“. . . lie and attack, win no matter what . . .” “I’m telling you the single biggest issue, as bad as the border is and it’s horrible, horrible what they’re doing, they’re destroying our country — but as bad as that is, the single biggest issue — the issue that gets the most pull, the most respect, the biggest cheers — is talking about the election fraud of the 2020 presidential election.” - Donald Trump, October 10, 2021 “There’s hostility to lying, and there should be.” – Bob WoodwardLearn More
At Risk, Ivanka Eventually Comes Clean.
October 2016: Ivanka Trump: Too many Georgians ‘feel their vote has been canceled’: Donald Trump Jr, has leaned into his father’s lies and anti-Democratic conspiracy theories about the electoral process, as reports say his daughter, Ivanka Trump, has urged him to concede — while apparently considering her own political future.
Ms Trump, who quickly displayed her own political ambitions following her father’s 2016 election despite not having any government experience, has mostly stayed silent on the administration’s baseless allegations of mass voter fraud. She posted a single tweet about the issue after Election Day, as her father began ramping up his false claims surrounding mail-in voting and ballot counting: “Every legally cast vote should be counted. Every illegally cast vote should not.” June 2022: The report details how, in the final days of the Trump White House, Jared Kushner would tell anyone who'd listen that he and the wife essentially knew that Dad was a loser before it had been officially called. It's hardly a coincidence that this latest one, which could help shield the couple from any accusation that they played a role in fomenting violence at the Capitol, is emerging just as the January 6 committee is presenting them as the hearings' star attraction. Learn More
Eric Trump ”liked” a Tweet identifying QAnon “Shaman” Jacob Chansley and the assault on the U.S. Capitol as “a staged #Antifa attack”.
In response to such false accusations: Fox News' Jeanine Pirro Blasts Pro-Trump Capitol Rioters, Says Don't Blame Antifa: ‘You Did It’
The crab apple falls not far from the tree.
DT Junior: “There's nothing that I would do to ever endanger this country”.
November 2020: Text From Donald Trump Jr. Set Out Strategies to Fight Election Outcome
In a message two days after Election Day 2020, the president’s son conveyed a range of ideas for keeping his father in office.
January 6, 2021: Trump Jr. told the crowd to send a message to members of Congress that we are “coming for you.” The siege of the U.S. Capitol ensued.
April 2021: Trump Jr.'s tweet about corporations opposing further [Red state voter suppression] measures comes as Amazon, BlackRock, Google, and hundreds of other companies and executives signed a statement opposing "any discriminatory legislation" that would make it harder for people to vote.
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Giuliani life lesson #1?
Blind loyalty to a demagogue never pays:
January 2021: Giuliani to insurrectionists at U.S. Capitol: "Over the next 10 days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent. If we're wrong we will be made fools of, but if we're right a lot of them will go to jail. Let's have trial by combat".
July 2022: An Appeals Court Has Suspended Rudy Giuliani's Ability To Practice Law In D.C. July 2022: Trump Sails Away as Rudy Giuliani Drowns in Legal Bills July 2022: Giuliani subject to $1.3 billion suit by Dominion Voting Systems for “a viral disinformation campaign” July 2022: Alexander Vindman sues Trump Jr. and Giuliani, alleging retaliation over first Trump impeachment proceedings July 2022: Rudy Giuliani, oversaw fake electors plot in 7 states August 2022: Giuliani Is Told He Is a Target in Trump Election Inquiry in Georgia August 2023: Guiliani Becomes Co-Consiprator #1 August 2023: Enter Trump to Pay Loyal Rudy's Legal FeesLearn More
Sidney Powell:
Shining Lights Ingraham, Carlson and Murdoch:
“Sidney Power is a bit nuts. Sorry, but she is.” Laura Ingraham “Sidney Powell is lying.” Tucker Carlson “Really crazy stuff.” Rupert Murdoch One of the most prominent lawyers advocating false claims of voter fraud and advising Mr. Trump to fight his election loss, She promised to "release the Kraken."Powell, meanwhile, explained to prosecutors her plans for seizing voting machines nationwide and claimed that she frequently communicated with Trump during her efforts to overturn the 2020 election — though both now claim she was never his attorney.
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The New York Young Republican's Club? A combative young Republican group in the state, firmly on the right and Trump-friendly, the club’s 29-year-old president, presiding.
Mr. Wax's kindred spirit? Vish Burra, the director of operations for Representative George Santos, the New York Republican whose long history of lies has been festooned with a nascent embrace of right-wing political positions. In December 2023, Mr. Wax made headlines after he made remarks at a gala in Manhattan — attended by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Stephen K. Bannon, both noted Trump allies — suggesting the Republicans should wage “total war” against the Democrats.The radicalization of some New York Republicans vaulted Carl Paladino, a western New York Republican, to the 2010 ballot for governor. Mr. Paladino’s history of racist, sexist and homophobic comments did not stop him from carrying the Republican banner.
Last year, Mr. Paladino made a bid for a House seat and quickly won the endorsement of Representative Elise Stefanik, the “Ultra MAGA” upstate congresswoman and the third-highest ranking Republican in the party’s House majority.
The convergence of someone who took part in the legal attempts to keep Mr. Trump in power with those who were central to bringing the force of a crowd to bear as Congress was certifying the election results was a powerful reminder of how many mysteries remain where Jan. 6 is concerned. But Mr. Chesebro hinted at those connections in an email exchange with John Eastman . . . . In late December 2020, the two lawyers discussed how to get a case before the Supreme Court. Mr. Chesebro told Mr. Eastman as they discussed filing a legal action that in terms of the highest court, the “odds of action before Jan. 6 will become more favorable if the justices start to fear that there will be ‘wild’ chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/us/politics/kenneth-chesebro-jan-6-trump
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“Ward participated in a scheme to send spurious electoral votes to Congress, a scheme that the committee describes as ‘a key part’ of the ‘effort to overturn the election’ that culminated on Jan. 6,” the two judges wrote.
They added that Ms. Ward had invoked her Fifth Amendment rights when the committee sought to question her. “Having attempted the less intrusive method of asking Ward directly,” the two judges wrote, “the committee has a strong interest in pursuing its investigation by other means.”
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- texted White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, urging him to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory,
- Pressed lawmakers in Arizona and a second battleground state, Wisconsin, to overturn state electoral votes for Biden,
- attended the “Stop the Steal” rally in D.C. on Jan. 6, and
- wrote to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) denigrating the House select committee’s investigation of the attack on the Capitol.
The so-called "election integrity" committees of the RNC and its state counterpart (the RSLC) are filled with election deniers (members who backed the false conspiracies about the 2020 election) and who have publicly called for some of the most severe voting restrictions.
On the RNC committee, Drew McKissick, the Republican chair in South Carolina, tweeted false accusations by the Trump campaign in November about dead voters and vans full of Biden ballots.
Lenar Whitney, a RNC committee member from Louisiana, repeated conspiracies about Dominion voting machines at a party meeting.
The charge relates to Chesebro’s role organizing slates of pro-Trump electors to meet in seven states where Joe Biden had won. According to details of the amended indictment read in open court, prosecutors allege several other co-defendants were a part of that conspiracy: Trump, four other lawyers including Rudy Giuliani, and one campaign operative. Chesebro signed the amended indictment, though it was not clear if he had offered prosecutors evidence related to the alleged role those other defendants played.
Mitchell advised Trump on his 2020 call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in whichTrump tried to get Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votesand flip Georgia’s electoral college votes to him.
Vivek Goes Full Tinfoil Hat With New Taylor Swift Election Conspiracy
The former GOP hopeful thinks the NFL might be rigged to help secure a win for Joe Biden. Seriously.
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Scalise is seemingly less aligned with the hard right on these issues than Jordan, who leads the House GOP’s “weaponization” subcommittee and has spun elaborate conspiracy theories.
But Scalise has echoed much of the same rhetoric:
- In August, he alleged that federal law enforcement is “being abused to go after political opponents.” He also baselessly suggested that Trump’s indictments are politically timed.
- Last year, he claimed that the FBI agents searching Mar-a-Lago went “rogue,” prompting pushback from a Fox News host.
- After the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, Scalise called the events at the Capitol “domestic terrorism.” But he voted to reject Biden electors that day and later voted against impeaching Trump.
- Scalise last month called the evidence against Biden “incredibly devastating already,” despite the GOP’s own witnesses at the first impeachment inquiry hearing acknowledging there was little direct evidence tying Biden to anything nefarious.
- Huckabee:“The president in no way, form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence. If anything, quite the contrary.”
- Trump: “So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Just knock the hell .... I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise."
- Trump, inciting the insurrectionists: “And we fight. We fight like hell. And, if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
- 2017: Promoting Trump’s false ‘voting fraud’ narrative: “Well, I won't reveal private conversations with the president, Judy, but I will tell you that what the president is talking about is registration and voter rolls. He knows there are dead people registered, there are illegal people registered, and he wants to get to the bottom of that without an election on the horizon.
- 2021: “Alternative facts”: Conway praised Trump for his response to the U.S. Capitol riots.
- The very next day: President Trump appoints Conway to the board of visitors of the U.S. Air Force Academy.
Rupert Murdoch doesn’t believe Trump was cheated. But he’s letting Fox personalities spin tales that could permanently harm America.
Murdoch tries to have it both ways and it’s time for Fox to dispense with the bad-faith, bifurcated approach to the truth it has used for years.
His news operation — the one Trump tweets angrily about — has told its viewers that Trump lost the election and that his complaints about voter fraud are made up.
But in the morning, and at night, Fox allows its most popular stars – Hannity, Carlson, Ingraham, the Fox & Friends crew - to peddle lies to its audience under the guise that they’re merely offering their opinions.
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November 2021: Jared Kushner advising Trump to 'pursue his legal remedies' to the election.
June 2022: Next was Mr. Kushner. In his video he was pressed by Representative Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chairwoman, about whether he was aware that the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, had been threatening to resign because Mr. Trump was making increasingly outlandish efforts to stay in power.
He added that he knew that Mr. Cipollone and “the team were always saying, ‘Oh we are going to resign, we are not going to be there if this happens, if that happens.’ So I kind of took it up to just be whining, to be honest with you.”
Ms. Cheney: “Whining,” she said. “There’s a reason why people serving in our government take an oath to the constitution. As our founding fathers recognized, democracy is fragile. The people in positions of public trust are duty bound to defend it, to step forward when action is required.
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The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.
- Charles DickensLearn More
On Tuesday, the committee announced 10 new subpoenas that seemed to expand the aperture of the inquiry even further, seeking information from top officials in Mr. Trump’s White House including Stephen Miller, his senior adviser . . . . In its order to Mr. Miller, the committee said that he had helped to spread false claims of voter fraud in the election, and to encourage state legislatures to appoint alternate slates of electors in an effort to invalidate Mr. Biden’s victory.
Six days after major news organizations declared Donald J. Trump the loser of the 2020 presidential election, his allies were applying a desperate full-court press in an effort to turn his defeat around, particularly in Georgia.
The pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell went on television claiming that there was abundant evidence of foreign election meddling that never ultimately materialized. Another lawyer, L. Lin Wood, filed a lawsuit seeking to block the certification of Georgia’s election results.
That same day, Nov. 13, 2020, Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican and one of Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporters, made a phone call that left Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, immediately alarmed. Mr. Graham, he said, had asked if there was a legal way, using the state courts, to toss out all mail-in votes from counties with high rates of questionable signatures. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/24/us/lindsey-graham-trump-georgia.
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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) attempted to defend Trump’s comments at a rally on Saturday, where the former president said he warned a foreign leader that if that country didn’t contribute enough to the alliance, then Russia can “do whatever the hell they want."
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Not content with his highly reported attempts to overturn the results of several 2020 state elections, which supported Biden, Hawley also supported the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, giving an arm-raised fist salute to the somewhat-deluded people who stormed the Capitol in hopes of stopping the certification of state’s election results.
In April 2021, Hawley, a leading Big Lie advocate, said Georgia's controversial new voter suppression law is like his own attempt in January to get millions of votes thrown out of the 2020 presidential election.
After voters in the 2022 midterm elections signaled "thumb-down" to GOP election denier candidates, Hawley played the blame game. He fingered Minority Leader McConnell, who early on signaled consternation over election deniers running as GOP candidates. McConnell was right.
Former Senator Danforth views his prior political support of Josh Hawley as "the worst mistake" of my life".
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Ingraham: Two Tales of A City (under Siege):
As the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol unfolded, Meadows received texts from Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade, as well as Hannity, according to the newly released communications.
“Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home,” Ingraham wrote. “This is hurting all of us."
Ingraham’s private missives, however, differed starkly from what she said on her show later that evening, when she began whitewashing the violence of the day and claiming the attacks were “antithetical” to the Trump movement.
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- Funded by? The Council for National Policy (CNP), also known as the “Secret Hub of the Radical Christian Right."
- Founded/directed by? Jim DeMint, CNP member & former president of The Heritage Foundation.
- Led by? Trump enabler & co-conspirator Mark Meadows, CNP member & former Trump chief of staff.
- Founder and funder of? Election Integrity Network (EIN), voter suppression masquerading as election integrity,
- EIN's leader? CNP/CPI member & Trump voter-suppression attorney, Cleta Mitchell.
- Opposed: "For the People" Act, the elections reform bill that would undo Voter ID laws, support mail-in ballots, enact automatic voter registration, and shine light on dark money.
- Partners with: Jan 6. enabler Turning Point USA, which played a major role in the January 6th Capitol riots.
- Funding: Mark Meadows' mission "to create more members [of Congress] like Jim Jordan, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley," via CPI’s new State Freedom Caucus Network.
Mark Meadows Spills to Special Counsel About Trump’s Election Lies: Report
Mark Meadows has reportedly testified before a federal grand jury impaneled by Special Counsel Jack Smith in exchange for immunity from prosecution in the Justice Department’s election interference case against Donald Trump.
According to ABC News, the former White House chief of staff has testified under oath at least three times, twice before the special counsel’s office and once to a grand jury, regarding the investigation into Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Meadows reportedly testified that he had told the former president the election was lost and, according to sources, testified to the DOJ that “obviously we didn’t win.”
As previously reported by Politico, Meadows’ testimony to Georgia prosecutors has provided hints that he may be prepared to flip on Trump there, as well.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mark-meadows-flips-trump-spills-jack-smith Learn More
- Except the appearance only reinforced the true lack of evidence that the Trump team has produced.
- Hannity asked McEnany two questions, and in each case, she responded with a talking point that has been roundly debunked for weeks.
Jan. 6, 2021:
Even Fox News’s Sean Hannity tried to stop the madness, in a text to Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany:
“Hey now, no more crazy people, no more stolen election talk. Yes, impeachment and 25th amendment are real. Many people will quit.”
Replied McEnany:“Love that. That’s the playbook.”
Yet in public McEnany remains adamant about her baseless claims of massive voter fraud and Trump's role in instigating the U.S. Capitol riots. Hannity too.
“Marble Freedom Trust is Leonard Leo’s billion-dollar slush fund to erode democracy”
In 2018, during a live event, Justice Clarence Thomas joked about how honored he was to be sharing the stage with Mr. Leo, calling him “the No. 3 most powerful person in the world.” In 2020, Leo left the leadership of the conservative Federalist Society to become chairman of a company called CRC Advisors, which advises and helps manage conservative nonprofits. In 2021, Leo became “a kingmaker in conservative big money politics” as the trustee and chairman of the new $1.6 billion Marble trust, a political non-profit organization, created and funded by a 90-year old electronics manufacturing mogul, effectively giving Leo “the power to shape elections and political fights.” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/us/politics/republican-dark-money.htmlLearn More
Guilfoyle’s leaked text messages show her bragging about having raised $3 million for the rally that fueled the Capitol riot and, per ProPublica, “represent the strongest indication yet that members of the Trump family circle were directly involved in the financing and organization of the rally.”
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Jan. 6, 2021: Even Fox News’s Sean Hannity tried to stop the madness, in a text to Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany: “Hey now, no more crazy people, no more stolen election talk. Yes, impeachment and 25th amendment are real. Many people will quit.”
Spending hundred of millions, so much dark money backing long-debunked lies about Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, and supporting campaigns to derail direct democracy efforts in multiple states
Who benefits?
Trump and Trump enablers CPI, the Election Integrity Network, The Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, Mark Meadows, Steven Bannon, MTG and many more
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2020: Steve Bannon sought to overturn the certified results falsely alleging illegal voting, mail-in ballots and voting machines.
He and Peter Navarro authored a plan "to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to misuse his role as the person officially counting electoral ballots and instead reject them, delaying the certification of Biden’s victory and giving Republican-controlled state legislatures time to overturn the election."
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- 1998: Dershowitz on the impeachment of Bill Clinton: “It certainly doesn’t have to be a crime if you have somebody who completely corrupts the Office of the President and who abuses trust and poses a great danger to our liberty, you don’t need a technical crime.
- 2020: Dershowitz on the first impeachment of Donald Trump: “And if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment."
Trump’s ‘deep-state’ warrior
Trump has repeatedly blasted an alleged “Deep State” in the intelligence community, repeatedly accusing career officials of seeking to undermine his administration from the inside despite no evidence to back up his claims. In between his turns in government, Grenell had a public affairs consulting firm called Capitol Media Partners. One of the firm’s clients, according to the financial disclosure that Grenell filed when he became an ambassador, was Arthur J. Finkelstein, the late Republican political consultant whose international clients included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary.Learn More
"And if there’s one thing we’ve learned about Tommy Tuberville, it’s that he’ll never let what’s good for Americans, including his constituents, stand in the way of what’s good for him and his political party."
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This Texan bends a knee to dictatorial Donald Trump:
[x] Abbott "has certainly been very loyal to former President Trump, so he has that going for him". [x] "[T]here is very little chance that Abbott would try to outshine Trump." [x] "[H]e has acted like someone positioning himself for national office." [x] "He has almost quixotically staked out support for school vouchers — catnip for national Republican voters — even though Texas lawmakers largely are opposed." [x] He has recently "journeyed to the Middle East to show his support for Israel." [x] Abbott has been governor for a decade, and it is difficult to say what he has succeeded in doing to improve the lives of his constituents. His legacy consists entirely of keeping a few people out, at fabulous expense.Learn More“There’s hostility to lying, and there should be.”
– Bob Woodward
“Shame . . . focuses attention . . . and this provides a deterrence instrumental in sanctioning vicious or unjust action.”
– Marlene K. Sokolon, author of Political Emotions: Aristotle and the Symphony of Reason and Emotion
“Rule will not be morally legitimate unless it proceeds from the will of a moral individual. Legitimacy of exercise in the discourse of virtue politics must spring from a desire of a political leader to be and to do good.”
– James Hankins, author of Virtue Politics
“The institutional Republican party knows exactly how unfit Donald Trump is and how dangerous are the forces he has unleashed. They simply refuse to say so publicly, due to a combination of vanity, avarice, and cowardice.”
– Jonathan V. Last