Kenneth Chesebro, a former lawyer for Donald Trump’s campaign, pleaded guilty Friday to illegally conspiring to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, striking a deal in which he will avoid jail time and agreed to provide evidence that could implicate other defendants, including Trump himself.
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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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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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.
Joker: Former President Donald Trump:
“. . . 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 Woodward Learn More
“. . . 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 Woodward Learn More
Alt-right radio host Jesse Kelly, adoring Trump booster, and frequent guest on Tucker Carlson’s former prime-time Fox News show, agreed with a Twitter user's suggestion that “Weimar problems eventually lead to Weimar solutions."
Kelly's tweet?
America “needs a dictator.” Learn More
McEnany on the Big Lie and the Capitol Insurrection - All In:
December 2020: An increasing number of Republicans and now even President Trump’s own Justice Department have undermined the White House’s baseless claims of massive voter fraud. So Kayleigh McEnany appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show Tuesday night with a defiant message: This evidence is real, it’s from real people, and we’re not backing down.
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- 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.
“You’ve got two camps right now of people who should speak out and haven’t. The first camp knows Trump is a dangerous and vindictive man but doesn’t want to upend their lives by provoking his ire. The second camp is more nakedly transactional."
- Miles Taylor, former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration
McCarthy sided with Trump partisans in voting to toss out votes from swing state electoral votes of Arizona and Pennsylvania just hours after a mob forcibly invaded the Capitol. In May 2021 McCarthy endorsed the Republican wave of state voter suppression laws because Republican voters lack “confidence in the electoral system".
McCarthy is not out to smooth out the Trumpiest elements of the GOP. And he’s rarely hinted that he finds the more bumptious members on his right flank to be real problems, including members of he Freedom Caucus, the hard-line group that is now less formally conservative than a vehicle for Trumpism, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), perhaps the most divisive member of his conference.
“For somebody who has the picture of Ronald Reagan on his wall in his office in the Capitol, the notion that now Kevin McCarthy is going to make himself the leader of the pro-Putin wing of my party is just a stunning thing.”
— Liz Cheney, Meet the Press, October 23, 2022. Learn More
Podcaster Dobbs, staunchly anti-democracy propagandist:
“If president Trump can win again, he would join Winston Churchill and Alexander the Great among the greatest leaders of world history,” Dobbs, quoting his own book, “The Trump Century” (2020).
“And if he falls short, well, there is no point in considering the possibility. He’s a winner — the winner.”
After Trump’s loss, Dobbs took his propaganda-like praise of then President Trump to a higher level, asking “. . . why not just say we’re not going to accept the results of this election? It’s outrageous.”
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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 Fees Learn More
After Joe Biden won the state of Arizona, Hoffman, an Arizona state representative, declared himself a state elector and attempted to submit false documents to the National Archive asserting that Arizona had been won by Republican candidate Donald Trump. Learn More