From the joint intelligence report at page 2: We assess the influence campaign aspired to help President-elect Trump’s chances of victory when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to the President-elect. When it appeared to Moscow … Continue reading
Category Archives: chicanery
Lynda Waddington: As telegraphed by key GOP lawmakers last month, a key component of Pate’s upgrades is Voter ID. This piece requires voters to produce approved forms of identification before casting ballots. Pate suggests Iowa-issued driver’s licenses, military-issued identification cards … Continue reading
Adam Gitlin and Wendy Weiser with a new Brennan Center report in advance of the Sen. Sessions confirmation hearings for AG. … Continue reading
AP: Iowa will require voters to show identification at the polls under a bill announced Thursday by the state’s top election official, and Republicans in the new GOP-controlled Legislature have indicated a willingness to pass it. The legislation mirrors voter … Continue reading
Yesterday, as this blog noted, Governor Cooper filed his brief in his effort to block the last-minute changes the North Carolina legislature made to abolish the existing state board of elections and replace it with a newly configured one. The … Continue reading
Release: Today, the Center for American Progress released a new report to address the threats to representative self-government inherent in special interest lobbying, revolving door politics, corruption of public service, and lax ethics and contracting oversight, as well as the major … Continue reading
Not the Onion: Rep. Duncan Hunter used campaign funds to pay for $600 of airline fees to fly a pet rabbit, one of the more colorful expenses to surface in an ongoing review of his practices. … Continue reading
BuzzFeed: The FBI did not examine the servers of the Democratic National Committee before issuing a report attributing the sweeping cyberintrusion to Russia-backed hackers, BuzzFeed News has learned. Six months after the FBI first said it was investigating the hack … Continue reading
Reuters reports. … Continue reading
Matt Viser highlights a wow detail. Eric Lipton for the NYT: The surprising vote came on the eve of the start of a new session of Congress, with emboldened Republicans ready to push an ambitious agenda on everything from health … Continue reading
NYT: President Obama struck back at Russia on Thursday for its efforts to influence the 2016 election, ejecting 35 suspected Russian intelligence operatives from the United States and imposing sanctions on Russia’s two leading intelligence services. The administration also penalized … Continue reading
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The city’s top prosecutor said her office “uncovered important evidence” in a voter fraud investigation dealing with an August primary statehouse race that has since been reversed by voters. The case — which centered on the validity … Continue reading
AP: A widely shared story that claimed in headlines that Michigan had mass Democratic voter fraud and that more than half of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s Detroit vote faces disqualification is false. State election officials say there is no proof … Continue reading
The News and Observer reports. … Continue reading
WaPo: FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have backed a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the presidency, according to U.S. officials. Comey’s support … Continue reading
Wasting no time: The House approved Senate Bill 4 67-23, and sent it to the Senate for final approval. The Senate signed off on it in the early afternoon and sent it to the governor. Gov. Pat McCrory signed the … Continue reading
Wisconsin State Journal: The Department of Justice will likely convene a grand jury to investigate a leak of evidence collected during a secret criminal investigation into whether Gov. Scott Walker’s recall campaign circumvented state campaign finance law, Attorney General Brad … Continue reading
NYT: President Obama said on Thursday that the United States would retaliate for Russia’s efforts to influence the presidential election, asserting that “we need to take action,” and “we will.” The comments, in an interview with NPR, indicate that Mr. … Continue reading
The latest from Bloomingburg. … Continue reading
WSJ reports. … Continue reading
TPM. … Continue reading
Doug Chapin reports. … Continue reading
Watch this story grow. Update: De Blasio Is Fined $48,000 for Campaign Finance Violations … Continue reading
News and Observer: Cooper declined to say if he thought the session itself was unconstitutional – as some Democratic legislators had said – but he said lawyers are looking over every bill that was introduced. And he promised to challenge … Continue reading
The latest on the shenanigans. … Continue reading
NY Post. … Continue reading
I’ve been watching the Bloombingburg voting saga play out for years (see this excellent VICE piece by Hella Winston). And now comes news of what many suspected: Lamm and others have been charged in federal court with conspiracy to commit … Continue reading
NYT reports. See my earlier analysis yesterday. … Continue reading
While many people were worried about whether there would be a court-packing plan for the NC Supreme Court (about to have a majority of Democratic members) in the special session on disaster relief that NC Governor Pat McCrory had called, … Continue reading
Josh Gerstein for Politico: Sen. Bob Menendez is asking the Supreme Court to consider his argument that federal bribery charges he is facing impermissibly intrude into a legislative activity protected by the Constitution’s speech-or-debate clause. In a petition submitted to … Continue reading
NYT: The impact of the information released by the hackers on candidates like Ms. Taddeo in Florida and others in nearly a dozen House races around the country was largely lost in the focus on the hacking attacks against the … Continue reading
News and Observer: House Speaker Tim Moore says there is no plan to add two seats to the N.C. Supreme Court, and he said he’d be opposed to the change. “The only people discussing a Supreme Court bill are the … Continue reading
Must-read NYT on the hack of the DNC, etc. … Continue reading
Josh Douglas CNN oped. … Continue reading
NYT: The top two Republicans in Congress said on Monday that they supported investigations into possible Russian cyberattacks to influence the American election, setting up a potential confrontation with President-elect Donald J. Trump in his first days in office. “Any foreign … Continue reading
Special session starts tomorrow and the issue could come up. Lots of people will be watching. … Continue reading
Watch. … Continue reading
WaPo: The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the … Continue reading
Byron Tau for WSJ: he Department of Homeland Security said it is “deeply concerned” about what appears to be an attempted breach of Georgia’s secretary of state computer systems that has been tracked to a federal internet address. In a … Continue reading
NYT: President Obama has ordered American intelligence agencies to produce a full report on Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election, his homeland security adviser said on Friday. He also directed them to develop a list of “lessons learned” … Continue reading
Law Newz: The most pressing of these, in light of various recount lawsuits and the various deadlines in play, is regarding his latest allegation of massive voter fraud. Described by Time as “eager to talk about the controversy he stirred,” Trump … Continue reading
Greg Sargent: Republicans have spent years pushing lies about voter fraud in order to justify vote suppression measures. But Donald Trump took these lies to another level entirely. He not only claimed in advance of the election that its outcome … Continue reading
NYT: The Obama administration said on Friday that despite Russian attempts to undermine the presidential election, it has concluded that the results “accurately reflect the will of the American people.” The statement came as liberal opponents of Donald J. Trump, … Continue reading
I trust Charles Stewart a lot and this is a must-read. … Continue reading
Byron Tau for WSJ. … Continue reading
“If there were something to do here, there are a lot of us who would be jumping on it” Adam Bonin, attorney representing democrats, to the Phil. Inquirer. (Bonin said that while every election has “little hitches and glitches, I … Continue reading
WaPo: The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in … Continue reading
Extensive Alex Halderman post at Medium begins: You may have read at NYMag that I’ve been in discussions with the Clinton campaign about whether it might wish to seek recounts in critical states. Thatarticle, which includes somebody else’s description of … Continue reading
Quite a report from Gabriel Sherman: Hillary Clinton is being urged by a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers to call for a recount in three swing states won by Donald Trump, New York has learned. The group, … Continue reading
WTVD reports. Given that the Fourth Circuit ordered this provision restored, hard to me to see that this complaint is about anything other than trying to stir up more doubts about the election. … Continue reading