House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Sunday refused to say former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.
During a heated interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, Johnson also declined to criticize comments from Donald Trump and Eric Trump implying Democrats helped fuel the assassination attempt against the former president in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July….
The ABC host asked Johnson multiple times whether he was willing to say definitively Biden won the 2020 presidential election. Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance declined to do the same during Tuesday’s debate on CBS.
Biden won the 2020 election. Donald Trump and his allies launched dozens of lawsuits following the election, and the former president has long said without evidence the race was impacted by voter fraud. Courts across the country have rejected the allegations.
“You want us to litigate things that happened four years ago when we’re talking about the future,” Johnson said. “We’re not going to talk about what happened in 2020.”
Category Archives: election subversion risk
“Election denial returns as focus with Vance’s ‘non-answer,’ new Trump indictment details”
“The Untold Link Between Justice Alito and Trump’s Election Denying Efforts; Mark Martin floated fringe theories to keep Trump in power. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito taught with him — even after January 6.”
Shawn Musgrave for The Intercept:
On the evening of January 6, 2021, retired North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Martin had a nine-minute conversation with former President Donald Trump. This call followed weeks of efforts by Martin to find any legal means to keep Trump in power, during which he peddled fringe theories of election fraud and constitutional law to state officials and the Supreme Court.
Just 20 days after the insurrection, Martin had another intimate audience with another powerful right-winger: He taught a three-day seminar on constitutional law with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for Regent University Law School in Virginia, where Martin was the dean at the time.
This link between a Supreme Court justice and such a close legal adviser to Trump’s Big Lie efforts has not been reported previously, and it adds to mounting questions about Alito’s sympathy for Trump heading into the election.
Despite evidence at the time that Martin was part of the Trump campaign’s legal brain trust and fed Trump radical ideas about the Constitution, Alito taught the three-day seminar with him again in 2022.
Martin and Alito did not respond to The Intercept’s questions for this story.
“It was and continues to be a shock to the system knowing that the upper echelons of the legal community used their legal talents to subvert the will of the people,” said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, “and that Supreme Court justices of all people are friends with these individuals.”
Martin’s continued access to Alito even after January 6 also illustrates just how little scrutiny Martin ever faced. While other prominent Trump legal advisers like John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani have faced sanctions for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, Martin has never publicly accounted for his role. He’s still a law school dean, now at High Point University, a private university in North Carolina, which also did not respond to The Intercept’s questions about Martin’s relationship with Alito.
Martin remains active in prestigious legal organizations, including the American Law Institute and American Bar Association committees, where he recently sat on a judicial ethics panel and moderated another about election law. He was at the Republican National Convention in July, and a far-right group recently floated Martin as a potential Supreme Court nominee. …
My New One at Slate: “Jack Smith’s Big New Jan. 6 Brief Is a Major Indictment of the Supreme Court”
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins:
It’s rare to simultaneously feel red hot anger and wistfulness, especially when merely reading a document. But that’s exactly the emotions that washed over me when I read the redacted version of special counsel Jack Smith’s brief reciting in detail the evidence against Donald Trump for attempting to subvert the 2020 election. The anger is at the Supreme Court for depriving the American people of the chance for a full public airing of Donald Trump’s attempt to use fraud and trickery to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory before voters consider whether to put Trump back in office beginning January 2025. The wistfulness comes with the recognition that there is about an even chance that this will be the last evidence produced by the federal government of this nefarious plot. If Donald Trump wins election next month, the end of this prosecution is certain and the risks of future election subversion heightened….
Right now it appears to be a tossup whether Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris will win office in the November election. If Trump wins, he will have his attorney general fire Smith and shut down this prosecution. If he keeps his promises, he even may seek to investigate and prosecute Smith, Harris, Biden, and others. There is a risk of authoritarianism down the line.
The fact that no jury may pass on the deadly serious allegations in Smith’s complaint will do more than simply let Trump and others off the hooks for their potential crimes. It will make future criminal activity related to American elections much more likely. And it all could have been avoided if McConnell, Garland, and especially the Supreme Court did the right thing.
“Vance refuses to admit that Trump lost the 2020 election”
JD Vance declined to say that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, drawing a sharp rebuttal from Tim Walz, who called his response a “damning non-answer.”
“When this is over, we need to shake hands, and the winner needs to be the winner. This has got to stop,” Walz said, delivering perhaps his clearest and most forceful answer of the night — on the final question of the debate.
When Walz pressed Vance to acknowledge that Trump lost the last election, Vance replied: “Tim, I’m focused on the future.”
Vance used his time to present a revisionist version of Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, saying Trump had simply asked his allies to protest the election results peacefully at the Capitol. Vance omitted Trump’s attacks on his then-Vice President Mike Pence while a violent riot raged, as well as his months of fomenting false claims that the election was stolen and urging his supporters to “stop the steal.”
Eliding Trump’s many efforts to overturn the election results, Vance said simply that Trump eventually did hand over power to Joe Biden on Jan. 20, 2021.
At Tuesday’s debate, Vance selectively portrayed January 2021 as what he sees as a peaceful transfer of power.
“Remember [Trump] said that on January 6 the protesters ought to protest peacefully. And on January the 20th, what happened? Joe Biden became the president, Donald Trump left the White House,” Vance said, implying that the only duty of the president to enable a peaceful transfer of power is to physically leave the White House on Inauguration Day. Whether that person has conceded their loss, or filed more than five dozen lawsuits in opposition to that loss, or riled up his or her supporters to the point of deadly violence before that inevitable departure is, apparently, immaterial to his definition.
Walz rejected Vance’s evasions, saying he was “pretty shocked.”
“When Mike Pence made that decision to certify that election — that’s why Mike Pence isn’t on this stage,” said Walz. “What I’m concerned about is, where is the firewall with Donald Trump? Where is the firewall if he knows he can do anything, including taking an election, and his vice president’s not going to stand [up] to it?”
What Would a VP Vance Do on January 6, 2029? Matt Seligman Explores Before the VP Debate
By saying he would have prevented Congress from counting the electoral votes that confirmed President Biden’s victory, Mr. Vance has admitted that he would have asserted an extra-constitutional power to abet Mr. Trump’s plot to remain in power. And he would have done so based on long-disproven conspiracy theories of fraud and illegality in the election that Mr. Trump legitimately and lawfully lost.
Even more chilling, Mr. Vance’s pledge about what he would have done in Mr. Pence’s place on Jan. 6, 2021, is a promise about what Mr. Vance will do on Jan. 6, 2029, should he preside over the electoral count as vice president. He is telling us more than four years in advance that if he is a candidate to be president himself, he would be willing to defy the courts and Congress to seize power regardless of the lawful outcome of the 2028 election.
The law is clear: The vice president, who presides over the electoral count as president of the Senate, has no constitutional power to reject electoral votes, to delay the electoral count, to send the issue back to the states or to do anything else that Mr. Vance is claiming he would have done — and that he is threatening to do if he one day sits in the vice president’s chair.
“Advocacy groups urge Congress to commit to certifying election results”
A broad coalition of advocacy groups called on every member of Congress to commit to certifying the results of the presidential election on Jan. 6, 2025, warning lawmakers in a letter sent Monday that “our most fundamental rights and freedoms will be jeopardized once again” if they don’t accept the outcome.
The letter, first obtained by The Washington Post, comes days after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) hedged when asked if he would commit to certifying the results if former president Donald Trump loses to Vice PresidentKamala Harris. Johnson answered that he would do so “if we have a free, fair and safe election.”
The House GOP leader’s response echoes Trump’s position that he would accept the outcome only if he considers it fair to him. Trump and his allies continue to falsely insist that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and have been laying the legal and rhetorical groundwork to undermine the results of this year’s contest if he loses. At a campaign rally Friday night, Trump said that the “only way we’re going to lose, because they cheat.”
The letter to lawmakers serves as a reminder that in less than 100 days, Congress will gather to once again certify the presidential election. The largely ceremonial task turned chaotic and deadly when a mob of pro-Trump rioters, trying to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
More than two dozen groups signed the letter, including voting rights organizations, pro-democracy nonprofits, labor unions and issue advocacy groups. Signatories included Common Cause, Public Citizen, the National Education Association and the League of Conservation Voters.
“News Outlets Brace for Chaos on Election Night (and Perhaps Beyond)”
The data nerd of NBC News, Steve Kornacki, is preparing to sleep at his desk in 30 Rockefeller Plaza — for days on end, if need be. CNN is adding to its bench of legal experts in case of disputed counts in swing states.
The Associated Press, whose election calls are widely amplified by major media outlets, has determined it needs to devote more people and other resources to explain its decisions to readers.
Election Day is the news industry’s biggest night, when voters rely on media outlets to declare state-by-state winners and keep score in the Electoral College.
But as presidential polls project a razor-thin finish that could take days to determine — and as baseless claims about voting fraud run rampant — news executives acknowledge that the onus is on them to help viewers understand the nuances of the vote-tallying process.
As a result, almost every major news organization is putting contingency plans in place to push back against a gale-force storm of misinformation and ensure that audiences trust their coverage. Their efforts will probably stretch far beyond Nov. 5, as absentee ballots are counted and close races potentially face legal reviews.
“We live in an environment where misinformation travels really fast, and we understand that the public is confused,” Julie Pace, the executive editor of The A.P., said in an interview. “There’s distrust in elections — there’s distrust in institutions in general.”
“We’ve assumed that because we’ve been doing it for so long, it was understood by the public, and that when we called a race, people believed it,” Ms. Pace added. “And we know we have got to do more than that.”…
Much of the public doubt in the news media has been sown by Mr. Trump, whose insistence that the 2020 presidential election was rigged has remained a staple of his political talk. Polls show that many Trump supporters continue to believe his outlandish claims of voter fraud, virtually all of which were eventually dismissed by courts.
Over the past several months, Mr. Trump and his allies have steadily built up an infrastructure to fight back against an outcome that displeases him this November….
What Does Mike Johnson Mean By Saying “If we have a free, fair and safe election, we’re going to follow the Constitution, absolutely”? That If There Are Election Problems, We Won’t Follow the Constitution?
Watch Video of UCLA Hammer Museum/Safeguarding Democracy Project Forum: Democracy and Risks to the 2024 Elections (Leah Aden, John Fortier, Yoel Roth)
“Legal Watchdog Group Warns Pro-Trump Lawyers Against Subverting Democracy in November”
After the 2020 election, legal watchdogs, outraged at some of their colleagues, filed scores of ethics complaints against lawyers who used their skills in questionable ways to help former President Donald J. Trump stay in power.
And in the past few years, the groups have had some notable successes, securing judgments that have led to pro-Trump lawyers like John Eastman and Rudolph W. Giuliani having their law licenses deactivated.
Now, one of these groups — the 65 Project — is taking a more proactive approach. Starting on Thursday, the group’s organizers are planning to run advertisements in legal journals published in swing states, reminding lawyers that they are ethically barred from bringing false claims on behalf of any client.
“Don’t risk your law license by joining an effort to subvert democracy,” one of the ads says. “We — and the public — are watching.”
“Network of Georgia election officials strategizing to undermine 2024 result”
Emails obtained by the Guardian reveal a behind-the-scenes network of county election officials throughout Georgia coordinating on policy and messaging to both call the results of November’s election into question before a single vote is cast, and push rules and procedures favored by the election denial movement.
The emails were obtained by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) as a result of a public records request sent to David Hancock, an election denier and member of the Gwinnett county board of elections. Crew shared the emails with the Guardian.
Spanning a period beginning in January, the communications expose the inner workings of a group that includes some of the most ardent supporters of the former president Donald Trump’s election lies as well as ongoing efforts to portray the coming election as beset with fraud. Included in the communications are agendas for meetings and efforts to coordinate on policies and messaging as the swing state has once again become a focal point of the presidential campaign.
The communications include correspondence from a who’s who of Georgia election denialists, including officials with ties to prominent national groups such as the Tea Party Patriots and the Election Integrity Network, a group run by Cleta Mitchell, a former attorney who acted as an informal adviser to the Trump White House during its attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
The group – which includes elections officials from at least five counties – calls itself the Georgia Election Integrity Coalition.
Among the oldest emails released are those regarding a 30 January article published by the United Tea Party of Georgia. Headlined “Georgia Democratic Party Threatens Georgia Election Officials”, the article was posted by an unnamed “admin” of the website, and came in response to letters sent to county election officials throughout Georgia who had recently refused to certify election results….
While the author of the article was not named on the United Tea Party of Georgia’s website, the emails obtained by Crew show that it was Hancock, an outspoken election denier and member of the Gwinnett county board of elections, who has become a leading voice in the push for more power to refuse to certify results.
“All right – I finished the article and posted it,” Hancock wrote in an email the same day he published the article.
Receiving the email were a handful of county election officials who have expressed belief in Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election in 2020, and have continued to implement policies and push for rules based on the belief that widespread election fraud threatens to result in a Trump loss in Georgia in November. They include Michael Heekin, a Republican member of the Fulton county board of elections who refused to certify results this year; his colleague Julie Adams, who has twice refused to certify results this year and works for the prominent national election denier groups Tea Party Patriots and the Election Integrity Network; and Debbie Fisher of Cobb county, Nancy Jester of DeKalb county and Roy McClain of Spalding county – all of whom refused to certify results last November and who received the letter Hancock took issue with..///