Why are always the same indi­vid­u­als involved from the past in tomor­row’s elec­tions and today’s cur­rent events?
Just like E. Howard Hunt final­ly admit­ted being involved in the JFK assas­si­na­tion, the same old sus­pects are the ones we final­ly see hid­ing behind the scenes...

Well that was decid­ed­ly unde­ci­sive. The Democ­rats lost seats in the House. The Repub­li­cans appear poised to hold their grip on the Sen­ate. And yet Joe Biden appears to be on track for a vic­to­ry over Pres­i­dent Trump, bar­ring an inter­ven­tion by the Supreme Court on Trump’s behalf. And with Trump already claim­ing vic­to­ry and assert­ing that the race is already being stolen from him, as pre­dict­ed, and promis­ing to take his legal chal­lenges to the Supreme Court, it’s look­ing like the Supreme Court is ulti­mate­ly where the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion will be decid­ed. Trump has already taint­ed and per­ma­nent­ly marred the US elec­toral tra­di­tions with his gaslight­ing claims of stolen vic­to­ry but there’s plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty for more taint­ing, espe­cial­ly with a fresh­ly packed far right Supreme Court. It’s real­ly a ques­tion of how much more taint­ed this elec­tion will be as a result of GOP malfea­sance as this plays out. Along with the ques­tion of whether or not that malfea­sance will ulti­mate­ly work.

So with all that in mind, it’s worth keep­ing an eye on one of the legal fights that could end up reveal­ing what could end up one of the biggest cas­es of GOP malfea­sance. And an entire­ly expect­ed case of GOP malfea­sance: the sab­o­tage of the US postal sys­tem’s han­dling of mail-in bal­lots. As we’ll see, a poten­tial­ly major legal fight between the courts and the US Post­mas­ter Gen­er­al Louis DeJoy — an open Trump crony with major con­flicts of inter­est — emerged after it was report­ed that over 300,000 mail in bal­lots had been received by US postal facil­i­ties but may not have been deliv­ered to their des­ti­na­tion. Based on these reports, fed­er­al Judge Emmet Sul­li­van ordered DeJoy to move for­ward the rou­tine inspec­tions con­duct­ed by the US postal sys­tem — from 12:30 to 3:30 PM in stead of 4 to 8 PM — for 12 postal pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties that cov­er 15 states in order to ensure any bal­lots remain­ing in US postal facil­i­ties would be deliv­ered to state elec­tion offi­cials by the Elec­tion Day dead lines. The rea­son­ing behind this order is that some states have dead­lines as ear­ly as 5 PM on Elec­tion Day, so if the postal sys­tem stuck to its reg­u­lar inspec­tion sched­ule — inspec­tions car­ried out from 4 PM to 8 PM — that means some bal­lots found in these facil­i­ties still would­n’t be deliv­ered on time even if they’re dis­cov­ered in these inspec­tions. Poten­tial­ly thou­sands of bal­lots.

So how did DeJoy respond to this fed­er­al court order to expe­dite the inspec­tions? He ignored the court order. Yep. Just ignored it. You can’t actu­al­ly do that. But he did it any­way. It was a high­ly Trumpian last minute gim­mick for Elec­tion Day. It’s very on brand.

Now, it’s impor­tant to point out that the US postal sys­tem — includ­ing the union lead­ers who aren’t inclined to be par­ti­san cranks — do have a valid expla­na­tion for the bulk of those ~300,000 bal­lots that the US postal sys­tem has a record of being received by the sys­tem but not deliv­ered: as a result of the move to get bal­lots deliv­ered on time, many bal­lots were sim­ply tak­en and put into expe­dit­ed deliv­ery piles — skip­ping the step where they are indi­vid­u­al­ly scanned by the sys­tem to indi­cate they are leav­ing for deliv­ery — in order to ensure the bal­lots were deliv­ered by the dead­lines. That’s prob­a­bly the sit­u­a­tion we’re look­ing at for most of these bal­lots.

But, again, we still know that the US Post­mas­ter Gen­er­al defied a court order specif­i­cal­ly to NOT ensure that any bal­lots that were hid­ing away in facil­i­ties weren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly found in time to be deliv­ered on time. So while the issue of the ~300,000 with check-in records but not check-out records can prob­a­bly rea­son­ably be explained by that move to expe­dit­ed deliv­ery, that’s still sep­a­rate for the issue of the poten­tial­ly thou­sands of bal­lots that weren’t deliv­ered on time due to DeJoy’s refusal to move for­ward the inspec­tions of postal facil­i­ties for missed bal­lots.

And as we’ll see in the sec­ond arti­cle below, we don’t have to just spec­u­late as to whether or not the postal sys­tem was deliv­er­ing bal­lots late. Those stats are already avail­able and the US postal sys­tem has not only been under-per­form­ing its own per­for­mance met­rics for on-time deliv­ery but those met­rics have got­ten worse in the days lead­ing up to the elec­tion. The goal of 97 per­cent on time deliv­er­ies was missed, with near­ly 7 per­cent of bal­lots — ~8,000 — processed by US postal facil­i­ties on Elec­tion Day NOT being deliv­ered on time. Again, this was ENTIRELY pre­ventable. All they had to do was fol­low the judge’s orders and move up the inspec­tions.

Keep in mind that as this legal fight was play­ing out we got reports of thou­sands of bal­lots found in Mia­mi-Dade coun­ty, which is one of the areas where the Biden cam­paign decid­ed­ly under-per­formed. And Biden also over­whelm­ing­ly dom­i­nat­ed the mail-in vote nation­al­ly. Did ‘lost’ bal­lots have any­thing to do with that under-per­for­mance in Mia­mi-Dade? That remains an open ques­tion. An open ques­tion that the Post­mas­ter Gen­er­al def­i­nite­ly did­n’t want addressed in a time­ly man­ner. So much so that he defied a direct court order. And when you defy a direct court order you’re only going to do that because you fear the con­se­quences of com­ply­ing with that order more than the con­se­quences of defy­ing it. And that’s all why one of the ques­tions we’re left ask­ing in the wake of this Elec­tion Day is if Louis DeJoy defied that court order because he was com­mit­ted to NOT find­ing ‘lost’ bal­lots in time and feared Trump’s wrath if he did so more than he feared the wrath of a defied fed­er­al judge? Or did he defy the court order because he accu­rate­ly real­ized that the rule of law does­n’t apply to Trump cronies (who will just be par­doned) any­more and felt like there was be no con­se­quences? Or per­haps all of the above?:

Moth­er Jones

Fed­er­al Judge Wants Louis DeJoy to Tes­ti­fy Under Oath About Mail Delays
The USPS refused to com­ply with a court order to make sure mail bal­lots were sent on time.

Ari Berman
Senior Reporter
11/4/2020

A fed­er­al judge exco­ri­at­ed lawyers for the Unit­ed States Postal Ser­vice on Wednes­day for fail­ing to com­ply with a court order on Elec­tion Day requir­ing postal inspec­tors to con­duct sweeps of pro­cess­ing plans to make sure mail bal­lots were sent on time. “In no uncer­tain terms, I’m not pleased about this 11th-hour devel­op­ment last night,” Judge Emmet Sul­li­van told Jus­tice Depart­ment lawyers rep­re­sent­ing USPS. “You can tell your clients that—and some­one might have a price to pay.”

Sul­li­van said he want­ed Post­mas­ter Gen­er­al Louis DeJoy to sit for a depo­si­tion or appear before his court­room under oath, say­ing that the fail­ure to fol­low the court order starts “at the top of the food chain.” Samuel Spi­tal of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which is chal­leng­ing USPS poli­cies that have lead to major mail delays, said he might seek a con­tempt-of-court order against DeJoy next week.

Last month, Sul­li­van ordered USPS to reverse poli­cies imple­ment­ed under DeJoy that led to major delays over the sum­mer, such as pro­hibit­ing postal work­ers from mak­ing extra trips to deliv­er the mail. The Postal Ser­vice was slow to com­ply with the court order, and mail delays have got­ten worse clos­er to the elec­tion, lead­ing to fears that bal­lots will be reject­ed if they do not arrive on time. At least 30 states require mail bal­lots to be received by Elec­tion Day.

Yes­ter­day, there were media reports that 300,000 bal­lots were not deliv­ered on time, but that num­ber is mis­lead­ing because USPS is send­ing bal­lots with­out scan­ning them to expe­dite deliv­ery, accord­ing to the agency. The Postal Ser­vice said it had no time to com­plete the sweep Sul­li­van ordered yes­ter­day, but did its own inves­ti­ga­tion and found only 13 miss­ing bal­lots, which were sub­se­quent­ly deliv­ered on time.

...

————

“Fed­er­al Judge Wants Louis DeJoy to Tes­ti­fy Under Oath About Mail Delays” by Ari Berman; Moth­er Jones; 11/04/2020

“Sul­li­van said he want­ed Post­mas­ter Gen­er­al Louis DeJoy to sit for a depo­si­tion or appear before his court­room under oath, say­ing that the fail­ure to fol­low the court order starts “at the top of the food chain.” Samuel Spi­tal of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which is chal­leng­ing USPS poli­cies that have lead to major mail delays, said he might seek a con­tempt-of-court order against DeJoy next week.”

Will DeJoy be called in for a depo­si­tion before the judge he defied? If so, will he even both­er to show up? Or does that get defied too? More ques­tions raised by the elec­tion. Ques­tions about basic rule of law.

And as the arti­cle points out, this fight with the Post­mas­ter Gen­er­al was tak­ing place at the same time we had reports of 300,000 bal­lot poten­tial­ly not being deliv­ered on time, although it appears most of those 300,000 were actu­al­ly deliv­ered and the rea­son for the lack of records for those deliv­er­ies was pre­cise­ly because the postal sys­tem was skip­ping the step where they record deliv­ery by indi­vid­u­al­ly scan­ning each bal­lot in order to expe­dite the process. The postal work­ers union is back­ing this sto­ry so it’s not just DeJoy mak­ing that claim. And that sounds large­ly find. But as the fol­low­ing arti­cle makes clear, even if that case of the 300,000 bal­lots is entire­ly resolved with­out issue, that still does­n’t address the gen­er­al issue of ‘lost’ bal­lots in postal facil­i­ties not being dis­cov­ered and deliv­ered until AFTER the deliv­ery dead­lines, a pit­fall that could have impact­ed thou­sands of bal­lots that could be cru­cial to close races. And that is an issue cre­at­ed entire­ly by DeJoy’s refusal to com­ply with the judge’s orders to sim­ply move the inspec­tion sweeps a few hours up...along with all of DeJoy’s pre­vi­ous sab­o­tage of the postal sys­tem:

The Wash­ing­ton Post

USPS data shows thou­sands of mailed bal­lots missed Elec­tion Day dead­lines
The Postal Ser­vice ignored a fed­er­al judge’s order to sweep pro­cess­ing plants on Tues­day after more than 300,000 scanned bal­lots could not be traced.

By Jacob Bogage and
Christo­pher Ingra­ham
Novem­ber 4, 2020 at 12:19 PM EST

Near­ly 7 per­cent of bal­lots in U.S. Postal Ser­vice sort­ing facil­i­ties on Tues­day were not processed on time for sub­mis­sion to elec­tion offi­cials, accord­ing to data the agency filed Wednes­day in fed­er­al court, poten­tial­ly leav­ing tens of thou­sands of bal­lots caught in the mail sys­tem dur­ing an espe­cial­ly tight pres­i­den­tial race.

The Postal Ser­vice report­ed the time­ly pro­cess­ing — which includes most mail-han­dling steps out­side of pick­up and deliv­ery — of 93.3 per­cent of bal­lots on Elec­tion Day, its best pro­cess­ing score in sev­er­al days, but still well below the 97-per­cent tar­get that postal and vot­ing experts say the agency should hit.

The Postal Ser­vice processed 115,630 bal­lots on Tues­day, a vol­ume much low­er than in recent days after weeks of warn­ings about chron­ic mail delays. Of that num­ber, close to 8,000 bal­lots were not processed on time, a small pro­por­tion but one that could fac­tor heav­i­ly in states such as Michi­gan and Wis­con­sin, which do not accept bal­lots after Elec­tion Day and could be decid­ed by a few thou­sand votes.

Ear­li­er Tues­day, U.S. Dis­trict Judge Emmet G. Sul­li­van of the Dis­trict of Colum­bia had ordered the Postal Ser­vice to sweep 12 postal pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties that cov­er 15 states for bal­lots. But the agency rebuffed that order and said it would stick to its own inspec­tion sched­ule, which vot­ing rights advo­cates wor­ried was too late in the day for found bal­lots to make it to vote coun­ters.

The direc­tive came after the Postal Ser­vice dis­closed that more than 300,000 bal­lots nation­wide could not be traced. Those bal­lots received entry bar code scans at pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties, but not exit scans. The agency said the like­li­hood of that many bal­lots being mis­placed was very low; mail clerks had been ordered to sort bal­lots by hand in many loca­tions, and items that were pulled out for expe­dit­ed deliv­ery were not giv­en an exit scan.

“We know yes­ter­day that if the sweeps were doing their job, mail that was iden­ti­fied as bal­lots and were in the sys­tem should have been pulled out and deliv­ered, and it may be that affects what we see as the scores,” said Alli­son Zieve, an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the NAACP, which brought the law­suit against the Postal Ser­vice with oth­er civ­il and vot­ing rights groups. “The prob­lem is, in part because of the tim­ing and in part because they haven’t giv­en us all the infor­ma­tion we asked for, it’s hard to know whether the num­bers we saw today — the low scores for exam­ple in Atlanta and Cen­tral Penn­syl­va­nia — it’s hard to assess how big a prob­lem that is.”

About 101 mil­lion Amer­i­cans cast their bal­lots before elec­tion day, accord­ing to an ear­ly vote tal­ly main­tained by Michael McDon­ald at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da, with rough­ly 60 mil­lion oth­ers vot­ing in-per­son on elec­tion day. Giv­en the wide­ly pub­li­cized issues with mail deliv­ery, experts last week began advis­ing absen­tee vot­ers to drop off their bal­lots in-per­son rather than send them by mail. The high rates of ear­ly vot­ing led to gen­er­al­ly uncrowd­ed con­di­tions at polling places around the coun­try on elec­tion day, although long lines were report­ed in some areas.

Sul­li­van had giv­en the mail agency until 3:30 p.m. Tues­day to con­duct the “all clear” checks to ensure that any found bal­lots could be deliv­ered before polls closed. But in a fil­ing sent to the court just before 5 p.m., Jus­tice Depart­ment attor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the Postal Ser­vice said the agency would not abide by the order, to bet­ter accom­mo­date inspec­tors’ sched­ules.

Attor­ney John Robin­son, writ­ing for the Jus­tice Depart­ment, not­ed that the dai­ly review was already sched­uled to occur from 4 to 8 p.m. on elec­tion night. “Giv­en the time con­straints set by this Court’s order, and the fact that Postal Inspec­tors oper­ate on a nation­wide basis, Defen­dants were unable to accel­er­ate the dai­ly review process to run from 12:30 pm to 3:00 pm with­out sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­rupt­ing pre­ex­ist­ing activ­i­ties on the day of the Elec­tion, some­thing which Defen­dants did not under­stand the Court to invite or require.”

“This is super frus­trat­ing,” Zieve said Tues­day. “If they get all the sweeps done today in time, it doesn’t mat­ter if they flout­ed the judge’s order. They say here they will get the sweeps done between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., but 8 p.m. is too late, and in some states 5 p.m. is too late.”

Sul­li­van was incensed dur­ing Wednesday’s hear­ing over the sweeps, accus­ing the Postal Ser­vice of attempt­ing to run the clock out on his order to avoid con­duct­ing the sweeps.

“It just leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth for the clock to run out — game’s over — and then to find out there was no com­pli­ance with a very impor­tant court order,” he said.

He said that at some point, he would order Post­mas­ter Gen­er­al Louis DeJoy to appear before the court or sit through a sworn depo­si­tion, and inti­mat­ed that he’d con­sid­er con­tempt charges against postal lead­er­ship, say­ing “some­one might have to pay a price,” for defy­ing his order.

It was DeJoy’s aggres­sive cost-cut­ting reg­i­men, accord­ing to postal experts, that cre­at­ed sus­tained slow­downs in the mail ser­vice that over one five-week span delayed more than 7 per­cent of the nation’s first-class mail.

The Postal Ser­vice began elec­tion mail “all clear” sweeps in Jan­u­ary, agency spokesman David Parten­heimer wrote in an emailed state­ment, to search for mis­placed polit­i­cal mail (such as cam­paign ads) and elec­tion mail (bal­lots, bal­lot appli­ca­tions and vot­er reg­is­tra­tion infor­ma­tion).

Since Thurs­day, he said, agents from the U.S. Postal Inspec­tion Ser­vice, the agency’s law enforce­ment arm, con­duct­ed dai­ly reviews at 220 bal­lot pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties. Inspec­tors walk the facil­i­ty and observe mail con­di­tions and check dai­ly polit­i­cal- and elec­tion-mail logs.

In the past 14 months, Parten­heimer said, the Postal Ser­vice has processed more than 4.5 bil­lion pieces of polit­i­cal and elec­tion mail, up 114 per­cent from the 2016 gen­er­al-elec­tion cycle.

“Bal­lots will con­tin­ue to be accept­ed and processed as they are pre­sent­ed to us and we will deliv­er them to their intend­ed des­ti­na­tion,” he said.

Time­ly bal­lot pro­cess­ing scores, which indi­cate the pro­por­tion of bal­lots sort­ed, post­marked and trans­port­ed with­in the agency’s one-to-three-day ser­vice win­dow, wors­ened in the run-up to Elec­tion Day, accord­ing to data the agency sub­mit­ted to the court. In 28 states, elec­tion offi­cials must receive bal­lots by the end of Elec­tion Day to be count­ed.

Vot­ing and postal experts say the mail agency should be able to process 97 per­cent of incom­ing bal­lots — or com­plet­ed bal­lots sent to elec­tion offi­cials. But data shows the Postal Ser­vice missed that mark sev­en out of eight days. And in the five days end­ing Mon­day, pro­cess­ing scores dropped, from 97.1 per­cent to 89.6 per­cent on Mon­day. . (The Postal Ser­vice did not report Sun­day data.)

In 17 postal dis­tricts that cov­er 151 elec­toral votes, Monday’s on-time pro­cess­ing rate was even low­er: 81.1 per­cent.

Sul­li­van on Tues­day ordered offi­cials from the Postal Inspec­tion Ser­vice, the agency’s law enforce­ment arm, or the Postal Ser­vice Office of Inspec­tor Gen­er­al, its inde­pen­dent watch­dog, to inspect all pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties in the dis­tricts of Cen­tral Penn­syl­va­nia, Philadel­phia Metro, Detroit, Colorado/Wyoming, Atlanta, Hous­ton, Alaba­ma, North­ern New Eng­land (Ver­mont, New Hamp­shire and Maine), Greater South Car­oli­na, South Flori­da, Lake­land (Wis­con­sin) and Ari­zona (which includes New Mex­i­co) by 3 p.m.

The Postal Ser­vice con­tin­ued Tues­day to try to track down the more than 300,000 bal­lots it said had entered pro­cess­ing plants but could not be traced. In 17 postal dis­tricts in swing states that account for 151 elec­toral votes, more than 81,000 bal­lots were untrace­able. In Los Ange­les, 48,120 bal­lots were miss­ing, the most of any dis­trict. San Diego was next, with 42,543 unac­count­ed.

“At this point,” said Zieve, “we don’t have any way of know­ing if those bal­lots are of con­cern or if they aren’t.”

Sul­li­van has been more aggres­sive than judges in Penn­syl­va­nia, New York and Wash­ing­ton state to grant increased over­sight of the mail sys­tem. He has ordered the Postal Ser­vice to report dai­ly data on bal­lot per­for­mance scores and to pro­vide writ­ten expla­na­tions each day for under­per­form­ing dis­tricts.

....

————-

“USPS data shows thou­sands of mailed bal­lots missed Elec­tion Day dead­lines” by Jacob Bogage and Christo­pher Ingra­ham; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 11/04/2020

“The Postal Ser­vice processed 115,630 bal­lots on Tues­day, a vol­ume much low­er than in recent days after weeks of warn­ings about chron­ic mail delays. Of that num­ber, close to 8,000 bal­lots were not processed on time, a small pro­por­tion but one that could fac­tor heav­i­ly in states such as Michi­gan and Wis­con­sin, which do not accept bal­lots after Elec­tion Day and could be decid­ed by a few thou­sand votes.”

There were at least 8,000 bal­lots that weren’t deliv­ered on time — thanks to DeJoy’s refusal defi­ance of a court order — and that’s just what we know about. We don’t actu­al­ly know yet how high this num­ber could be but we do know that those are votes that almost cer­tain­ly over­whelm­ing­ly favor Biden:

...
Ear­li­er Tues­day, U.S. Dis­trict Judge Emmet G. Sul­li­van of the Dis­trict of Colum­bia had ordered the Postal Ser­vice to sweep 12 postal pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties that cov­er 15 states for bal­lots. But the agency rebuffed that order and said it would stick to its own inspec­tion sched­ule, which vot­ing rights advo­cates wor­ried was too late in the day for found bal­lots to make it to vote coun­ters.

The direc­tive came after the Postal Ser­vice dis­closed that more than 300,000 bal­lots nation­wide could not be traced. Those bal­lots received entry bar code scans at pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties, but not exit scans. The agency said the like­li­hood of that many bal­lots being mis­placed was very low; mail clerks had been ordered to sort bal­lots by hand in many loca­tions, and items that were pulled out for expe­dit­ed deliv­ery were not giv­en an exit scan.

“We know yes­ter­day that if the sweeps were doing their job, mail that was iden­ti­fied as bal­lots and were in the sys­tem should have been pulled out and deliv­ered, and it may be that affects what we see as the scores,” said Alli­son Zieve, an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the NAACP, which brought the law­suit against the Postal Ser­vice with oth­er civ­il and vot­ing rights groups. “The prob­lem is, in part because of the tim­ing and in part because they haven’t giv­en us all the infor­ma­tion we asked for, it’s hard to know whether the num­bers we saw today — the low scores for exam­ple in Atlanta and Cen­tral Penn­syl­va­nia — it’s hard to assess how big a prob­lem that is.”

...

Sul­li­van had giv­en the mail agency until 3:30 p.m. Tues­day to con­duct the “all clear” checks to ensure that any found bal­lots could be deliv­ered before polls closed. But in a fil­ing sent to the court just before 5 p.m., Jus­tice Depart­ment attor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the Postal Ser­vice said the agency would not abide by the order, to bet­ter accom­mo­date inspec­tors’ sched­ules.

Attor­ney John Robin­son, writ­ing for the Jus­tice Depart­ment, not­ed that the dai­ly review was already sched­uled to occur from 4 to 8 p.m. on elec­tion night. “Giv­en the time con­straints set by this Court’s order, and the fact that Postal Inspec­tors oper­ate on a nation­wide basis, Defen­dants were unable to accel­er­ate the dai­ly review process to run from 12:30 pm to 3:00 pm with­out sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­rupt­ing pre­ex­ist­ing activ­i­ties on the day of the Elec­tion, some­thing which Defen­dants did not under­stand the Court to invite or require.”

“This is super frus­trat­ing,” Zieve said Tues­day. “If they get all the sweeps done today in time, it doesn’t mat­ter if they flout­ed the judge’s order. They say here they will get the sweeps done between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., but 8 p.m. is too late, and in some states 5 p.m. is too late.”
...

And we know that DeJoy made this deci­sion to defy this court order despite the US postal sys­tem falling increas­ing­ly behind sched­ule in the lead up to Elec­tion Day: In 17 postal dis­tricts that cov­er 151 elec­toral votes, Monday’s on-time pro­cess­ing rate was at 81.1 per­cent. That’s the con­text of DeJoy’s deci­sion:

...
Vot­ing and postal experts say the mail agency should be able to process 97 per­cent of incom­ing bal­lots — or com­plet­ed bal­lots sent to elec­tion offi­cials. But data shows the Postal Ser­vice missed that mark sev­en out of eight days. And in the five days end­ing Mon­day, pro­cess­ing scores dropped, from 97.1 per­cent to 89.6 per­cent on Mon­day. . (The Postal Ser­vice did not report Sun­day data.)

In 17 postal dis­tricts that cov­er 151 elec­toral votes, Monday’s on-time pro­cess­ing rate was even low­er: 81.1 per­cent.
...

So as the cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence makes clear, Trump’s Post­mas­ter Gen­er­al crony made an active deci­sion to sab­o­tage the on-time deliv­ery of the vote. In keep­ing with the sab­o­tage of the post sys­tem he’s been open­ly exe­cut­ing for months now. First he spent months slow­ing the abil­i­ty of postal sys­tem to process the mail, and then he defied a last minute order when it appeared those slow downs were becom­ing a major prob­lem. That’s active sab­o­tage. Out in the open:

...
It was DeJoy’s aggres­sive cost-cut­ting reg­i­men, accord­ing to postal experts, that cre­at­ed sus­tained slow­downs in the mail ser­vice that over one five-week span delayed more than 7 per­cent of the nation’s first-class mail.
...

So while we have plen­ty of remain­ing open ques­tions about how this elec­tion will turn out, we already have plen­ty of answers too. The much feared open sab­o­tage of the postal sys­tem hap­pened. The open defi­ance of the judi­cial sys­tem hap­pened. Trump’s dec­la­ra­tions of stolen vic­to­ry hap­pened. And Trump’s attempt to win via a packed far right Supreme Court is hap­pen­ing. We have those answers. They’re hor­ri­ble answers to hor­ri­ble ques­tions, but at least we have them. For some of the hor­ri­ble ques­tions. Plen­ty of hor­ri­ble ques­tions remain unan­swered.

The first cou­ple weeks of Decem­ber of this year were slat­ed to be a peri­od of extreme Repub­li­can antic after Joe Biden had secured the elec­toral votes he need­ed to win the pres­i­den­cy. Decem­ber 8 is the “Safe Har­bor” dead­line for states to cer­ti­fy their votes and Dec 14 is the date the elec­tors are sched­uled to meet and cast their votes. This is basi­cal­ly the last week for the Trump White House and Repub­li­cans to find a legal means of some­how get­ting Trump reelect­ed. Repub­li­can legal absur­di­ties were guar­an­teed. Just not nec­es­sar­i­ly this absurd: Texas is suing the states of Geor­gia, Wis­con­sin, Penn­syl­va­nia and Michi­gan to block their elec­tion results. Yep. Specif­i­cal­ly, Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton is ask­ing the Supreme Court to block the results and grant the state leg­is­la­tures (all Repub­li­can con­trolled) the oppor­tu­ni­ty to appoint their own elec­tors to vote in the Elec­toral Col­lege instead:

Talk­ing Points Memo
News

In Bonkers SCOTUS Bid, Texas Tries To Sue To Over­turn WI, PA, GA and MI Elec­tion Results

By Tier­ney Sneed
Decem­ber 8, 2020 11:09 a.m.

Every­thing is big­ger in Texas, includ­ing the lengths its top attor­ney will go to to do the anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic bid­ding of Pres­i­dent Trump.

Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton filed a request with the U.S. Supreme Court that it review a law­suit chal­leng­ing the elec­tion results in Geor­gia, Wis­con­sin, Penn­syl­va­nia and Michi­gan.

Texas is suing those states on the extreme­ly dubi­ous the­o­ry that they some­how vio­lat­ed the U.S. Constitution’s Elec­tions Clause in how they han­dled their elec­tions. It float­ed alle­ga­tions — some of them straight-up con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries — per­tain­ing to the states’ chang­ing their elec­tion prac­tices in ways not explic­it­ly autho­rized by the states’ leg­is­la­tures.

Texas is ask­ing the jus­tices to block the use of the cur­rent results in those states — which Joe Biden won — and to give the leg­is­la­tures, all Repub­li­can-con­trolled, the oppor­tu­ni­ty to appoint their own elec­tors to the Elec­toral Col­lege instead.

The U.S. Supreme Court has the pow­er to adju­di­cate law­suits between states. But Texas will first need the court’s per­mis­sion to even for­mal­ly file the law­suit, where it is also seek­ing expe­dit­ed review.

...

For all the pre-elec­tion talk of the U.S. Supreme Court ulti­mate­ly inter­ven­ing to resolve any post-elec­tion dis­putes, very few of those cas­es have actu­al­ly made it that far up the judi­cial lad­der, and the jus­tices have not appeared to be par­tic­u­lar­ly eager to get involved.

In one Penn­syl­va­nia case, brought by Repub­li­can House can­di­dates who are ask­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to over­turn the elec­tion results in their state, Jus­tice Samuel Ali­to ini­tial­ly didn’t even ask for a response to the GOP request until after Tuesday’s Safe Har­bor date, a dead­line for set­tling these kinds of dis­putes. He lat­er bumped up that dead­line to Tues­day morn­ing, but the lit­tle time that gives the Court to act sug­gests that it has no real inter­est in dis­turb­ing the results.

———–

“In Bonkers SCOTUS Bid, Texas Tries To Sue To Over­turn WI, PA, GA and MI Elec­tion Results” by Tier­ney Sneed; Talk­ing Points Memo; 12/08/2020

“Texas is ask­ing the jus­tices to block the use of the cur­rent results in those states — which Joe Biden won — and to give the leg­is­la­tures, all Repub­li­can-con­trolled, the oppor­tu­ni­ty to appoint their own elec­tors to the Elec­toral Col­lege instead.”

Will the Supreme Court, now ful­ly stacked with far right jus­tices, choose to hear the case? It does­n’t sound like­ly. But Tex­as­’s Repub­li­cans will at least get an ‘A for Effort’ in terms of demon­strat­ing loy­al­ty to Trump.

So now that we have states suing oth­er states to over­turn the elec­tion results, per­haps this is a good time to take a walk down mem­o­ry lane and review the law­suits brought before the Supreme Court by the Flori­da Repub­li­can Par­ty in 2000 in the Bush v Gore case. Not only did the Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors argue that they had the right to make their own slate of elec­tors, but they argued that they have a right to do so even if all of the legal bat­tles were resolved before the Decem­ber 12 dead­line that had been set. Beyond that, they argued that they had the right to over­rule both the Flori­da state Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court on this mat­ter. Yep, the Flori­da state leg­is­la­ture could over­rule the US Supreme Court. That was real­ly part of the Repub­li­cans’ legal argu­ment. It’s a his­tor­i­cal fun fact worth keep­ing in mind this week:

The Los Ange­les Times

Flori­da Law­mak­ers Cite Broad Pow­er to Award Elec­tors to Bush

By RONALD BROWNSTEIN
TIMES POLITICAL WRITER
NOV. 28, 2000 12 AM

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Amid ris­ing par­ti­san ten­sions, the Repub­li­can major­i­ty in the Flori­da Leg­is­la­ture moved clos­er Mon­day toward an unprece­dent­ed effort to direct­ly award the state’s 25 elec­toral votes to George W. Bush.

In legal papers filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, the Leg­is­la­ture assert­ed broad author­i­ty to allo­cate Florida’s elec­toral votes even if the state courts order fur­ther recounts of pres­i­den­tial bal­lots that could give the lead to Demo­c­rat Al Gore.

Speak­er of the House Tom Feeney and Sen­ate Pres­i­dent John McK­ay, both Repub­li­cans close to Gov. Jeb Bush, sig­naled Mon­day that a spe­cial leg­isla­tive com­mit­tee meet­ing for the first time today would exam­ine the Legislature’s author­i­ty to appoint its own slate of elec­tors.

“If this con­tro­ver­sy is . . . unre­solved by Dec. 12, the Leg­is­la­ture has the author­i­ty and may have the respon­si­bil­i­ty to step in,” said McK­ay, who rep­re­sents a Tam­pa, Fla., dis­trict.

Using even stronger lan­guage, Feeney–who served as Jeb Bush’s run­ning mate in his unsuc­cess­ful 1994 guber­na­to­r­i­al bid–insisted that the Flori­da Supreme Court had usurped the author­i­ty of the Leg­is­la­ture by per­mit­ting coun­ties to con­duct man­u­al recounts through Sun­day. He strong­ly hint­ed that the Leg­is­la­ture may move to name its own elec­tors if the state courts don’t quick­ly dis­miss Gore’s for­mal con­test against Sec­re­tary of State Kather­ine Har­ris’ cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of George W. Bush as the offi­cial win­ner in the state.

“I do not want to be the House speak­er who pre­sides over the under­min­ing of the legit­i­mate pow­ers and author­i­ty of the Flori­da House,” Feeney said.

Feeney offered only one hypo­thet­i­cal that might cause the Leg­is­la­ture not to appoint its own slate of elec­tors: a U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion over­turn­ing last week’s Flori­da Supreme Court deci­sion and rein­stat­ing Har­ris’ effort to cer­ti­fy Bush as the win­ner on Nov. 14.

These sig­nals from Repub­li­can lead­ers drew a sharp rebuke from Democ­rats. House Minor­i­ty Leader Lois J. Frankel from Palm Beach, Fla., sent Feeney a stern­ly word­ed three-page let­ter Mon­day denounc­ing the Legislature’s move toward inter­ven­tion in the pres­i­den­tial race.

“The State Leg­is­la­ture should not become an arm of any one pres­i­den­tial cam­paign,” she wrote. “We believe sur­ren­der­ing the inde­pen­dence and integri­ty of this great insti­tu­tion in this fash­ion would place a dark par­ti­san stain on our Leg­is­la­ture.”

Democ­rats, though, can do lit­tle more than com­plain: Repub­li­cans hold a 77–43 major­i­ty in the state House and a 25–15 advan­tage in the Sen­ate.

In effect, the Leg­is­la­ture could be steam­ing toward a his­toric con­fronta­tion with the state courts. Under the for­mal con­test to the elec­tion result that Gore filed Mon­day, state courts will deter­mine whether to autho­rize fur­ther recounts that could give the vice pres­i­dent the lead in Florida–and thus pos­si­bly the 25 elec­toral votes he needs to win the pres­i­den­cy.

No state leg­is­la­ture has ever vot­ed to autho­rize a slate of elec­tors to com­pete with those cho­sen in a pop­u­lar vote.

But in a brief they joint­ly filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on Mon­day, the Flori­da Sen­ate and House aggres­sive­ly claimed the con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­er to do just that.

The brief argues that fed­er­al law gives the Leg­is­la­ture broad pow­er to name its own slate of elec­tors. It offers two dis­tinct jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for such a move: if the legal con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing the elec­tion are not set­tled in a “time­ly man­ner” or if the Leg­is­la­ture deter­mines that the state court deci­sions effec­tive­ly rewrote the rules for allo­cat­ing Florida’s elec­tors after elec­tion day.

In a sweep­ing asser­tion of author­i­ty, the Leg­is­la­ture argues that the “Leg­is­la­ture itself, and not the courts,” can deter­mine when the state has failed to make a “time­ly” choice of its elec­tors. Most often, leg­is­la­tors have sug­gest­ed that they would act only if law­suits chal­leng­ing the Flori­da result are still unre­solved on Dec. 12, the legal dead­line for set­tling a state’s elec­toral col­lege rep­re­sen­ta­tion. But leg­isla­tive aides say the lan­guage in the brief means the Repub­li­can major­i­ty believes it has the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to appoint its own elec­tors even if all lit­i­ga­tion is set­tled before then.

And, try­ing to pre­empt fur­ther chal­lenges, the Leg­is­la­ture asserts in the brief that Con­gress has no right to object to any slate of elec­tors it might appoint, pre­sum­ably even if the recounts pro­duce a com­pet­ing slate of elec­tors for Gore: “Con­gress has a con­sti­tu­tion­al oblig­a­tion to count the votes of any elec­tor who was indis­putably appoint­ed by the Leg­is­la­ture,” it argues.

Even more strik­ing­ly, the brief argues that if the U.S. Supreme Court says that the Flori­da Supreme Court was with­in its author­i­ty to extend the dead­line for man­u­al recounts, the Leg­is­la­ture could still decide the state court over­stepped and use that to jus­ti­fy appoint­ing its own elec­tors.

Echo­ing the argu­ment Bush has made to the Supreme Court, the Leg­is­la­ture main­tains that not only last week’s state Supreme Court deci­sion, but the shift­ing stan­dards used in those recounts, vio­lat­ed a fed­er­al law requir­ing that all dis­putes over a state’s elec­tors be gov­erned by laws enact­ed “pri­or to” elec­tion day. And that, they argue, would jus­ti­fy the Legislature’s nam­ing its own elec­tors.

On Mon­day, House Major­i­ty Leader Mike Fasano, a Repub­li­can from out­side of Tam­pa, brushed aside sug­ges­tions from Democ­rats that if the Leg­is­la­ture act­ed, it should split the elec­toral votes even­ly between Bush and Gore–a move that would give Gore an elec­toral col­lege major­i­ty. “It is win­ner take all,” Fasano said. “And Bush being the win­ner is allowed to have the 25 elec­toral votes.”

To inter­vene in the pres­i­den­tial race, the Leg­is­la­ture would have to con­vene in a spe­cial ses­sion; McK­ay and Feeney can order such a gath­er­ing with a joint request. But the clock is tick­ing: Leg­isla­tive pro­ce­dures require five days to pass a bill through both cham­bers. And if the Leg­is­la­ture wants the bill to become law with­out Jeb Bush need­ing to sign it–as many Repub­li­cans prefer–it must sit on his desk for sev­en days.

Under that sce­nario, the Leg­is­la­ture would have to start work by the end of this week to meet the Dec. 12 dead­line for select­ing the state’s elec­tors. It could start lat­er if it appoint­ed elec­tors through a joint res­o­lu­tion, which would not require Bush’s sig­na­ture, or if Bush signed a bill giv­ing the state’s elec­tors to his brother–as Sen­ate Pres­i­dent McK­ay said Mon­day he would pre­fer.

...

The leg­isla­tive process will begin today with the first hear­ing of a spe­cial 14-mem­ber com­mit­tee Feeney and McK­ay appoint­ed last week to “address vot­ing irreg­u­lar­i­ties.” After ini­tial­ly sig­nal­ing that the com­mit­tee would con­duct a broad inves­ti­ga­tion of elec­tion dis­putes that con­cern Republicans–such as the inval­i­da­tion of some over­seas mil­i­tary ballots–Feeney said Mon­day it would focus instead on the legal ques­tions sur­round­ing pos­si­ble leg­isla­tive inter­ven­tion.

That nar­rowed focus may reflect a desire to accel­er­ate the timetable: McK­ay said Mon­day that no deci­sion would be made on whether to call a spe­cial ses­sion until the com­mit­tee con­clud­ed its work. It is expect­ed to hear today from Har­vard Law Pro­fes­sors Charles Fried, a for­mer solic­i­tor gen­er­al, and Ein­er Elhauge, and attor­ney Roger J. Mag­nu­son, the three authors of the Legislature’s Supreme Court brief.

————

“Flori­da Law­mak­ers Cite Broad Pow­er to Award Elec­tors to Bush” by RONALD BROWNSTEIN; The Los Ange­les Times; 11/28/2000

“In legal papers filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, the Leg­is­la­ture assert­ed broad author­i­ty to allo­cate Florida’s elec­toral votes even if the state courts order fur­ther recounts of pres­i­den­tial bal­lots that could give the lead to Demo­c­rat Al Gore.”

Even if the Flori­da state courts ordered fur­ther recounts of pres­i­den­tial bal­lots, the Repub­li­can-con­trolled state leg­is­la­ture had the author­i­ty to go ahead and cre­ate its own slate of elec­tors any­way. That was just one argu­ments put for­ward by the legal charge being led by then-Flori­da House Speak­er Tom Feeney, a close ally of Jeb Bush. The ONLY hypo­thet­i­cal sce­nario that Feeney put for­ward that might cause the leg­is­la­tures to not appoint its own slate of elec­tors: the US Supreme Court over­turn­ing the Flori­da Supreme Court’s deci­sion to resume the recount. Which is exact­ly what hap­pened:

...
Using even stronger lan­guage, Feeney–who served as Jeb Bush’s run­ning mate in his unsuc­cess­ful 1994 guber­na­to­r­i­al bid–insisted that the Flori­da Supreme Court had usurped the author­i­ty of the Leg­is­la­ture by per­mit­ting coun­ties to con­duct man­u­al recounts through Sun­day. He strong­ly hint­ed that the Leg­is­la­ture may move to name its own elec­tors if the state courts don’t quick­ly dis­miss Gore’s for­mal con­test against Sec­re­tary of State Kather­ine Har­ris’ cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of George W. Bush as the offi­cial win­ner in the state.

“I do not want to be the House speak­er who pre­sides over the under­min­ing of the legit­i­mate pow­ers and author­i­ty of the Flori­da House,” Feeney said.

Feeney offered only one hypo­thet­i­cal that might cause the Leg­is­la­ture not to appoint its own slate of elec­tors: a U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion over­turn­ing last week’s Flori­da Supreme Court deci­sion and rein­stat­ing Har­ris’ effort to cer­ti­fy Bush as the win­ner on Nov. 14.

...

The brief argues that fed­er­al law gives the Leg­is­la­ture broad pow­er to name its own slate of elec­tors. It offers two dis­tinct jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for such a move: if the legal con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing the elec­tion are not set­tled in a “time­ly man­ner” or if the Leg­is­la­ture deter­mines that the state court deci­sions effec­tive­ly rewrote the rules for allo­cat­ing Florida’s elec­tors after elec­tion day.

In a sweep­ing asser­tion of author­i­ty, the Leg­is­la­ture argues that the “Leg­is­la­ture itself, and not the courts,” can deter­mine when the state has failed to make a “time­ly” choice of its elec­tors. Most often, leg­is­la­tors have sug­gest­ed that they would act only if law­suits chal­leng­ing the Flori­da result are still unre­solved on Dec. 12, the legal dead­line for set­tling a state’s elec­toral col­lege rep­re­sen­ta­tion. But leg­isla­tive aides say the lan­guage in the brief means the Repub­li­can major­i­ty believes it has the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to appoint its own elec­tors even if all lit­i­ga­tion is set­tled before then.

And, try­ing to pre­empt fur­ther chal­lenges, the Leg­is­la­ture asserts in the brief that Con­gress has no right to object to any slate of elec­tors it might appoint, pre­sum­ably even if the recounts pro­duce a com­pet­ing slate of elec­tors for Gore: “Con­gress has a con­sti­tu­tion­al oblig­a­tion to count the votes of any elec­tor who was indis­putably appoint­ed by the Leg­is­la­ture,” it argues.
...

And that asser­tion by the Repub­li­can state leg­is­la­ture of the author­i­ty to select its own slate of elec­tor extend­ed beyond the Supreme Court. The Repub­li­can-led Flori­da leg­is­la­ture of 2000 was the high­est law in the land! At least when it came to pres­i­den­tial elec­tions:

...
Even more strik­ing­ly, the brief argues that if the U.S. Supreme Court says that the Flori­da Supreme Court was with­in its author­i­ty to extend the dead­line for man­u­al recounts, the Leg­is­la­ture could still decide the state court over­stepped and use that to jus­ti­fy appoint­ing its own elec­tors.
...

They were argu­ing before the Supreme Court that they did­n’t have to actu­al­ly lis­ten to it. It’s the kind of legal of argu­ment that almost makes you won­der why they both­ered. It’s also the kind of argu­ment that almost makes the cur­rent Texas case before the Supreme Court seem hum­ble in com­par­i­son. At least Texas Repub­li­cans haven’t assert­ed the author­i­ty to just ignore the Supreme Court, although it’s unclear what that would entail in this case bar­ring Texas out­right invad­ing these oth­er states and forc­ing them to change their elec­tion results. And that’s one of the sad lessons we can take from this look back to the Bush v Gore fight of 2000: the GOP was already an eth­i­cal­ly bro­ken enough in 2000 to be will­ing to break the coun­try in order to get a Repub­li­can elect­ed. What we’re see­ing in 2020 is just refined bro­ken­ness.

Check­out the new new dead­line for some­how keep Pres­i­dent Trump in the White House: Jan­u­ary 6, a day after the Geor­gia spe­cial sen­ate runoffs. It’s the day the elec­toral col­lege votes are offi­cial­ly count­ed. And accord­ing to the scheme cur­rent­ly being pushed by Roger Stone, if a sin­gle mem­ber of the House and sin­gle mem­ber of Sen­ate sub­mit an objec­tion in writ­ing to a state’s results, that brings the count­ing to a halt and both cham­bers debate the objec­tion and have a vote on it. Both cham­bers have to vote to uphold the objec­tion for it to be sus­tained, so even if the GOP-con­trolled Sen­ate vot­ed to uphold an objec­tion it’s high­ly unlike­ly the House would also do so, mak­ing this essen­tial­ly a sym­bol­ic gam­bit with no real­is­tic chance of suc­ceed­ing. But as we’ll see, there’s a very good chance that a Jan­u­ary 6 objec­tion scheme would suc­ceed in one major respect: it would be one one very high pro­file oppor­tu­ni­ty for Repub­li­cans to sow elec­tion fraud dis­in­for­ma­tion and one last oppor­tu­ni­ty for elect­ed Repub­li­cans to demon­strate their undy­ing loy­al­ty to Trump:

The Wash­ing­ton Post

No, Jan. 6 isn’t anoth­er chance for Trump to reverse the elec­tion
Con­gress will count the elec­toral votes. The pres­i­dent will prob­a­bly try to pre­tend the out­come is in doubt.

By Trevor Pot­ter
Trevor Pot­ter is a Repub­li­can for­mer chair­man of the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion and the pres­i­dent of the Cam­paign Legal Cen­ter.
Dec. 17, 2020 at 11:00 a.m. UTC

Jan. 6 is not anoth­er Elec­tion Day. Don’t let Pres­i­dent Trump con­vince you it is.

What will hap­pen then — a joint ses­sion of Con­gress to receive the pres­i­den­tial and vice-pres­i­den­tial elec­tion results trans­mit­ted by the states — typ­i­cal­ly occurs every four years in rel­a­tive obscu­ri­ty. But this elec­tion cycle has been any­thing but typ­i­cal. While there’s no real­is­tic chance of any­thing hap­pen­ing Jan. 6 to dis­rupt the peace­ful trans­fer of pow­er con­sis­tent with the will of America’s vot­ers and Monday’s elec­toral col­lege votes, there is still a good chance Trump will try to make the day a super spread­er event for the elec­tion dis­in­for­ma­tion with which he is relent­less­ly try­ing to infect Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy.

Fore­knowl­edge is, how­ev­er, a form of inoc­u­la­tion here. By under­stand­ing exact­ly what does and doesn’t hap­pen Jan. 6, all of us can con­tribute to mak­ing that day a reaf­fir­ma­tion of our demo­c­ra­t­ic process rather than part of a con­tin­ued assault on it.

As required by the Constitution’s Twelfth Amend­ment, the House and Sen­ate will gath­er in a joint ses­sion presided over by Vice Pres­i­dent Pence. There, the slates of elec­tors for pres­i­dent and vice pres­i­dent from the 50 states plus the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, received by Con­gress from the state gov­ern­ments and accom­pa­nied by cer­tifi­cates from the gov­er­nors, will be read out, and the vote totals will be count­ed. This is usu­al­ly a rou­tine process — as it should be, because fed­er­al law urges any dis­putes over such slates to be resolved in the states by Dec. 8, ahead of the elec­toral col­lege meet­ing Dec. 14. That is to say any dis­putes (which are rare to begin with) are meant to be dis­posed of well before Con­gress gath­ers to count the elec­toral votes. It’s “real­ly a for­mal­i­ty,” as Sen. John Cornyn (R‑Tex.) has right­ly called the com­ing ses­sion.

But it is at least pos­si­ble for mem­bers of Con­gress to raise objec­tions to one or more slates of elec­tors as they’re read aloud. Under a 130-year-old law called the Elec­toral Count Act, if one rep­re­sen­ta­tive and one sen­a­tor joint­ly object to a slate, then the whole process paus­es while the House and Sen­ate sep­a­rate­ly debate the objec­tion, then vote on whether to sus­tain it.

This gives Trump’s die-hard sup­port­ers in Con­gress an oppor­tu­ni­ty to again pro­vide more dis­in­for­ma­tion about the elec­tion on nation­al tele­vi­sion Jan. 6. At least one Repub­li­can House mem­ber, Rep. Mo Brooks (Ala.), has said he is con­sid­er­ing mak­ing such an objec­tion — much to Trump’s delight. He’s think­ing of object­ing even though his osten­si­ble rea­son, pur­port­ed elec­tion fraud, has been resound­ing­ly reject­ed by state and fed­er­al courts, state elec­tion offi­cials of both par­ties and even Trump’s own attor­ney gen­er­al. (It has also been reject­ed by Trump’s lawyers, who have most­ly refrained from bring­ing fraud charges in actu­al court pro­ceed­ings where they would have to prove them, even as they fling accu­sa­tions around out­side of court.)

Even if Brooks finds one or more col­leagues and sen­a­tors to join him, there’s no real pos­si­bil­i­ty of over­turn­ing the out­come of the elec­tion: the Elec­toral Count Act requires both the House and the Sen­ate to reject a slate of elec­tors, and there is no sign that either cham­ber would do so. A num­ber of Repub­li­can sen­a­tors have already reject­ed such a chal­lenge to the votes of the peo­ple, and Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell (R‑Ky.) is telling his cau­cus not to join any such effort. Sure­ly a major­i­ty-Demo­c­ra­t­ic House won’t do so.

As with so much that’s hap­pened since Nov. 3, how­ev­er, it’s not the threat of actu­al­ly chang­ing the out­come that’s most wor­ri­some here. Instead, it’s the dan­ger of spread­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion and under­min­ing the per­ceived legit­i­ma­cy of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy, plant­i­ng the seed for future attempts by the los­ing par­ty to change elec­tion results if they con­trol state leg­is­la­tures or Con­gress.

Imag­ine how Trump might frame the votes that he could push for in Jan­u­ary as he con­tin­ues to deny his elec­tion defeat. First, just as Trump has turned on Georgia’s Repub­li­can Gov. Bri­an Kemp — pre­vi­ous­ly a close ally — because Kemp would not take ille­gal steps to dis­rupt that state’s vote cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, the soon-to-be-for­mer-pres­i­dent could start tweet­ing demands that objec­tions be lodged in Con­gress. Trump has also attacked Arizona’s Repub­li­can Gov. Doug Ducey for not pre­vent­ing that state’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of elec­tors for Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden, and the U.S. Supreme Court for reject­ing a far-fetched law­suit by his sup­port­ers in Texas. Sec­ond, if one or more objec­tions are made, Trump might frame the poten­tial votes in the House and Sen­ate to be a vote for him or for Biden — and Trump might, in turn, exco­ri­ate any Repub­li­can who votes “for Biden,” as he would mis­lead­ing­ly frame it.

That’s why it’s essen­tial to immu­nize the Amer­i­can peo­ple against these false­hoods now, before they can spread. There’s sim­ply no vote for or against any can­di­date Jan. 6 when Con­gress meets. No rep­re­sen­ta­tive or sen­a­tor is being asked to choose between Trump or Biden. That’s some­thing they were all enti­tled to do along with oth­er Amer­i­cans, when they as cit­i­zens vot­ed before or on Nov. 3. As Sen. Mitt Rom­ney (R‑Utah) said recent­ly, “try­ing to get elec­tors not to do what the peo­ple vot­ed to do is mad­ness.”

Instead, there’s only one thing that could be put to a vote Jan. 6: Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. The ques­tion is whether to respect the choice already made by the Amer­i­can peo­ple in every state, as cer­ti­fied by each state’s own elec­tion sys­tem, whether any par­tic­u­lar mem­ber of Con­gress likes that choice. The alter­na­tive is to lodge a legal­ly futile but psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly dam­ag­ing blow against the integri­ty of America’s fun­da­men­tal demo­c­ra­t­ic process and the prin­ci­ples of fed­er­al­ism and the sov­er­eign­ty of vot­ers.

...

———–

“No, Jan. 6 isn’t anoth­er chance for Trump to reverse the elec­tion” by Trevor Pot­ter; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 12/17/2020

“But it is at least pos­si­ble for mem­bers of Con­gress to raise objec­tions to one or more slates of elec­tors as they’re read aloud. Under a 130-year-old law called the Elec­toral Count Act, if one rep­re­sen­ta­tive and one sen­a­tor joint­ly object to a slate, then the whole process paus­es while the House and Sen­ate sep­a­rate­ly debate the objec­tion, then vote on whether to sus­tain it.”

One last chance. One last chance for Repub­li­cans to declare the elec­tion fraud­u­lent and one last chance to elect­ed offi­cials to show the com­plete feal­ty to the Repub­li­can God King over the con­sti­tu­tion. It’s the ulti­mate lit­mus test, which might be why Mitch McConnell report­ed­ly begged his fel­low Repub­li­can sen­a­tors to not take the bait and issue any objec­tions:

...
This gives Trump’s die-hard sup­port­ers in Con­gress an oppor­tu­ni­ty to again pro­vide more dis­in­for­ma­tion about the elec­tion on nation­al tele­vi­sion Jan. 6. At least one Repub­li­can House mem­ber, Rep. Mo Brooks (Ala.), has said he is con­sid­er­ing mak­ing such an objec­tion — much to Trump’s delight. He’s think­ing of object­ing even though his osten­si­ble rea­son, pur­port­ed elec­tion fraud, has been resound­ing­ly reject­ed by state and fed­er­al courts, state elec­tion offi­cials of both par­ties and even Trump’s own attor­ney gen­er­al. (It has also been reject­ed by Trump’s lawyers, who have most­ly refrained from bring­ing fraud charges in actu­al court pro­ceed­ings where they would have to prove them, even as they fling accu­sa­tions around out­side of court.)

Even if Brooks finds one or more col­leagues and sen­a­tors to join him, there’s no real pos­si­bil­i­ty of over­turn­ing the out­come of the elec­tion: the Elec­toral Count Act requires both the House and the Sen­ate to reject a slate of elec­tors, and there is no sign that either cham­ber would do so. A num­ber of Repub­li­can sen­a­tors have already reject­ed such a chal­lenge to the votes of the peo­ple, and Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell (R‑Ky.) is telling his cau­cus not to join any such effort. Sure­ly a major­i­ty-Demo­c­ra­t­ic House won’t do so.

As with so much that’s hap­pened since Nov. 3, how­ev­er, it’s not the threat of actu­al­ly chang­ing the out­come that’s most wor­ri­some here. Instead, it’s the dan­ger of spread­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion and under­min­ing the per­ceived legit­i­ma­cy of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy, plant­i­ng the seed for future attempts by the los­ing par­ty to change elec­tion results if they con­trol state leg­is­la­tures or Con­gress.
...

Keep in mind that if they do going through with this scheme it will prob­a­bly involve objec­tions to mul­ti­ple states so there could be mul­ti­ple rounds of vot­ing over these objec­tions. That’s assum­ing Rep. Mo Brooks finds a fel­low Repub­li­can in the Sen­ate to join him in the planned objec­tions. Will he find a part­ner? We’ll see. It’s undoubt­ed­ly going to be mighty tempt­ing. After all, any Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor who does issue objec­tions will instant­ly become a hero of the Trumpian base.

And as the fol­low­ing pair of arti­cles reminds us, there’s anoth­er rea­son Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors might be inclined to vote in favor of these objec­tions on Jan­u­ary 6: fear of get­ting pri­maried on the right, poten­tial­ly by the fig­ures like Roger Stone. Yep, Roger Stone is now float­ing pri­ma­ry runs against Repub­li­can sen­a­tors who don’t sup­port the Jan­u­ary 6 objec­tions. Two Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors who might be par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to pri­maries chal­lenges from the right: Rick Scott and Mar­co Rubio of Flori­da.

First, here’s an arti­cle about Roger Stone call­ing on Rick Scott to be the “coura­geous” mem­ber of the Sen­ate who issues the Jan­u­ary 6 objec­tions. It’s the “car­rot” in Stone’s car­rot and stick approach to forc­ing at least one Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor to pro­vide those Jan­u­ary 6 objec­tions:

Bay News 9

Roger Stone, in Pinel­las Coun­ty Stop, Calls on Rick Scott to Chal­lenge Elec­toral Col­lege Results

By Mitch Per­ry Pinel­las Coun­ty
PUBLISHED 4:25 PM ET Dec. 15, 2020

With Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden’s Elec­toral Col­lege vic­to­ry cer­ti­fied on Mon­day, there is just one venue left to chal­lenge the results of the 2020 elec­tion – that’s when Con­gress con­venes on Jan­u­ary 6 to approve the elec­toral results from all 50 states. It requires just one mem­ber of the House and a mem­ber of the Sen­ate to sub­mit an objec­tion in writ­ing to a state’s results.

Speak­ing before a crowd of sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple in Largo on Mon­day, Roger Stone encour­aged the audi­ence to con­tact Flori­da Sen­a­tor Rick Scott to be that one mem­ber of the Sen­ate.

“I believe that there is a coura­geous mem­ber of the House who is going to rise to the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion,” Stone said while stand­ing atop of the back of a flatbed truck in the park­ing lot of Con­ser­v­a­tive Grounds, the pro-Don­ald Trump cof­fee shop in Largo. “And then it is up to the Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors.”

“I look to the men that I admire in the Sen­ate,” Stone con­tin­ued. “Sen­a­tor Rand Paul. Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz. Sen­a­tor Josh Haw­ley. Sen­a­tor Rick Scott. Any­one of these sen­a­tors could sec­ond the motion by a House mem­ber to trig­ger a re-exam­i­na­tion of the cor­rup­tion in this elec­tion.” (Sen­a­tor Scott’s office did not imme­di­ate­ly respond for a request for com­ment).

Sev­er­al news orga­ni­za­tions report­ed on Tues­day that Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConell “plead­ed” with Sen­ate col­leagues not to join any House mem­bers in object­ing to the Elec­toral Col­lege results.

While the sen­ti­ment expressed by those in Largo may be out of the main­stream, they’re not with Repub­li­cans. A poll con­duct­ed last week by NPR/PBS/Marist Col­lege found that while a sol­id major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans do trust the results of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, less than a quar­ter (24%) of Repub­li­cans say they accept them.

...

Pre­ced­ing Stone on Mon­day night were four oth­er speak­ers, all of whom bashed the results of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

“Trump has not con­ced­ed and we should not con­cede either,” said Craig Long. “Can I get an amen to that?”

The crowd cheered enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly.

————

“Roger Stone, in Pinel­las Coun­ty Stop, Calls on Rick Scott to Chal­lenge Elec­toral Col­lege Results” by Mitch Per­ry Pinel­las Coun­ty; Bay News 9; 12/15/2020

““I look to the men that I admire in the Sen­ate,” Stone con­tin­ued. “Sen­a­tor Rand Paul. Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz. Sen­a­tor Josh Haw­ley. Sen­a­tor Rick Scott. Any­one of these sen­a­tors could sec­ond the motion by a House mem­ber to trig­ger a re-exam­i­na­tion of the cor­rup­tion in this elec­tion.” (Sen­a­tor Scott’s office did not imme­di­ate­ly respond for a request for com­ment).”

Who will be the coura­geous sen­a­tor that sec­onds the motions of objec­tion on Jan­u­ary 6? Will it be Ted Cruz? Josh Haw­ley? Per­haps Rick Scott? That’s the reward Stone is hold­ing out for the Repub­li­can sen­a­tors. Now here’s the ‘stick’ in this car­rot and stick rhetor­i­cal cam­paign: Stone is also telling audi­ences that peo­ple are encour­ag­ing him to pri­ma­ry Mar­co Rubio in 2022. Stone said he’d be more inter­est­ed in wait­ing until 2024 and pri­ma­ry­ing Rick Scott instead. But that does­n’t mean Mar­co is out of the woods because there’s anoth­er fig­ure report­ed­ly being whis­pered about as a poten­tial pri­ma­ry chal­lenger for Rubio in 2022: Ivan­ka Trump:

Tam­pa Bay Times

Mar­co Rubio may face a Flori­da pri­ma­ry chal­lenge in 2022. Here’s why.

“This is prob­a­bly the only state where a Repub­li­can should fear a pri­ma­ry chal­lenge from a Trump­ist can­di­date, and Marco’s first in line,” says one GOP con­sul­tant.

By David Smi­ley and Alex Daugh­er­ty
Pub­lished Dec. 17, 2020

At a week­end ral­ly orga­nized by Repub­li­cans out­side Miami’s Free­dom Tow­er, a crowd uni­fied by the false belief that the 2020 elec­tion was stolen from Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump gath­ered and waved Trump 2020 ban­ners, Amer­i­can flags — and, in one case, a sign ask­ing “Where’s Mar­co?”

Mar­co Rubio, Florida’s senior Repub­li­can U.S. sen­a­tor, was not expect­ed to attend the event, one of many protests planned around the coun­try by Trump’s most dogged sup­port­ers. Though Rubio has not crit­i­cized Trump’s efforts to over­turn the results of an elec­tion that made Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee Joe Biden the pres­i­dent-elect, he has stopped short of back­ing the president’s alle­ga­tions of wide­spread vot­er fraud and at times acknowl­edged the lack of evi­dence to sup­port the claims.

“Where is Mar­co, indeed?” Roger Stone, a for­mer Trump advis­er who spoke at the Sun­day ral­ly in Mia­mi, wrote lat­er on the social media site Par­ler. “A grow­ing num­ber of Flori­da Repub­li­cans are urg­ing me to chal­lenge Mar­co Rubio in the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry.”

Stone, a self-described dirty trick­ster par­doned by Trump this year for lying to Con­gress, may have just been stir­ring the pot. He went on to say that, were he to run, he’d rather wait two years and chal­lenge Florida’s junior Repub­li­can U.S. sen­a­tor, Rick Scott, and also told the Dai­ly Caller that he’s “friend­ly” with Rubio and “not like­ly to run for any­thing.”

But Stone’s flir­ta­tion with chal­leng­ing Rubio’s bid for a third term under­scores a new real­i­ty for Flori­da Repub­li­cans: In 2022, the great­est threat to most GOP incum­bents may lie not on the left, but on the right — and in the per­cep­tion that they’re not loy­al enough to Trump.

“This is prob­a­bly the only state where a Repub­li­can should fear a pri­ma­ry chal­lenge from a Trump­ist can­di­date, and Marco’s first in line,” said Jacob Per­ry, a for­mer GOP cam­paign con­sul­tant in Flori­da who now runs a dig­i­tal newslet­ter.

In a Wednes­day inter­view on Capi­tol Hill, Rubio said he’s not wor­ried that Trump sup­port­ers will turn against GOP offi­cials who do not unequiv­o­cal­ly back all of Trump’s claims.

“We’re a very diverse par­ty, a very vibrant par­ty, but I don’t wor­ry,” Rubio said. “I think it’s most­ly a cre­ation by you guys, media peo­ple, that sort of focus on these things because it draws rat­ings and clicks.”

But since los­ing the Nov. 3 elec­tion, Trump has put Repub­li­cans on notice that any­one who bucks his false claim that the elec­tion was stolen from him could draw his ire.

Trump sug­gest­ed that an Ohio Repub­li­can should run in the pri­ma­ry against Gov. Mike DeWine after the gov­er­nor con­grat­u­lat­ed Biden last month on his vic­to­ry. And dur­ing a ral­ly in Geor­gia this month on behalf of two GOP U.S. sen­a­tors, Trump encour­aged an ally to chal­lenge Repub­li­can Gov. Bri­an Kemp, whom Trump has report­ed­ly deemed dis­loy­al after he refused to take unprece­dent­ed steps to try and over­turn Biden’s win in the state.

In Flori­da, Trump has had no need to make such threats. He won the state last month by near­ly four per­cent­age points — a rel­a­tive blowout in a state known for tight con­tests — and Repub­li­cans have been large­ly sup­port­ive of his con­tin­ued legal chal­lenges.

Gov. Ron DeSan­tis, who won the 2018 Flori­da GOP pri­ma­ry for gov­er­nor thanks large­ly to Trump’s endorse­ment, encour­aged the idea of faith­less elec­tors after the elec­tion. Pan­han­dle Con­gress­man Matt Gaetz has said law­mak­ers should con­sid­er con­test­ing the elec­tion when they con­vene Jan. 6 to tab­u­late the results. And the state’s attor­ney gen­er­al, Ash­ley Moody, was one of 17 attor­neys gen­er­al to back a Texas law­suit seek­ing to have the U.S. Supreme Court inval­i­date elec­tion results in Geor­gia and three oth­er bat­tle­grounds that went for Biden.

The high court reject­ed the law­suit, which was blast­ed by some Sen­ate Repub­li­cans as a pub­lic rela­tions stunt. But not before two-thirds of the 195 House Repub­li­cans — includ­ing 13 of Florida’s 16 GOP rep­re­sen­ta­tives — signed onto a friend-of-the-court brief encour­ag­ing jus­tices to hear the case. Of the three who didn’t add their names, one is retir­ing, and a sec­ond said he sim­ply missed a dead­line, leav­ing Sarasota’s Vern Buchanan as the lone unex­plained hold­out return­ing to Con­gress in 2021.

U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, who was auto­mat­i­cal­ly reelect­ed to a safe Repub­li­can seat rep­re­sent­ing north­west Mia­mi-Dade Coun­ty this sum­mer when no Demo­c­rat filed to run against him, told the Mia­mi Her­ald that he backed the Texas law­suit because “there are valid ques­tions as to whether or not there were con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tions by a num­ber of states.” But some ques­tion whether polit­i­cal expe­di­ence is lead­ing Florida’s GOP con­gress­men, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in reli­ably red dis­tricts, to toe the Trump line on the elec­tion.

...

Does elec­toral vote change any­thing?

A Mon­day vote by the elec­toral col­lege solid­i­fy­ing Biden’s win has loos­ened some Repub­li­cans’ resis­tance to acknowl­edge the results of the 2020 elec­tion. So far, with most of Florida’s GOP del­e­ga­tion con­tin­u­ing to back Trump’s legal chal­lenges, there’s lit­tle sign that an insur­gent wave is com­ing to knock out Repub­li­can incum­bents, as hap­pened in 2010 with the tea par­ty move­ment.

But it’s ear­ly in the com­ing elec­tion cycle. And though the stay­ing pow­er of Trump’s influ­ence remains to be seen, it seems like­ly that he will linger as a polit­i­cal force into the 2022 midterm elec­tions, espe­cial­ly in Flori­da, giv­en that the pres­i­dent is expect­ed to return to his Palm Beach estate next month while con­sid­er­ing anoth­er run for pres­i­dent.

“There is no way that Trump can sit this out,” said Per­ry, refer­ring to Trump’s abil­i­ty to influ­ence the 2022 cam­paign cycle. “He’s too addict­ed to the pow­er and the spot­light. The only wild­card in this is if Trump decides one of his own kids should run for Sen­ate some­where.”

For Rubio, a for­mer state law­mak­er who rode the tea par­ty wave to an upset win over then-Repub­li­can Gov. Char­lie Crist in the 2010 Flori­da U.S. Sen­ate race, a younger Trump run for Sen­ate could be a prob­lem. Rumors abound that Ivan­ka Trump, the president’s eldest daugh­ter, could chal­lenge Rubio in 2022 after reports emerged that she and her fam­i­ly are pur­chas­ing a lot in exclu­sive Indi­an Creek Vil­lage.

Ivan­ka Trump has declined to com­ment on the spec­u­la­tion. And on Mon­day, Politi­co report­ed that Flori­da GOP Chair­man Joe Gruters said the reports were “just noise.”

Rubio, who has not backed unfound­ed claims by some sup­port­ers of the pres­i­dent that Venezuela and Cuba were involved in rig­ging the 2020 elec­tion, told the Mia­mi Her­ald he wasn’t sure if there will be pro-Trump pri­ma­ry chal­lenges to incum­bents in 2022. But he said he remains con­fi­dent that his work on the Pay­check Pro­tec­tion Pro­gram dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and hard-line stances on Cuba and Chi­na will be reward­ed by GOP pri­ma­ry vot­ers.

“I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved over the last four years, a lot of it work­ing with the pres­i­dent,” Rubio said. “We’ve achieved great things work­ing hand-in-hand with the pres­i­dent on Chi­na, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, you name it. That’s why we worked so hard for his reelec­tion and why I’m so proud he won Flori­da. We’re very proud about what we’ve done, but we have more to do.”

But the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a chal­lenge by Ivan­ka Trump or Roger Stone reflects the uncom­fort­able posi­tion in the mid­dle that Rubio has earned by sup­port­ing Trump only to a point — and a warn­ing to oth­er Repub­li­cans.

“The first goal of any politi­cian is to be reelect­ed,” said Per­ry. “It’s some­thing you have to keep in mind.”

————

“Mar­co Rubio may face a Flori­da pri­ma­ry chal­lenge in 2022. Here’s why.” by David Smi­ley and Alex Daugh­er­ty; Tam­pa Bay Times; 12/17/2020

“Stone, a self-described dirty trick­ster par­doned by Trump this year for lying to Con­gress, may have just been stir­ring the pot. He went on to say that, were he to run, he’d rather wait two years and chal­lenge Florida’s junior Repub­li­can U.S. sen­a­tor, Rick Scott, and also told the Dai­ly Caller that he’s “friend­ly” with Rubio and “not like­ly to run for any­thing.””

Rick Scott is on notice! The threat has been issued. Grant­ed, four years is a long way away. But at 68 years old, there’s a very good chance Roger Stone will be healthy enough to run in 2024. And a lot of changes could hap­pen to the Repub­li­can Par­ty over the next four years. The kind of changes that make fig­ures seen as close to Trump and loy­al to Trump the like­ly win­ners in any pri­ma­ry challenges...especially if they are chal­leng­ing a sit­ting sen­a­tor who skipped an oppor­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate their loy­al­ty to Trump dur­ing the 2020 elec­tion tus­sle:

...
“Where is Mar­co, indeed?” Roger Stone, a for­mer Trump advis­er who spoke at the Sun­day ral­ly in Mia­mi, wrote lat­er on the social media site Par­ler. “A grow­ing num­ber of Flori­da Repub­li­cans are urg­ing me to chal­lenge Mar­co Rubio in the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry.”

...

But Stone’s flir­ta­tion with chal­leng­ing Rubio’s bid for a third term under­scores a new real­i­ty for Flori­da Repub­li­cans: In 2022, the great­est threat to most GOP incum­bents may lie not on the left, but on the right — and in the per­cep­tion that they’re not loy­al enough to Trump.

...

In a Wednes­day inter­view on Capi­tol Hill, Rubio said he’s not wor­ried that Trump sup­port­ers will turn against GOP offi­cials who do not unequiv­o­cal­ly back all of Trump’s claims.

“We’re a very diverse par­ty, a very vibrant par­ty, but I don’t wor­ry,” Rubio said. “I think it’s most­ly a cre­ation by you guys, media peo­ple, that sort of focus on these things because it draws rat­ings and clicks.”

But since los­ing the Nov. 3 elec­tion, Trump has put Repub­li­cans on notice that any­one who bucks his false claim that the elec­tion was stolen from him could draw his ire.

Trump sug­gest­ed that an Ohio Repub­li­can should run in the pri­ma­ry against Gov. Mike DeWine after the gov­er­nor con­grat­u­lat­ed Biden last month on his vic­to­ry. And dur­ing a ral­ly in Geor­gia this month on behalf of two GOP U.S. sen­a­tors, Trump encour­aged an ally to chal­lenge Repub­li­can Gov. Bri­an Kemp, whom Trump has report­ed­ly deemed dis­loy­al after he refused to take unprece­dent­ed steps to try and over­turn Biden’s win in the state.
...

And while Mar­co Rubio might be spared from a Roger Stone pri­ma­ry chal­lenge in 2022, he should­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly be thank­ful. Because a poten­tial­ly far more potent pri­ma­ry chal­lenge is appar­ent­ly being talked about for his seat in 2022: Ivan­ka Trump:

...
“There is no way that Trump can sit this out,” said Per­ry, refer­ring to Trump’s abil­i­ty to influ­ence the 2022 cam­paign cycle. “He’s too addict­ed to the pow­er and the spot­light. The only wild­card in this is if Trump decides one of his own kids should run for Sen­ate some­where.”

For Rubio, a for­mer state law­mak­er who rode the tea par­ty wave to an upset win over then-Repub­li­can Gov. Char­lie Crist in the 2010 Flori­da U.S. Sen­ate race, a younger Trump run for Sen­ate could be a prob­lem. Rumors abound that Ivan­ka Trump, the president’s eldest daugh­ter, could chal­lenge Rubio in 2022 after reports emerged that she and her fam­i­ly are pur­chas­ing a lot in exclu­sive Indi­an Creek Vil­lage.
...

Does Mar­co Rubio want to face Ivan­ka in 2022? Because that’s prob­a­bly not going to be an easy con­test. Grant­ed, we don’t know yet how skill­ful Ivan­ka will be as a politi­cian run­ning for office, but it’s not like she does­n’t have expe­ri­ence oper­at­ing in the pub­lic eye at this point. And there’s prob­a­bly A LOT more default love for Ivan­ka than Mar­co and Flori­da’s Repub­li­can vot­er base, which is the only elec­torate that mat­ters for a pri­ma­ry run. Is Mar­co sure he does­n’t want to uphold those Jan­u­ary 6 objec­tions?

That’s all part of the dynam­ic that’s going to be play­ing out in the Repub­li­can Par­ty over the next two weeks when we final­ly hit that Jan­u­ary 6 dead­line. It’s going to be inter­est­ing to see how many oth­er Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry threats we hear dur­ing this peri­od.

And then we get to move on to the new new new dead­line of Jan­u­ary 20, Inau­gu­ra­tion Day, which will pre­sum­ably revolve around threat­en­ing Repub­li­cans into sup­port­ing mar­tial law. The ‘car­rot and stick’ cam­paign will prob­a­bly be a lot more intense at that point.

Here’s the lat­est reminder of how the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s ger­ry­man­dered-grip on state-lev­el pol­i­tics rep­re­sents a gen­uine threat to US democ­ra­cy. It’s also a peek at what will like­ly be on the agen­da in every oth­er GOP-con­trolled state: the chair of the GOP-con­trolled Ari­zona state House Ways and Means Com­mit­tee just intro­duced an elec­tion law reform bill for the state. And as expect­ed, the bill allows the state Leg­is­la­ture to revoke the sec­re­tary of state’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion “by major­i­ty vote at any time before the pres­i­den­tial inau­gu­ra­tion.” It’s unclear if the bill will pass the GOP-con­trolled state sen­ate, but it’s just a mat­ter of time as long as the GOP con­trols that state. This is where the grav­i­ty in the Repub­li­can Par­ty resides today. Chang­ing the rules to ensure Repub­li­can vic­to­ry is the new ‘civ­il right’ on the Right:

NBC News

Ari­zona GOP law­mak­er intro­duces bill to give Leg­is­la­ture pow­er to toss out elec­tion results
One sec­tion grants the Leg­is­la­ture the abil­i­ty to revoke the sec­re­tary of state’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion at any time before the pres­i­den­tial inau­gu­ra­tion.

Jan. 28, 2021, 8:09 PM CST / Updat­ed Jan. 29, 2021, 9:40 AM CST
By Dar­tunor­ro Clark

The Repub­li­can chair of Ari­zon­a’s state House Ways and Means Com­mit­tee intro­duced a bill Wednes­day that would give the Leg­is­la­ture author­i­ty to over­ride the sec­re­tary of state’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its elec­toral votes.

GOP Rep. Shawn­na Bol­ick intro­duced the bill, which rewrites parts of the state’s elec­tion law, such as sec­tions on elec­tion observers and secur­ing and audit­ing bal­lots, among oth­er mea­sures.

One sec­tion grants the Leg­is­la­ture, which is cur­rent­ly under GOP con­trol, the abil­i­ty to revoke the sec­re­tary of state’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion “by major­i­ty vote at any time before the pres­i­den­tial inau­gu­ra­tion.”

“The leg­is­la­ture may take action pur­suant to this sub­sec­tion with­out regard to whether the leg­is­la­ture is in reg­u­lar or spe­cial ses­sion or has held com­mit­tee or oth­er hear­ings on the mat­ter.”

...

One of the state’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­gress­man, Ruben Gal­lego, said if the bill passed, he would work to have it defeat­ed by pub­lic ref­er­en­dum.

Ref­er­en­dums are expen­sive but I will raise the mon­ey to kill this Democ­ra­cy killing bill. Fol­low this bill if it pass­es we will have 90 days after it is signed into law to col­lect the nec­es­sary sig­na­tures to get it on the bal­lot and then defeat it. https://t.co/i1M8lm5FCj— Ruben Gal­lego (@RubenGallego) Jan­u­ary 29, 2021

The intro­duc­tion of the bill comes as the Ari­zona GOP has faced an intra­party fight after for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump fueled base­less claims about the elec­tion after the state went to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden in the 2020 elec­tion — the first time in 24 years a Demo­c­rat has won the state.

The state GOP has also moved to cen­sure Cindy McCain, the wife of late for­mer Ari­zona GOP Sen. John McCain, and for­mer Ari­zona GOP Sen. Jeff Flake. Both sup­port­ed Biden in the elec­tion.

It’s unclear how far the bill will go even in a Repub­li­can-con­trolled House and Sen­ate. Although Ari­zona GOP chair Kel­li Ward, who is fac­ing ques­tions about her own reelec­tion to the posi­tion, claimed the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion was stolen from Trump, oth­er top Repub­li­cans have pushed back on such claims.

Ari­zona House Speak­er Rusty Bow­ers, a Repub­li­can, rebutted Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s mer­it­less attempts to over­turn the elec­tion results there in a sharply-word­ed state­ment in Decem­ber 2020. He also dis­missed the idea of the Leg­is­la­ture appoint­ing its own elec­tors to deliv­er the state’s Elec­toral Col­lege votes to Trump.

“I vot­ed for Pres­i­dent Trump and worked hard to reelect him. But I can­not and will not enter­tain a sug­ges­tion that we vio­late cur­rent law to change the out­come of a cer­ti­fied elec­tion,” he said at the time.

—————-

“Ari­zona GOP law­mak­er intro­duces bill to give Leg­is­la­ture pow­er to toss out elec­tion results” By Dar­tunor­ro Clark; NBC News; 01/28/2021

“One sec­tion grants the Leg­is­la­ture, which is cur­rent­ly under GOP con­trol, the abil­i­ty to revoke the sec­re­tary of state’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion “by major­i­ty vote at any time before the pres­i­den­tial inau­gu­ra­tion.””

As long as the GOP con­trols the Ari­zona leg­is­la­ture, a Demo­c­rat can’t win the state of Ari­zona in future pres­i­den­tial races. That’s the obvi­ous intent of the bill. And this is com­ing from a state Repub­li­can cau­cus that recent­ly cen­sured Cindy McCain and for­mer Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Jeff Flake over their sup­port of Joe Biden in the elec­tion. The Ari­zona GOP’s is basi­cal­ly a par­ty in open rebel­lion against democ­ra­cy:

...
“The leg­is­la­ture may take action pur­suant to this sub­sec­tion with­out regard to whether the leg­is­la­ture is in reg­u­lar or spe­cial ses­sion or has held com­mit­tee or oth­er hear­ings on the mat­ter.”

...

The intro­duc­tion of the bill comes as the Ari­zona GOP has faced an intra­party fight after for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump fueled base­less claims about the elec­tion after the state went to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden in the 2020 elec­tion — the first time in 24 years a Demo­c­rat has won the state.

The state GOP has also moved to cen­sure Cindy McCain, the wife of late for­mer Ari­zona GOP Sen. John McCain, and for­mer Ari­zona GOP Sen. Jeff Flake. Both sup­port­ed Biden in the elec­tion.
...

We’ll see if this actu­al­ly pass­es through the state sen­ate and becomes law. But the idea is out there and has root in the GOP: when Repub­li­cans lose it’s because the elec­tion was stolen and the only way to fix this is to give Repub­li­can offi­cials the pow­er to ‘fix’ those rigged results. It’s only fair.

The Trump pres­i­den­cy may be over, but the seem­ing­ly end­less flood of insane Trump-relat­ed sto­ries have yet to recede: We now have reports that Don­ald Trump’s legal team for his impeach­ment defense in the Sen­ate was com­plete­ly replaced over the week­end. Why? Because they were unwill­ing to argue the defense Trump want­ed them to argue. That being the defense that the elec­tion real­ly was stolen, which isn’t so much a defense of Trump against accu­sa­tions that he incit­ed the insur­rec­tion and more a defense of the insur­rec­tion:

Talk­ing Points Memo
Edi­tor’s Blog

Note What This Means

By Josh Mar­shall
Jan­u­ary 31, 2021 10:27 a.m.

I think some­thing is get­ting lost in the the dis­cus­sion of Trump’s Impeach­ment 2.0 lawyers quit­ting. They report­ed­ly bailed because they were unwill­ing to argue Trump’s lies about the elec­tion being stolen. But argu­ing the elec­tion was stolen amounts to an affir­ma­tive defense of the events of Jan­u­ary 6th. In oth­er words, Trump isn’t guilty not because he didn’t incite the insur­rec­tion but because the incite­ment and the insur­rec­tion were jus­ti­fied.

Repub­li­cans have been hop­ing Trump will con­test the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the pro­ceed­ing itself. This is a thor­ough­ly bogus argu­ment. No one pri­or to 2021 ever thought a for­mer Pres­i­dent couldn’t be tried in the Sen­ate. But it has the mer­it of being anti­sep­tic. It’s a tech­ni­cal ques­tion housed in the late 1780s far away from the events of Jan­u­ary 6th.

A more log­i­cal defense would be on the facts of the alleged incite­ment. The case against Trump is very strong. But you can cer­tain­ly argue that he didn’t explic­it­ly tell the insur­rec­tion­ists to storm the Capi­tol and mur­der mem­bers of the House and Sen­ate. There’s a defense there you can argue and enough of the jury has decid­ed to acquit regard­less. So why not?

But again, that’s not what Trump wants to argue. He wants to say it was all jus­ti­fied.

————

“Note What This Means” by Josh Mar­shall; Talk­ing Points Memo; 01/31/2021

“I think some­thing is get­ting lost in the the dis­cus­sion of Trump’s Impeach­ment 2.0 lawyers quit­ting. They report­ed­ly bailed because they were unwill­ing to argue Trump’s lies about the elec­tion being stolen. But argu­ing the elec­tion was stolen amounts to an affir­ma­tive defense of the events of Jan­u­ary 6th. In oth­er words, Trump isn’t guilty not because he didn’t incite the insur­rec­tion but because the incite­ment and the insur­rec­tion were jus­ti­fied.”

It was­n’t an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al insur­rec­tion. No, it was an entire­ly appro­pri­ate attempt to have their griev­ances address in the face of a stolen elec­tion. That’s the defense Trump is clear­ly intent on hav­ing his legal team argue. A defense made all the more remark­able by the fact that the con­sen­sus opin­ion held by most of the rest of his fel­low Repub­li­can cau­cus is that the argu­ment that will acquit Trump is that it is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al to impeach a pres­i­dent after they are out of office. It’s a ready-made argu­ment that the Repub­li­cans in the Sen­ate are ready to go with and Trump’s acquit­tal under that argu­ment is vir­tu­al­ly guar­an­teed. But Trump wants to use the Sen­ate tri­al to jus­ti­fy the insur­rec­tion.

It rais­es the ques­tion: is this legal strat­e­gy pure­ly Trump’s idea? Or is some­one whis­per­ing in his ear? Recall how, back in Novem­ber fol­low­ing Trump’s elec­toral loss, we were get­ting reports that most of Trump’s advi­sors want­ed him to sim­ply con­cede, but there was a small group of advi­sors that appeared to include Roger Stone and Steve Ban­non who were telling Trump there was still a path to vic­to­ry. And as has become clear, Trump chose to lis­ten to that small group of advi­sors. That’s what led up to the Jan 6 insur­rec­tion. So it’s quite notable that in the midst of these reports of a legal team shake­up, we’re also hear­ing that Steve Ban­non is advis­ing Trump to go to the Sen­ate him­self and argue the case him­self that the elec­tion was stolen:

The Week

Trump’s impeach­ment defense is out. Ban­non is report­ed­ly encour­ag­ing him to go to the Sen­ate him­self.

Tim O’Don­nell
Jan­u­ary 31, 2021

Five attor­neys who were pre­pared to defend for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in his upcom­ing Sen­ate impeach­ment tri­al have depart­ed his legal team, peo­ple famil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion con­firmed to CNN and The New York Times. Butch Bow­ers and Deb­o­rah Bar­bi­er, who were expect­ed to be two of the lead attor­neys, are out, as are Josh Howard, John­ny Gasser, and Greg Har­ris. No oth­er attor­neys have announced they were involved with the case, so it appears that, for now, Trump is defense­less.

The lawyers report­ed­ly left because of a dis­agree­ment over legal strat­e­gy. Trump report­ed­ly want­ed them to push his unfound­ed claims of wide­spread vot­er fraud in last year’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion rather than focus on whether con­vict­ing a for­mer pres­i­dent after he’s out of office is con­sti­tu­tion­al, an argu­ment that appears to be the con­sen­sus among Repub­li­cans and the rea­son he’ll like­ly be acquit­ted. Bow­ers, a source said, lacked chem­istry with Trump and the deci­sion to leave was report­ed­ly mutu­al.

It’s unclear where Trump will go from here — his per­son­al attor­ney Rudy Giu­liani report­ed­ly wants to take the case, but he’s a poten­tial wit­ness in the tri­al because he spoke at the ral­ly pre­ced­ing the dead­ly Capi­tol riot Trump is accused of incit­ing, and the Times notes “almost all” of Trump’s advis­ers blame Giu­liani for the impeach­ment in the first place.

...

And here is a state­ment Trump has made to advis­ers almost ver­ba­tim > https://t.co/zktWOIrUD6— Mag­gie Haber­man (@maggieNYT) Jan­u­ary 31, 2021

Stephen Ban­non, Trump’s for­mer chief strate­gist, thinks the for­mer pres­i­dent should go the Sen­ate him­self because “he’s the only one who can sell it.” How­ev­er, aides are report­ed­ly against the idea. Read more at The New York Times and CNN.

———–

“Trump’s impeach­ment defense is out. Ban­non is report­ed­ly encour­ag­ing him to go to the Sen­ate him­self.” by Tim O’Don­nell; The Week; 01/31/2021

“Stephen Ban­non, Trump’s for­mer chief strate­gist, thinks the for­mer pres­i­dent should go the Sen­ate him­self because “he’s the only one who can sell it.” How­ev­er, aides are report­ed­ly against the idea. Read more at The New York Times and CNN.”

Trump is going to per­son­al­ly argue before the Sen­ate the elec­tion real­ly was stolen. That’s going to be his impeach­ment defense. It’s quite a strat­e­gy. Will Trump fol­low Ban­non’s advice and lead his own defense? That pre­sum­ably depends in part on whether or not Trump can find a lawyer will­ing to argue this case. A lawyer who isn’t a poten­tial wit­ness like Giu­liani.

But it’s also worth not­ing one of the oth­er rea­sons fig­ures like Ban­non might want Trump to focus on jus­ti­fy­ing the insur­rec­tion: as part of their own defense against pos­si­ble upcom­ing charges as orga­niz­ers of the insur­rec­tion. After all, there’s grow­ing evi­dence that the Trump White House and its close allies like Steve Ban­non and Roger Stone were inti­mate­ly involved with plan­ning the storm­ing of the Capi­tol. And any­one involved with plan­ning that event has got be extra keen right now on see­ing Don­ald Trump jus­ti­fy it as a legit­i­mate act, because Trump isn’t the only fig­ure fac­ing pos­si­ble reper­cus­sions over the storm­ing of the Capi­tol:

Salon

Six degrees of sedi­tion: Was mas­ter trick­ster Roger Stone behind the Capi­tol riot?
Stone was linked to sev­er­al “Stop the Steal” events, and has ties to orga­niz­ers behind the Jan. 6 ral­ly and attack

By Roger Sol­len­berg­er
Jan­u­ary 29, 2021 10:03PM (UTC)

The night before a mob of Don­ald Trump’s diehard sup­port­ers laid siege to the U.S. Capi­tol, long­time Trump con­fi­dant and pres­i­den­tial-par­don recip­i­ent Roger Stone made his first pub­lic appear­ance in Wash­ing­ton since his tri­al, giv­ing a pump-up speech at a Free­dom Plaza ral­ly orga­nized by a group called Stop the Steal. In a help­ful moment of clar­i­ty, the emcee for the evening, Stone asso­ciate and fel­low con­vict­ed felon Ali Alexan­der (for­mer­ly Ali Akbar), a dri­ving force behind the events that led to the attack the fol­low­ing after­noon, not­ed that “It was Roger Stone who coined the term first: Stop the Steal.”

Stone did more than coin the term. He reg­is­tered it with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment as a polit­i­cal non­prof­it more than four years ear­li­er, in 2016, and appears to have a hand in its suc­ces­sor, which was cre­at­ed less than a month before the 2020 elec­tion.

But while Alexan­der went on to claim to be the “father of the move­ment,” that too traces to Stone, who had orga­nized not just the 2016 effort, but anoth­er one two years lat­er. All of this traces back deep in Repub­li­can dirty-trick his­to­ry, all the way to the “Brooks Broth­ers Riot” orches­trat­ed by Stone to inter­fere with the 2000 Mia­mi-Dade Coun­ty recount and help make George W. Bush pres­i­dent.

When Stone, escort­ed by body­guards from the Oath Keep­ers anti-gov­ern­ment mili­tia group, deliv­ered the keynote speech at the Free­dom Plaza ral­ly on Jan. 5, after show­ing off his dance moves, in his pin­stripe suit and fedo­ra hat, to a hip-hop remix of a song hon­or­ing his inno­cence, he made clear that Alexan­der had only “revived the Stop the Steal move­ment.” In oth­er words, all of this was, at its root, a Roger Stone pro­duc­tion.

It appears that Stone bears as much respon­si­bil­i­ty as any­one — and quite a bit more than most — for the dead­ly riot that unfold­ed the next day, though the extent of his influ­ence has not yet come into pub­lic focus.

Roger Stone cre­at­ed the first Stop the Steal orga­ni­za­tion in April 2016, rais­ing and spend­ing tens of thou­sands of dol­lars for the antic­i­pat­ed mis­sion of defend­ing Trump through the con­test­ed Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry and lat­er chal­leng­ing an appar­ent Hillary Clin­ton gen­er­al elec­tion win, nei­ther of which proved nec­es­sary. That group was shut­tered in 2017, but Stone, a Flori­da res­i­dent, reac­ti­vat­ed the move­ment after the 2018 midterms — specif­i­cal­ly to pro­tect then-Flori­da Gov. Rick Scot­t’s nar­row vic­to­ry in a U.S. Sen­ate race over Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bent Bill Nel­son. Stone even got help from Alexan­der, an itin­er­ant provo­ca­teur who came aboard to help recruit for the effort, lay­ing out his vision in a Periscope video, as report­ed in Right Wing Watch, in which Alexan­der said he hoped to moti­vate not just Repub­li­cans, but QAnon fol­low­ers, Democ­rats and “home­less peo­ple in all the adja­cent coun­ties” to mon­i­tor the vote count.

That mis­sion appears to have been some­thing of an ad hoc project, and Stone did­n’t cre­ate an offi­cial orga­ni­za­tion around it. Two years lat­er, though — and three weeks ahead of the 2020 elec­tion — a new non­prof­it called “Com­mit­tee to Stop the Steal” was cre­at­ed by a woman named Ash­ley Maderos, who accord­ing to her LinkedIn page works for Jensen & Asso­ciates, a per­son­al injury firm in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia head­ed up by Paul Rolf Jensen, who has rep­re­sent­ed Stone for at least two decades. Jensen was also on the pay­roll for Stone’s Com­mit­tee to Restore Amer­i­can Great­ness, which became a tar­get of for­mer spe­cial coun­sel Robert Mueller’s inves­ti­ga­tion into Russ­ian inter­fer­ence in the 2016 elec­tion.

In Sep­tem­ber 2020, just a few weeks before Maderos reg­is­tered the Com­mit­tee to Stop the Steal, Ali Alexan­der post­ed a Periscope video say­ing he want­ed to revive Stop the Steal for 2020, as report­ed by Jared Holt for Right Wing Watch. The vision he artic­u­lat­ed would cre­ate a text-mes­sag­ing data­base to deploy Trump sup­port­ers to bal­lot-counts and “bad sec­re­tary of state” offices across the coun­try, and would pro­vide vol­un­teers with the food, shel­ter, vit­a­mins and “elec­trolytes” they would need to stop the prover­bial steal. Where the fund­ing for this would come from was unclear.

“In the next com­ing days, we’re going to build the infra­struc­ture to stop the steal,” Alexan­der said in the video. “What we are going to do is we’re going to bypass all of social media. In the com­ing days, we will launch an effort con­cen­trat­ing on the swing states, and we will map out where the votes are being count­ed and the sec­re­tary of states. We will map all of this out for every­one pub­licly and we will col­lect cell phone num­bers so that way if you are with­in 100-mile radius of a bad sec­re­tary of state or some­one who’s count­ing votes after the dead­line or if there’s a fed­er­al court hear­ing, we will alert you of where to go. We’re going to bypass all of Twit­ter, all of Face­book, all of Insta­gram, OK? We’re going to bypass it all.”

“We will camp out if we need to?,” Alexan­der added. ?“We will have tents. We will have water. We will have elec­trolytes. We will have vit­a­min D, C and A. We will have zinc. We will have sand­wich­es. We will have every­thing so that patri­ots can over­see the sup­posed peo­ple in our repub­lic who are tasked with count­ing our votes, not mak­ing it. Count­ing our votes, not mak­ing new votes.”

About a month lat­er, the Com­mit­tee to Stop the Steal was launched by Stone’s asso­ciates. By Novem­ber, Stone was post­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion about Trump’s defeat.

Alexan­der spear­head­ed the grass­roots and polit­i­cal dimen­sions of the protests that he even­tu­al­ly car­ried to the Capi­tol on Jan. 6, even launch­ing a Stop The Steal super PAC in Novem­ber, as first report­ed by Salon. In Decem­ber, amid esca­lat­ing vio­lent rhetoric, Alexan­der boast­ed that the move­ment had attract­ed the coop­er­a­tion of three far-right Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress — Paul Gosar and Andy Big­gs of Ari­zona and Mo Brooks of Alaba­ma — who were help­ing him exert a “max­i­mum pres­sure” cam­paign on Capi­tol Hill.

But the polit­i­cal and pub­lic­i­ty efforts were just one arm of Stone’s influ­ence on the riot. His oth­er con­tri­bu­tion appears to have been brute force — the afore­men­tioned Oath Keep­ers, as well as the neo­fas­cist Proud Boys.

After the insur­rec­tion, The Wall Street Jour­nal revealed that the Proud Boys played a major role in the vio­lence on Jan. 6, and a num­ber of group mem­bers and affil­i­ates have since then been arrest­ed and named in fed­er­al indict­ments. The Proud Boys also have long­stand­ing ties to Stone, in recent years act­ing as a per­son­al secu­ri­ty detail dur­ing his tri­al and his pub­lic appear­ances. In Novem­ber 2019, self-described Proud Boy “orga­niz­er” Joe Big­gs trav­eled to Wash­ing­ton to sup­port Stone at his tri­al, and in a video inter­view ahead of the trip said that he would be joined by cur­rent Proud Boy leader Enrique Tar­rio and founder Gavin McInnes. Big­gs can be seen in a num­ber of videos from the Capi­tol riots, includ­ing images shot inside the build­ing, and was arrest­ed last week on charges of imped­ing Con­gress, ille­gal entry and dis­or­der­ly con­duct.

A video record­ed out­side the Capi­tol grounds just before the attack shows a group of Proud Boys psych­ing them­selves up ahead of con­fronta­tions with police. The video­g­ra­ph­er can be heard hawk­ing “Enrique did noth­ing wrong” shirts — a Proud Boy spin on the “Roger Stone did noth­ing wrong” catch­phrase.

At this writ­ing, no clear dig­i­tal trail con­nect­ing the Capi­tol vio­lence to Stone has yet emerged, although it would shock exact­ly no one of the ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions revealed a direct link. The Proud Boys and Oath Keep­ers have appeared in numer­ous pho­tographs and videos pro­vid­ing secu­ri­ty to Stone, includ­ing on the night of Jan. 5. Law enforce­ment offi­cials are cur­rent­ly sort­ing through count­less pho­tographs and hours of video pulled from social media, show­ing who exact­ly was in or near the Capi­tol com­plex the next day. Hack­ers who exploit­ed an absurd­ly sim­ple vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in the alter­na­tive social media plat­form Par­ler, now at least tem­porar­i­ly defunct, have uploaded dozens of ter­abytes of data to the web, some of which has already been put to use. Facial recog­ni­tion soft­ware has also yield­ed results, such as the mas­sive Faces of the Riot open-source data­base.

On the night before the ral­ly, Stone sur­round­ed him­self with sym­bols of poten­tial vio­lence in the form of his Oath Keep­er secu­ri­ty detail, who also chauf­feured him around in a golf cart. When he spoke, he made clear that he knew exact­ly what would dri­ve the mass­es over the police bar­ri­cades the fol­low­ing after­noon, cast­ing the futile fight in the com­mon lan­guage of the QAnon fan­ta­sy move­ment, of a strug­gle between “dark and light, between the god­ly and god­less, between good and evil.”

...

————–

“Six degrees of sedi­tion: Was mas­ter trick­ster Roger Stone behind the Capi­tol riot?” by Roger Sol­len­berg­er; Salon; 01/29/2021

“It appears that Stone bears as much respon­si­bil­i­ty as any­one — and quite a bit more than most — for the dead­ly riot that unfold­ed the next day, though the extent of his influ­ence has not yet come into pub­lic focus.”

He’s as guilty as any­one and more guilty than most. That’s the pic­ture emerg­ing of Roger Stone’s role the orga­niz­ing that led up to the Jan 6 storm­ing of the Capi­tol. A pic­ture that includes Stone play­ing the role of weird fas­cist sym­pa­thy symbol/war lord as he was escort­ed around by heav­i­ly armed groups of Oath Keep­ers and Proud Boys:

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When Stone, escort­ed by body­guards from the Oath Keep­ers anti-gov­ern­ment mili­tia group, deliv­ered the keynote speech at the Free­dom Plaza ral­ly on Jan. 5, after show­ing off his dance moves, in his pin­stripe suit and fedo­ra hat, to a hip-hop remix of a song hon­or­ing his inno­cence, he made clear that Alexan­der had only “revived the Stop the Steal move­ment.” In oth­er words, all of this was, at its root, a Roger Stone pro­duc­tion.

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That mis­sion appears to have been some­thing of an ad hoc project, and Stone did­n’t cre­ate an offi­cial orga­ni­za­tion around it. Two years lat­er, though — and three weeks ahead of the 2020 elec­tion — a new non­prof­it called “Com­mit­tee to Stop the Steal” was cre­at­ed by a woman named Ash­ley Maderos, who accord­ing to her LinkedIn page works for Jensen & Asso­ciates, a per­son­al injury firm in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia head­ed up by Paul Rolf Jensen, who has rep­re­sent­ed Stone for at least two decades. Jensen was also on the pay­roll for Stone’s Com­mit­tee to Restore Amer­i­can Great­ness, which became a tar­get of for­mer spe­cial coun­sel Robert Mueller’s inves­ti­ga­tion into Russ­ian inter­fer­ence in the 2016 elec­tion.

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Alexan­der spear­head­ed the grass­roots and polit­i­cal dimen­sions of the protests that he even­tu­al­ly car­ried to the Capi­tol on Jan. 6, even launch­ing a Stop The Steal super PAC in Novem­ber, as first report­ed by Salon. In Decem­ber, amid esca­lat­ing vio­lent rhetoric, Alexan­der boast­ed that the move­ment had attract­ed the coop­er­a­tion of three far-right Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress — Paul Gosar and Andy Big­gs of Ari­zona and Mo Brooks of Alaba­ma — who were help­ing him exert a “max­i­mum pres­sure” cam­paign on Capi­tol Hill.

But the polit­i­cal and pub­lic­i­ty efforts were just one arm of Stone’s influ­ence on the riot. His oth­er con­tri­bu­tion appears to have been brute force — the afore­men­tioned Oath Keep­ers, as well as the neo­fas­cist Proud Boys.

After the insur­rec­tion, The Wall Street Jour­nal revealed that the Proud Boys played a major role in the vio­lence on Jan. 6, and a num­ber of group mem­bers and affil­i­ates have since then been arrest­ed and named in fed­er­al indict­ments. The Proud Boys also have long­stand­ing ties to Stone, in recent years act­ing as a per­son­al secu­ri­ty detail dur­ing his tri­al and his pub­lic appear­ances. In Novem­ber 2019, self-described Proud Boy “orga­niz­er” Joe Big­gs trav­eled to Wash­ing­ton to sup­port Stone at his tri­al, and in a video inter­view ahead of the trip said that he would be joined by cur­rent Proud Boy leader Enrique Tar­rio and founder Gavin McInnes. Big­gs can be seen in a num­ber of videos from the Capi­tol riots, includ­ing images shot inside the build­ing, and was arrest­ed last week on charges of imped­ing Con­gress, ille­gal entry and dis­or­der­ly con­duct.

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On the night before the ral­ly, Stone sur­round­ed him­self with sym­bols of poten­tial vio­lence in the form of his Oath Keep­er secu­ri­ty detail, who also chauf­feured him around in a golf cart. When he spoke, he made clear that he knew exact­ly what would dri­ve the mass­es over the police bar­ri­cades the fol­low­ing after­noon, cast­ing the futile fight in the com­mon lan­guage of the QAnon fan­ta­sy move­ment, of a strug­gle between “dark and light, between the god­ly and god­less, between good and evil.”
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Is Roger Stone fac­ing new legal trou­ble over the role he played in orches­trat­ing the storm­ing of the Capi­tol? That’s unclear at this point but it’s hard to imag­ine inves­ti­ga­tors aren’t look­ing into it. And Trump could­n’t have par­doned stone for the Jan 6 insur­rec­tion, so Stone pre­sum­ably fac­ing some sort of legal risk at this point over his role in the raid. Save for Steve Ban­non. So what are the fig­ures like Stone and Ban­non, who guid­ed Trump down the path towards insur­rec­tion fol­low­ing his elec­toral loss, telling Trump to do now? Well, based on the avail­able evi­dence, they’re advis­ing Trump to do exact­ly what he is doing right now. This is still very much a Steve and Roger pro­duc­tion.

And that’s per­haps the biggest sto­ry here: Trump is still very much in the grip of Steve Ban­non’s in Roger Stone’s bad ideas. The mad king may be a mad ex-king now, but he’s still got Machi­avel­lian advi­sors and a thirst for pow­er which means there’s going to be a method to Trump’s mad­ness we should­n’t dis­miss. Trump isn’t ignor­ing the evil voic­es in his head so we unfor­tu­nate­ly can’t either.