reportedly been investigating the fake elector scheme since autumn 2021. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco publicly confirmed the investigation in January, noting that several state attorney generals had referred the matter to the DOJ.

[LFC]

More on John Eastman, the Trump lawyer who was a/the major architect of the coup. Bonus schadenfreude points for being stiffed by Trump on his legal bills.

I’ll Never Let Go, Jack!

John Eastman emailed Rudy Giuliani on Inauguration Day 2021 proposing that they file more election lawsuits to try to delegitimize the results of Georgia’s Jan. 5 Senate runoffs won by Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. The email was obtained by the New York Times.

• Eastman’s email indicated that unlike with the presidential election, the proposal was less about undoing the runoff results and more about saving face after his voter fraud conspiracy theories were shown to be, uh, bullshit. “A lot of us have now staked our reputations on the claims of election fraud, and this would be a way to gather proof,” Eastman wrote.

• Eastman also asked Giuliani to help him collect the $270,000 he claimed the Trump campaign owed him for his coup services. Trump had predictably bilked Eastman out of those legal bills, and it’s not clear how helpful Giuliani could’ve been given that he too got stiffed by his client.

[LFC]

Jul 29, 2022 19:10:36 GMT LFC said:

Colorado election criminal Tina Peters managed to raise a quarter million for a recount of the primary election where she managed to place 3rd. Gawd, Republicans are SO f***ing stupid. I can't feel even a little sorry for them being sheared. It's like they're begging to have their pockets picked.

That flushing sound? A big old pile of MAGAt money going down the toilet!

It’s confirmed: Hardline election denier Tina Peters, the indicted Mesa County clerk in Colorado, lost the GOP primary for secretary of state — and lost by a whole lot.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) announced on Thursday that the recount Peters had requested after making unfounded claims of voter fraud only confirmed the results of the election, where the winner, Pam Anderson, had steamrolled Peters by a 14-point margin.

The vote tallies included in Griswold’s announcement show that Peters gained 13 votes — but so did Anderson. A third candidate, Mike O’Donnell, gained 11 votes.

[LFC]

The Republican running for Michigan AG is now under investigation for election tampering so his Democratic opponent, the current AG, must recuse herself and bring in a special prosecutor. You can't make this shit up. The banana Republicans are destroying our democracy at every turn.

Michigan’s attorney general is requesting a special prosecutor be named to investigate her Trump-endorsed opponent, citing evidence tying him to a potentially criminal scheme to seize and tamper with voting machines, according to documents obtained by POLITICO.

The decision comes after a monthslong investigation by Michigan State Police and the attorney general, Dana Nessel, into voting machine breaches that took place in several Michigan counties. That investigation unexpectedly led to Kalamazoo lawyer Matthew DePerno, whom former President Donald Trump has taken an outsize interest in promoting to be Michigan’s next attorney general.

According to an Aug. 5 petition from Nessel’s office requesting a special prosecutor, DePerno, in concert with two other people, “orchestrated a coordinated plan to gain access to voting tabulators” that were illegally seized from county clerks.

The petition was formally made to the Michigan Prosecuting Attorneys Coordinating Council, an autonomous state body. In it, Nessel’s office states that DePerno — who has been a pivotal figure promoting Trump’s false allegations that the 2020 election was stolen — was present at an Oakland County hotel room sometime in early 2021, during which tabulators were tampered with. According to people involved in the investigation, this is among multiple pieces of evidence linking DePerno to the breach of several voting machines.

As it became evident that DePerno was a subject of the investigation, Nessel’s office decided to request a special prosecutor so as to try to avoid the appearance of political motivation, according to the request.

Maybe Clarence Thomas should study this lesson on how an honest official dealing with legal matters act.

[LFC]

Gee, look who just embraced reality. What a cynical, self-serving, corrupt, anti-American piece of shit.

After barely surviving a primary challenge from a no-name, Trump-endorsed opponent, Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) trashed the partisan 2020 election investigation for which he’s authorized more than $1 million.

The leader of that so-called investigation, Michael Gableman, had endorsed Vos’ challenger, Adam Steen, in an effort to knock Vos out of one of the state’s top jobs. So had Donald Trump, who’d pressed Vos to decertify the 2020 election — a legal impossibility Vos rejected.

Trump endorsed Steen a week before the primary election day, calling him a “rising patriotic candidate.” He gave Steen a rally shoutout Friday as well. Gableman recorded a robocall in which he said Vos “never wanted a real investigation into the 2020 election in Wisconsin” — attempting to royally screw Vos after the legislative leader funded and promoted Gableman’s investigation for over a year.

So, when returns Tuesday night showed he was likely to win a narrow victory, Vos let loose.

“Mike Gableman is an embarrassment to the state,” he told reporters at an election night event. Later, Vos added: “We asked two simple things: Don’t get involved in politics and please try to make sure you focus on the investigation, not being on TV. He couldn’t help himself.”

Let's roll the playback, shall we?

Alas, Vos has no one to blame but himself for Gableman’s Trumpian, shambolic, disinformation-fueled “investigation” of the 2020 election. It was Vos who authorized the probe and hired Gableman more than a year ago, and Vos who stood by Gableman’s side even as the former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice made evidently clear that he was not uncovering anything of value in his probe.

Gableman was openly partisan as he conducted his examination of the election, praising a Republican candidate for governor, hiring one investigator who led an organization that had sued to overturn the 2020 election results, and another who’d opined that the 2020 election was “was stolen, fair and square” and stressed the need for “our own irate hooligans” such as the Proud Boys. Gableman’s probe was originally scheduled to end on Oct. 31 last year, then December, then February, then April.

In March, as Vos extended Gableman’s contract yet again, Vos took aim not at Gableman, who he said had done an “outstanding job,” but at Democrats.

“We will continue to fight the obstruction and myriad of lawsuits filed by Democrats and out-of-state liberal activists, questioning the legislature’s subpoena power and ultimately keeping this matter from concluding in the time frame we expected,” Vos said. That comment came well after Gableman had sought to jail liberal mayors in Wisconsin who refused to cooperate with the review.

Vos and Gableman have both been found in contempt of court by state judges in Wisconsin, an outcome of the multiple public records lawsuits they’ve faced related to the investigation. Vos’ latest contract extension for Gableman had literally no end date at all — except to say that Gableman’s office “may remain open in order prosecute [sic] a series of lawsuits the Office is engaged in.”

And yet Gableman has repeatedly failed to show any smoking gun of election fraud. Rather, he made false assertions such as the claim that a large number of nursing homes had 100% voter turnout in 2020 — which was simply not true.

[LFC]

A judge GA just told Rudy to get his saggy, old, Trump's poodle ass down there.

A judge in Fulton County, Georgia on Tuesday rejected Rudy Giuliani’s attempt to skirt in-person testimony before a special grand jury, ordering him to travel by any other means to Atlanta.

Giuliani had previously argued that a recent medical procedure bars him from flying.

Giuliani has told prosecutors that he is unable to testify in person for an investigation into election interference in the battleground state due to the implantation of two coronary heart stents last month.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney swiftly rejected Giuliani’s argument on Tuesday and tentatively ordered him to appear for in-person testimony on Aug. 17.

“Mr. Giuliani is not cleared for air travel, A-I-R,” McBurney said during a hearing on Tuesday afternoon, according to the New York Times. “John Madden drove all over the country in his big bus, from stadium to stadium.”

McBurney reportedly floated other ideas besides air travel that Giuliani could use to appear for testimony “without jeopardizing his recovery and his health.”

“On a train, on a bus or Uber, or whatever it would be,” McBurney said, the Times reported, adding, “New York is not close to Atlanta, but it’s not traveling from Fairbanks.”

How bad is Rudy's medical condition? Uuuuhhhh...

Tuesday’s hearing comes a day after prosecutors with the Fulton County district attorney’s office pushed back on Giuliani’s effort to get out of his testimony. Prosecutors pointed out that Giuliani paid for recent international travel “with cash,” purportedly for travel to Rome and Zurich during the week of July 22 to July 29.

In an email to Giuliani attorney Robert Costello on Monday, Deputy District Attorney Will Wooten said the office will “provide alternate transportation including bus or train if your client maintains that he is unable to fly.”

In the email, prosecutors attached a tweet that Giuliani sent on Aug. 1, saying that he was “having fun” in the 603 — a New Hampshire area code. Prosecutors said that both the alleged cash-paid travel and the tweet occurred after Giuliani’s medical procedure.

[LFC]

Little Lindsey must be wetting his pull-ups.

Georgia DA Zeroes In On Graham’s Coordination With Trump

As Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) fights a Georgia grand jury subpoena, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office has indicated in court that it’s looking to dig into whatever coordinated effort the GOP senator may have had with Trump’s 2020 campaign in trying to overturn the election results in Georgia.

[LFC]

The Republican candidate for attorney general admitted he was involved in election tampering.

Michigan AG Hopeful Bragged About Breaking Into Voting Equipment

Matthew DePerno, the Trump-backed candidate for Michigan attorney general, boasted during several podcast interviews throughout the spring last year that he and his motley crew of election “investigators” had gotten access to a voting tabulator. Like, just openly bragged about it.

• “We got access to a tabulator, and we were able to simulate elections,” DePerno said during one interview in May last year.

• DePerno was allegedly at the center of a plot to seize and break into several counties’ voting machines, according to Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D), whose office is investigating the breaches (Nessel herself seeks to recuse herself from the case since DePerno will likely be her rival in the November elections).

[LFC]

Aug 11, 2022 17:34:06 GMT LFC said:

Little Lindsey must be wetting his pull-ups.

Georgia DA Zeroes In On Graham’s Coordination With Trump

As Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) fights a Georgia grand jury subpoena, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office has indicated in court that it’s looking to dig into whatever coordinated effort the GOP senator may have had with Trump’s 2020 campaign in trying to overturn the election results in Georgia.

OMG, now he's hiding! They need to find him in contempt and issue a bench warrant immediately. Sure, he'll just avoid ever going to Georgia (their gain on that front) but it would be fun to see Little Lindsey being a wanted criminal.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Wednesday did not show up for his scheduled appearance at the Fulton County courthouse, following an agreement he reached with the county district attorney, according to a local CBS affiliate.

TPM reached out to Graham’s office for comment.

A special grand jury led by Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis is investigating former President Trump and his allies’ efforts to subvert the 2020 election results in Georgia. Willis recently subpoenaed Graham who initially challenged the subpoena in his home state. Last month, Graham reached an agreement with Willis to move his challenges to a district court in Georgia.

Graham followed through with disputing the subpoena earlier this month, attempting to quash it.

In their challenge, Graham’s lawyers argued that he has “absolute legislative immunity and privilege” under the Constitution’s speech or debate clause. They also asserted the defense of federal sovereign immunity in challenging the subpoena.

Last month, a county judge in Georgia ruled that Graham must testify before the special grand jury in Willis’ investigation. The grand jury wants to hear from Graham because of the calls he made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), who refused to do Trump’s bidding of overturning the election results. In at least one of the calls, Graham allegedly asked Raffensperger to toss out some legally cast ballots. The calls were cited in the subpoena Willis sent to Graham.

[LFC]

Aug 10, 2022 18:47:55 GMT LFC said:

Gee, look who just embraced reality. What a cynical, self-serving, corrupt, anti-American piece of shit.

After barely surviving a primary challenge from a no-name, Trump-endorsed opponent, Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) trashed the partisan 2020 election investigation for which he’s authorized more than $1 million.

And lookie who's running in the general election now. What a cynical, two-faced, son of a bitch.

Just a few days after defeating a Trump-backed primary challenger, Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) fired the partisan election “investigator” he himself had hired more than a year ago, in what turned out to be a futile attempt to appease Trump and others who lied about the supposed theft of the 2020 election, the Associated Press has reported.

The investigator, former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, was openly partisan from the start, endorsing a Republican for governor, hiring a man who had sued to overturn Trump’s loss as an investigator, and even suggesting to Wisconsin legislators that they take a “hard look” at decertifying the election — a legal impossibility that Vos resisted.

He’s also not been a very good investigator: Gableman claimed, in one instance, that a large number of nursing homes in the state had suspiciously shown 100% voter participation in 2020 — a statistic that was quickly shown to be simply false. A state judge later slammed Gableman because at the start of his probe, she said, taxpayers were paying for him “to sit in the New Berlin library to learn about election law because he knows nothing about election law.”

Nonetheless, Vos stuck by his hired investigator’s side for months, saying in March, as he extended Gableman’s contract yet again, that the former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice was doing an “outstanding job.”

For his part, Gableman eventually began to antagonize Vos, applying public pressure on the Assembly speaker to continue paying for his investigation even as it was beset with paralyzing public records lawsuits. (Both Vos and Gableman have been separately held in contempt of court throughout the course of those suits.)

Donald Trump added his own voice to the mix, threatening to endorse Vos’ primary challenger if Vos stood in the way of Gableman’s probe.

Vos, at that point, did what Trump and Gableman wanted, signing another contract with Gableman that didn’t even have an end date.

And yet, after Vos resisted yet another call from Trump to decertify the 2020 election results, Trump and Gableman turned against their legislative benefactor, endorsing his no-name opponent, Adam Steen, an election lie believer who lost the primary race to Vos by a very slim margin on Tuesday.

At that point, all bets were off: After early election results indicated his primary win, Vos attacked Trump, without naming him, and called Gableman “an embarrassment to the state.”

[goldenvalley]

Looks like there are breaches of voting equipment in Michigan...done by those who demand physical custody of voting tabulators under the guise of searching for evidence of fraud.  There's a conspiracy all right, but it's one that is being perpetrated by those who are "investigating" without proof of any fraud.  They just want to fish around in the equipment and make headlines about how they are fishing around.

In states across the country, including Colorado, Pennsylvania and Georgia, attempts to inappropriately access voting machines have spurred investigations. They have also sparked concern among election authorities that, while voting systems are broadly secure, breaches by those looking for evidence of fraud could themselves compromise the integrity of the process and undermine confidence in the vote.

On Friday, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law sent a memo to organizations representing thousands of local election officials nationwide advising them of the growing problem of machine breaches and how to respond to it. “Public confidence in future elections can be severely damaged by plausible allegations that unauthorized or biased actors have been given physical access to voting equipment,” the memo says.

The memo urges officials to have a plan in place to quickly investigate possible breaches of voting machines and to replace or decommission election equipment if needed. The memo recommends practices to prevent such tampering, including closely restricting access to election systems, instituting background checks on those who have access and installing surveillance cameras.

“It is super important for election officials to know these breaches of election security are occurring and that there have been swift and strong reactions to it,” said Lawrence Norden, director of elections and government for the Brennan Center. “We want to be sure local election officials know they have an obligation to detect and quickly take remedial action if a breach occurs.”

Here is commentary from one city elections official that refused to release the equipment:

Hawthorne, the clerk from Rutland Charter Township, was baffled by the theories presented to her during her meeting with Erb and Lynch about votes being shifted from Trump to Biden in a county that Trump won by a nearly 2-to-1 margin.
“They seem to think there was some kind of microchip in our tabulators that was throwing votes to Biden,” Hawthorne said. “But Trump won Barry County. He won by 65 percent of the vote, so I don’t know where they’re thinking that any kind of chips were in any of our machines or thinking that something had happened to them. The whole thing is nutty. It is nutty, totally nutty.”

[pnwguy]

Aug 15, 2022 15:06:12 GMT goldenvalley said:

“They seem to think there was some kind of microchip in our tabulators that was throwing votes to Biden,” Hawthorne said. “But Trump won Barry County. He won by 65 percent of the vote, so I don’t know where they’re thinking that any kind of chips were in any of our machines or thinking that something had happened to them. The whole thing is nutty. It is nutty, totally nutty.”

"Trump should have received at least 95% of the vote, so it must be fraud!  We did everything possible to keep them Marxist Antifa enemies from voting in our county!"

[andydp]

Another day and another Trump crime

Trump-Allied Lawyers Pursued Voting Machine Data

A team of computer experts directed by lawyers allied with President Donald Trump copied sensitive data from election systems in Georgia as part of a secretive, multistate effort to access voting equipment that was broader, more organized and more successful than previously reported,” the Washington Post reports.

“As they worked to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat, the lawyers asked a forensic data firm to access county election systems in at least three battleground states… The firm charged an upfront retainer fee for each job, which in one case was $26,000.”



politicalwire.com/2022/08/15/trump-allied-lawyers-pursued-voting-machine-data/

[jackd]

I'm not sure what the crime is.