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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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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“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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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’
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
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.
Mr. Cipollone was a witness to some of the most significant moments in Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the election results, including discussions about seizing voting machines, meddling in the Justice Department and sending false letters to state officials about election fraud.
“That’s a terrible idea for the country,” he said of suggestions that the Trump administration seize voting machines, adding, “That’s not how we do things in the United States.”
Mr. Cipollone was also in direct contact with Mr. Trump on Jan. 6 as rioters stormed the Capitol and told the House committee he believed more should have been done to call off the mob.
“I think I was pretty clear there needed to be an immediate and forceful response, statement, public statement, that people need to leave the Capitol now,” Mr. Cipollone testified.
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