Category Archives: Election interference

Election deniers, Election interference, U.S. House of Representatives

Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) blisters GOP’s Speaker nominee Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) in fiery speech

Still from C-Span footage covering the US House Speaker election, October 17, 2023.

The Hill, by Lauren Sforza, October 17, 2023

Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) blasted Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in an impassioned speech nominating Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) for Speaker on the House floor Tuesday.

“A vote today to make the architect of a nationwide abortion ban, a vocal election denier and an insurrection insider to the Speaker of this house would be a terrible message to the country and our allies,” Aguilar said, speaking of Jordan.

“Mr. Speaker, it would send an even more troubling message to our enemies, that the very people who would seek to undermine democracy are rewarded with positions of immense power,” he continued.

He ripped the GOP’s Speaker nominee for putting the country’s national security at risk, for his role in not certifying the 2020 election results and for launching “baseless investigations.” Jordan has been a leading figure in House impeachment probes into President Biden and his son Hunter.

“We’re talking about someone who has spent his entire career trying to hold our country back, putting our national security in danger, attempting government shutdown after government shutdown, wasting taxpayer dollars on baseless investigations with dead ends, authoring the very bill that would ban abortion nationwide without exceptions and inciting violence on this chamber,” Aguilar said.

“Even leaders of his own party have called him a legislative terrorist,” he added.

That monicker was once used by former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to describe Jordan.

Aguilar also took aim at Jordan for voting no on a series of legislative action, including approving natural disaster relief in states after they were ravaged by hurricanes and wildfires. When listing out examples of what legislative action Jordan opposed, some Democrats appeared to join in chorus, saying “he said no” along with Aguilar.

“When the Mississippi River floods devastated the south and communities across state lines needed Congress to act, he said no,” he said. “When our veterans were suffering from disease and dying as a result of their service to our country and Congress passed a bipartisan solution, he said no.”

The California Democrat criticized the House for considering electing a member “who has not passed a single bill in 16 years.”

Aguilar called on the House to find a bipartisan way forward, accusing Republicans of throwing the House into “chaos” by failing to come to a consensus on a new Speaker. He said that they are gathered to vote on a new leader because “this hallowed chamber has been led to a breaking point by two dangerous forces — extremism and partisanship.”

He also urged those on both sides of the aisle to vote for Jeffries.

“Only Hakeem Jeffries can be trusted to keep his word. Only Hakeem Jeffries can lead us out of the chaos and towards the path of governance. It brings me immense pride to nominate our friend the Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker,” he said.

Jordan, who narrowly secured the GOP nomination for Speaker in an internal vote last week, failed to clinch the 217 votes necessary on the first ballot. The vote was 200 for Jordan, 212 for Jeffries and 20 for other members. It’s unclear when a second vote might be held.

Watch Rep. Aguilar’s whole speech here:

Election deniers, Election interference, MAGA extremists, Trump

Developing story – Trump charged in Georgia 2020 election probe, his fourth indictment

[Note from BenIndy Contributor Nathalie Christian: Check out the full indictment here.]

Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney hands back indictment papers from a grand jury after reviewing the pages on Wednesday. | Joshua Lott / The Washington Post.

The Washington Post, by Holly Bailey and Amy Gardner, August 14, 2023

ATLANTA — Former president Donald Trump and 18 others were criminally charged in Georgia on Monday in connection with efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, according to an indictment made public late Monday night.

Trump was charged with 13 counts, including violating the state’s racketeering act, soliciting a public officer to violate their oath, conspiring to impersonate a public officer, conspiring to commit forgery in the first degree and conspiring to file false documents.

The historic indictment, the latest to implicate the former president, follows a 2½-year investigation by Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D). The probe was launched after audio leaked from a January 2021 phone call during which Trump urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to question the validity of thousands of ballots, especially in the heavily Democratic Atlanta area, and said he wanted to “find” the votes to erase his 2020 loss in the state.

Willis’s investigation quickly expanded to other alleged efforts by him or his supporters, including trying to thwart the electoral college process, harassing election workers, spreading false information about the voting process in Georgia and compromising election equipment in a rural county. Trump has long decried the Georgia investigation as a “political witch hunt,” defending his calls to Raffensperger and others as “perfect.”

Among those named in the 98-page indictment, charged under Georgia’s anti-racketeering law, are Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who served as Trump’s personal attorney after the election; Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows; and several Trump advisers, including attorneys John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro, architects of a scheme to create slates of alternate Trump electors.

Also indicted were two Georgia-based lawyers advocating on Trump’s behalf, Ray S. Smith II, and Robert Cheeley; a senior campaign adviser, Mike Roman, who helped plan the elector meeting; and two prominent Georgia Republicans who served as electors: former GOP chairman David Shafer and former GOP finance chairman Shawn Still.

Several lesser known players who participated in efforts to reverse Trump’s defeat in Georgia were also indicted, including three people accused of harassing Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman. They are Stephen Cliffgard Lee, Harrison Floyd and Trevian Kutti. The latter is a former publicist for R. Kelly and associate of Kanye West.

A final group of individuals charged in the indictment allegedly participated in an effort to steal election-equipment data in rural Coffee County, Ga. They are former Coffee County elections supervisor Misty Hampton, former Coffee County GOP chair Cathy Latham and Georgia businessman Scott Hall.

Trump was indicted in Washington, D.C., earlier this month in a separate Justice Department probe into his various attempts to keep his grip on power during the chaotic aftermath of his 2020 defeat. Some aspects of that four-count federal case, led by special counsel Jack Smith, overlaps with Willis’s sprawling probe, which accuses Trump and his associates of a broad, criminal enterprise to reverse Joe Biden’s election victory in Georgia.

But the Fulton County indictment, issued by a grand jury and made public Monday night, is far more encompassing and detailed than Smith’s ongoing federal investigation.

Prosecutors brought charges around five separate subject areas, including false statements by Trump allies, including Giuliani, to the Georgia legislature; the breach of voting data in Coffee County, Ga.; calls Trump made to state officials including Raffensperger seeking to overturn Biden’s victory; the harassment of election workers and the creation of a slate of alternate electors to undermine the legitimate vote. Those charged in the case were implicated in certain parts of what prosecutors presented as a larger conspiracy to undermine the election

Willis had signaled for months that she planned to use Georgia’s expansive anti-racketeering statutes that allow prosecutors not only to charge in-state wrongdoing but to use activities in other states to prove criminal intent in Georgia. Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute is one of the most expansive in the country and is broader than federal law in how prosecutors can define a criminal enterprise or conspiracy.

In January 2022, Willis requested an unusual special purpose grand jury be convened to continue the probe, citing the reluctance of witnesses who would not speak to prosecutors without a subpoena. The investigative body of 23 jurors and three alternates picked from a pool of residents from Atlanta and its suburbs was given full subpoena power for documents and the ability to call witnesses — though it could not issue indictments, only recommendations in the case.

Over roughly eight months, the panel heard from 75 witnesses — including key Trump advisers including Giuliani, Meadows and U.S. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who waged a failed legal battle all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to block his subpoena before ultimately testifying.

The panel also heard from several key witnesses in the investigation, including Raffensperger and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), who were on the other end of aggressive lobbying efforts by Trump and his associates to overturn Trump’s loss in the state.

In January, the special grand jury concluded its work and issued a final report on its investigation, which was largely kept under seal by the judge who oversaw the panel.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney cited “due process” concerns for “potential future defendants” as Willis considered charges in the case. But in February, McBurney released a five-page excerpt of the report — including a section in which the panel concluded that some witnesses may have lied under oath during their testimony and recommended that charges be filed.

The panel’s forewoman later confirmed that the special grand jury had recommended multiple indictments — though she declined to say of who.

Trump’s attorneys later sought to disqualify Willis and her office from the case — citing Willis’s public comments about the investigation — and quash the final report and any evidence gathered by the special purpose grand jury. The motions were rejected by McBurney and the Georgia Supreme Court, which ruled that Trump had no legal standing to stop an investigation before charges were filed.

In the spring, amid security concerns, Willis took the unusual step of telling law enforcement that she planned to announce her charging decision in August. Because the special grand jury could not issue indictments, prosecutors presented their case to a regular grand jury sworn in last month, which began hearing the case Monday.

Trump’s attorneys are likely to immediately seek to have the case thrown out, reviving their complaints about Willis and the use of a special grand jury in the case.

Trump has intensified his attacks on Willis and other prosecutors examining his activities, describing them as “vicious, horrible people” and “mentally sick.” Trump has referred to Willis, who is Black, as the “racist DA from Atlanta.” His 2024 campaign included her in a recent video attacking prosecutors investigating Trump. Willis has generally declined to respond directly to Trump’s attacks, but in a rare exception, she said in an email last week sent to the entire district attorney’s office that Trump’s ad contained “derogatory and false information about me” and ordered her employees to ignore it.

“You may not comment in any way on the ad or any of the negativity that may be expressed against me, your colleagues, this office in coming days, weeks or months,” Willis wrote in the email, obtained by The Washington Post. “We have no personal feelings against those we investigate or prosecute and we should not express any. This is business, it will never be personal.”

Still, Willis has repeatedly raised concerns about security as her investigation has progressed, citing Trump’s “alarming” rhetoric and the racist threats she and her staff have received. Willis is often accompanied by armed guards at public appearances, and security at her office and her residence was increased even more in recent days ahead of the expected charging announcement, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive security matters.

This story is developing. It will be updated.

Election deniers, Election interference, Scott Morris, Vallejo Sun

New Solano group cancels Vacaville event with election denier after inquiry

Solano Sheriff Tom Ferrara and members of his staff met with the Solano Committee of Safety, who posted this photo and proclaimed Ferrara to be a “constitutional sheriff,” which Ferrara disputed. | Uncredited image.

Vallejo Sun, by Scott Morris, July 20, 2023

VACAVILLE – A new group in Solano County that appears to be tied to a national extremist movement canceled an event with Douglas G. Frank, a former math and science teacher who has spread false claims about the 2020 election, a day after receiving questions about the event from the Vallejo Sun.

The “Solano Committee of Safety,” which intended to host Frank for a speaking engagement in Vacaville, also took down its website late Wednesday. It’s unclear who is behind the newly-formed group, which is not a registered organization with the state of California and identified its officers only by their first names. After the Sun inquired about their identities, the leadership’s photos were removed from the website and the group declined to provide their last names before the entire site was taken down. The website domain name was registered anonymously in March.

Frank has spread unsubstantiated, misleading and false theories about the 2020 election in a series of speaking engagements across the country and appears to be under investigation by the FBI after data was illegally taken from a local government office. Frank has worked for MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, an ally of former President Donald Trump, who has extensively spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

The Aug. 10 event with Frank at the Vacaville Veterans Hall would have been the group’s second event after an initial outreach event in July. The event was canceled Wednesday without explanation after the Sun asked about whether the group had any concerns that Frank’s rhetoric would inappropriately erode confidence in the county’s voting systems and about a recent incident when Frank appeared to call for violence.

The group also appears to be affiliated with the National Liberty Alliance, a group which encourages people to start local “Committees of Safety,” organize militias and seek commitments from local sheriffs to follow “constitutional sheriff” ideology — a fringe view that asserts that sheriffs have ultimate power in enforcing the U.S. Constitution. The Solano committee claimed on its website that Solano County Sheriff Tom Ferrara said that he subscribes to these views, which Ferrara has since disputed.

Frank has traveled the country speaking to small audiences and meeting with election officials. The Solano Committee of Safety said that Frank, who was formerly a math and science teacher in Ohio, has appeared at more than 300 speaking engagements over the last year.

His conclusions — including that an algorithm created by unknown conspirators determines the result of U.S. elections using large numbers of phantom voters — have been amplified by Lindell. Frank has also spoken at Trump rallies.

During a recent appearance in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, Frank even seemed to incite violence. “If Antifa comes to town, what’s your instinct? Call the sheriff? Wrong,” he said. “If Antifa comes to town, you get your AR and you call your neighbors and you meet them on the street and you take care of business. You call the

He went on, “If you have a problem, you don’t call your legislator, you fix it. Maybe the legislature will fix it three years later. If you’re waiting for legislation you’re going to be waiting… nothing’s going to happen. You’re going to have to fix it.”

During the same talk in Pennsylvania, Frank claimed he was working with sheriffs across California and would soon expose massive voter fraud. He implied that if voter rolls increase faster than population growth, that suggests fraudulent voters have been added, despite that changes in demographics, successful registration drives or a popular election may boost registration. He also repeatedly falsely said that local election officials are not in charge of counting ballots.

Justin Grimmer, a political science professor at Stanford University, has extensively researched Frank’s claims and created a website that refutes Frank’s claims of fraud. Grimmer said that Frank often claims he has volunteers canvassing to find voter fraud, but that they have turned up nothing.

“I have spent a lot of time investigating his claims, and I have not seen a single individual case of voter fraud that he has surfaced,” Grimmer said. “He has claims but at no point has he ever shown that there is voter fraud.”

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2020 elections, Donald Trump, Election interference, Election results, Presidential politics

Trump recorded pressuring and threatening Georgia officials yesterday

[Editor: If you can’t stand his voice, just read the excellent analysis that follows.  – R.S.]

‘I just want to find 11,780 votes’: In extraordinary hour-long call, Trump pressures Georgia secretary of state to recalculate the vote in his favor

Washington Post, By Amy Gardner, Jan. 3, 2021

President Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that election experts said raised legal questions.

The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk.”

Throughout the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected Trump’s assertions, explaining that the president is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.

Trump dismissed their arguments.

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

Raffensperger responded: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”

At another point, Trump said: “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

The rambling and at times incoherent conversation offered a remarkable glimpse of how consumed and desperate the president remains about his loss, unwilling or unable to let the matter go and still believing he can reverse the results in enough battleground states to remain in office.

“There’s no way I lost Georgia,” Trump said, a phrase he repeated again and again on the call. “There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”

Several of his allies were on the line as he spoke, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a prominent GOP lawyer whose involvement with Trump’s efforts had not been previously known.

In a statement, Mitchell said Raffensperger’s office “has made many statements over the past two months that are simply not correct and everyone involved with the efforts on behalf of the President’s election challenge has said the same thing: show us your records on which you rely to make these statements that our numbers are wrong.”

The White House, the Trump campaign and Meadows did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Raffensperger’s office declined to comment.

Election results under attack: Here are the facts

On Sunday, Trump tweeted that he had spoken to Raffensperger, saying the secretary of state was “unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the “ballots under table” scam, ballot destruction, out of state “voters”, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”

Raffensperger responded with his own tweet: “Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true.”

The pressure Trump put on Raffensperger is the latest example of his attempt to subvert the outcome of the Nov. 3 election through personal outreach to state Republican officials. He previously invited Michigan Republican state leaders to the White House, pressured Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) in a call to try to replace that state’s electors and asked the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to help reverse his loss in that state.

His call to Raffensperger came as scores of Republicans have pledged to challenge the electoral college’s vote for Biden when Congress convenes for a joint session on Wednesday. Republicans do not have the votes to successfully thwart Biden’s victory, but Trump has urged supporters to travel to Washington to protest the outcome, and state and federal officials are already bracing for clashes outside the Capitol.

Growing number of Trump loyalists in the Senate vow to challenge Biden’s victory

During their conversation, Trump issued a vague threat to both Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the secretary of state’s legal counsel, suggesting that if they don’t find that thousands of ballots in Fulton County have been illegally destroyed to block investigators — an allegation for which there is no evidence — they would be subject to criminal liability.

“That’s a criminal offense,” he said. “And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.”

Trump also told Raffensperger that failure to act by Tuesday would jeopardize the political fortunes of David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, Georgia’s two Republican senators whose fate in that day’s runoff elections will determine control of the U.S. Senate.

Trump said he plans to talk about the fraud on Monday, when he is scheduled to lead an election eve rally in Dalton, Ga. — a message that could further muddle the efforts of Republicans to get their voters out.

“You have a big election coming up and because of what you’ve done to the president — you know, the people of Georgia know that this was a scam,” Trump said. “Because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people aren’t going out to vote, and a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative, because they hate what you did to the president. Okay? They hate it. And they’re going to vote. And you would be respected, really respected, if this can be straightened out before the election.”

Trump’s conversation with Raffensperger put him in legally questionable territory, legal experts said. By exhorting the secretary of state to “find” votes and to deploy investigators who “want to find answers,” Trump appears to be encouraging him to doctor the election outcome in Georgia.

But experts said Trump’s clearer transgression is a moral one. Edward B. Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University, said that the legal questions are murky and would be subject to prosecutorial discretion. But he also emphasized that the call was “inappropriate and contemptible” and should prompt moral outrage.

“He was already tripping the emergency meter,” Foley said. “So we were at 12 on a scale of 1 to 10, and now we’re at 15.”

Throughout the call, Trump detailed an exhaustive list of disinformation and conspiracy theories to support his position. He claimed without evidence that he had won Georgia by at least a half-million votes. He floated a barrage of assertions that have been investigated and disproved: that thousands of dead people voted; that an Atlanta election worker scanned 18,000 forged ballots three times each and “100 percent” were for Biden; that thousands more voters living out of state came back to Georgia illegally just to vote in the election.

“So tell me, Brad, what are we going to do? We won the election, and it’s not fair to take it away from us like this,” Trump said. “And it’s going to be very costly in many ways. And I think you have to say that you’re going to reexamine it, and you can reexamine it, but reexamine it with people that want to find answers, not people who don’t want to find answers.”

Trump did most of the talking on the call. He was angry and impatient, calling Raffensperger a “child” and “either dishonest or incompetent” for not believing there was widespread ballot fraud in Atlanta — and twice calling himself a “schmuck” for endorsing Kemp, whom Trump holds in particular contempt for not embracing his claims of fraud.

“I can’t imagine he’s ever getting elected again, I’ll tell you that much right now,” he said.

He also took aim at Kemp’s 2018 opponent, Democrat Stacey Abrams, trying to shame Raffensperger with the idea that his refusal to embrace fraud has helped her and Democrats generally. “Stacey Abrams is laughing about you,” he said. “She’s going around saying, ‘These guys are dumber than a rock.’ What she’s done to this party is unbelievable, I tell you.”

The secretary of state repeatedly sought to push back, saying at one point, “Mr. President, the problem you have with social media, that — people can say anything.”

“Oh this isn’t social media,” Trump retorted. “This is Trump media. It’s not social media. It’s really not. It’s not social media. I don’t care about social media. I couldn’t care less.”

At another point, Trump claimed that votes were scanned three times: “Brad, why did they put the votes in three times? You know, they put ’em in three times.”

Raffensperger responded: “Mr. President, they did not. We did an audit of that and we proved conclusively that they were not scanned three times.”

Trump sounded at turns confused and meandering. At one point, he referred to Kemp as “George.” He tossed out several different figures for Biden’s margin of victory in Georgia and referred to the Senate runoff, which is Tuesday, as happening “tomorrow” and “Monday.”

His desperation was perhaps most pronounced during an exchange with Germany, Raffensperger’s general counsel, in which he openly begged for validation.

Trump: “Do you think it’s possible that they shredded ballots in Fulton County? ’Cause that’s what the rumor is. And also that Dominion took out machines. That Dominion is really moving fast to get rid of their, uh, machinery. Do you know anything about that? Because that’s illegal.”

Germany responded: “No, Dominion has not moved any machinery out of Fulton County.”

Trump: “But have they moved the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts?”

Germany: “No.”

Trump: “Are you sure? Ryan?”

Germany: “I’m sure. I’m sure, Mr. President.”

It was clear from the call that Trump has surrounded himself with aides who have fed his false perceptions that the election was stolen. When he claimed that more than 5,000 ballots were cast in Georgia in the name of dead people, Raffensperger responded forcefully: “The actual number was two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted.”

But later, Meadows said, “I can promise you there are more than that.”

Another Trump lawyer on the call, Kurt Hilbert, accused Raffensperger’s office of refusing to turn over data to assess evidence of fraud, and also claimed awareness of at least 24,000 illegally cast ballots that would flip the result to Trump.

“It stands to reason that if the information is not forthcoming, there’s something to hide,” Hilbert said. “That’s the problem that we have.”

Reached by phone Sunday, Hilbert declined to comment.

In the end, Trump asked Germany to sit down with one of his attorneys to go over the allegations. Germany agreed.

Yet Trump also recognized that he was failing to persuade Raffensperger or Germany of anything, saying toward the end, “I know this phone call is going nowhere.”

But he continued to make his case in repetitive fashion, until finally, after more than an hour, Raffensperger put an end to the conversation: “Thank you, President Trump, for your time.”

Amy Gardner joined The Washington Post in 2005. She has worked stints in the Virginia suburbs, covered the 2010 midterms and the tea party revolution, and covered the Republican presidential nominating contest in 2011-2012. She was a politics editor for five years and returned to reporting in 2018.

Alice Crites contributed to this report.