“Trump pledges to jail opponents, baselessly suggests election will be stolen from him”

election subversion risk

And now the WaPo story:

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump threatened to jail people “involved in unscrupulous behavior” related to voting in the 2024 election, suggesting without evidence that the election could be stolen from him — and prompting widespread condemnation from election officials who said such rhetoric could provoke violence.

Trump’s remarks, made in a social media posting on Saturday night, represent the most overt signal yet that he may not accept the result in November if he loses.

Trump has a history of railing against election officials and raising unsubstantiated claims of fraud when his political fortunes appear uncertain, as they do now in his extremely close race with Vice President Kamala Harris. His comments are his most direct threats made against those tasked with administering elections this year.

In reality, illegal voting is exceedingly rare. But Trump appears to be replaying his efforts to sow doubt about the voting process ahead of the 2020 election — actions that contributed to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol….

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“What is the Claremont Institute doing back at APSA?”

chicanery

Dave Karpf:

Let me tell you a little story about institutional cowardice.

The American Political Science Association (APSA) is my primary professional association. Every year, APSA holds a massive convention of political science professors. We present working papers, give feedback, catch up with old colleagues, hatch new research projects, and discuss the state of the discipline.

Three years ago, I spearheaded an effort to remove John Eastman and the Claremont Institute from the APSA annual meeting. Eastman was one of the architects of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” effort that culminated in January 6th. APSA had formally condemned these efforts. It seemed ridiculous that the architects and vocal proponents of an attempt to overthrow electoral democracy would be welcome to hold their own mini-conference at the convention.

(Also, they were fundraising off of the meeting. And holding a meeting-within-a-meeting let them draft off of my professional association’s administrative overhead. Political scientists membership dues ought not be spent in support of an organization trying to overthrow electoral democracy. Come on.)

APSA didn’t appreciate the pressure from its members, but we ended up with acceptable results. APSA told Claremont they’d be switched to virutal panels. Claremont got mad and canceled the panels in a huff. After that, Claremont was quietly removed from the list of APSA related groups. I’ll take it, I thought. A win is a win?

In 2022, Claremont wasn’t at APSA. I checked the full agenda and felt a moment of pride. In 2023, Claremont wasn’t at APSA. Mission accomplished.

And then yesterday, while attending APSA, I checked the agenda. And it appears someone decided the heat had died down and it was fine for them to return. Claremont is back.

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Must read: “Trump threatens lawyers, donors and election officials with prison for ‘unscrupulous behavior'” (Why Is This Not Getting More Coverage?)

election subversion risk

NBC News:

Former President Donald Trump, who makes frequent false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen through rampant fraud, warned Saturday that he would attempt to imprison anyone who engages in “unscrupulous behavior” during the 2024 race results.

The threat was issued in a post on Truth Social, his social media website, and repeated his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, accusing Democrats of “rampant Cheating and Skullduggery.”

“The 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again,” he wrote.

He continued, “Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”

The threat was one of the most wide-ranging that he’s made while running for president after his 2020 defeat — going beyond threatening old foes and issuing warnings to those involved with the current election….

Election workers across the country have been subject to threats, most famously Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, two election workers whose entire lives were uprooted when Trump and his allies targeted them after the 2020 election with false accusations of fraud….

UPDATE: Here is coverage in the NYT. Glad to see it.

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Must-Read and Must-Watch AP Dive Compiling the Evidence of What Happened at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and Trump and His Allies’ Efforts to Deny It

chicanery, election subversion risk

This is well worth your time:

Inside Washington’s federal courthouse, there’s no denying the reality of Jan. 6, 2021. Day after day, judges and jurors silently absorb the chilling sights and sounds from television screens of rioters beating police, shattering windows and hunting for lawmakers as democracy lay under siege.

But as he seeks to reclaim the White House, Donald Trump continues to portray the defendants as patriots worthy of admiration, an assertion that has been undercut by the adjudicated truth in hundreds of criminal cases where judges and juries have reached the opposite conclusion about what history will remember as one of America’s darkest days.

The cases have systematically put on record — through testimony, documents and video — the crimes committed, weapons wielded, and lives altered by physical and emotional damage. Trump is espousing a starkly different story, portraying the rioters as hostages and political prisoners whom he says he might pardon if he wins in November.

There are no broadcast television cameras inside the E. Barrett Prettyman federal courthouse on Constitution Avenue. But the real story of Jan. 6 is found in the mounds of evidence and testimony judges and juries have seen and heard behind the doors of the courthouse where hundreds of Trump’s supporters have been convicted in the attack….

In Trump’s telling, the mob on Jan. 6 assembled peacefully to preserve democracy, not upend it, and the rioters were agitated but not armed. They were not insurrectionists but rather 1776-style “patriots.” And now they are being persecuted by the Justice Department, juries and judges for their political beliefs.

His relentless attempts to rewrite history have become foundational to the Republican’s bid for another term, with campaign rallies honoring the rioters as heroes while an anthem plays in their name.

He was an invited guest for a “J6 Awards Gala” fundraiser at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, for those charged with crimes connected to the riot. His campaign later said he wouldn’t attend the fundraiser, which was then postponed. Organizers did not respond to requests for comment.

When pressed during a recent event, Trump said he “absolutely” would pardon rioters who assaulted police — if they were “innocent.” When the interviewer noted she was talking about convicted rioters, Trump replied that they were convicted “by a very tough system.”

It’s part of an effort to undermine faith in the nation’s justice system that has escalated since Trump’s conviction on 34 felony charges in his New York hush money trial. Even more than that, it’s fuel for a campaign of vengeance Trump says will come if he wins. 

“Those J6 warriors, they were warriors, but they were really more than anything else — they’re victims of what happened,” Trump said in a rally after his conviction. Falsely claiming the rioters were “set up” by police, he appeared to threaten revenge: “That blows two ways, that blows two ways, believe me.”

In response to several questions from the AP about Trump’s support of the Jan. 6 defendants and pledge to pardon the rioters, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in an email: “Kamala Harris and Joe Biden’s Department of Justice has spent more time prosecuting President Trump and targeting Americans for peacefully protesting on January 6th than criminals, illegal immigrants, and terrorists who are committing violent crimes in Democrat-run cities every day.”…

Many Republicans have lined up behind Trump to minimize the violence and push these lies: Police welcomed the mob into the building. Undercover FBI operatives and left-wing antifa activists instigated the attack….

The disinformation campaign has taken root in a vast swath of the country. About a year after the attack, only about 4 in 10 Republicans recalled it as very violent or extremely violent, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. Three years after the riot, a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found about 7 in 10 Republicans said too much is being made of it.

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“Russia Secretly Worms Its Way Into America’s Conservative Media”

cheap speech, chicanery, social media and social protests

NYT:

In early 2022, a young couple from Canada, Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan, registered a new company in Tennessee that went on to create a social media outlet called Tenet Media.

By November 2023, they had assembled a lineup of major conservative social media stars, including Benny Johnson, Tim Pool and Dave Rubin, to post original content on Tenet’s platform. The site then began posting hundreds of videos — trafficking in pointed political commentary as well as conspiracy theories about election fraud, Covid-19, immigrants and Russia’s war with Ukraine — that were then promoted across the spectrum of social media, from YouTube to TikTok, X, Facebook, Instagram and Rumble.

It was all, federal prosecutors now say, a covert Russian influence operation. On Wednesday, the Justice Department accused two Russians of helping orchestrate $10 million in payments to Tenet in a scheme to use those stars to spread Kremlin-friendly messages.

The disclosures reflect the growing sophistication of the Kremlin’s longstanding efforts to shape American public opinion and advance Russia’s geopolitical goals, which include, according to American intelligence assessments, the election of former President Donald J. Trump in November.

In 2016 and 2020, Russia employed armies of internet trolls, fake accounts and bot farms to try to reach American audiences, with debatable success. The operation that prosecutors described this week shows a pivot to exploiting already established social media influencers, who, in this case, generated as many as 16 million views on Tenet’s YouTube channel alone.

Most viewers were presumably unaware, as the influencers themselves said they were, that Russia was paying for it all.

“Influencers already have a level of trust with their audience,” said Jo Lukito, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s journalism school who studies Russian disinformation. “So, if a piece of information can come through the mouth of an existing influencer, it comes across as more authentic.”

The indictment — which landed like a bombshell in the country’s conservative media ecosystem — also underscored the growing ideological convergence between President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia and a significant portion of the Republican Party since Mr. Trump’s rise to political power….

Martin J. Riedl, a journalism professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who studies the spread of misinformation on social media, said the case of Tenet spotlighted gaping regulatory holes when it came to the American political system.

While the Federal Election Commission has strict disclosure rules for television and radio advertisements, it has no such restrictions for paid social media influencers.

The result is an enormous loophole — one that the Russians appeared to exploit.

“Influencers have been around for a while,” Mr. Riedl said, “but there are few rules around their communication, and political speech is not regulated at all.”

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