Tag Archives: fraud

Many People Are Saying …

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.. that it would be a mistake to keep Trump off the ballot, that the people should decide so he and his cult supporters will not cry ‘foul’ when he loses the election by vote counting.

Does any rational person truly believe that if Trump remains on the ballot and loses the election by vote count (with, of course, the Electoral College factored in), he will abide the result he refused to accept in 2020? Is there any plausible basis to think that his cult supporters, many of whom claim he is their God’s messenger, will just say, “oh well, we fought the good fight and lost so let’s just move on?”

Bear in mind that Trump is arguing now that because he was still President on January 6, 2021, he cannot be held criminally accountable for anything he did as President. That’s right, his brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to which the U.S. Supreme Court referred the immunity case, asserts Trump is absolutely immune from anything he did while President. He is arguing that everything that happened regarding the 2020 election dispute was within the broad range of presidential responsibilities and actions that are absolutely immune from any form of prosecution. If he loses in the Circuit Court, he will make that same argument to the Supreme Court, playing for time, his normal strategy when called to account for his many crimes and civil offenses.

The Supreme Court’s decision to deny certiorari to the Special Prosecutor gives Trump more chances to achieve his goal of delay. His strategy is that if he can avoid a definitive finding of criminal guilt until he wins the 2024 election, he will then pardon himself. That act will, of course, be challenged and he’ll almost certainly lose the argument, well into his presidency. At that point he will simply say: “You’ve made your decision, now try to enforce it.”

I understand the argument that his supporters will not tolerate his exclusion from the ballot in 2024 because they are morally certain he committed no crimes and even if he did, so what? The people should decide who they want for President, not the courts.

That’s a nice idea if everyone were going to play by the same rules. But the reality is that Republicans are doing everything they can to suppress Democratic votes. Trump has already convoluted his lead in the Republican nomination process to claiming certain victory in 2024. What then can be expected if he loses? Another January 6 only much worse?

I have read the Trump brief before the D.C. Circuit in which he argues that everything he did, including particularly his actions leading to and on January 6, was an “official act” of the President and thus absolutely immune from question in the courts. Only Congress, his arguments goes, can punish criminal conduct by a President and only by impeachment. If found “not guilty” in impeachment, a certainty in any Senate with even a large minority of compliant Republicans, his argument is that it would represent Double Jeopardy to try that President for crimes in the courts.

I believe Trump is wrong yet again for several simple but fundamental reasons:

  • Trump’s “concerns” about the validity of the election had no factual basis, as proven by losing 60+ lawsuits;
  • Attempts to overturn the results by pressuring local election officials and submitting slates of bogus electors are not plausibly “official acts” within the responsibility of a president;
  • Impeachment is not a criminal procedure even if crimes are at the heart of the allegations; it is a political procedure, as conclusively evidenced by the process followed in Trump’s specific case (refusal to call witnesses, being just one example) and by the Constitutionally-limited penalty that could be applied if a guilty outcome were determined; therefore, Double Jeopardy does not attach to an impeachment,

Let’s examine that.

First, Trump argues, “The indictment alleges five types of conduct, all of which constitute quintessential Presidential acts.” The Trump brief lists those acts as:

(1) “tweets and other public statements about the outcome of the 2020 federal election, contending that the election was tainted by fraud and irregularities;”

(2) “Trump communicated with the Acting Attorney General and officials at the U.S. Department of Justice about investigating election crimes and possibly appointing a new Acting Attorney General;”

(3) “Trump communicated with state officials about the administration of the federal election and urged them to exercise their official responsibilities in accordance with extensive information that the election was tainted by fraud and irregularities;”

(4) “Trump communicated with the Vice President, in his legislative capacity as President of the Senate, and attempted to communicate with other members of Congress in order to urge them to exercise their official duties with respect to the certification of the federal election according to President Trump’s view of the national interest;” and

(5) “other individuals organized slates of alternate electors from seven States to provide a justification for the Vice President to exercise his official duties in the manner urged by President Trump.”

Those are fantasy versions of what actually transpired.

In reality, the indictment of Trump charges a different state of facts:

  • Conspiracy to Defraud the United States— “using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the federal government;”

Trump “spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and [Trump] knew that they were false.”

“The purpose of the conspiracy was to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the federal government function by which those results are collected, counted, and certified.”

“The Defendant and co-conspirators used knowingly false claims of election fraud to get state legislators and election officials to subvert the legitimate election results and change electoral votes for the Defendant’s opponent, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., to electoral votes for the Defendant. That is, on the pretext of baseless fraud claims, the Defendant pushed officials in certain states to ignore the popular vote; disenfranchise millions of voters; dismiss legitimate electors; and ultimately, cause the ascertainment of and voting by illegitimate electors in favor of the Defendant.”

“The Defendant and co-conspirators organized fraudulent slates of electors in seven targeted states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), attempting to mimic the procedures that the legitimate electors were supposed to follow under the Constitution and other federal and state laws.”

  • Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding— “to corruptly obstruct and impede an official proceeding, that is, the certification of the electoral vote;”
  • Obstruction of, and Attempt to Obstruct, an Official Proceeding— “that is, the certification of the electoral vote;”
  • Conspiracy Against Rights— “to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States—that is, the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.”

I will spare you the rest of the extensive details in the indictment. It comprises 45 pages of specific allegations of conduct, not just “speech” or “communications,” engaged in by Trump and his co-conspirators to overturn the election based on false and illegal allegations for which no evidence existed, and which had been rejected in some 60 lawsuits filed on Trump’s behalf.

The contention that the indictment is just about some tweets and some random communications about election fraud that were plainly “official acts” of the President acting as President is preposterous and false.

The Trump brief claims that “the text of the Constitution, through the Impeachment Judgment Clause, presupposes criminal immunity. That Clause dictates that a President may be criminally charged only if he is the “Party convicted” in an impeachment trial.” That Clause says:

Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

Bear in mind that Trump simultaneously makes the argument that Impeachment is a criminal proceeding and thus once tried for asserted crimes and acquitted, Double Jeopardy attaches, and the President cannot be criminally prosecuted for those same crimes.

And so, ipse dixit, according to Trump, he gets a complete pass on his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. For the initiated, ipse dixit means: “He himself said it; a bare assertion resting on the authority of an individual.” http://tinyurl.com/yc3pdcrm In other words, Trump said it, so it’s true.

Fortunately for the country, that’s not how things work. It is elementary that in conspiracy, which is what Trump is charged with in three of the four indictment counts, these elements must be satisfied:

    • Two or more persons
    • intentionally make an agreement
    • to violate federal law or defraud the United states, and
    • commit some overt act in furtherance of the agreement.

The indictment charges and explains in gruesome detail the unlawful conspiracies in which Trump and others engaged to overturn the election result that Trump knowingly and falsely claimed had been stolen through fraud.

To take but one example (Georgia), Trump didn’t just “communicate” with “state officials about the administration of the federal election and urged them to exercise their official responsibilities in accordance with extensive information that the election was tainted by fraud and irregularities,” as claimed in his brief. No, he pressed them repeatedly to “find” enough votes to overturn the result of the election based on false claims of stolen votes. He was aided in all his efforts by others with whom he had reached an understanding (agreement) that they would continue fighting the election outcome regardless of the evidence (the facts). He continued doing this up to and through January 6, 2021.

Trump’s claim that his statements and conduct clearly fall within the “‘outer perimeter’ of [the President’s] official responsibility” is preposterous on its face. The brief effectively concedes that point in multiple places where it argues that “When the President “acts[s] in cases in which the executive possesses a constitutional or legal discretion, nothing can be more perfectly clear tan that [his] acts are only politically examinable.” Trump Brief at 29.

Similarly, Trump’s claim that “Because the Constitution specifies that only “the Party convicted” by trial in the Senate may be “liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment,” … it presupposes that a President who is not convicted may not be subject to criminal prosecution,” citing as authority, naturally, the writings of Antonin Scalia offering this quote: “When a car dealer promises a low financing rate to ‘purchases with good credit,’ it is entirely clear that the rate is not available to purchasers with spotty credit.” Trump Brief at 26-27.

Trump’s argument might have some force if the impeachment process had the attributes of a criminal trial, but it doesn’t, as plainly demonstrated by the way in which his impeachment for his conduct before, on and after January 6 was handled.

Trump’s brief repeats the claim many times that his conduct covered by the indictment consisted entirely of “official acts”, but the brief nowhere explains how efforts to overturn an election based on false claims constitute “official acts” of the President. He doesn’t explain it because he can’t. The argument is ridiculous.

The same is true of the other major elements of Trump’s arguments, such as that.

The unbroken tradition of not exercising the supposed formidable power of criminally prosecuting a President for official acts—despite ample motive and opportunity to do so, over centuries—implies that the power does not exist.

That argument assumes the answer in the question: were Trump’s conspiracies “official acts?” Nowhere does the Trump brief establish or make a serious effort to establish that they were.

Calling Trump’s effort to subvert the election “core political speech and advocacy” does not make it so. Trump once said, ““I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose voters.” Trump would likely argue that shooting the particular person was “speech” in defense of his presidency. This example illustrates the danger of granting unlimited immunity to someone who recognizes no legal, moral, or other limitations on his entitlements.

Trump further claims that the law under which he was indicted “dramatically stretches the language of vague criminal statutes in novel interpretations in an attempt to criminalize core political speech and advocacy.” And, he argues, this problem is compounded by the fact that “Criminal prosecution … requires only a single enterprising prosecutor and a compliant grand jury drawn from a tiny sector of America.”

He is wrong because in both cases EVIDENCE is required. Trump didn’t hesitate to seek the rulings of the judicial system when he believed that allegations alone could overturn the results of the presidential election in key states. When he lost 60 cases, he decided it was ok to turn to extra-judicial means to achieve his goal of remaining in office. There is nothing vague about criminal conspiracy statutes under which he is charged, and he’ll have a full opportunity, like every other American, to defend himself in court.

Piling one false premise on another does not improve his argument. His brief claims there were “widespread reports of election fraud” that he was entitled to address, but those reports were by people working in concert with Trump and he knew the claims were false.

The brief’s attempt to show that his “communications” with state election officials (Georgia comes to mind) were merely “taking steps to ensure the integrity of federal elections, such as communicating with state officials who play a critical role in administering those federal elections.” The tapes of his attempts to persuade George Secretary of State Raffensperger to change the vote count there make a laughingstock of this argument.

Even more absurd is Trump’s claim that “communicating with Members of Congress, including the Vice President in his capacity as President of the Senate, about their exercise of their official duties lies at the core of Presidential responsibility.” That’s now what Trump did. He demanded, repeatedly and in multiple venues and contrary to advice from multiple credible advisors, that the Vice President reject electoral votes lawfully and properly certified by the states. To argue that “organizing contingent slates of electors to support the President’s advocacy to the Vice President and Congress is likewise an official act” is preposterous on its face.

Trump’s claim that Double Jeopardy attaches to his acquittal in the second impeachment also fails because, among other things, the impeachment was not for the “same offense.” The fact that the Constitution expressly limits the punishment that can be imposed for a guilty finding conclusively demonstrates that the impeachment was not a criminal proceeding under a criminal statute. A subsequent prosecution would be required to impose the criminal penalties, according to the express wording of the impeachment clause.

The Circuit Court should make short work of Trump’s ludicrous arguments and send the case back where it will ultimately be decided anyway: the United States Supreme Court where we will learn, once and for all, whether this Court is still tethered to the Constitution or whether it has become, as many of us believe, a political arm of the Republican Party. This case should settle any doubts about that and then, the fate of democracy in America will be determined.

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Note for the New Year: the peril to our democracy grows with each passing day. If you believe the posts in this blog have any value, feel free to share links to them with your own social media networks.

Trump’s Documents – Trump’s Crimes

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By now you are likely aware that Trump’s attempts to prevent the disclosure of emails and other documents related to his attempted coup on January 6 are failing across the board. This is clearly the correct outcome. The observations of one judge, in particular, have attracted some news attention but, as usual, have disappeared into the fog of astonishing disclosures about Republican obstruction and corruption in Congress and elsewhere.

I am therefore using this forum to share with you a few quotations from the March 28 opinion in Eastman v Thomson, the federal District Court opinion that heard Trump attorney John Eastman’s claims of attorney-client and work product privilege for a tranche of 111 emails demanded by the January 6 Select Committee. These messages related to Eastman’s role, and Trump’s actions, in Trump’s legal and political strategy regarding the results of the 2020 election. [NB: footnotes and citations, the bane of effective communication, have been omitted; my helpful headings are underscored & italicized; opinion points of emphasis bolded by me] [NB2: the opinion is 44 pages long; you can read the whole thing here, https://bit.ly/3tZ0tax , but the gist is set out below. I read it so you don’t have to.]

There Was No Election Fraud in 2020

In the months following the election, numerous credible sources–from the President’s inner circle to agency leadership to statisticians–informed President Trump and Dr. Eastman that there was no evidence of election fraud.

… after “dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews,” the Department of Justice had concluded that “the major allegations [of election fraud] are not supported by the evidence developed.”

By early January, more than sixty court cases alleging fraud had been dismissed for lack of evidence or lack of standing.

Eastman’s Plan to Overturn the Election

Ultimately, Dr. Eastman conceded that his argument was contrary to consistent historical practice, would likely be unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court,38 and violated the Electoral Count Act on four separate grounds.

Knowing that his legal theories were invalid, Eastman addressed the mob that assembled on January 6 at Trump’s invitation:

We no longer live in a self-governing republic if we can’t get the answer to this question. This is bigger than President Trump. It is a very essence of our republican form of government, and it has to be done. And anybody that is not willing to stand up to do it, does not deserve to be in the office.

But,

Before the Joint Session of Congress began, Vice President Pence publicly rejected President Trump and Dr. Eastman’s plan.

Then, and then, they threw themselves on the railroad tracks …  [NB3: paraphrase of 1969 song, Along Came Jones]

Even as the rioters continued to break into the Capitol, President Trump tweeted at 2:24 pm: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”

As the attack progressed, Dr. Eastman continued to urge Vice President Pence to reconsider his decision not to delay the count.

The rampage on January 6 “left multiple people dead, injured more than 140 people, and inflicted millions of dollars in damage to the Capitol.”

As the House of Representatives later wrote, January 6, 2021 was “one of the darkest days of our democracy.”

 Refusal to Produce Documents to January 6 Select Committee

 Dr. Eastman declined to produce any documents or communications to the Select Committee and asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege against production.67 During his deposition, Dr. Eastman asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege 146 times.

 NB4: You know, the Fifth Amendment that says you don’t have to testify to facts that might incriminate you. The government must find someone else to incriminate you. Or some documents ….

 The plan proposed by Dr. Eastman’s memo involve actions by the Vice President without recourse to the courts.

Litigation was never Dr. Eastman’s motivation for planning the events of January 6, perhaps because, as he conceded, his legal theories would be rejected “9-0” by the Supreme Court.

The true animating force behind these emails was advancing a political strategy: to persuade Vice President Pence to take unilateral action on January 6.

Trump Committed Crimes

The crime-fraud exception applies when (1) a “client consults an attorney for advice that will serve [them] in the commission of a fraud or crime,” and (2) the communications are “sufficiently related to” and were made “in furtherance of” the crime. It is irrelevant whether the attorney was aware of the illegal purpose or whether the scheme was ultimately successful. The exception extinguishes both the attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine.

The Select Committee alleges that President Trump violated 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), which criminalizes obstruction or attempted obstruction of an official proceeding.

President Trump attempted to obstruct an official proceeding by launching a pressure campaign to convince Vice President Pence to disrupt the Joint Session on January 6.

Together, these actions [meetings at White House, statements to the January 6 mob] more likely than not constitute attempts to obstruct an official proceeding.

Dr. Eastman does not dispute that the Joint Session is an “official proceeding.”

A person violates § 1512(c) when they obstruct an official proceeding with a corrupt mindset. The Ninth Circuit has not defined “corruptly” for purposes of this statute. However, the court has made clear that the threshold for acting “corruptly” is lower than “consciousness of wrongdoing,” meaning a person does not need to know their actions are wrong to break the law. Because President Trump likely knew that the plan to disrupt the electoral count was wrongful, his mindset exceeds the threshold for acting “corruptly” under § 1512(c).

President Trump and Dr. Eastman justified the plan with allegations of election fraud—but President Trump likely knew the justification was baseless, and therefore that the entire plan was unlawful.

President Trump’s repeated pleas for Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger clearly demonstrate that his justification was not to investigate fraud, but to win the election.

President Trump likely knew the electoral count plan had no factual justification.

The plan not only lacked factual basis but also legal justification.

Vice President Pence “very consistent[ly]” made clear to President Trump that the plan was unlawful, refusing “many times” to unilaterally reject electors or return them to the states.

Dr. Eastman argues that the plan was legally justified as it “was grounded on a good faith interpretation of the Constitution.”  But “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” and believing the Electoral Count Act was unconstitutional did not give President Trump license to violate it. Disagreeing with the law entitled President Trump to seek a remedy in court, not to disrupt a constitutionally-mandated process. And President Trump knew how to pursue election claims in court—after filing and losing more than sixty suits, this plan was a last-ditch attempt to secure the Presidency by any means.

The illegality of the plan was obvious.

… Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.

… the evidence shows that an agreement to enact the electoral count plan likely existed between President Trump and Dr. Eastman.

President Trump likely knew that the electoral count plan was illegal.

President Trump continuing to push that plan despite being aware of its illegality constituted obstruction by “dishonest” means under § 371.

Dr. Eastman himself repeatedly recognized that his plan had no legal support.

Dr. Eastman admitted more than once that “his proposal violate[d] several provisions of statutory law….”

Dr. Eastman’s views on the Electoral Count Act are not, as he argues, a “good faith interpretation” of the law; they are a partisan distortion of the democratic process. His plan was driven not by preserving the Constitution, but by winning the 2020 election.

The evidence shows that Dr. Eastman was aware that his plan violated the Electoral Count Act. Dr. Eastman likely acted deceitfully and dishonestly each time he pushed an outcome-driven plan that he knew was unsupported by the law.

President Trump’s acts to strong-arm Vice President Pence into following the plan included meeting with and calling the Vice President and berating him in a speech to thousands outside the Capitol.

Based on the evidence, the Court finds that it is more likely than not that President Trump and Dr. Eastman dishonestly conspired to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.

Finally,

Dr. Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history. Their campaign was not confined to the ivory tower—it was a coup in search of a legal theory.

At most, this case is a warning about the dangers of “legal theories” gone wrong, the powerful abusing public platforms, and desperation to win at all costs. If Dr. Eastman and President Trump’s plan had worked, it would have permanently ended the peaceful transition of power, undermining American democracy and the Constitution. If the country does not commit to investigating and pursuing accountability for those responsible, the Court fears January 6 will repeat itself.

Trump Goes Full Dictator

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The president has been asked multiple times if he will respect the result of the vote and participate in the peaceful transfer of power that has been a hallmark of American democracy since the Founding. His chilling responses are, in essence, “only if I win,” just as he said before the 2016 election. In that election he made much of claims that the election was being “rigged” by Democrats against him. Little was known at that time about the support he was getting from Russia which wanted Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton at all costs. Of course, a significant majority of voters went for Clinton anyway. Trump’s squeak-by win was the product of a few votes in a few states favored by the Electoral College.

This time, Trump has gone all-in with his “election rigging” claims, focusing mainly on the on-going shift toward mail-in voting compelled by the COVID-19 pandemic crisis that the president himself has admitted he deliberately downplayed the danger and misled the public despite his early knowledge of how deadly and easily transmitted the virus was. Details in Bob Woodward’s Rage. Trump claims that mail-in voting, in which ballots are sent to all registered voters rather than the traditional absentee method that send ballots only to voters who ask for them, are inherently infected with fraud.

These assertions have no basis in history. Multiple states, including Republican-led states, have long used mail-in voting without material evidence of voter fraud. Paul Begala’s recent book, You’re Fired, The Perfect Guide to Beating Donald Trump, shares some compelling data on this subject. He reminds us of the Pence-Kobach voter fraud commission, ponderously named by Trump as the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Kobach was the lead horse in the Trump wagon train seeking evidence that voter fraud was rampant in the United States.

During its roughly seven-month life, the Commission came up with … nothing of substance. The pathetic history of this effort at voter suppression, inspired by Trump’s hurt feelings over having lost the popular vote in 2016, are set out at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Advisory_Commission_on_Election_Integrity, including the finding by a federal magistrate that Kobach had engaged in “patently misleading representations” in a court dispute over document access.

Begala reports that the Bush administration had also tried to unearth voter fraud. Then Attorney General Ashcroft investigated hundreds of campaigns involving 197 million votes and prosecuted 26 people. In a study of 14 years of elections (1 billion votes), the Washington Post found 31 cases of actual or plausible voter fraud. For the 2016 election, a WAPO investigation revealed 4 published reports of fraud in an election with 135 million votes. Sidebar: one of those cases was someone who voted twice for … Donald Trump.

Begala observes that voter fraud involves a very small gain for the fraud-favored candidate (one incremental vote) whereas the perpetrator faces the prospect of federal prison. If you think that’s fanciful, recall Crystal Mason who cast a provisional ballot, which was never counted, in Texas while on federal supervised release following a prison term for tax fraud. She was sentenced to five years – five years – in prison for an uncounted vote when she had never been told of her disqualification under Texas law. https://bit.ly/3mVm4eI

Never deterred by facts, Trump and his enablers have been stoking the fears of massive voter fraud and other problems for months. As reported by Politico,

This past spring, President Donald Trump began a full-fledged assault on voting by mail, tweeting, retweeting and railing about massive fraud and rigged elections with scant evidence. Then the Republican apparatus got to work backing up the president. In the weeks since, Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee have taken to the courts dozens of times as part of a $20 million effort to challenge voting rules, including filing their own lawsuits in several battleground states, including Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Nevada. And around the time Trump started musing about delaying the election last week, aides and outside advisers began scrambling to ponder possible executive actions he could take to curb mail-in voting — everything from directing the postal service to not deliver certain ballots to stopping local officials from counting them after Election Day. https://politi.co/33ZERNl

The more recent developments are pretty well known, including the efforts of Trump’s Postmaster General, a man with zero experience managing the Postal Service, to slow down mail deliveries, removing automated mail-sorting machines, altering delivery schedules to force mail to be undelivered or delayed, and so on. This is classic voter suppression by other means in the face of a national health crisis that has, due in large part to the president’s lying, killed more than 200,000 Americans and left tens of thousands more with permanent, crippling organ damage.

We are now in the final two months run-up to Election Day. Trump is desperate. He is behind in almost every poll, including many  battleground/swing states and his lies/distortions/deflections have not moved the needle in his favor.

Then the question is put: will you respect the vote and participate in a peaceful transfer of power? His answer remains, in effect, NO.

Does he mean it? We would be foolish to think it’s just a ploy on his part, part of Trump’s bag of braggadocio that so excites his political base at rallies. When you ask someone, “what do you do?” and he answers, “I’m a thief,” you should believe him.

Trump’s campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the election is unrelenting, supported by Russia again, and like an elixir for his base. However, many of Trump’s key enablers, like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, are falling behind their Democratic opponents and pleading for help from Fox Propaganda News viewers.

Remember Trump’s answer: ‘NO, I will not respect the election result because I know, in advance with the use of my mystical powers to see the future, that it will be unfair to me and I won’t stand for it.’ There are suggestions that he will order the U.S. military and state National Guard units to the polls, for the sole purpose of intimidating voters. His supporters in open-carry states have already appeared at some protests related to the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor armed with AR-15s and other weapons. They call themselves militias, but they are actually armed gangs who will not hesitate to participate in voter suppression in support of Trump’s white supremacy agenda.

Lastly, and most recently, in a now common apparent effort to bolster Trump’s claims of voter fraud working against him, the Justice Department announced it was investigating nine “discarded military ballots” that were cast for Trump in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. https://cnn.it/2FZzo1a

The announcement is extraordinary in multiple respects: DOJ does not normally announce pending investigations absent compelling circumstances, especially if they may influence an election. That is true notwithstanding the astounding, history-changing decision by James Comey, then Director of the FBI, to announce a reopened email investigation of Hillary Clinton only days before the 2016 election. That decision, in which Comey overrode the advice of virtually everyone else at Justice, is recounted in Jeffrey Toobin’s True Crimes and Misdemeanors.

The initial announcement regarding the Pennsylvania ballots was wrong regarding how many votes were for Trump and had to be reissued. As noted by CNN, the disclosure of the candidate’s identity

immediately raised suspicions that the Justice Department was trying to furnish material that Trump could promote for political gain. Indeed, Trump and other White House aides used the information, even before it was made public, to attack mail-in voting. Election officials go to extraordinary lengths to protect ballot secrecy. It’s unclear how investigators figured out who the votes were for, and why they made that information public.

Not surprisingly, the federal inquiry was prompted by a request from the Republican District Attorney in Luzerne County; the DOJ attorney announcing the case is also a Trump-appointed Republican.

As usual with vote fraud cases, the “discarded” ballots are a tiny fraction of the “normal” voter turnout in Pennsylvania (6.1 million votes in 2016). Because the envelopes appeared similar to the ballot application envelopes, the story goes, the local officials decided to open them for fear of missing absentee ballot requests from the military, a problem that had cropped up in the last primary and, apparently, not cured.

This is, I believe, related to an ongoing problem with ballots, the requesting and use of which has become so complicated that many mistakes are made by ordinary voters whose votes are then rejected. This happens even in jurisdictions that have no history of voter suppression.

Another curiosity about this situation is that the investigation apparently had not yet learned who “discarded” the ballots or why. Yet, DOJ was most anxious to make public statements about the investigation and, it turns out, brief Trump in detail before the DOJ’s public announcement of the situation.

Trump spoke to Fox News Radio about it and the White House Press Secretary was informed and advised reporters before DOJ’s announcement.

CNN’s report continues:

Trump and Attorney General William Barr …have promoted debunked conspiracy theories and blatant disinformation to claim that mail-in voting leads to massive fraud. Election officials from both parties have rejected these claims and say there are tried-and-true safeguards prevent and quickly detect fraud.

The unorthodox Justice Department announcement is sure to fuel suspicion that Barr is using the Justice Department as a political weapon to help Trump’s reelection.

In recent months, Barr has aided Trump’s effort to label Democratic-run cities as “anarchist” strongholds, and has targeted Democratic-run states over Covid-19 deaths at nursing homes. Barr has also intervened in criminal cases to help prominent Trump allies.

David Becker, founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation, and a former DOJ attorney himself, said

the announcement didn’t say anything about the voters’ preferences in the down-ballot races, and that it said nothing about how the ballots were actually discovered.… to release a public statement with so little info, at the beginning of an investigation, is inexplicable, and law enforcement malpractice.

Becker was not alone in his condemnation of the early partial release of what amounts to political campaign material supporting Trump. For example,

It’s wildly improper, and it’s truly unconscionable,” said Justin Levitt, a former Justice Department official who is now a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. https://wapo.st/334NpDv

But, wouldn’t you know, the reality turns out to be quite different than the hysterical web of deceit and conspiracy that Trump and his sycophantic enablers weave. The discarding of ballots was a mistake by an inexperienced contractor, since fired. Another nothing-burger in the Trump pantheon of wounds and slights in the fantasy word he has concocted around voting fraud. https://cnn.it/2Sen7IV

Trump’s ongoing campaign to undermine confidence in the election, assisted by his Attorney General acting, and using the resources of the Justice Department, as de facto personal attorney for Trump and his re-election campaign. Barr’s involvements on behalf of the president and his enablers is so bad that more than 1,100 former DOJ officials publicly urged Barr to resign last February. https://n.pr/3hXHNPG

Trump’s plan seems clear. He intends to resist with every available tool, legal or otherwise, the outcome of the election. There are reports that his statements and claims have alarmed the generals in the Chiefs of Staff and in the Pentagon that they may be called on by Trump to intervene in the election. https://wapo.st/2Gawcj7 Trump would not hesitate to order the military to intervene if he thought that would save his presidency from electoral defeat.

In that case military leaders will have to choose between Trump and the Constitution – saying they’ll leave it to the courts will not suffice if Trump, as Commander-in-Chief, orders them to intervene on his behalf. And resignation, the other suggested option, will not work either. The decision-making authority would simply devolve down the chain of command until someone –- there’s always someone – says “I’ll give the order.” It will be someone least capable of leading but who is intoxicated by the power or the attention, however brief it may be.

Trump is half-way there. He has been asked repeatedly and continues to hedge: “we’ll see what happens.”

One suggested solution is that the Democratic vote must be so overwhelming that there simply is no basis for a claim of electoral fraud. A gigantic Blue Wave would be helpful, but it is no guarantee against a desperate man who has no allegiance to the Constitution or anything else beyond himself. Everyone should prepare for the worst. And, without fail, VOTE. VOTE like your country’s life and your own depend upon it. Because they do.