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Election Interference Page 2

Tracking interference into our elections
In 2016, we had to worry about the Russians interfering in our elections. In 2020 we worried that the Russians would interfere again never did we think that the President of the Untied States would be the one inferring in our elections and attempting to steal the election. Some Republicans are now helping Donald J. Trump interfere with, subvert the law and the will of the people, and steal the election depriving 80,000,000 of their votes. Trump will fail in his attempt to steal the election however, the damage that he and his enablers have done to our democracy will be long lasting.

Noelle Dunphy is suing attorney Rudy Giuliani for wage theft and says she had access to thousands of his emails, including correspondence with former President Trump. “#SistersInLaw” podcast hosts Barbara McQuade, Kimberly Atkins Stohr, Joyce Vance and Jill Wine-Banks discuss the potential for “blockbuster testimony” from Dunphy and share why they’re expecting a Trump indictment in August.
Story by By SCOTT BAUER, Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin judge on Monday refused to break up a lawsuit filed against 10 fake electors for former President Donald Trump and two of his attorneys, saying the case could proceed in the county where it was filed.

The lawsuit seeks $2.4 million from the fake electors and their attorneys, alleging they were part of a conspiracy by Trump and his allies to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential race. It also seeks to disqualify the Republicans from ever serving as electors again.

Fake electors met in Wisconsin and other battleground states where Trump was defeated in 2020, attempting to cast ballots for the former president even though he lost. Republicans who participated in Wisconsin said they were trying to preserve Trump’s legal standing in case courts overturned his defeat.
Story by Gabriella Ferrigine

Attorneys for Georgia GOP Chairman David Shafer claimed that he should not face charges of the 2020 fake elector scheme because he was acting at the behest of lawyers working for former President Donald Trump.

Shafer's legal team, in a letter sent to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis last week, argued that their client was following "repeated and detailed advice of legal counsel" when he assembled a group of "contingent" Georgia electors and acted as one himself, thereby "eliminating any possibility of criminal intent or liability."

Willis and a team of prosecutors are embroiled in an ongoing investigation into efforts to flip the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. Willis opened the investigation in early 2021 after the revelation of a phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In the call, Trump suggested that the election official could "find" the 11,780 votes needed to overturn the state election. CNN reported that she plans to announce possible charges against the former president and his supporters sometime this summer.

BUENA VENTURA LAKES, Fla. (AP) — A former city commissioner in central Florida accused of being a “ghost candidate" in a 2022 county commission race has been arrested on several campaign finance charges.

Former Kissimmee Commissioner Carlos Irizarry Sr., 67, of Buena Ventura Lakes, was arrested Friday on eight counts of willful certification of false or incomplete campaign treasure’s reports and six counts of deliberate failure to report campaign expenditures as required, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said in a news release.

State investigators said they began looking into Irizarry last year following allegations that he was paid to enter the Osceola County Commission District 4 race to affect its outcome. Kissimmee and Osceola County are located immediately south of Orlando.
Story by Matthew Chapman

David Shafer, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, now claims that his plot to stand as a fake elector should not be criminally charged because he was acting on the advice of former President Donald Trump's legal team, reported CNN on Monday.

"Specifically, Shafer’s attorneys say their client was relying on 'repeated and detailed advice of legal counsel' when he organized a group of 'contingent' electors from Georgia and served as one himself, thus 'eliminating any possibility of criminal intent or liability,' according to a copy of the May 5 letter," reported Zachary Cohen and Sara Murray. "The letter, which was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, comes as Willis and her team of prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia are planning to make an announcement on possible charges against Trump or his allies later this summer."

This comes after reporting last week that eight of the 16 fake electors have accepted immunity deals from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
Story by By SCOTT BAUER, Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin judge said Monday he will order that the state elections commission reconsider a complaint filed against fake Republican electors who attempted in 2020 to cast the state's electoral ballots for former President Donald Trump.

But this time, Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington said, the commission must consider the complaint without the participation of one of its six commissioners who was also one of the fake electors.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission, Republican commissioner Robert Spindell and those who brought the lawsuit ultimately all agreed that the complaint should be heard again without Spindell's participation.

Given that agreement, Remington said during oral arguments on Monday that he would write a written order as soon as next week to vacate the commission's unanimous rejection in March 2022 of the complaint against the fake electors and to require it to consider it again without Spindell.
Story by Amy Gardner, Holly Bailey

At least eight of the 16 Georgia Republicans who convened in December 2020 to declare Donald Trump the winner of the presidential contest despite his loss in the state have accepted immunity deals from Atlanta-area prosecutors investigating alleged election interference, according to a lawyer for the electors.

Prosecutors with the office of Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) told the eight that they will not be charged with crimes if they testify truthfully in her sprawling investigation into efforts by Trump, his campaign and his allies to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia, according to a brief filed Friday in Fulton County Superior Court by defense attorney Kimberly Bourroughs Debrow.
Story by Kaila Philo

You’ll remember that, in the waning days of the Trump presidency, a crew of conspiracy-theorizing loyalists pushed the president to use the federal government to seize voting machines and investigate his bogus claims of fraud. Those plans never became reality, but Trump supporters did take matters into their own hands, breaching voting machines in locations around the country to try to substantiate Trump’s big lie. Here’s what’s new: It turns out Trump was at a meeting where those nascent, unlawful efforts were also discussed — back in December 2020. Trump was present as allies discussed a plot to unlawfully access voting machine software in Michigan and Georgia, according to testimony heard by the Jan. 6 committee.

The advocacy group Free Speech for People sent a letter to top DOJ and FBI officials, including special counsel Jack Smith, highlighting part of testimony delivered to the House Jan. 6 committee about the now-infamous, wild Dec. 18, 2020 strategy session at the White House. That meeting, as detailed by various Trump allies, involved hours of screaming and insults as conspiracy theorists held forth and White House lawyers attempted to keep them at bay. It also, the group noted, included early references to a plot to break into voting machines.
Story by Tom Boggioni

Reacting to a CNN report that Trump operatives were making plans to use breached voting data to not only undercut the 2020 presidential election results but also to give the GOP control of the Senate, one legal analyst stated the former president's legal woes have just grown exponentially worse. Speaking with host Fredricka Whitfield, former prosecutor Michael Zeldin claimed multiple laws at the state and federal level may have been broken.

As CNN reported on Friday, "The plot to breach voting systems in Coffee County, coordinated by members of Trump’s legal team including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, is part of a broader criminal investigation into 2020 election interference led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis," before adding, "Willis’ office is weighing a potential racketeering case against multiple defendants and is actively deciding who to bring charges against, sources tell CNN. Willis has subpoenaed a number of individuals involved in the Coffee County breach, including the two men who carried it out who were in touch with [Jim] Penrose and [Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug] Logan."
Story by Jose Pagliery

The fake GOP electors in Georgia that former President Donald Trump recruited as part of his failed attempt to stay in power are starting to point fingers at each other, court documents revealed on Tuesday. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, the Atlanta-area prosecutor who’s investigating Trump’s effort to upend American democracy there, laid out the details in a legal memo to a state judge—one that hints at criminal indictments to come.

According to the memo, prosecutors in July last year dangled immunity deals for “alternate electors” who were willing to cooperate with the investigation—but their defense lawyer is now accused of never telling them about the potential deal. Following a special purpose grand jury recommendation in December that the DA seek indictments against some people involved in the fraudulent scheme, investigators have turned up the pressure.
Story by Meaghan Ellis

MSNBC’s Alex Wagner recently aired bombshell recordings that featured Rudy Giuliani and a former campaign official for then-President Donald Trump admitting to Fox News that they lacked substantial evidence to support all of their claims of widespread voter fraud.

According to Mediaite, the damning recordings were presented to a judge as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the conservative news network. According to Mediaite, the damning recordings were presented to a judge as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the conservative news network.
Story by Samantha Benitz

Fox News allegedly has never-before-heard recordings of Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies admitting there was no proof of voter fraud in the 2020 election, an ex-employee who is now suing the media giant claimed in court docs.

Abby Grossberg worked as a producer for Maria Bartiromo and Tucker Carlson during her tenure, having since lost her job after filing a lawsuit alleging she was pressured into giving misleading testimony about the network's coverage of election fraud theories. She later filed new allegations in Delaware and New York on March 20, claiming Fox News fostered a workplace culture of sexual harassment and misogyny.
Story by Jessica Washington

It’s no secret that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has a contentious relationship with Black Americans. And the Republican Governor certainly didn’t help his case when he went on a tirade against African American studies. But some of his more public moves aside, it’s what he’s done to voting rights in the state that has got Black Floridians on edge.

Since entering office, DeSantis has waged an unprecedented attack on Black voters and Black political power in Florida.The accusations against DeSantis include allegations that he gerrymandered Black voting power into oblivion and pushed through voting restrictions in an attempt to scare and confuse Black voters into staying home.

Let’s start with his gerrymandering strategy. We now have ample reporting from ProPublica and The Guardian that DeSantis was deeply involved in redrawing the new congressional district maps last year. According to reporting from The Guardian, DeSantis’s new map not only heavily favored Republicans, but it also cut the number of districts where Black voters had a chance to elect a candidate in half.
Story by Zachary Cohen

Former top national security officials have testified to a federal grand jury that they repeatedly told former President Donald Trump and his allies that the government didn’t have the authority to seize voting machines after the 2020 election, CNN has learned.
Story by kniemeyer@insider.com (Kenneth Niemeyer)

A jury convicted a far-right influencer known as "Ricky Vaughn" in a federal court in New York on Friday for a plot to deprive Hillary Clinton supporters of their ability to vote in the 2016 presidential election. Vaugh — whose real name is Douglass Mackey — was convicted on one count of "conspiracy against rights," according to court documents. He faces up to 10 years in prison.

Prosecutors accused Mackey of conspiring with other people to post "disinformation relevant to the impending 2016 presidential election" on social media, often in the form of "memes," according to a criminal complaint seen by Insider.

As the 2016 presidential election approached, Mackey and his co-conspirators created posts on various social media sites that encouraged people to vote for their preferred candidate by posting a specific hashtag on Twitter or Facebook or by texting the candidate's first name to a specific phone number, the document states.

According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), in November 2016, Mackey — who had tweeted about limiting the amount of "black turnout" in the election — posted a photo of a Black woman in front of an "African Americans for Hillary" sign that read "Avoid the Line. Vote from Home," "Text 'Hillary' to 59925." On or around election day in 2016, at least 4,900 telephone numbers texted "Hillary" to the 59925 text number, the DOJ said.
Story by Tom Boggioni

Reacting to a report that a Fulton County grand jury heard a recording of Donald Trump speaking with Georgia House Speaker David Ralston and asking him to convene a special session of the legislature to the 2020 presidential election results, CNN's Eli Honig claimed the former president's legal team will be hard-pressed to dismiss Trump's call to Secretary of State Brad Rafensperger as a one-off venting of frustration.

Speaking with hosts Jim Sciuto and Erica Hill, the former prosecutor said the call -- a third one from Trump --is evidence of a "pattern" of criminality. With host Sciutto mentioning there are now three Trump phone calls the grand jury has heard, he asked, "How impactful are recordings like this and, based on what the president said to those individuals, do they provide, in your view, the ability to indict?"

"First of all, there is no evidence better than recordings, "Honeig replied,"Because that is the defendant or subject's own voice they cannot dispute. And there is something to showing a jury, letting a jury to hear it and judge it by themselves."
Story by Stephen Silver

Trump’s election claims were undercut by Trump-commissioned report: The former president, who is running again in 2024, commissioned a major study of the 2020 election. That study contradicted virtually every 2020 claim by Trump.

More Trump Self-Created Drama
Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him have been debunked over the last two-and-a-half years. Now, we have learned that those claims were debunked another time- in a report commissioned by Trump’s own presidential campaign in early 2021. Trump paid a group called the Berkeley Research Group for the “Project 2020” report, for $600,000 to Trump’s 2020 campaign.

Prosecutors investigating the January 6 attack have the report, following subpoenas to “some people involved in its crafting,” the Washington Post said. Perhaps because it didn’t uphold Trump’s claims, the report was never made public.
Story by Tommy Christopher

Justice Department investigators have obtained a Trump campaign-commissioned report that debunked voter fraud claims days before then-President Donald Trump used those claims to pressure officials to help him overturn the 2020 election. Trump is currently in the crosshairs of several potentially damaging legal cases: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump over hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, as well as the Special Counsel Jack Smith-led Justice Department probes into Trump’s mishandling of classified information under the Espionage Act and his conduct surrounding the January 6 insurrection, and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ grand jury investigation of Donald Trump’s effort to overturn election results in Georgia.
Story by Igor Derysh

AFulton County grand jury heard a previously unreported recording of former President Donald Trump pressuring a top Georgia Republican to help overturn his election loss in the state, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The special grand jury investigated Trump's efforts to overturn his election in the state after District Attorney Fani Willis launched a probe into the former president's infamous phone call pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" enough votes to reverse his loss. But five grand jurors who spoke with AJC revealed that investigators also have an audio recording of Trump pressuring then-Georgia House Speaker David Ralston to push for a special session to reverse President Joe Biden's win.

Ralston proved to be an "amazing politician" on the call, a juror told AJC. The speaker "basically cut the president off. He said, 'I will do everything in my power that I think is appropriate.' … He just basically took the wind out of the sails," the juror said. "'Well, thank you,' you know, is all the president could say."
Story by Mary Papenfuss

Anderson Cooper slammed Donald Trump's former senior campaign legal adviser Colorado attorney Jenna Ellis on Friday for completely contradicting within hours her own admission that she had lied when she claimed the 2020 election was rigged. The segment on his CNN program "360" was entitled: "When Liars Lie About Lying." Cooper played a clip of a disgusted Ellis baselessly insisting the vote was rigged — the kind of statement she completely disavowed this week — or not.

Ellis, who had helped Trump challenge election results, was censured on Wednesday by a Colorado judge after she admitted under oath in state bar disciplinary proceedings that she had violated multiple professional rules when she misrepresented facts about the election. A watchdog tallied 10 cases of "misrepresentation." In an agreement with legal authorities, Ellis reportedly accepted that she had “through her conduct, undermined the American public’s confidence in the presidential election, violating her duty of candor to the public.”

Ellis even signed a legal acknowledgment that “she made a number of public statements about the November 2020 presidential election that were false” and did so with a “reckless state of mind” and with “a selfish motive,” according to documents released by Colorado’s Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel.
Story by Matthew Chapman

Scandal-plagued Republican former Mesa County, Colorado Clerk Tina Peters has been convicted of obstruction of government operations, reported 9News on Friday. "Jurors found Peters guilty of obstruction of government operations but acquitted her on a charge of obstruction of a peace officer. She's scheduled for sentencing April 10," reported Janet Oravetz.

"Grand Junction Police approached Peters in a bagel shop in Feb. 8, 2022, to execute a warrant related to her iPad, on which she is suspected of improperly recording a court hearing for her deputy clerk," said the report. "An arrest affidavit says that when officers tried to seize the iPad, people sitting at the table with her started passing around the tablet. Police detained Peters as she allegedly tried to stop an officer from taking the iPad. Video shows Peters yell at and struggle with the officers who detained her." The affidavit claims that Peters then attempted to kick an officer, and shouted when ordered to stop kicking.
Story by John Bowden

Agrand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, has recommended multiple criminal charges as a result of an investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. In an interview, the jury foreperson told The New York Times that the list of charges recommended was “not short”.

Much like the city of Detroit, also a target of Mr Trump’s false claims of voter fraud, Fulton County’s population is majority-Black and was a key region for the Biden campaign’s voter turnout efforts throughout 2020. The surge of Democratic votes in those regions were enough to flip two states, Georgia and Michigan, that voted for Mr Trump in 2016 – a costly blow in the former president’s fight for the Electoral College.

But it was Republican officials, including Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who were the target of Donald Trump’s overtures in the days following the 2020 election as he desperately sought to change the results. A conference call between the White House, Mr Trump’s lawyers, and Georgia state officials on 2 January 2021 has now become a crucial piece of evidence in the grand jury investigation into Mr Trump and his legal team after it first sent shockwaves through the media and political class.
Story by By HARM VENHUIZEN, Associated Press

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Recent revelations about Republican election strategies targeting minority communities in Wisconsin's biggest city came as no surprise to many Black voters. A Wisconsin election commissioner bragged about low turnout in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods during last year’s elections. Weeks later, an audio recording surfaced that showed then-President Donald Trump’s Wisconsin campaign team laughing behind closed doors about efforts to reach Black voters in 2020. Many people who voted this past week in the state's primary election said they had long felt targeted by Republicans. The difference now is the public display of strategies that at best ignore the priorities of Black voters and at worst actively look to keep them from voting.

“It’s a plan that they devised and carried out with quite a lot of precision,” said lifelong Milwaukee resident Dewayne Walls, 63. “It’s a repeatable pattern that’s going to continue to happen over and over as long as they have that plausible deniability and as long as they have the power in Madison” — the state capital. Walls and other Black voters said they are tired of the countless hurdles that disproportionately try to keep them from being heard at the ballot box. Voters said their experiences with the GOP have been as voices to silence, not to win over.
Story by Kristyn Burtt

Donald Trump’s campaign team in Wisconsin knew they lost the state in the 2020 presidential election, but that didn’t stop them from trying to spin a fraud narrative. There’s new audio that is confirming that Republican officials behind the scenes were trying to cook up a story that the election was stolen.

This is the latest chaotic issue to come down the pike as Donald Trump tries to run for president for the third time. According to the Associated Press, who posted the leaked audio, the voice is of Andrew Iverson, who led the former president’s campaign in Wisconsin, and shockingly advises the team of possible “stunts” they may need to “pull.” “Here’s the drill: Comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election,” he said on Nov. 5, 2020. “We’ll do whatever they need (inaudible) help with. Just be on standby in case there’s any stunts we need to pull.”
Story by By GABE STERN and RIO YAMAT, Associated Press/Report for America

LAS VEGAS (AP) — New transcripts of closed-door testimony to the Jan. 6 House committee show Donald Trump and his allies had a direct hand in the Nevada Republican Party’s scheme to send a phony electoral certificate to Congress in 2020 in a last-ditch attempt to keep the former president in power. The documents made public Wednesday evening included interviews with state party leader Michael McDonald and Republican National Committeeman Jim DeGraffenreid in February. Both men served as fake electors in Carson City on Dec. 14, 2020.

That day, six Nevada GOP members signed certificates falsely stating that Trump won Nevada in 2020 and sent them to Congress and the National Archives, where they were ultimately ignored. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is digging into the role that these fake electors in key battleground states had in Trump’s attempt to cling to power after his 2020 defeat. McDonald and DeGraffenreid invoked Fifth Amendment protection hundreds of times in their separate interviews with the Jan. 6 committee, refusing to answer questions about their involvement and the extent to which Trump's top allies had helped in orchestrating the plot.

Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA), Member of House Judiciary Committee and Representative for Pennsylvania’s 5th Congressional District speaks with Yasmin Vossoughian about Mark Meadows’ text messages, the upcoming January 6 report, and the House Committee’s hearings on guns this week on the 10th anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting.
tporter@businessinsider.com (Tom Porter)

Yevgeny Prigozhin, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said that Russia has interfered in US elections in the past and would continue to do so. In a post on the Russian social-media site VKontakte, via his catering firm, Prigozhin said: "We have interfered, we are interfering and we will continue to interfere. Carefully, accurately, surgically and in our own way, as we know how to do."

"During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once," Prigozhin added, in an apparent reference to the surgical nature of the operations. Prigozhin, who has been dubbed "Putin's chef" for securing valuable Kremlin catering contracts, has been accused of attempts to subvert past US elections through his control of so-called "troll farms," which flooded social media platforms with disinformation and conspiracy theories.
Zachary Cohen

Apro-Trump operative who was caught on tape participating in a Georgia voting system breach after the 2020 election has testified before the special grand jury investigating efforts to overturn the outcome in that state, two sources familiar with the matter tell CNN. Scott Hall, a Georgia bail bondsman and Fulton County Republican poll watcher who was captured on surveillance video the same day the breach happened and acknowledged he gained access to a voting machine, testified as a witness for over three hours last week in the state-level probe overseen by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, the sources said.

Hall’s appearance before the grand jury has not been previously reported. On January 7, 2021, the day after the attack on the US Capitol, Hall and others connected to Trump lawyer Sidney Powell spent hours inside a restricted area of the Coffee County elections office, where they set up computers near election equipment and appeared to access voting data. Willis’s criminal investigation recently expanded to include the breach of voting systems in the deeply-red Coffee County by operatives working for Powell.
Eric Ting, SFGATE

"Very aggressive" individuals impersonating elections officials have reportedly been knocking on Shasta County residents' doors and questioning their voter registration status, Shasta County's elections office warned residents this week. "They’re wearing very distinctive neon vests and some kind of ID badge that says 'voter task force,'" County Clerk Cathy Darling Allen told SFGATE. "We are being told that these people are being very aggressive and intimating that they work in this office when they do not. We want voters to know this isn’t an official effort; we have a whole host of tools we use to verify info. Door knocking is not something we would ever do."

Allen said it is probably a safe assumption that members of the fake "voter task force" are individuals who believe, incorrectly, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. In the time since that election, her office has become a "dumping ground for frustrations" and has had to deal with things ranging from frivolous copy-pasted public records requests to demands that the office preserve records it is required to destroy by California state law.
By Sarah K. Burris | Raw Story

Questions surfaced after Justice Clarence Thomas was the only member of the U.S. Supreme Court to oppose the release of Mark Meadows' texts and information to the Jan. 6 committee. It turned out that in those text messages that the justice didn't want revealed were communications with his wife. Former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-VA), wrote in his new book that he thinks Justice Thomas is far more involved in his wife Ginni Thomas' 2020 election overthrow attempts.

Riggleman, who left the committee in April, included many of the text messages that had previously been released from Ginni Thomas, along with the note that he had a difficult time trying to get the House Select Committee to sound the alarm on her actions. "Supreme Court spouses are typically low profile. Ginni’s involvement with political groups had already led to questions about whether Clarence would need to recuse himself in cases with a political component," wrote Riggleman. If Clarence had been in the logs, it would be a much bigger deal than all that. When I began to suspect Ginni and Clarence had texted with Meadows, I put together a technical brief outlining how we might be able to cement the identifications."
In some cases, Trump’s fake electors could influence elections in midterm swing states, while others are running for office themselves.
By Natasha Korecki and Kaitlyn Francis

They were part of an effort across battleground states to upend the 2020 presidential election results, signing documents asserting they were their states’ rightful electors and Donald Trump — not Joe Biden — was the victor. Today, the U.S. Justice Department is circling these “fake electors.” The FBI has visited many of their homes delivering grand jury subpoenas and, in at least one case, seizing a cellphone, a source familiar with the investigation confirmed to NBC News. And the Jan. 6 Select Committee has compelled many of them to testify, arguing they were an integral part of a broader scheme cooked up by some of Trump’s closest confidants to overturn the election.

Law enforcement activity has not pushed these false electors from their political perches. Instead, with just two months until the midterms, more than two dozen of the individuals who served as phony electors still hold some of the highest-ranking political posts in their state parties. They’re also interwoven into the GOP infrastructure across seven battleground states that will determine the balance of Congress in November and the next presidential race two years later, according to a review by NBC News.

At issue is the attempt by Republicans in seven battleground states that Biden won in 2020 — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — to offer phony slates of 84 Republicans most of whom signed certificates declaring themselves the “duly elected electors” from their states. The problem: There were official, state-certified electors for Biden whose votes were sent to Congress to be counted as part of the verification of presidential election results.
The GOP war on voting just took a new turn
By Bob Brigham | Raw Story

Republicans are not just fighting to limit access to the ballot box but are increasing battling what questions can even appear on ballots.

"Hundreds of thousands of people signed petitions this year backing proposed ballot initiatives to expand voting access, ensure abortion rights and legalize recreational marijuana in Arizona, Arkansas and Michigan," the Associated Press reported. "Yet voters might not get a say because Republican officials or judges have blocked the proposals from the November elections, citing flawed wording, procedural shortcomings or insufficient petition signatures."

The AP noted GOP lawmakers in both Arizona and Arkansas are attempting to amend their constitutions to make it harder put citizen initiatives on the ballot. "The Republican pushback against the initiative process is part of a several-year trend that gained steam as Democratic-aligned groups have increasingly used petitions to force public votes on issues that Republican-led legislatures have opposed," the AP reported.
The wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas urged a Wisconsin state senator and representative to do their ‘duty’
Martin Pengelly

Ginni Thomas, the wife of the US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, lobbied lawmakers in Wisconsin as well as Arizona in November 2020, seeking to overturn Joe Biden’s victories over Donald Trump in both swing states. Thomas emailed lawmakers in support of Trump’s lie that Biden won thanks to electoral fraud. The Washington Post reported Thomas’s efforts in Arizona earlier this summer. On Thursday it detailed her efforts in Wisconsin, citing emails obtained under public-records law. Thomas emailed a Wisconsin state senator and a state representative, both Republican, on 9 November, two days after the election was called for Biden.

The messages used the same text as those sent to Arizona officials and were also sent using a form-emailing platform. The subject line read: “Please do your constitutional duty!” The text said: “Please stand strong in the face of media and political pressure. Please reflect on the awesome authority granted to you by our constitution. And then please take action to ensure that a clean slate of electors is chosen for our state.”
Wife of Supreme Court justice was apparently leading wide-ranging effort to influence local officials
John Bowden

The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was active in not just one but two states as she sought to overturn the rightful results of the 2020 election in favour of Donald Trump, new emails show. The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Ginni Thomas emailed at least two elected lawmakers in Wisconsin, urging them to back the plot for a vote to “decertify” the state’s election results (which is not something the state legislature can legally do) in favour of a slate of Trump-supporting “electors” who would go to Washington and cast Electoral College votes.
By KATE BRUMBACK

ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia prosecutor who’s investigating whether former President Donald Trump and others illegally interfered in the 2020 general election in the state has informed 16 Republicans who served as fake electors that they could face criminal charges.

They all signed a certificate declaring falsely that then-President Trump had won the 2020 presidential election and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors even though Joe Biden had won the state and a slate of Democratic electors was certified. Eleven of them filed a motion Tuesday to quash their subpoenas, calling them “unreasonable and oppressive.”

Also Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, agreed to file any challenges to a subpoena in the investigation in either state superior court or federal court in Georgia, according to a court filing. He had previously filed a motion in federal court in South Carolina trying to stop any subpoena from being issued to him there on behalf of the prosecutor in Georgia.
By Tamar Hallerman, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Fulton County special grand jury investigating potential criminal interference in Georgia’s 2020 elections has subpoenaed key members of former President Donald Trump’s legal team, including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, according to copies obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In addition to Giuliani, those being summoned include John Eastman, Cleta Mitchell, Kenneth Chesebro and Jenna Ellis, all of whom advised the Trump campaign on strategies for overturning Democrat Joe Biden’s wins in Georgia and other swing states.
Igor Derysh

Investigations by Michigan authorities have uncovered 11 attempts to breach voting systems by supporters of former President Donald Trump, including one by an unidentified "third party" that seized vote-counting machines for weeks. State police documents obtained by Reuters reveal a widening investigation into Trump supporters' efforts to prove his baseless claims of widespread fraud even after a Republican-led legislative committee and numerous audits found no evidence. State police have obtained warrants to seize voting equipment and records in at least three towns and one county in the last six weeks as the probe heats up. Authorities have uncovered 11 incidents in which Trump supporters "gained or attempted to gain unauthorized access to voting equipment," according to the report. That brings the nationwide total of breach attempts to at least 17 after Reuters previously identified six others in four other states. In one case in Roscommon County, a Richfield Township official admitted that he gave two vote-counting machines to an unauthorized and unidentified "third party," who held on to the machines for several weeks early last year.
insider@insider.com (Cheryl Teh)

A bombshell email obtained by The Washington Post and CNN has unveiled new information on a scheme concocted by former President Donald Trump's campaign in Georgia that involved getting fake electors to cast electoral votes for him. The email, dated December 13, 2020, contained instructions on how the electors could position themselves to cast electoral college votes in favor of Trump, despite President Joe Biden's victory in the state. Despite the plan, all 16 electoral votes for the state were cast in favor of the Biden-Harris ticket the following day. In the email sent by a Trump campaign staffer, fake electors were instructed on how to infiltrate the Georgia State Capitol, sign certificates declaring they were there to cast the votes for the state, and ultimately defy the will of the state's voters by voting for Trump instead. "I must ask for your complete discretion in this process," wrote Robert Sinners, the Trump campaign's elections operations director in Georgia, per the outlets. "Your duties are imperative to ensure the end result — a win in Georgia for President Trump — but will be hampered unless we have complete secrecy and discretion." According to The Post, the electors were told to inform the building's security guards that they had an appointment with one of the state senators to gain entry. "Please, at no point should you mention anything to do with Presidential Electors or speak to the media," Sinners wrote in bold text, per the outlet.
By Tom Boggioni | Raw Story

Reacting to a report from the Washington Post that a slate of fake electors in Georgia who were attempting to award the state's 16 Electoral College votes to Donald Trump were instructed to keep quiet about their work, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said it reeked of illegality. According to the Post, an email went out to the conservatives hoping to assist Trump in his quest to win re-election that stated, "Your duties are imperative to ensure the end result — a win in Georgia for President Trump — but will be hampered unless we have complete secrecy and discretion. Please, at no point should you mention anything to do with Presidential Electors or speak to the media," with the secrecy portion bolded. Speaking with "New Day" hosts Brianna Keilar and John Berman, political analyst Laura Jarrett prompted, "Georgia is the sleeper in this whole thing. It is because it's the -- it's where I think the most exposure is." "It speaks to this whole issue of intent," she continued. "If this whole thing was on the up and up and you actually believed that Donald Trump was the rightful winner, why is all of this shrouded in secrecy? I think it speaks to the criminality of it, and it speaks to the potential criminal intent of the actors involved. Now what Trump knew, of course, all of that is going to remain to be seen. The fact that a member of the Trump campaign is on the record in an e-mail saying we have to do all this shrouded in secrecy is noteworthy."
by Monique Beals

A Trump campaign staffer instructed a group of Republicans in Georgia who were planning to cast Electoral College votes for former President Trump to conduct the plan in “complete secrecy,” according to an email obtained by media outlets. The Washington Post and CNN reported Monday evening that the email, written by Trump campaign Georgia operations director Robert Sinners, instructed the fake electors to tell security at the state capitol that they had appointments with two state senators. “I must ask for your complete discretion in this process,” Sinners wrote. “Your duties are imperative to ensure the end result — a win in Georgia for President Trump — but will be hampered unless we have complete secrecy and discretion,” Sinners wrote.
By Tom Boggioni | Raw Story

According to a report from the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery, texts obtained by the website between a former Georgia Republican county chair and an election board member revealed they were plotting to allow pro-Donald Trump outsiders access to the county's election computers. As the report reveals, those text messages were flying back and forth on Jan 6th as the Capitol in Washington D.C. was under siege to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election that saw Trump lose re-election. As Pagliery notes, the Washington Post has reported that "the Secretary of State’s office was investigating the matter. But the previously unreported text messages shed new light on who arranged the possibly illegal access to the computer and who was on the team that traveled south to do it." According to the new Beast report, "The text messages acquired by The Daily Beast show two separate conversations in which former Coffee County GOP chair Cathy Latham and elections board member Eric Chaney lay out a plan to bring in a team of computer experts to access the computer voting system. The Daily Beast has verified that the conversations were real and remain stored on an iPhone."
By Brad Reed | Raw Story

Reporter Heidi Przbyia on Wednesday broke down new revelations about Michigan GOP operatives launching what she describes as an "unprecedented" effort to recruit poll workers to directly contest elections at polling places across the state. As Przbyia reported in Politico, the plan is to "install trained recruits as regular poll workers and put them in direct contact with party attorneys" so they can challenge votes in real time. Speaking about the report on CNN, Przbyia outlined just how much this could disrupt the voting process on election day.
Placing operatives as poll workers and building a "hotline" to friendly attorneys are among the strategies to be deployed in Michigan and other swing states.
By Heidi Przybyla

Video recordings of Republican Party operatives meeting with grassroots activists provide an inside look at a multi-pronged strategy to target and potentially overturn votes in Democratic precincts: Install trained recruits as regular poll workers and put them in direct contact with party attorneys. The plan, as outlined by a Republican National Committee staffer in Michigan, includes utilizing rules designed to provide political balance among poll workers to install party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling places, developing a website to connect those workers to local lawyers and establishing a network of party-friendly district attorneys who could intervene to block vote counts at certain precincts. “Being a poll worker, you just have so many more rights and things you can do to stop something than [as] a poll challenger,” said Matthew Seifried, the RNC’s election integrity director for Michigan, stressing the importance of obtaining official designations as poll workers in a meeting with GOP activists in Wayne County last Nov. 6. It is one of a series of recordings of GOP meetings between summer of 2021 and May of this year obtained by POLITICO.
Emma Roth

Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people and co-founder of the Oracle software company, was involved in a November 2020 call to develop plans to contest the results of the US presidential election, according to a report from The Washington Post. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Fox News host Sean Hannity, Donald Trump’s attorney Jay Sekulow, and True the Vote attorney James Bopp Jr., also participated in the call. As reported by the Post, details of the call surfaced in a court filing associated with a legal battle between True the Vote, a nonprofit organization that promotes baseless claims about election fraud, and Fair Fight, a voting rights organization led by Georgia politician Stacey Abrams. Last year, Fair Fight filed a complaint against True the Vote, alleging the group attacked voter eligibility in Georgia.
Tommy Christopher

Ten illegitimate electors for ex-President Donald Trump are being sued — and could face millions of dollars in fines — in what is being called the first lawsuit of its kind. A raft of local Wisconsin Republican officials who signed on to a fake slate of electors in the 2020 presidential election — Bob Spindell, Andrew Hitt, Kelly Ruh, Carol Brunner, Scott Grabins, Bill Feehan, Kathy Kiernan, Darryl Carlson, Pam Travis, and Mary Buestrin — are named in a suit that seeks to block them from submitting fake elector papers in the future, to stop them from ever serving as electors, and to fine each of them up to $200,000.00.
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