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by **admin** » Sat Dec 19, 2020 5:59 am

National Security Experts Warn Trump “Is Promoting Terrorism”: The president’s post-election incitement expands on a tactic he has long used: stochastic terrorism.
by Mark Follman
National Affairs Editor
Mother Jones
December 17, 2020

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

In the waning days of his presidency, Donald Trump is engaged in a deliberate campaign of terrorism aimed at Americans who oppose him politically. That description of his actions is neither a metaphor nor hyperbole—it is the assessment of veteran national security experts, whose view of the political violence being stoked by the outgoing president is echoed by law enforcement and political leaders. As Trump has pushed a litany of lies and conspiracy theories claiming that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him through “massive fraud,” he has stirred his most extreme supporters into menacing public officials, election workers, and his Democratic and Republican critics alike. Over the past four years, numerous perpetrators of threats and violence have directly invoked the president and his rhetoric, and recent gatherings by far-right groups in support of Trump’s efforts to reverse his election defeat have led to beatings, stabbings and a shooting.

Trump is using a tactic known as “stochastic terrorism,” says Juliette Kayyem, a national security expert and former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security. It’s a method of political incitement that provokes random acts of extremist violence, in which the instigator uses rhetoric ambiguous enough to give himself and his allies plausible deniability for any resulting bloodshed. Violent threats or attacks linked to the rhetoric usually generate muted denials and equivocal denunciations, or claims to have been “joking,” as Trump and those speaking on his behalf have routinely hidden behind.

Previously discussed in obscurity among counterterrorism specialists and national security wonks, the concept of stochastic terrorism first drew wider attention in 2018 when Kayyem cited it in reference to Cesar Sayoc, a fervent Trump supporter who sent mail bombs to CNN and nearly a dozen Democratic figures, including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. Since then—and particularly since Trump’s defeat in November—the president’s willingness to encourage violence for political purposes has become only more evident, according to Kayyem. She says Trump’s behavior should be called out for what it is: “He is promoting terrorism.”

Among national security experts, Kayyem is not alone in this view. “It really matters that the president of the United States is an arsonist of radicalization,” said Kori Schake, who served in leadership posts at the National Security Council and State Department under President George W. Bush. “It will really help when that’s no longer the case,” she added, speaking in a recent online panel discussion about the danger fueled by Trump and his enablers.

Elizabeth Neumann, who until early 2020 served as a DHS assistant secretary focused on counterterrorism and threat prevention, asserted in a Washington Post op-ed before the election that the president has been fomenting violence. “Language from campaign materials and Trump’s extemporaneous speeches at rallies have been used as justification for acts of violence,” she wrote, emphasizing that Trump “has repeatedly been confronted with this fact.” His “inconsistent and muddied” denouncements of violence and white supremacists, she said, only exacerbated the problem: “Extremists thrive on this mixed messaging, interpreting it as coded support.”

Trump has long pursued a campaign of incitement with impunity, unchallenged by Republican leaders in Congress and met with tepid press coverage. “Until recently mainstream media were unwilling to say explicitly that Trump was lying,” Kayyem notes. “In the same way, there is a reluctance to identify the kind of violence that Trump is propagating, maybe because it seems too close to calling him a terrorist. You can call him whatever you want, but the tactics he’s using are clearly a form of terrorism.”

Trump’s nods and winks to far-right extremists began with his 2016 campaign and came to a head in August 2017 when he suggested that the torch-wielding white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, included some “very fine people.” His demagoguery as president was initially focused on “the other,” whether it was his attempt to ban Muslims from entering the United States or his incendiary rhetoric about Mexican “rapists,” migrant caravans, and “shithole” countries. He also attacked the news media as “the enemy of the people,” sparking violent threats and plots against journalists. “What’s happened now is that he has clearly turned it against Americans,” Kayyem says. “He knows exactly what he’s doing. He is focused on American political leadership that is not behind him.”

The danger escalated in the spring when Trump urged supporters to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” in response to public health restrictions ordered by the state’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, for battling the coronavirus pandemic. Trump targeted the governors of Virginia and Minnesota with the same message and sided with armed protesters in Michigan while tweeting criticism of Whitmer: “These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely!” By early October, the FBI and state authorities announced they had arrested 13 people plotting violent attacks in Michigan and elsewhere, including plans to storm the Capitol and kidnap and execute Whitmer. Far-right extremists also allegedly targeted Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia, whom Trump had blasted as “crazy” for his pandemic policies and for supposedly planning to take away Virginians’ guns. When pressed in a fall presidential debate to denounce the violent far-right group known as the Proud Boys, Trump infamously responded that they should “stand back and stand by.”

Trump’s post-election incitement has manifested in new and alarming ways. By early December, after the president unleashed a wave of false claims attacking the election results in battleground states including Michigan, a group of armed Trump supporters gathered outside the home of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson as she and her young son were putting up Christmas decorations. They chanted “Stop the steal” and shouted “You’re a felon and must turn yourself in immediately.” Less prominent officials and election workers around the country have been harassed for doing their jobs processing votes, menaced with nooses and death threats, and stalked online or at their homes. On December 14, state electors faced with “credible threats” in Michigan and Arizona were compelled to take extraordinary security measures—including locking down buildings and meeting at an undisclosed location—as they convened to certify Biden’s presidential victory.

Kayyem reiterated in a series of tweets how Trump had perfected the technique of provoking random but predictable violence. “We are stuck parsing Trump’s words, forced into textualist debates about what he meant by ‘Liberate Michigan’ or ‘Stand Back and Stand By,'” she wrote. “Meanwhile his supporters know EXACTLY what he means.”

“The level of concern is about as high as I’ve ever seen it,” a senior federal law enforcement official told me in early December. “Threatening activity based in this kind of rhetoric or anger is always there, but that said, it has been a very active year and it’s kept us and our [state and local] counterparts very busy.” The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declined to offer any specific assessment of the president’s role in provoking violence, but acknowledged in broader terms that the post-election conspiracy mongering led by Trump “is undoubtedly big fuel on the fire.”

The president’s tactics have been imitated by his operatives and political allies. Recent comments from Trump campaign lawyer Joseph DiGenova were a textbook example: After the president fired DHS cybersecurity director Chris Krebs, who had described the 2020 elections as the most secure in history, DiGenova said in an interview that Krebs should be “taken out at dawn and shot.” DiGenova later claimed his comments “were sarcastic and made in jest.” As electors in Arizona prepared to certify Biden’s win, state Sen.-elect Wendy Rogers, a backer of Trump’s false claims about the election, tweeted: “Buy more ammo.” When Arizona Democrats criticized Rogers for using incendiary language on such a consequential day, she tweeted repeatedly that she was simply cheerleading for Second Amendment rights. “She knows exactly what she’s doing & wants plausible deniability,” responded Rep. Jennifer Longdon, an assistant Democratic leader in the Arizona House. Longdon’s tweet described Rogers’ own as a “clarion call to lone wolf extremists.”

Longdon, a gun violence survivor, knows well the danger of fringe actors who go on the attack over a political cause, including those who threatened, stalked, and assaulted her over her work on gun safety. Trump’s allies, she says, “have ramped this up to a level that’s beyond irresponsible.” If violence follows, Rogers and others “will just shrug their shoulders and walk away from it. But someone is hearing that call, and that call is coming from someone they consider to be a responsible voice of leadership.” Longdon added that the targeting of conservative Republican state officeholders who deemed Arizona’s election results fair and credible was telling. “This is a really dangerous and cynical attempt to whip up a base for what comes next,” she says. “At what point does this become sedition?”

Both Kayyem and the federal law enforcement official I spoke with suggested that recent commentary about the possibility of a brewing “civil war” has been overblown. They said that fringe elements who would act violently remain small in number. Kayyem also sees the coming change at the White House as pivotal. “We’ve gotten pretty immune to the sort of everyday racism of the current president and how he has nurtured it from the top,” she says. “But I think Biden will be able in his way to shame that, and a lot of it will start to go away. There will still be a threat of violence, but it’s not existential. I think we’ll see that when nonracists control the levers of law enforcement and communications, that these fringe groups will find themselves adrift and more isolated again.”

by **admin** » Sun Dec 20, 2020 12:52 am

It Seems Bad That the Guy the President Just Pardoned Is Calling for Him to Execute a Military Coup:
Former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has checked in with a fresh dose of patriotism.
by Jack Holmes
Esquire
Dec 2, 2020

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

october 18 republican presidential candidate donald trump jokes with retired gen michael flynn as they speak at a rally at grand junction regional airport on october 18, 2016 in grand junction colorado trump is on his way to las vegas for the third and final presidential debate against democratic rival hillary clinton photo by george frey getty images

Many of the high clergy in the Church of the Savvy have been calmly explaining for weeks that although Donald Trump's brazen and pathetic post-election behavior is corrosive to democracy, it does not technically count as a coup attempt. The president's myriad lawsuits attempting to throw out the results of democratic elections have not worked, these folks explain, therefore they were never going to work (Logic), and concern about them working—on the basis that no Law or Norm has much mattered for four years—was hysteria. This is too stupid to be a coup! It's just a grift, because these things are mutually exclusive. And besides, a coup involves using the military or the security apparatus to seize power. He's just getting laughed out of court.

Welp, now his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, a man the president pardoned just last week for "any and all possible offenses" related to the Mueller probe, has endorsed a call for the president to "temporarily suspend the Constitution," "declare limited martial law," have "the military oversee a national re-vote," and "silence the destructive media." Wow! Sounds a bit like a coup. Maybe the best part is the idea that you can have "limited" martial law, or that suspending the Constitution would just be "temporary," or that the only organization that could oversee a legitimate election—read: one where Donald Trump wins—is the military.

The military is not some repository of Real American sentiment—Donald Trump enjoys broad disapproval in the armed forces, including at the officer level, so it's not likely the army or navy will participate in the president's plot to overturn the election. But this stuff is metastasizing on the right. It's a natural extension of the Republican Party's growing belief that any democratic process that ends with a Democratic candidate getting elected is by-definition illegitimate. This is what was beneath the push from numerous Republican-led state legislatures in the last couple of cycles to strip their governors' offices of their powers in the lame-duck period before a Democrat could take office and wield them. Never mind that a majority of citizens had voted to give it to them. This is what's lurking under the voter-suppression tactics, and the post-election push to throw out the votes in predominantly Black cities. These Americans are not considered full citizens, in that they should not have the right to determine who the president is. Their participation in the polity is fraudulent.

Meanwhile, those preaching calm over the last few weeks have not merely ignored the guiding principles of the Trump era: never assume there is a bottom to the shameless depravity, and never bet against that shamelessness being rewarded. (This is a guy who has never faced consequences for a single thing he's done, and who continually gets things he does not deserve. Why would that stop now?) These Savvy Observers suffer from a failure of imagination. The increasingly deranged conspiracies propping up Trump's tantrum have had the desired effect: millions of the Republican rank-and-file do not believe Biden's (fairly decisive) win was legitimate. Very few Republican officeholders have openly acknowledged Biden's win—even if, as we were reminded by Senator Ron Johnson today, they very well know the truth and just regard speaking it as "political suicide"—and that number does not include anyone in congressional leadership. The official position of the Republican Party is that the outcome is in doubt and in need of investigation.

Flynn pled guilty to lying to the FBI. He was also on the government of Turkey’s payroll while advising the president’s 2016 campaign.
ALEX WROBLEWSKI GETTY IMAGES

And more than all that, the military is not the only segment of our society with guns that might theoretically attempt to achieve a desired political outcome with force rather than through the democratic process. Election officials in states targeted by Trump and his allies are already facing a deluge of death threats, and we all seem to have memory-holed the attackers—from the mail bomber to El Paso to the Pittsburgh synagogue—who engaged or attempted to engage in mass violence while spouting off right-wing rhetoric over the last few years. If members of the armed forces do not take things into their own hands, which they almost certainly will not, we can only hope no one else will attempt to do so. Because, again: millions of people believe this stuff. The vast, vast majority—almost every single person—would never turn to violence in response. But it only takes one.

And all the while, the president is starting to fire up the Pardon Machine, both for those who do crime on his behalf and, possibly, for himself. Because he faces such huge legal jeopardy when he leaves office. Which is something he wants to avoid at all costs. It is also straight out of the strongman playbook to put a number of hare-brained schemes in motion, hoping that at least one will play out in such a way that you can profit off the chaos. But yeah, everybody simmer down. The important thing when witnessing the wild behavior of an authoritarian leader, cornered and desperate, is to be the most Calm and Savvy observer. Don't you know about The Laws?

by **admin** » Mon Dec 21, 2020 3:50 am

Trump sought to tap Sidney Powell as special counsel for election fraud: Powell, an attorney for onetime national security adviser Michael Flynn, has led the president's efforts to overturn Joe Biden's victory.
by Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein
politico.com
12/19/2020 02:59 PM EST
Updated: 12/20/2020 07:28 AM EST

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Attorney Sidney Powelll has amplified calls for President Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. | AP Photo/Ben Margot

President Donald Trump escalated his bid to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 election during a contentious White House meeting on Friday night — telling advisers he wanted to name a special counsel to investigate his loss and pressing for the seizure of voting machines he has falsely suggested were manipulated to rig the outcome against him.

As the clock ticks down on the remainder of the president's term, top officials are growing alarmed by his fixation with reversing his defeat, according to a senior administration official. Many are concerned that he is turning to fringe characters for advice and support, this person added, while dismissing the views of officials who have expressed skepticism about the effort.

Another person familiar with the Oval Office meeting said it included Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani as well as former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who has suggested in recent days that the president could invoke martial law as he seeks to pursue baseless allegations of voter fraud.

In one heated exchange, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows pushed back against the idea of tapping Sidney Powell — an attorney who has promoted numerous conspiracy theories about the election — as a special counsel to probe the claims.

Giuliani also has urged top Department of Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli to confiscate voting machines, a request Cuccinelli has turned down because he lack the authority to do so, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

The Friday meeting was first reported by the New York Times, and Giuliani's lobbying effort was first reported by the Times and Axios.

Powell, a conservative firebrand who represented Flynn in his long-running fight against a criminal charge for lying to the FBI, has amplified calls for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that enables the president to deploy troops to suppress domestic uprisings. Since early November, Powell has spearheaded a wide-ranging legal campaign to overturn the 2020 election results that has been sharply rejected in courts across the country.

According to the person familiar with Friday’s meeting, the animated gathering featured yelling and screaming, with the lawyers often accusing each other of failing to sufficiently support the president's efforts. Flynn and Powell both said they needed the Trump administration to do more to support their efforts to reverse President-elect Joe Biden's win. Giuliani and Powell also turned their ire on each other. The source said National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien, a successor to Flynn, participated by phone.

Powell was briefly a formal adviser to Trump's campaign in the aftermath of the election but was cut from the official team early in the legal push. Powell, Giuliani and Meadows did not respond to requests for comment.

Appointing a special counsel through the Justice Department under current regulations would require the concurrence of the attorney general. Amid some tension with Trump over election-related issues, Attorney General William Barr has announced plans to step down effective Wednesday. After that, the task would fall to Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen.

In an interview last week, Rosen declined to say whether he had plans to name any special counsels during the waning days of the administration, but he portrayed a business-as-usual atmosphere that seems at odds with him taking such a dramatic move.

A Justice Department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to requests for comment on whether any department personnel were involved in the Friday talks at the White House.

Trump could name Powell or someone else as a special counsel without Justice Department buy-in, but that person would lack the powerful tools federal prosecutors have to demand evidence and compel testimony through grand juries and other legal mechanisms available only to formally appointed Justice Department attorneys.

Senior U.S. Army officials said Friday, in response to Flynn's recent calls, that the military would have "no role" in determining the outcome of the U.S. election. Late Saturday, Trump appeared to deny reports that the subject of martial law has arisen in the Oval Office conversation, calling them "Fake News."

Alex Isenstadt, Meridith McGraw and Lara Seligman contributed.

by **admin** » Mon Dec 21, 2020 4:01 am

MAGA leaders call for the troops to keep Trump in office
by Tina Nguyen
politico.com
Fri, December 18, 2020, 2:30 AM MST

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An 1807 law invoked only in the most violent circumstances is now a rallying cry for the MAGA-ites most committed to the fantasy that Donald Trump will never leave office.

The law, the Insurrection Act, allows the president to deploy troops to suppress domestic uprisings — not to overturn elections.

But that hasn’t stopped the act from becoming a buzzword and cure-all for prominent MAGA figures like Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, two prominent pro-Trump attorneys leading efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and even one North Carolina state lawmaker. Others like Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser who was recently pardoned for lying to the FBI, have made adjacent calls for Trump to impose martial law. The ideas have circulated in pro-Trump outlets and were being discussed over the weekend among the thousands of MAGA protesters who descended on state capitols and the Supreme Court to falsely claim Trump had won the election.

At its core, the Insurrection Act gives the president authority to send military and National Guard troops to quell local rebellions and violence, offering an exemption to prohibitions against using military personnel to enforce domestic laws. Historically, it has been used in moments of extreme national strife — the Civil War, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, violent labor disputes, desegregation battles, rioting following Martin Luther King Jr.’s death.

Only once, however, has it been used in the wake of an election — and that was to stop a literal militia from seizing the Louisiana government on behalf of John McEnery, a former Confederate officer who had lost the 1872 governor’s race.

Nonetheless, in the minds of some authoritarian-leaning and conspiracy-minded Trump supporters, the Insurrection Act has become a needed step to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from assuming the presidency. Their evidence-deficient reasoning: Democrats illegally rigged the election and are attempting a coup, and Trump must send in the troops to undo this conspiracy.

The conviction shows how hard-edged MAGA ideology has become in the wake of Trump’s election loss. While scattered theories about a “deep state” arrayed against Trump have long circulated in MAGA circles, calls for troops to stop a democratically elected president from taking office have taken those ideas to a more conspiratorial and militaristic level. It also displays the exalted level to which Trump has been elevated among his most zealous fans as his departure looms.

“The central theme here is that there supposedly exists a network of nefarious actors trying to undermine Trump and destroy the United States, and that this is a tool that Trump could use to save the day,” said Jared Holt, a research fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, who focuses on far-right extremism.

The Insurrection Act has been rarely invoked since the civil unrest of the 1960s — the last time was to quell violence during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. And when it has been used over that period, it was always at the request of a state governor.

But over the past several years, it has gained popularity among the far-right fringes, mainly as a way for Trump to solve all their problems, from expelling undocumented migrants, to arresting generals and other “deep state” actors for allegedly plotting coups against Trump.

The idea has also become intertwined with the QAnon movement, the far-reaching and baseless conspiracy that Trump is secretly working to disrupt a cabal of pedophiliac, sex trafficking Democrats and global elite.

In May, a Q-drop — the name for the mysterious missives allegedly from a person at the center of the QAnon movement — floated the Insurrection Act for the first time as a way to solve “growing unrest” after George Floyd was killed by Minnesota police. “Call the ball,” Q said mysteriously.

Then, in June, GOP Sen. Tom Cotton brought the idea of the Insurrection Act into the national dialogue with a New York Times op-ed that called on Trump to invoke the law in response to rioting that was occurring amid largely peaceful protests over racial justice. Trump himself leaned into the idea, suggesting to a rally audience that he would use the act to put down “leftist thugs” protesting that summer.

From there, the Insurrection Act became a quick fix to everything among the more extreme MAGA figures.

Trump ally and convicted political operative Roger Stone brought it up on Infowars as a way for Trump to combat anything from coups to protests to election fraud.

“The president's authority is the Insurrection Act and his ability to declare martial law,” he told host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Stone added that Trump could also use the law to arrest anyone from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for election interference, to Democratic power couple Bill and Hillary Clinton — an interpretation that legal experts say strains credulity.

Jimmy Gurulé, a former Justice Department prosecutor now teaching at Notre Dame Law School, called the argument tenuous. While the Insurrection Act can be legally invoked as a response to a “conspiracy” that hinders people’s rights, there must actually be a conspiracy to justify sending in federal troops over the objection of local and state officials.

“I think that the key here is, 'Well, what the hell is that conspiracy?’” he said. “No one can articulate the participants in the conspiracy, the scope of the conspiracy, the object of the conspiracy. It’s all over the place.”

Still, Trump himself seemed keen to the idea, telling Fox News host Jeanine Pirro that he would “put down [anti-Trump protests] very quickly” if they broke out after the election: “Look, it's called insurrection. We just send in and we do it very easy.”

Further out on the MAGA fringe, Trump supporters suggested the president jump the gun and simply arrest everyone — before the election.

And now, with the Electoral College confirming Biden’s win, recounts failing to change the results and courts at every level swatting down lawsuits challenging the outcome, some MAGA figures have latched on to the specific Insurrection Act clause granting the president authority to use the military to quash a “rebellion against the authority of the United States.” In their strained interpretation, the clause gives Trump the power to go after the Democrats and deep state actors conspiring to remove him from office. It’s a reading of the law experts immediately rejected.

“When you're talking about a group of conspiracy theorists, and others who lack any kind of legal knowledge, they'll just pull that arrow out of their quiver when the rest don’t work,” said Brian Levin, executive director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

It seems nearly impossible Trump would actually invoke the law in this manner. But that hasn’t stopped prominent Trump supporters like Wood, one of the lawyers pushing unsubstantiated lawsuits through the courts, from suggesting Trump send the military into Georgia to break up a meeting of electors.

And over the weekend, after the Supreme Court rejected a Trump-boosted lawsuit from Texas asking to overturn the election results in four other swing states, MAGA supporters took to the streets to demand, among other things, that Trump use the Insurrection Act to force an election do-over, or at the very least, stop Biden from taking office.

The Epoch Times itself ran an editorial on Monday arguing that it was time for Trump to invoke the act and send in the military to seize thousands of voting machines in order to find fraud: “Our system is in crisis. Trump would act to restore the rule of law.”

Gurulé, the former DOJ prosecutor, pointed out that even if Trump tried to invoke the Insurrection Act, there really is nothing for the military to suppress.

“I guess it’d be a voting fraud conspiracy, but how is the military going to suppress that?” he said. “By what, seizing all the ballots? By seizing all the voting machines? By then, what are they going to do, conduct the votes? It just doesn't make sense.”

The point, however, might just be to have the Insurrection Act as a talking point to keep the MAGA movement motivated. And Levin, the extremism researcher, feared a darker path if Trump — a man who already speaks in militaristic terms on a regular basis — continued to goad his base into thinking a Biden presidency is an insurrection.

“What is the heart of the Second Amendment, pro-militia, anti-government patriot movement? It's the insurrectionist theory of the Second Amendment,” he said. “It says people can rise up against a tyrannical government. To me, this looks like the last exit on the Jersey Turnpike before we get to that spot.”

by **admin** » Mon Dec 21, 2020 4:46 am

Sidney Powell shares post recommending military tribunals review election
by Andrew Blake
Washington Times
December 1, 2020

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Conservative lawyers alleging President Trump was the victim of an unproven election fraud conspiracy are calling on him to deploy the U.S. military over his projected defeat to Joseph R. Biden.

Sidney Powell, a former member of the Trump reelection campaign’s legal team, shared a post from her popular Twitter account Monday recommending the race be reviewed by military tribunals.

L. Lin Wood, Ms. Powell’s co-counsel in lawsuits she filed challenging the results of the election in Georgia and Michigan, said Tuesday that Mr. Trump “should declare martial law,” meanwhile.

Each of their posts on the social media platform came as Mr. Trump and his defenders continue to allege without evidence that his loss was the result of fraud and that he was not really beaten.

Voting in the presidential race ended Nov. 3, and multiple news outlets began calling it for Mr. Biden on Nov. 7. Weeks later, however, Mr. Trump has yet to admit defeat.

Ms. Powell, who had been identified as a lawyer for the Trump campaign until Nov. 22, has since filed lawsuits with Mr. Wood in Georgia and Michigan alleging the elections there were flawed.

The post on Twitter that Ms. Powell shared, or retweeted, urged Mr. Trump to use the Insurrection Act of 1807, which empowers the president to deploy U.S. troops domestically in rare circumstances.

It also urged Mr. Trump to suspend the upcoming electoral college vote that will cement his loss and to immediately set up military tribunals to resolve purported “cyber warfare” issues at hand.

Shared with her more than one million Twitter followers, the tweet Ms. Powell posted on Twitter also said Mr. Trump should postpone Inauguration Day next month, “until this issue is resolved.”

Mr. Wood subsequently recommended Mr. Trump declare martial law in a tweet of his own which referred to an online article that suggests having the U.S. military “oversee a national re-vote.”

Each of the lawsuits filed in federal court in Georgia and Michigan alleges Mr. Trump was the victim of “massive election fraud.” No evidence has emerged to corroborate that serious claim, however.

Instead, the lawyers have cited a range of debunked, discredited or unproven claims and conspiracy theories, such as that ballots cast for Mr. Trump were purportedly “switched” to be for Mr. Biden.

Dominion Voting Systems, a manufacturer of election infrastructure mentioned in the lawsuits but not listed as a defendant, said some of the claims they make about its products are “impossible.”

Election and security experts from across the public and private sectors have also said they saw no evidence to suggest voting systems used recently were compromised in any way.

Inauguration Day is Jan. 20, 2021.

by **admin** » Mon Dec 21, 2020 4:52 am

’Liberals are going nuts’: NC senator says he’d support suspension of civil liberties
by Jim Morrill
December 16, 2020 06:11 PM, UPDATED DECEMBER 17, 2020 08:33 AM

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Sen. Bob Steinburg NC GENERAL ASSEMBLY

North Carolina state Sen. Bob Steinburg knew he’d get a lot of blowback after suggesting that President Donald Trump could suspend civil liberties to protest an election they both believe was stolen.

And that was fine with him.

“All the liberals are just going nuts today,” he said Wednesday. “Somebody has got to stand up and risk being ridiculed, laughed at and scorned, And right now that’s me.”

Steinburg’s comments, first reported Tuesday night by WRAL, found a national audience Wednesday in the Washington Post.

On Facebook, the Republican from northeast Chowan County posted comments from controversial retired Gen. Thomas McInerney, who said that Trump should suspend civil liberties and invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, which would allow the president to deploy the military to quell domestic disorder.

Steinburg said while he was simply posting the general’s comments, he might also support curtailing civil liberties. He compared it to North Carolina’s restrictions to stem the spread of COVID-19.

“If there were reasons to do it then civil liberties would be suspended for a short period of time,” he told the Observer. “But our civil liberties in North Carolina have been abridged since March. If Donald Trump invoked this executive order, if he thought there was foreign intervention, then, yes, I support it.”

Steinburg, 72, said he doesn’t believe Democrat Joe Biden won the election.

“Hell no,” he said. “There’s no way he’s president-elect. I think not only did President Trump win but I think President Trump won by at least 10 million votes.”

Steinburg’s comments to WRAL drew fire from Democratic Senate colleagues.

“Joe Biden will be our next president because he won fair and square, by more than 7 million votes,” said Sen. Natasha Marcus of Davidson. “Elected officials shouldn’t be fueling baseless conspiracy theories that undermine our democratic process. Sen. Steinburg’s remarks are undemocratic, irresponsible and, frankly, alarming.”

In a tweet, Democratic Sen. Sam Searcy of Wake County called Steinburg’s comments “embarrassing & dangerous.”

“Republicans in the #NCGA should immediately denounce these remarks,” he said.

It’s not the first time Steinburg has come under fire for social media posts. He has criticized the Black Lives Matter movement and efforts to remove Confederate monuments.

Earlier this month he posted, “It’s 1776 in America again. Our country and its Constitution will not be stolen or compromised and we will never heel to Deep State Corruption or Communist China — Ever!!”

Asked what evidence he has that the election was rigged against the president, he has cited controversial articles in Epoch Times, which the New York Times called “a leading purveyor of right-wing misinformation.” He also called attention this month to a news conference featuring Sidney Powell, a North Carolina native who was on Trump’s legal team pushing conspiracy theories about the election.

Steinburg said he’s not worried about Monday’s Electoral College vote, which made Biden’s victory official. He said that could change when Congress meets Jan. 6 to accept the results. A handful of Republicans are expected to fight it.

Steinburg doesn’t expect the media to portray him fairly.

“I am not John Brown at Harper’s Ferry,” he said. “This is the way some in the media like to portray you, that I’m some kind of crazy man.”

He plans to continue making his arguments when he starts a podcast in January.

“People can choose to listen to me or not,” Steinburg said. “But they can’t silence me. We’re going to be keeping the heat on.”

by **admin** » Mon Dec 21, 2020 5:22 am

Trump campaign brings new U.S. Supreme Court challenge over Pennsylvania’s 2020 election
by Jonathan Lai
Updated: December 20, 2020- 5:38 PM

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President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and overturn several decisions the Pennsylvania Supreme Court made regarding the 2020 election, saying that the court overstepped its bounds and that “the outcome of the election for the Presidency of the United States hangs in the balance.”

But even in the unlikely event the new challenge is successful and the court agrees to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania, it would not change his Electoral College win. Biden amassed 306 electoral votes, the same as Trump four years ago — 36 more votes than the 270 needed to win. Pennsylvania has 20 votes.

What the challenge would do, if successful, is defy the will of the Pennsylvania voters who cast ballots in the Nov. 3 election under the rules in place at the time. Specifically, the campaign said in its filing, it would throw out 110,000 votes that it says are invalid because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court inappropriately changed election rules.

A lawyer representing the campaign said Sunday it had filed a cert petition and a motion to expedite, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to fast-track the case because of the impending Jan. 6 meeting of Congress to receive the Electoral College results and the Jan. 20 inauguration.

The challenge is the latest in a series of increasingly long-shot attempts to overturn the election, which Trump lost in Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes. The latest attempt, like the others, doesn’t center on any specific claims of voter fraud in Pennsylvania, despite Trump’s repeated use of baseless conspiracy theories to attack the election.

Instead, it challenges three Pennsylvania Supreme Court decisions on mail ballots and says the state court overstepped its constitutional role. Those opinions, which resolved multiple cases, prohibited counties from comparing mail ballot signatures to those on file; said campaigns and political parties can’t challenge ballots as they are being processed and counted; allowed limitations on observers to the vote count in Philadelphia; and allowed ballots to count even if voters had forgotten to fill out the address or date on the envelope.

In making those decisions, the campaign argues, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court violated the Constitution by taking the state legislature’s power to determine how federal elections are run, similar to an existing argument Pennsylvania Republicans are making in a separate set of challenges. The campaign also says the state court violated the Constitution’s due process clause and equal protection guarantees.

“Collectively, these three decisions resulted in counting approximately 2.6 million mail ballots in violation of the law as enacted by the Pennsylvania Legislature,” reads the petition for a writ of certiorari, the document which asks the Supreme Court to take up the case. If the state Supreme Court erred, the campaign said, that would mean “over 110,000 invalid ballots were illegally counted — more than enough to have affected the outcome of the election, where the margin between the two principal candidates for President currently stands at 80,558.”

Federal courts have consistently protected ballots cast by voters relying in good faith on the election rules that were in place at the time, even if those rules are later deemed unconstitutional.

A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State, which as a policy doesn’t comment on active litigation, didn’t respond to an email for comment Sunday.

In its filing, the campaign urges the Supreme Court to take up the challenge “to put the country at ease, to the extent possible in these tumultuous times,” painting a dark portrait of a divided nation in which nearly half the country questions the legitimacy of the election, and raising the specter of chaos on the horizon.

“Indeed, the intense national and worldwide attention on the 2020 presidential election only foreshadows the disruption that may well follow if the uncertainty and unfairness shrouding this election are allowed to persist,” reads the motion to fast-track the challenge.

It is Trump and his allies who have spent months fueling the uncertainty around the election and baselessly questioning the results instead of accepting Biden’s victory.

The filings don’t acknowledge that Trump began attacking the election long before a single vote was cast; promotes outlandish conspiracy theories; provides no real evidence of his claims of fraud; has lost dozens of lawsuits across the country, rejected by judges across the ideological spectrum; and fueled the very erosion of public faith that the campaign now points to as a concern.

Instead, they invoke the Civil War election of 1860 and list a series of data points that don’t prove malfeasance or even irregularity in the results.

“A large percentage of the American people know or at least strongly believe that something is deeply amiss,” the cert petition reads.

The Trump campaign asserts that even though the vote has already been certified and the Electoral College has already met, the court can still intervene because a separate group of Republican electors also met to provide dueling electoral votes for Congress to choose from. Or the Republican-controlled legislature could appoint its own set of electors, the campaign argues.

And even if it’s too late to change this election, Trump can still run again: “The legal issues presented by this petition, namely, whether the alteration of state election laws by nonlegislative officials in the states is unconstitutional, will likely recur in future elections — including in the presidential election in 2024, in which Petitioner is constitutionally eligible to run.”

The campaign is represented by John C. Eastman, a law professor at Chapman University who wrote a controversial Newsweek op-ed questioning Kamala Harris’ eligibility for the vice presidency, and Bruce S. Marks, the Republican former state senator from Philadelphia who appeared to lose his election in 1993 before a federal judge declared him the winner and found his opponent had engaged in absentee-ballot fraud.

Copies of the documents filed were provided by Marks and lawyers for other parties in the state cases.

by **admin** » Tue Dec 22, 2020 4:45 am

'Thuggery': Four Star Army General Blasts Trump's MAGA Martial Law Plot
The Beat With Ari Melber
MSNBC
Dec 21, 2020

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[Ari Melber] And now about that extraordinary rebuke from top military leaders pushing back against the talk of imposing martial law that's reportedly swirling inside the Trump Whitehouse.

The Secretary of the Army and and Army Chief of Staff having to release a joint statement saying in part: "There is no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election."

It is remarkable that military officials are even having to say this, but that is the response after multiple reports that Trump asked about the option on Friday during an Oval Office meeting about overturning the election. Trump says the reporting is wrong.

One person attending Friday's meeting was Trump's former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Now the day before that meeting, this is what Flynn said. Watch.

[Ari Melber] That is a former U.S. general calling for martial law to re-run an election in this country.

Joining me now is Retired Army General Barry McCaffrey, a former National Security Council member. Thank you so much General McCaffrey for joining us. I'm curious to get your thoughts. First of all, how alarming do you find this talk of martial law?

[Retired Army General Barry McCaffrey] We've never heard anything like it since 1860. I was personally horrified watching Mike Flynn, who was a terrific intelligence officer during the war on terror, who is now acting in a demented fashion. Seizing ballot boxes, the Armed Forces in charge of unilaterally conducting elections in swing states -- this is thuggery! This is third-world behavior!

And by the way, the Armed Forces will NEVER, IN ANY WAY, TAKE PART.

But what we don't want to do is find out what happens when the commander-in-chief tells the acting Secretary of Defense to pull something like this off.

So I think what we get back to is the responsibility of Republicans, Senators in particular, and it's going to be heavy in history if they don't go to the President IN PUBLIC, and back him down from this criminal conversation!

[Ari Melber] General, what do you think is the thinking right now among top military officials? I understand your point about they will never do this, but at the end of the day, what happens when given the order, as you mention, because they WILL BE GIVEN THE ORDER, and they will then be tormented between following an order that they may think is illegal, and having to resign. What do you think they are thinking?

[Retired Army General Barry McCaffrey] Well, there will be NO "torment" whatsoever! If they get an order that is CLEARLY illegal, they have lawyers, both military and civilian, who will rule on it. This would be PATENTLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL! They simply won't do it! But then, the question becomes: "Will the Congress get engaged?; will the Supreme Court get engaged?; will Trump start firing generals until he finds somebody that would move?

And by the way, I might add that Acting Secretary of Defense, retired Lieutenant Colonel, will bear a heavy responsibility. The Chairman of the JCS has NO COMMAND AUTHORITY over the Armed Forces. Two civilians do: Trump, and Chris Miller. So we need the Senate Republicans in particular to step up. And not in private, but in public, and say, "We're not going there with you!"

by **admin** » Tue Dec 22, 2020 5:17 am

Trump discussed naming Sidney Powell special counsel during White House meeting: Powell has been a vocal proponent of many conspiracy theories about voter fraud since the election.
by Carol E. Lee
NBC News
Dec. 20, 2020, 12:46 PM MST

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump held a meeting at the White House on Friday evening in which he discussed naming appellate lawyer Sidney Powell as a special counsel to investigate voter fraud in the election, a person familiar with the meeting confirmed to NBC News.

Powell, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows took part in the meeting, as did retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who was Trump's first national security adviser. Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani participated by phone. The meeting was first reported by The New York Times.

Powell's conspiracy theories about the election got strong pushback from other aides in the meeting. The person familiar with the meeting said Meadows and Cipollone cut the meeting off because it was going in an alarming direction.

The White House declined to comment. Giuliani and Powell, who is also Flynn's attorney, did not respond to requests for comment.

Powell was involved with the Trump legal team's election lawsuits, the vast majority of which have been unsuccessful.

Flynn, whom Trump recently pardoned, has been publicly pushing for Trump to declare martial law. He told the conservative outlet Newsmax on Thursday that Trump should order the military to immediately "seize" every voting machine and to "rerun" the election. Trump disputed that on Twitter, writing, "Martial law = Fake News. Just more knowingly bad reporting!"

Flynn also claimed that he is acting as a conduit between Trump and foreign intelligence agencies that he claims have evidence of external interference in the election.

"I think they'll provide it directly to the president once we present it to him. ... They're more than willing to do that, from what we understand," Flynn said in an interview with Fox Business' Lou Dobbs that aired Friday.

"There are foreign partners and allies that are willing to help us," Flynn said at another point. He said without evidence that there is "a relationship" between the SolarWinds hack and election security.

by **admin** » Wed Dec 23, 2020 12:22 am

Judge Says Lin Wood’s Post-Election Lawsuits May Have Violated Several Professional Rules, Orders Him to Respond
by Adam Klasfeld
Law & Crime
Dec 22nd, 2020, 11:47 am

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Attorney Lin Wood’s lawsuits aimed to topple the 2020 election may have violated Delaware’s rules of professional conduct, preventing him from representing President Donald Trump’s ex-campaign advisor Carter Page in a defamation suit there, a judge found.

In a detailed order to show cause, Delaware Superior Court Judge Craig Karsnitz itemized defects and alleged unprofessional behavior in Wood’s lawsuits in Wisconsin and Georgia, including filing suit without a plaintiff’s authorization, submitting a false affidavit, and making a series of gaffes that the judge said call his competence into question.

“It appears to the Court that, since the granting of Mr. Wood’s motion he, has engaged in conduct in other jurisdictions, which, had it occurred in Delaware, would violate the Delaware Lawyers’ Rules of Professional Conduct,” Karsnitz wrote in a 4-page order to show cause.

Karsnitz is presiding over Page’s defamation lawsuit against Oath—the parent company of Yahoo News and the Huffington Post—alleging that their articles “portrayed him as a traitor to America.” Wood has been pursuing Page’s cause, but his post-election litigation may torpedo the attorney-client relationship.

The order to show cause that may disqualify Wood was issued on Friday, entered the docket on Saturday, and was provided by the court to Law&Crime on Tuesday morning.

The judge tore into Wood’s lawyering in the so-called “Kraken” litigation, a name given to litigation by fellow right-wing lawyer Sidney Powell; all four lawsuits filed in its name were torn asunder by federal judges, leaving an extensive record that could haunt the attorneys that filed them. The Kraken has since limped onto the Supreme Court docket.

In Wisconsin, a Republican candidate for Congress complained that Wood’s legal team named him as a plaintiff without authorization.

Judge Karsnitz cited that episode along with a series of gaffes in his complaint, including the failure to list an address, failing to file documents under seal, submitting a motion in draft form and repeatedly being skewered for violating the court’s rules.

As noted in the order to show cause, a quotation in one of the case’s filings was “found by the Court to be fictitious.”

“The citation was to a point of law critical to the case,” Karsnitz added.

U.S. District Judge Pamela Pepper pointed out the alleged act of legal fabulism in a ruling dismissing the Wisconsin case.

“Federal judges do not appoint the president in this country,” Pepper wrote in a 45-page ruling on Dec. 9. “One wonders why the plaintiffs came to federal court and asked a federal judge to do so. After a week of sometimes odd and often harried litigation, the court is no closer to answering the ‘why.’ But this federal court has no authority or jurisdiction to grant the relief the remaining plaintiff seeks.”

Judge Karsnitz also questioned Wood’s legal antics as a plaintiff in Georgia litigation, in a case thrown out for having “no basis in fact in law.”

That legal finding may put Wood in violation of Delaware’s professional rules.

“A lawyer shall not bring or defend a proceeding, or assert or controvert an issue therein, unless there is a basis in law and fact for doing so,” those rules state, as cited by the order.

Karsnitz also cited Wood’s “Exhibit Q,” an affidavit by Russell James Ramsland, Jr. roasted for confusing the states of Michigan and Minnesota.

“Mr. Wood’s conduct in filing this false affidavit violates DRPC 1.1 (Competence), 3.1 (Meritorious Claims and Contentions), 3.3 (Candor to the Tribunal), 4.1(a) (Truthfulness in Statements/False Statement of Material Fact), and Misconduct (Dishonesty and Deceit),” the order stated.

Wood is not licensed to practice in Delaware. He was allowed by the court to represent Page pro hac vice in the state. Judge Karsnitz called that permission into question.

“All of the foregoing gives the Court concerns as to the appropriateness of continuing the order granting Mr. Wood authorization to appear in this Court pro hac vice,” the judge said.

Wood must file any response to the order to show cause ruling by Jan. 6, 2021, but he already reacted on Twitter.

Responding to an email requesting comment, Wood denied violating Delaware’s professional rules.

“I am presently engaging counsel to represent me to determine why this order was issued and to defend against its false accusations against me,” Wood told Law&Crime in an email.

Oral argument on Oath’s motion to dismiss Page’s defamation lawsuit has been scheduled for Jan. 13.

Read Judge Karsnitz’s order to show cause below: [PDF HERE]

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