Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Criminal Donald is the ultimate loser and his deranged cult tried to help him steal the election for him based on blatant lies of "voter fraud" that never existed. This article is from December 14, 2020 but is relevant with the ongoing fake electors scheme being investigated by the DOJ and the 1/6 House Committee.

Fake electors try to deliver Arizona's 11 votes for Trump

In another sign of the lingering unrest over President Donald Trump's election loss, an Arizona group sent the National Archives in Washington, D.C., notarized documents last week intended to deliver, wrongly, the state's 11 electoral votes for him.

Copies of the documents obtained by The Arizona Republic show a group that claimed to represent the "sovereign citizens of the Great State of Arizona" submitted signed papers casting votes for what they want: a second term for Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

Mesa resident Lori Osiecki, 62, helped created a facsimile of the "certificate of ascertainment" that is submitted to formally cast each state's electoral votes as part of an effort to prevent what she views as the fraudulent theft of the election.

"We seated before the legislators here. We already turned it in. We beat them to the game," she said.

Osiecki said she and others associated with a group called "AZ Protect the Vote" have attended the postelection rallies protesting the results, including the daylong meeting in Phoenix that included Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. She left that gathering upset that Gov. Doug Ducey wasn't supporting the president's efforts and she wanted to take further action. She and the others chose electors as a result.

"One thing I will say about conservatives, is if something is wrong, and we have lost — a true loss — then we accept," she said. "We're not going to drag people through the mud and fight it. But this clearly has got issues. I saw it with my own eyes and my own research. After that hearing, I was shocked we didn't have any other marching orders." 

The 11 electors actually chosen by Arizona voters last month — meeting in an unpublicized location because of security concerns over their task — cast their votes Monday for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, formalizing the Democrats' victory nationally and in the state.

While Osiecki's elector documents do not appear to have been taken as genuine, they are part of a weekslong effort, led by Trump, his advisers, and involving Arizona Republican Party officials and three members of Arizona's GOP congressional delegation casting doubt on the legitimacy of Biden's victory in Arizona and nationally.

Reps. Andy Biggs and Debbie Lesko were among more than 100 Republican members of Congress to formally support a lawsuit brought by the attorney general of Texas seeking to overturn the results in four states where Biden won. The U.S. Supreme Court quickly dismissed the effort.

Rep. Paul Gosar has been a vocal supporter of the "Stop the Steal" effort seeking to similarly overturn the results based on baseless claims of widespread fraud. He also has encouraged people to sign on to an effort to recall Gov. Doug Ducey, who certified the election results showing Biden winning Arizona.

On Monday, White House adviser Stephen Miller said on Fox News that alternate electors for selected states would be casting votes for Trump. Arizona was not named as among them, and there was no indication the fake electors were connected to that effort.

"As we speak today, an alternate slate of electors in the contested states is going to vote, and we're going to send those results up to Congress," Miller said. "This will ensure that all of our legal remedies remain open."

Arizona's ersatz electors sent their choices using documents notarized by Melanie Hunsaker, who works in real estate. Her husband, Jamie Hunsaker, is a Trump enthusiast and one of the purported electors.

Donald Paul Schween, another would-be elector, has been active in Republican Party politics.

Federico Buck, another real estate veteran, is among the signatories. Others include Cynthia Franco, Sarai Franco, Stewart A. Hogue, Carrie Lundell, Christeen Taryn Moser, Danjee J. Moser, Jessica Panell and Peter Wang. Osiecki attested to the group's eligibility as electors.

It was not immediately clear if the group's effort broke any state or federal laws.

Arizona sketches out a series of criminal charges relating to voting and election fraud, but those mostly appear to deal with casting regular ballots or tallying the ballots.

It also has a provision for making, possessing or presenting what are known as forged instruments with an intent to defraud. That is a felony offense. 

The federal government has broad authority to prosecute what it deems mail fraud, although it is more often used to target financial crimes. There is a provision in the mail fraud statutes for depriving people of what are known as "honest services."

After learning what Melanie Hunsaker had notarized, another notary, Robert McDonald Jr. of Mesa, filed a complaint with the Secretary of State's Office against her, saying she "participated in a fraudulent scheme."

"As a duly sworn and commissioned Notary Public, myself, this fraud and malfeasance places a major black eye on those of us who do our duty faithfully and ethically," he wrote in his complaint.

McDonald also suggested it may be illegal for notaries to notarize documents involving family members.

Osiecki said she wants the archivist in Washington to count her group's electoral choices. She thinks the nation's election integrity is riding on it.

"I've never been in politics before," she said. "I'm not crazy. I'm just a person who feels like there's a problem here. We're at that (1776) moment here. It's the little people who are going to matter. You can't sit on the sidelines anymore."

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/12/14/arizona-groups-fake-electors-try-cast-11-electoral-votes-trump/6536056002/

[Rick Plant]

Leaked documents: Notorious pro-Kremlin Trump Tower lawyer accused of evidence tampering



On Friday, the Daily Beast reported that Natalia Veselnitskaya, the infamous Russian lawyer present at the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, has been accused of a criminal plot to tamper with government documents.

"Veselnitskaya, the pro-Kremlin lawyer who attended the notorious 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, allegedly doctored official documents, according to leaked files viewed by The Daily Beast," reported Nico Hines.

"New documents allege that Veselnitskaya or her team may have employed a similar strategy to tamper with supposedly independent evidence submitted to a court in a related case in Switzerland, where Veselnitskaya’s clients — Denis Katsyv and his company Prevezon — were at the center of a massive tax fraud and money-laundering investigation that was dropped last year."

Veselnitskaya, who became famous for the Trump Tower meeting as part of the investigation into efforts by Russia to sway the U.S. presidential election, was already indicted in 2019 on a separate obstruction of justice charge related to a money laundering plot.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/natalia-veselnitskaya-trump-tower-lawyer-accused-of-brand-new-crime-in-leaked-docs

[Rick Plant]

Top official in right-wing Turning Point USA was one of Arizona's fake 'electors'



The chief operating officer of Turning Point USA -- one of Trump World’s most powerful misinformation groups -- was among 11 people in Arizona who falsely claimed to be electors for former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

Arizona Republican Committeeman Tyler Bowyer was not among 14 people subpoenaed Friday by the House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot. But his signature on the apparently forged election certificate suggests that signatories in Arizona and six other swing states were hardly obscure.

Bowyer is credited with having “helped organize and host the first Trump rally in 2015,” according to the Turning Point USA website. It also states that Bowyer’s COO role means “overseeing the nation’s largest and most impactful field program, organizing some of the nation’s largest activist events and reaching hundreds of million digital initiatives.”

What’s more, Bowyer’s vita now boasts a companion COO role in the group’s 501c-4 organization that operates “Students for Trump.” And Bowyer’s stature is reportedly a key to the Turning Point USA’s robust operation in Arizona.

Here’s how that was reported at the Guardian last October:

“Chuck Coughlin, a veteran Republican operative in Arizona, said in an interview that Kirk’s groups have taken on roles that historically the party played. TPUSA’s influence in the state is underscored by its chief operating officer, Tyler Bowyer, who was elected in 2020 to be the Republican state committeeman, he noted.

“In Arizona, Kirk’s groups have recently been busy flexing their muscles to help Trump-backed candidates for governor and secretary of state, both of whom have been promoters of Trump’s oft disproven claims that he lost the state due to fraud, according to Arizona GOP sources and reports.”

Just six days after the January 6 insurrection, Bowyer was still promoting the Big Lie with gusto, as demonstrated by the minutes of the Sun Lakes Republican Party in Chandler. Crediting Bowyer as “one of our 11 elected electors for Trump,” the January 12, 2021, minutes stated this:

“Tyler started his talk declaring “The Fraud is Real!” He said he wants to give us advice as to how to survive as Republicans and thrive as Conservatives. He sees the National Republican Committee as being fractured 3 ways: the Conservatives (1/3), the RINOS and others he isn’t even sure are American loving citizens (1/3) and the “Pragmatists”, those who don’t care anything about the party they just want to get reelected and enjoy the perks (1/3).

https://www.rawstory.com/turning-point/


Fake Trump 'elector' boasted of playing '4D chess' days before Capitol riot — now she's been subpoenaed



On Friday, The Uprising newsletter reported that a former Trump campaign staffer who served as one of the fake "electors" tapped by loyalists to the former president to certify their nonexistent win in Pennsylvania, has been subpoenaed by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

"Lisa Vranicar Patton, who identifies herself as the Pennsylvania state events director for former President Trump’s 2020 campaign on Linkedin, is one of 14 people who received subpoenas on Friday due to their alleged involvement in a plan to send the electoral college 'false slates' of 'alternate electors' supporting Trump in seven key swing states that were actually won by President Joe Biden," reported Hunter Walker.

According to the report, Patton's social media pages show she had contact with members of Trump's inner circle in the weeks prior to the January 6 attack, including Eric Trump, former Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and ex-New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik — the latter of whom was present for the so-called Trump "command center" at the Willard Hotel.

"Patton’s social media pages included posts that urged Trump supporters to 'hold the line' in the aftermath of Biden’s victory," said the report. "In one tweet, Patton tagged Trump and his campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis, who helped lead his efforts to challenge the election, alongside a picture of a chess board. Using the motto of the World Chess Federation and hashtags, Patton implied the defeated president’s team was playing '4D' chess and would ultimately emerge victorious. 'Good times ahead,' Patton wrote."

The plot to submit the fake electors has also attracted the attention of the Department of Justice, who are separately investigating the matter.


Trump Campaign Aide Among 14 ‘Alternate Electors’ Subpoenaed By January 6 Committee
The list also included multiple local Republican Party officials



Lisa Vranicar Patton, who identifies herself as the Pennsylvania state events director for former President Trump’s 2020 campaign on Linkedin, is one of 14 people who received subpoenas on Friday due to their alleged involvement in a plan to send the electoral college “false slates” of “alternate electors” supporting Trump in seven key swing states that were actually won by President Joe Biden.

The group received the subpoenas from the House select committee investigating the attack at the U.S. Capitol that took place on January 6, 2021 as President Biden’s election victory over Trump was certified. In addition to Patton, the committee sent subpoenas to multiple local Republican Party officials who allegedly played a part in the “alternate electors” plan.

“The Select Committee is seeking information about attempts in multiple states to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including the planning and coordination of efforts to send false slates of electors to the National Archives,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), the chairman of the select committee, said in a statement about the subpoenas. “We believe the individuals we have subpoenaed today have information about how these so-called alternate electors met and who was behind that scheme.”

The committee ordered the individuals to turn over documents by February 11 and to appear for depositions between February 11 and 28. The subpoenas also outlined the contours of the alleged “alternate electors” plan and described a meeting of people involved in the plot.

“You were a purported Electoral College elector who met with other purported electors on or about December 14, 2020 to cast votes for former President Trump and former Vice President Pence despite the fact that your state had made a final determination that Joseph Biden, Jr. and Kamala Harris were the winners of the November 2020 presidential election and the appointment of their electors had been certified,” the subpoenas stated. “The existence of these purported alternate-elector votes was used as a justification to delay or block the certification of the election during the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.”

According to the statement from the committee announcing the subpoenas, Patton was the “secretary” for the alternate slate of electors in Pennsylvania. Patton did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

On a Facebook page that appears to belong to her, Patton, who also worked with Trump’s campaign during the 2016 election, posted multiple photos showing contact with high-level members of Trump’s inner circle including the former president’s son, Eric, and ex-White House officials Sarah Sanders and Omarosa Manigault. Her social media posts also indicated she had contacts with leading members of Trump’s effort to overturn his loss.

In a message posted to Twitter on December 4, 2020, Patton posted pictures indicating she attended a private holiday party where she met former Vice President Mike Pence at his official residence. Eight days earlier, Patton made a post indicating she had just spent “the day” with former New York City Police Department Commissioner Bernard Kerik and Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), one of the Republican members of Congress who voted to overturn Biden’s victory on January 6. Kerik has attracted the interest of the House select committee for his work with Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani and their presence in a so-called “command center” at the luxe Willard Hotel in D.C., where Trump allies worked on plans to sway the election on January 6.

Patton’s social media pages included posts that urged Trump supporters to “hold the line” in the aftermath of Biden’s victory. In one tweet, Patton tagged Trump and his campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis, who helped lead his efforts to challenge the election, alongside a picture of a chess board. Using the motto of the World Chess Federation and hashtags, Patton implied the defeated president’s team was playing “4D” chess and would ultimately emerge victorious.

“Good times ahead,” Patton wrote:



On Friday evening, after news broke about the subpoenas and The Uprising reached out to her for comment, Patton locked her Twitter page.

According to a detailed report from CNN that was published earlier this month, Trump campaign officials “led by” Giuliani “oversaw” the fake electors plot. Trump offered public support for the idea, which CNN described as “integral” to the former president’s hope that Pence would reject Biden’s electors and replace them with Republican alternatives during the certification of the vote. Pence ultimately did not go along with the plan. In that report, CNN noted that “it's not clear that any of the fake electors themselves participated in strategy sessions with top Trump campaign brass.” However, two of the alternate electors from Pennsylvania who were not among the leadership subpoenaed by the committee told CNN they were “in direct contact with members of the Trump campaign.”

Patton’s alleged role in the plan provides further indication of the Trump campaign’s involvement in the plot to install alternate electors. A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to a request for comment. The 14 subpoenas also pointed at Republican Party officials, including Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald, who were allegedly part of the plan.

According to the House select committee’s statement, subpoenas were sent to “individuals listed as chairperson and secretary of each group of alternate electors” in documents sent to the National Archives. The alternate electors came from Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, and New Mexico. Twelve of the people subpoenaed by the committee did not immediately respond to requests for comment.   

Both of the alleged alternate electors from New Mexico declined to comment when reached by The Uprising. Jewll Powdrell, an Albuquerque area businessman, told The Uprising he had not received a subpoena and had “no comment.” Maestas, who has served as chairwoman of the New Mexico GOP, referred all requests to the party organization.

"If you want to call the state party, the state GOP, they can answer your questions,” Maestas said.

The Uprising reached out to New Mexico Republican Party Communications Director Mike Curtis. He did not, in fact, answer questions.

“We don’t comment on pending investigations,” Curtis said. “That’s all I can tell you.”

https://www.theuprising.info/p/trump-campaign-aide-among-14-alternate

[Richard Smith]

Tucker Carlson is a wannabe fascist. He is a pro Russian Propaganda apologist like the rest of these right wing hacks. He even went to Hungary to interview right wing fascist Orbán to slobber over him. These right wingers are anti American and dream of an authoritarian rule in the United States as they want to model America after Hungary. What a disgrace. 

Why it matters that Tucker Carlson is broadcasting from Hungary this week
The country has become a model for a rising kind of authoritarianism. So, of course, the American right’s most popular cable host is embracing it

This week, America’s most watched cable news host is broadcasting from an authoritarian state — not to criticize its leadership but to praise it.

Fox’s Tucker Carlson is currently in Budapest, airing his show from Hungary’s capital city. In his Monday monologue, Carlson told his listeners that they should pay attention to Hungary “if you care about Western civilization, and democracy, and family — and the ferocious assault on all three of those things by leaders of our global institutions.” He tweeted out a friendly photo with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and is confirmed to speak at a government-supported conference in Budapest on SaPersonay.

Make no mistake: Fox’s marquee host is aligning himself with a ruler who has spent the past 11 years systematically dismantling Hungary’s free political system.

A 2021 report from V-Dem, the leading academic institute assessing the state of global democracy, found that Hungary crossed the line into autocracy in 2018. In March, Orbán’s Fidesz party was pushed out of the EPP, an alliance of center-right European parties, because its European peers felt it had strayed too far into authoritarian territory.

Despite the increasingly clear evidence that Hungary has abandoned democracy, many conservative intellectuals in America have come to see the Orbán regime as a model for America.

These right-wing observers, typically social conservatives and nationalists, see Orbán’s willingness to use state power against the LGBT community, academics, the press, and immigrants as an example of how conservatives can fight back against left-wing cultural power. They either deny Fidesz’s authoritarian streak or, more chillingly, argue that it’s necessary to defeat the left — a chilling move at a time when the GOP is waging war on American democracy, using tactics eerily reminiscent of the ones Fidesz successfully deployed against Hungary’s democratic institutions.

Carlson’s visit to Budapest, a follow-up to previous pro-Orbán coverage, shows that this authoritarian envy is no longer confined to a fringe.

Authoritarianism, Hungarian style

To understand why the American right’s admiration for a small Central European state is so concerning, it’s important to understand exactly how democracy in Hungary died.

For roughly the first two decades of Hungary’s post-communist history, 1990 to 2010, Hungary was a young but stable democracy. When Orbán was elected prime minister the first time, in 1998, he governed as a relatively conventional European conservative; when Fidesz lost the 2002 elections, a new prime minister from the rival Socialist party took over.

But though Orbán stepped aside, he and his followers never really accepted the 2002 defeat as legitimate. When Fidesz returned to power after the country’s 2010 election, winning a two-thirds majority amidst the Great Recession and incumbent corruption scandals, the party set about seizing complete control of the Hungarian state — turning it into a machine designed to subtly lock the opposition out of power without having to formally abolish elections.

Orbán and his allies gerrymandered parliamentary districts and packed the Constitutional Court. They seized control over the national elections agency, the civil service, and over 90 percent of all media in Hungary. They used economic regulation to enrich themselves and punish their opponents — persecuting a major university, for example, until it was forced to leave the country altogether.

“Hungary is not a democracy anymore,” Zsuzsanna Szelényi, a former Hungarian member from Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s party, told me when I met her in Budapest in 2018. “The parliament is a decoration for a one-party state.”

Fidesz justified its power grabs by demonizing a series of outgroups and external enemies. If you read the state-aligned press, you’ll learn that only Viktor Orbán can save Hungarian civilization from the threat posed by Muslim immigrants, liberals in the European Union, the LGBT community, and the Jewish billionaire George Soros.

Orbán won reelection in 2015 and 2018, in votes that were formally free but in no sense fair. Fidesz benefitted from massive resource advantages, backing from government-aligned media, and rules designed to tilt the playing field. Though Orbán’s party won less than 50 percent of the vote in the 2018 election, it still won a two-thirds majority in parliament — thanks in part due to gerrymandering.

Today, political scientists see Hungary as a textbook example of something called “competitive authoritarianism”: a kind of autocratic system where elections happen and aren’t formally rigged but are so heavily stacked in the incumbent party’s favor that the people don’t have real agency over who rules them.

“The sad thing is that the government can do whatever it wants,” activist Gergely Homonnay told me during my 2018 visit to Hungary.

Competitive authoritarian regimes survive, in part, by tricking their citizens — convincing enough of them that democracy is still alive to avoid an uprising. As such, Orbán claims his government is just a different kind of democracy — he calls it “illiberal democracy” or, alternatively, “Christian democracy” — that’s being persecuted by Western liberals who hate its socially conservative governance.

This democratic facade is easier to maintain at home thanks to a pliant press. What’s more surprising, and depressing, is that American conservatives like Carlson are choosing to help him out.

Tucker Carlson and the American right’s disturbing embrace of Orbán

The ideological affinities between Hungary’s rulers and the American right are fairly obvious, and they explain why figures like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon are increasingly describing it as a model for America.

Like American social conservatives, Hungary’s leader claims to stand for the traditional Christian family against progressives, feminists, and the LGBT community. Like American nationalists, Orbán despises immigrants and assails the European Union’s influence on his country (though he’s more than happy to accept billions in EU subsidies in order to prop up Hungary’s economy and enrich his allies).

How do those on the right address clear evidence of Orbán’s anti-democratic politics? Typically, they adopt a two-pronged and somewhat contradictory strategy — both denying that Orbán is an authoritarian and arguing that his repressive tactics are justified in response to progressive culture war aggression.

Take Rod Dreher, a senior editor at American Conservative magazine. Dreher, who is currently in Budapest on a fellowship at the state-funded Danube Institute, claims to have been instrumental in brokering Carlson’s visit — that he lobbied the Fox host to visit and worked with the Hungarian government to “clear the red tape” standing in the way of Carlson’s trip. There’s no Western thinker who more clearly exemplifies the right’s Orbánist turn.

In a Wednesday piece, Dreher mocks the very idea that the Hungarian leader might have destroyed democracy: “Golly, that Orbán must be an incompetent autocrat if he allows free and fair elections to take place, and he permits anyone to stand in the street in Budapest and denounce him.”

But later in the same piece, he argues that Orbán’s willingness to wield power against his cultural enemies is precisely what the American right needs to emulate.

“Which is the only power capable of standing up to Woke Capitalists, as well as these illiberal leftists in academia, media, sports, cultural institutions, and other places? The state,” he writes. “This is why American conservatives ought to be beating a path to Hungary.”

In Dreher’s mind, Orbán’s illiberalism is not anti-democratic but simply a defensive reaction to the left’s attempts to stamp out traditional cultural practices.

“The unhappy truth is that liberalism as we Americans have known it is probably dead. Our future is almost certainly going to be left-illiberal or right-illiberal,” he writes. “The right-of-center thought leaders who want to figure out how to resist effectively will be coming to Budapest to observe, to talk, and to learn.”

This siege mentality allows Dreher to justify admiring an authoritarian who has forcibly stamped out the free press without seeing himself as betraying democracy. Hungary’s government is not undemocratic but merely “illiberal” — an unsavory but necessary reaction to the left’s stranglehold on the cultural realm.

This two-step — it’s not really undemocratic, and it’s necessary to fight the left — is exactly how Republicans justify their own attacks on democracy at home.

Extreme gerrymandering, seizing control over local election boards, purging nonvoters from the voting rolls, stripping power from duly elected Democratic governors, packing courts with partisan judges, creating a media propaganda network that its partisans consume to the exclusion of other sources — all Republican approaches that, with some nouns changed, could easily describe Fidesz’s techniques for hollowing out from democracy from within.

The Republican turn on democracy is in significant part fueled by the right’s sense of leftist ascendancy — heightened by electoral defeats in 2008 and 2020 and strengthened by defeat in culture war battles like same-sex marriage. Dreher’s punditry on Hungary is an unusually honest expression of this attitude; he’s articulating what many on the right believe but are afraid to own too openly.

This, ultimately, is what makes Carlson’s pilgrimage to Budapest so worrying. The Fox host’s massive following gives him unusual power to set the terms of the conversation on the right; when he talks, Republicans from Trump on down listen. His bear hug embrace of Orbán could not only bring the Dreher view out into the open but also strengthen its influence over the GOP.

Republicans today aren’t directly imitating Orbán; they have their own anti-democratic playbook, drawn from all-American sources. Carlson’s active embrace of Hungary’s strongman risks making that connection more direct, giving Republicans more ideas for how to seize control and a more powerful sense of justification in doing so.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/8/5/22607465/tucker-carlson-hungary-orban-authoritarianism-democracy-backsliding

The American public overwhelmingly agrees with Tucker's position on the Ukraine.  That war is of no importance to the US.  Americans don't want to be involved in another conflicted pushed on them by the establishment politicians to benefit the military contractors.  Let the weak socialist countries in Europe fight those battles.  We already spend trillions to defend Europe while they contribute nothing.  Only Trump stood up to the European countries who haven't lived up to even their meager contributions to NATO.  Let them learn to speak Russian if they don't want to defend themselves. 

[Rick Plant]

The American public overwhelmingly agrees with Tucker's position on the Ukraine.  That war is of no importance to the US.  Americans don't want to be involved in another conflicted pushed on them by the establishment politicians to benefit the military contractors.  Let the weak socialist countries in Europe fight those battles.  We already spend trillions to defend Europe while they contribute nothing.  Only Trump stood up to the European countries who haven't lived up to even their meager contributions to NATO.  Let them learn to speak Russian if they don't want to defend themselves.

 

[Rick Plant]

Former federal prosecutor details what the fake electors are facing in court



President Donald Trump's desperation to overturn the 2020 election involved a plot with people pretending to be electors when they were nothing of the sort.

Lawyers involved with Trump's campaign worked with unelected Republican electors to file paperwork claiming that they had been elected. Because those documents were officially filed with the federal government, they could be on the hook for fraud.

Speaking to MSNBC, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner explained that their excuse that they were just "following orders" won't hold up.

"That's not a lawful defense, and that's the way I interpret that statement," he explained. "As Attorney General [Hector] Balderas just said, the electors have a legal obligation to certify the results accurately. The results of the popular vote, and the first duly authorized slate of electors from all 50 states did that. Then you have something that people sometimes refer to as an 'alternate' slate of electors, but let's call them what they are. It's a fraudulent slate of electors, because they did not certify the popular vote."

He noted that there was another goal of the Trump campaign to submit the paperwork, but once they did, they put the fake electors in "real hot water."

"It appears they committed state crimes and federal crimes, and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said, and I quote, 'This is a crime.' And both Attorney General Nessel and Attorney General Balderas have referred these matters for criminal investigation to the Department of Justice," Kirschner continued. "But I'll say — because these also very likely violate state laws in Michigan, in New Mexico and elsewhere, there's nothing preventing the state authorities from criminally investigating, and if the evidence supports it, indicting these people simultaneously with the federal investigation going on — because these are different sovereigns, different jurisdictions, there are no double jeopardy concerns, and hopefully, if DOJ isn't moving out quickly enough, the states will begin to move out themselves."

See the discussion below:

[Rick Plant]

'Decks cleared' for the criminal indictment of Mark Meadows: former federal prosecutor



According to former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner, there is nothing besides political factors that are keeping former Donald Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows from being indicted for refusing to speak with the House committee investigating the Jan 6th insurrection.

Referring to remarks made by a former Florida prosecutor during an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Friday morning, Kirschner said a recent ruling by the Supreme Court "clears the deck" for charges against the former Trump insider.

Noting it has been 45 days since Meadows balked at appearing by claiming executive privilege, the former prosecutor said the assertion no longer holds water and that it is apparent the Department of Justice is taking a deeper look since the court's ruling.

"We now know that the Department of Justice is factoring in the Supreme Court's rejection of Donald Trump's executive privilege claim," Kirschner explained. "And that clears the decks for an indictment of Mark Meadows."

"Because if Donald Trump doesn't have an executive privilege claim, then Mark Meadows can't invoke Trump's by extension," he continued. "I was kind of hoping today [Friday] would be the day -- the day that Mark Meadows was indicted. Why? Because today is day 45. Forty-five days since Congress referred Mark Meadows for criminal prosecution."

"It looks like we'll have to wait," he continued. "At least another couple of days because nobody get indicted on the weekend, so Monday will be day 48. And if we have to wait another couple of days, or couple of weeks, so be it as long as that indictment comes."

Watch below:

[Richard Smith]

Somewhere the Stasi are looking down with pride on Rick's boundless enthusiasm to lock up all his political opponents.  Is that how democracy works?   At the very least, it demonstrates a profound fear of allowing the American public to elect whomever they see fit to office.  I wonder why Rick is so fearful of the voters?  Maybe we will find out soon.