2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[RoseMorninStar]

It's frightening and discouraging how easily people can are drawn in with propaganda. It's a cult.

[N.E. Brigand]

I was completely unaware of Ginni Thomas's existence prior to 2010, when it was reported that she had left a voicemail for Anita Hill asking her to apologize to Justice Thomas for having accused him of sexual harassment nearly twenty years before. (Hill continues to maintain that her testimony about Thomas was truthful, and I certainly believe her.) A year later, after a liberal watchdog group inquired, Justice Thomas updated his financial disclosure forms for the previous 20 years to note his wife's employers during that time, some of which she spent working for the conservative Heritage Foundation. Despite a 1978 law that required judges to disclose their spouse's employer, he instead checked "none" on the "source of spousal income" box. It turns out she made roughly $687,000 in six years working at Heritage.

This new piece says that it's an "open secret" in Washington D.C. and especially among conservatives there that "Ginni Thomas is an idiot," and it quotes from some "widely circulated" emails that Mrs. Thomas shared over the years to demonstrate her low intelligence. This revelation appears to be meant to assure readers that just because White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows corresponded with her doesn't mean he was taking her insurrectionist suggestions seriously. That said, the author, a Republican apostate, also writes:

None of this means that everyone kissed up to Ginni with the explicit hope of getting access to her husband (although it’s hard to imagine that sort of thing never happened in Justice Thomas’s three decades on the bench). But hiring her for "consulting" or participating in a project with her was a way to signal that you were on the right team.

In a way, I would say that it may be even worse for Republican politics if you could send signals to, say, conservative Supreme Court justices by hiring their spouses.

CNN reports that in November 2018, President Donald Trump had conservative activist Ginni Thomas and her husband, Justice Clarence Thomas, to lunch at the White House, and that during the lunch, Ginni encouraged President Trump to install various associates of hers in his administration.

The CNN report is framed as a story about how other White House staff tried to keep Mrs. Thomas at arm's length and how "there were limits to Ginni Thomas' influence in Trump's orbit," but as some readers are pointing out: news of this lunch meeting would seem to shatter the Thomases' claims that Ginni Thomas doesn't discuss her activist work with her husband the Supreme Court justice.

[N.E. Brigand]

"It was there for the taking and he failed so badly."

That's Donald Trump, explaining that he won't endorse a particular candidate vying to be the Republican nominee for Pennsyvlania's governorship because as a U.S. Attorney that candidate didn't pursue Trump's phony claim that the election was stolen.

In other words: You didn't assist my efforts to overthrow the U.S. government, so I'm withholding my endorsement (a thing of value).

Which is that: extortion or bribery?

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(Trump also says that Attorney General William Barr failed to pursue (non-existent) voter fraud cases because he "was afraid of being impeached".)

[N.E. Brigand]

Speaking of bribery and elections, federal prosecutors have indicted New York's lieutenant governor, Brian Benjamin, for "a scheme to obtain campaign contributions in exchange for securing a state grant."

[N.E. Brigand]

(Sorry, double post.) But since I made this post:

Compare the decision of New York Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin, who claims to be innocent of the charges against him but has resigned nonetheless, to South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Ravnsborg fatally struck a man with his car and fled the scene in 2020. The victim's head apparently went through the windshield, because his glasses were found in the car, but Ravnsborg claimed that he thought he'd hit a deer. Ravnsborg didn't resign, and two weeks ago, a South Dakota House committee voted not to recommend Ravnsborg's impeachment.*

*UPDATE: As I was typing this, news broke that despite the S.D. House committee recommending against it, the full House has impeached Ravnsborg by a 36-31 vote.

Paxton was indicted on charges of securities fraud in Texas state court in 2015. He has fought those charges ever since and has yet to stand trial, seven years later. In 2020, seven of Paxton's aides alleged that Paxton had abused his office and committed bribery. Also in 2020, four former aides filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that he had fired them as retlation for reporting his improper conduct. That suit is ongoing. Paxton not only hasn't resigned, but he won reelection in 2018 and is running again for reelection now.

[N.E. Brigand]

Speaking of bribery and elections, federal prosecutors have indicted New York's lieutenant governor, Brian Benjamin, for "a scheme to obtain campaign contributions in exchange for securing a state grant."

Arguably I put this in the wrong thread: the campaign in question was for a 2021 election not a 2020 election.

Benjamin, a Democrat, has resigned from his office and suspended his campaign to be elected to the office in which he was serving. He had been appointed just last year by the current New York governor, Kathy Hochul, who herself had been the lieutenant governor until the resignation of Andrew Cuomo following multiple allegations of sexual harassment. Benjamin issued a statement proclaiming his innocence. He is alleged, as a state senator, to have directed $50,000 in state funds to a NYC real estate developer (no, not that one) in exchange for a contribution to his unsuccessful campaign for the position of state comptroller and to have falsified records to cover it up. If he did it, he should face the appropriate consequences, but this seems like relatively small potatoes, especially in New York and especially considering how much larger corruption cases seem to go unpunished.

[N.E. Brigand]

More mindblowing stuff that likely won't make a whit of difference.

Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows texted about overturning 2020 election

"We have multiple paths. We control them all."

source: Donald Trump Jr. texted Mark Meadows ideas on how to overturn the 2020 election (Business Insider)

You may recall that Mark Meadows, the former North Carolina Congressman who was Donald Trump's final White House chief of staff, was found by a vote of the House of Representatives to be in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with the January 6th Committee concerning his role in Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

You may also recall that Trump's efforts to remain in power, which Meadows aided, rested on claims of election fraud.

Well now it turns out that the address listed by Meadows and his wife on their North Carolina ballot applications in 2020 were for a trailer which they owned but didn't live at. People have gone to jail for years for less.

This is a deep cut:

[N.E. Brigand]

So former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows very well may have committed voter fraud in North Carolina in 2020. And as Media Matters reporter Parker Malloy notes today and wrote at the time, at a September 2020 rally in North Carolina President Donald Trump explicitly encouraged his supporters to commit voter fraud, but the mainstream media then was very reluctant to describe Trump's statements that way, instead taking him at his word that he only wanted them to "test" the system:





As Malloy put it then: "Encouraging people to commit felonies should probably make the front page," but for the most part, that didn't happen. The story was buried by the the "New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, [and] Chicago Tribune."

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Meanwhile, in Florida, the Orlando Sentinel reports: Two men from The Villages admit to casting multiple ballots in 2020 election.

The Villages is a generally conservative retirement community. Four men who live there have been arrested for voting more than once in November 2020. None of the four is registered as a Democrat.

While this crime comes with a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment, the two who are pleading guilty "will avoid further punishment if they regularly meet with a supervising officer, complete 50 hours of community service and attend a 12-week adult civics class, among a handful of other requirements."

[N.E. Brigand]

A jury has found Dustin Thompson of Ohio guilty of all six crimes with which he was charged for his part in the January 6th insurrection, including obstruction of Congress. There have been three jury trials in January 6th cases, and the government has won all three. (As previously noted, they have had less success in bench trials.)

Thompson's case was notable because his defense was that he was acting on the direction of President Trump.

Prosecutors countered that whether or not Trump bears some responsibility for the day's events is not relevant to Thompson's guilt.

[N.E. Brigand]

From a newly-published text sent in late 2020 by Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, after Donald Trump and his associates alleged that Dominion, a company that makes voting machines, had engaged in election fraud:

"The potential defamation liability for the president is significant here. For the campaign and the president personally. Unless [Trump's sometime lawyer Sidney] Powell can back up everything she said, which I kind of doubt she can."

And then Mark Meadows text back:

"I agree. Very concerned."

[N.E. Brigand]

More mindblowing stuff that likely won't make a whit of difference: Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows texted about overturning 2020 election.

You may recall that Mark Meadows, the former North Carolina Congressman who was Donald Trump's final White House chief of staff, was found by a vote of the House of Representatives to be in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with the January 6th Committee concerning his role in Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. You may also recall that Trump's efforts to remain in power, which Meadows aided, rested on claims of election fraud. Well now it turns out that the address listed by Meadows and his wife on their North Carolina ballot applications in 2020 were for a trailer which they owned but didn't live at. People have gone to jail for years for less.

This is a deep cut:

In case the reference was too obscure: "Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs" is something that Mark Meadows texted to Ginni Thomas when he was trying to reassure her that Donald Trump would indeed continue to be president after January 20, 2021.

[N.E. Brigand]

One case where there hasn't been much news lately is the investigation of Trump's attempt to interfere in Georgia's election processes. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said yesterday that her team has interviewed 50 people, will be issuing subpoenas to 30 people, will be seating the special grand jury (as approved by county judges a couple months ago) on May 2, and will be having witnesses testify to the grand jury starting June 1. Her witnesses will likely include Georgia's Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger, and Georgia's Governor, Brian Kemp, both of whom are running for reelection with primaries in late May. Willis says her office is deliberately waiting until after the primaries so as not to give the appearance of politicizing the case. During the grand jury's first month, it will issue subpoenas to witnesses who have not agreed to appear voluntarily.

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Meanwhile, Donald Trump abruptly ended an interview today with softball journalist Piers Morgan (the winner of the 2008 season of Celebrity Apprentice, hosted by Trump), who writes a column for the conservative New York Post, after Morgan asked questions about the 2020 election. When Morgan said that Trump "lost" a "free and fair" election in 2020, Trump called him "a fool" for saying so.

It may be telling that after Trump initially stood up to leave, Morgan persuaded him to stay for one more question, about his recent hole-in-one while golfing, before the interview ended for good. I wonder if it's just a publicity stunt. This was a television interview for a program Morgan will be hosting on the new TalkTV network, a British outlet owned by News Corp. (which also owns Fox News) that is scheduled to launch next week.

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And Congressman Jamie Raskin, who led the second Trump impeachment inquiry (and thus achieved the most bipartisan -- albeit still unsuccessful -- vote to convict a president in history) and who sits on the January 6th Committee, said in an interview with Reuters that the January 6th insurrection "was a coup organized by the president against the vice-president and against the Congress in order to overturn the 2020 presidential election" and that if the attack had succeeded in stopping the vote certification, "Trump was prepared to seize the presidency and likely to invoke the Insurrection Act and declare martial law."

(Regarding which, see also the post about the New Right I'm about to make to the the 2022 election thread.)

[N.E. Brigand]

Lordy.

Early today, the New York Times reported that in January 2021, just four days after the January 6th insurrection, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on a call with other top House Republicans that he would ask President Trump to resign. He also contemplated the possibility that Vice President Pence, who would then be the President, would pardon Trump.

Around noon, McCarthy put a statement denying the Times' reporting.

Turns out there's a tape of the call.

Rachel Maddow played it tonight.

[RoseMorninStar]

Some thought the actions of McCarthy/McConnell were that of cowards but this leans toward what Fiona Hill had to say about power being like the 'precious' for far too many in the Trump administration.

[N.E. Brigand]

McCarthy said some time ago that he would decline to be interviewed by the House Select Committee because he'd already said in public everything that he knew about the events surrounding January 6th.

As Politico's Kyle Cheney notes, McCarthy has taken numerous steps to undermine the Committee, even threatening tech companies that if they cooperate with the Committee, they would be punished when Republicans next take control.

It does seem like McCarthy's complicity in the cover up is edging fairly close to criminal behavior.

Ironically, what may hurt his political career the most is that he said the right thing on that phone call!

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By the way, the same New York Times story reports that the next day, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told colleagues about Donald Trump that:

"The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a bitch for us."

He also said, "If this isn't impeachable, I don't know what is."

And then he voted against conviction!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

McConnell reportedly said that he voted against conviction because he didn't get to be party leader by voting with five members of the caucus.

A true profile in courage.

[RoseMorninStar]

Not what I'd consider 'leadership' material.

[N.E. Brigand]

More mindblowing stuff that likely won't make a whit of difference.
Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows texted about overturning 2020 election

"We have multiple paths. We control them all."

source: Donald Trump Jr. texted Mark Meadows ideas on how to overturn the 2020 election (Business Insider)

You may recall that Mark Meadows, the former North Carolina Congressman who was Donald Trump's final White House chief of staff, was found by a vote of the House of Representatives to be in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with the January 6th Committee concerning his role in Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

You may also recall that Trump's efforts to remain in power, which Meadows aided, rested on claims of election fraud.

Well now it turns out that the address listed by Meadows and his wife on their North Carolina ballot applications in 2020 were for a trailer which they owned but didn't live at. People have gone to jail for years for less.

Per the Washington Post, Mark Meadows was simultaneously registered to vote in three states (North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia).

That's not actually a crime, as far as I know, of if failing to tell at state board of elections that you've moved to another state is a crime, it's surely a minor one.

But being registered in multiple states is exactly the sort of thing that Meadows and his allies have referred to as the enabling of voter fraud -- and yet here he is (quite possibly innocently) contributing to what he says is a problem.

[N.E. Brigand]

Lordy.

Early today, the New York Times reported that in January 2021, just four days after the January 6th insurrection, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on a call with other top House Republicans that he would ask President Trump to resign. He also contemplated the possibility that Vice President Pence, who would then be the President, would pardon Trump.

Around noon, McCarthy put a statement denying the Times' reporting.

Turns out there's a tape of the call.

Rachel Maddow played it tonight.

Greg Sargent of the Washington Post asks an excellent question:

For what crimes did Kevin McCarthy believed Donald Trump might be pardoned?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This could go either here or in the 2022 election thread, but I'll put it here both because it directly relates to the response to the 2020 election and I am quite sure that it won't have any real impact on the 2022 election.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene testifies for more than 3 hours in hearing on whether to disqualify her from seeking reelection

While I am quite sure that Taylor Greene will not be disqualified from running for reelection, just the fact that this is happening is pretty extraordinary.