Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Wednesday echoed the words of election official Gabriel Sterling, who accused President Donald Trump of "inciting acts of violence."
"Even after this office requests that President Trump try and quell the violent rhetoric being borne out of his continuing claims of winning the states where he obviously lost, he tweeted out: 'Expose the massive voter fraud in Georgia,'" Raffensperger explained during a Wednesday press conference.
"This is exactly the kind of language that is at the base of the growing threat environment for election workers who are simply doing their jobs," he added.
Raffensperger noted that he expected President-elect Joe Biden to win the state of Georgia when the election is certified.
Sen. Bernie Sanders late Tuesday called Betsy DeVos "the worst education secretary in the history of America" and made abundantly clear that he's not mourning her imminent departure after the billionaire school privatization zealot lashed out at popular proposals to cancel student loan debt and make public colleges and universities tuition-free.
"What do you call a billionaire who registered a $40 million, 164-foot yacht in the Cayman Islands to avoid $2.4 million in U.S. taxes, while undermining public schools? The worst education secretary in the history of America," tweeted the Vermont senator, a leading proponent of student debt cancellation and tuition-free higher education. "Bye-bye, Betsy DeVos. You won't be missed."
In a speech at an Education Department financial aid conference on Tuesday, the outgoing education secretary dismissed as "government gift-giving" proposals to forgive crippling student loan debt and eliminate tuition for public colleges and universities.
"We've heard shrill calls to cancel, to forgive, to make it all free. Any innocuous label out there can't obfuscate what it really is: Wrong," said DeVos, who last year proposed handing the federal government's $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio over to a "stand-alone government corporation." Critics slammed the proposal as an attempt to prevent the next president from canceling any of the debt.
President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to forgive a portion of the student debt held by tens of millions of Americans and make public colleges and universities tuition-free for families with incomes below $125,000 a year. The former vice president has not yet announced his pick to succeed DeVos.
In response to DeVos' remarks Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—one of many lawmakers and activists pressuring Biden to use his authority to cancel student loan debt—tweeted sardonically, "Because we were all just dying to know what the unqualified billionaire who made this problem worse thinks about helping people."
When Donald Trumptested positive for COVID-19 on October 2 and was hospitalised a day later it was widely assumed this would put a major crimp in his re-election campaign. In the event, the US president recovered quite quickly and returned to the campaign trail with gusto after a typically bullish photo-op as he arrived back at the White House.
But survey evidence – initial findings from which are published here for the first time – shows that, despite having apparently triumphed over the virus, he did not escape the grasp of COVID-19 and that his handling of the pandemic played a crucial role in his defeat in the November 3 election.
COVID-19’s horrific toll on human life and its devastating effects on millions of people’s economic and psychological wellbeing have become omnipresent realities. So it’s hardly surprising that the University of Texas at Dallas’ national Cometrends survey, which was conducted in the two weeks before the presidential election, indicates that the pandemic was the dominant issue on many voters’ minds.
Graph 1: Important issues facing the country, October 2020.
Source: Cometrends October 2020 pre-election survey, Author provided
As the first graph, above, shows, 62% of 2,500 respondents cited the COVID crisis as one of the top three issues facing the country, while 39% said it was the single most important. No other issue – not even the ailing economy – was chosen as most important by one person in five.
The salience of the pandemic as an issue was a major problem for Trump because an overwhelming number of voters judged that he had mishandled the crisis. As the second graph, below, shows, two-thirds of the Cometrends survey respondents said that they disapproved of the president’s response, while only one person in four approved. When given another chance to comment on his pandemic performance later in the survey, 51% said it had been “bad” or “terrible” and only 38% said “good” or “excellent”.
Graph 2: Approval of Trump’s job performance on most important issue.
Source: Cometrends October 2020 pre-election survey,Author provided
These dismal ratings for the president on coronavirus were quite opposite to those for the economy – among people who thought the economy was the most important issue, 69% approved of the job the president was doing and only 25% disapproved. Although this was good news for Trump, only a relatively small minority (17%) of voters gave the economy top billing as their most important issue. Moreover, he could not rely on various other issues to improve his job approval rating – across all issues other than the pandemic, only 41% approved of the president’s performance compared with 50% who disapproved.
Graph 3: Probability of voting for Trump by importance of COVID-19 issue.
with statistical controls for other issues, partisanship, ideology and demographics.
Source: Cometrends October 2020 pre-election survey, Author provided
The third graph, above, shows clearly that if electors were not that concerned about the pandemic they were more likely to vote for Trump as president. But if they gave the issue the top priority they were much less likely to do so. The graph illustrates the impact of COVID-19 on voting for the president, while at the same time statistically taking into account a number of other factors that influence voting behaviour.
The latter include attitudes to the economy, the environment, healthcare, law and order and race relations, as well as other important measures such as identifications with the Democratic and Republican parties, liberal-conservative ideological views and socio-demographic characteristics. The probability of voting for Trump is only 42% among voters who thought COVID-19 was the most important issue but 53% among those who prioritised some other issue in the top three.
This pattern is the opposite for that of the economy. More than three-quarters of voters who gave top priority to the economy supported Trump. That number fell to less than one in three among those for whom economic conditions were not a major concern.
These numbers are nearly identical to those for the large group of potential swing voters who think of themselves as political independents and have no attachment to either of the parties. Independents giving top priority to the pandemic made up nearly 13% of the voters in the Cometrends survey and, other things being equal, the probability of them voting for Trump was very mediocre, at just slightly over 40%.
Game-changing virus
As he was preparing for the 2020 campaign, Trump repeatedly emphasised that his case for re-election was strengthened by his demonstrated ability to deliver economic prosperity. Soaring stock prices and record low unemployment numbers for many groups of voters including ethnic and racial minorities, women and young people were helping the president to make his case. Then the pandemic came along and profoundly changed America and the election-year issue agenda.
As the election date of November 3 approached, most people focusing on the economy as the number one priority continued to give Trump high marks. But these people were now a distinct minority of the electorate. COVID-19 had become the dominant issue for millions of Americans and our survey evidence strongly indicates that most of them judged Trump very harshly for how he was handling the crisis. In many cases, those adverse judgements translated into votes for Trump’s opponent, Joe Biden.
Trump may have recovered physically from COVID-19. But his prospects of re-election took a body blow that he would not recover from.
According to a scoop from POLITICO, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) has been telling people that he plans to challenge the Electoral College when Congress certifies Joe Biden's election, even if no one joins him.
“In my judgment, if only lawful votes by eligible American citizens were cast, Donald Trump won the Electoral College by a significant margin, and Congress’s certification should reflect that,” Brooks told POLITICO. “This election was stolen by the socialists engaging in extraordinary voter fraud and election theft measures.”
While Brooks said there were some senators who were willing to join forces with him, he didn't mention anyone specifically.
As POLITICO's Melanie Zanona points out, "one lawmaker from both the Senate and House needs to challenge the results in order to force a deliberation on the matter. And even then, the gambit to overturn the election results in Congress is almost certain to fail, given the makeup of the House and Senate."
According to Brooks, a lot of time is being "wasted" in the courts.
"...the Supreme Court does not have the lawful authority to determine whether to accept or reject a state’s Electoral College submissions."
“Under the United States constitution and U.S. law, that is the job and duty of elected officials ... And so it’s the United States Congress that is the final judge and jury of whether to accept or reject Electoral College submissions by states, and to elect who the president and vice president of the United States might be," he added.
Just after the election, Brooks urged President Trump to continue to “fight Biden’s unlawful victory claims.”
“There’s no way I’ll vote in the House to ratify the Electoral College votes of states where illegal votes distorted the will of the people in those states who voted legally,” Brooks said.
Late last month, he tweeted that Biden "DID NOT win lawful vote majority in Georgia."
"Per its right & duty, Congress should reject any Georgia submission of 16 electoral college votes for Joe Biden," he wrote. "That is EXACTLY what I hope to help do."
On Wednesday, Politico reported that President-elect Joe Biden is anticipating Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his Republican allies will be an obstacle to getting his Cabinet confirmed — so he is focusing on front-loading lower level nominees who don't need Senate confirmation, ensuring that the agencies will be well-staffed by people he trusts no matter how difficult the confirmation fights for the major positions become.
"Concerned about Republicans slow-walking confirmation hearings for Cabinet appointees and hollowed-out federal agencies, Biden and his aides are eager to place mid- to lower-level officials across the federal government, particularly in national security roles, to ensure his administration can begin to enact his agenda immediately, according to three people familiar with the situation," reported Nahal Toosi, Tyler Pager, and Andrew Desiderio. "By quickly selecting candidates for slots that don’t require Senate confirmation, such as deputy assistant secretaries, the transition team also can try to ensure that many of those hired can obtain security clearances by the time Biden takes office."
"The shift in focus to filling positions that do not require confirmation reflects the urgency with which the Biden team sees its staffing conundrum — especially in the realm of national security, where there’s little room for error," said the report. "It also signals Biden’s anxiousness to replace Trump appointees and fill long-empty positions as soon as possible so he can enact his agenda."
Some of Biden's nominees for major positions, like former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen for Secretary of the Treasury, have garnered bipartisan support. But others, like the nomination of former Hillary Clinton aide and think tank director Neera Tanden to lead the Office of Management and Budget, have some Republican senators threatening a confirmation blockade.
President Donald Trump, his son-in-law White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner, and the White House were hit with a lawsuit on Tuesday to prevent the Trump administration from destroying documents during the last days of their time in office.
According to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and multiple other groups allege that the president and his administration are already "violating the Presidential Records Act by failing to properly preserve records of official government business," reports Axios.
The lawsuit is suggesting that White House abrogate an official policy requiring staffers to "preserve screenshots of information sent on non-official messaging platforms as official presidential records."
In a statement released on Tuesday, CREW and other plaintiffs including National Security Archive, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations and the American Historical Association, explained the importance of the White House adopting a policy that promotes more transparency. Due to the high possibility that Trump will be embroiled in a criminal investigation surrounding his personal and professional finances, there is an increased likelihood that Trump would destroy documents from his presidency.
"With the President facing potential legal and financial exposure once he leaves office, there is a growing risk that he will destroy records of his presidency before leaving."
CREW and other platforms are arguing that screenshots do not capture metadata for each message which means there would only be incomplete copies of what is preserved.
"As guidance from the National Archives and Records Administration makes clear, screenshots that do not capture a message's metadata are not 'complete copies' as the Presidential Records Act requires."
Kushner has reportedly "admitted using non-official messaging accounts like WhatsApp to conduct official White House business, relying on screenshots alone to satisfy his record-keeping obligations."
The statement indicates, "This is part of a larger pattern of the President and the White House ignoring, if not flouting, their obligation to create and preserve records memorializing official actions and decisions."
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) on Wednesday hit back at some of President Donald Trump's allies who have been promoting a bogus conspiracy theory about the 2020 presidential election.
Writing on Twitter, Kinzinger pointed to a Military.com article debunking a conspiracy theory being spread by a retired lieutenant general, who claimed that American troops recently "were killed while seizing computer servers in Germany as part of a CIA operation after the presidential election."
The military says that no such mission ever occurred and that the battalion referenced by the general is an "entry-level training intel battalion" that "is made up of Army privates straight out of basic training who are still training for their first military jobs."
"One of these men killed was my constituent," Kinzinger wrote on Twitter. "Sick and disgutsing, Donald Trump needs to denounce this conspiracy and those pushing it."
Shortly after this tweet, Kinzinger revealed that he would vote to override Trump's veto of a military funding bill unless it included a repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Recently pardoned Michael Flynn is urging President Donald Trump to "suspend the Constitution" and declare martial law in an effort to overturn his election loss to Joe Biden.
The retired U.S. Army general tweeted out a link to a post calling for the suspension of constitutional law and a new election overseen by the military to ensure Trump remains in office, despite losing the Electoral College 306-232 and the popular vote by more than 6 million.
"It is our exclusive right to elect our president and that sacred right has been infringed by the massive, planned, illegal election fraud conducted by corrupt Democrat/Socialist Party operatives across our nation to steal our vote," wrote Tom Zawistowski, the head of the Portage County, Ohio, Tea Party and the right-wing We the People Convention.
Attorney General William Barr has joined with election officials all over the country to state that no evidence of widespread voter fraud has been found that would change the outcome of last month's presidential election.
The non-profit We the People Convention took out a full-page ad in the Washington Times calling on Trump to declare martial law to prevent a "shooting civil war," which Zawistowski blames on his political opponents, although he warned that Americans were buying firearms at record pace because gun owners are "looking to defend themselves, their property and their rights."
Amanda Suffecool, chair of the Portage County Republican Party, told the Akron Beacon Journal she had not seen Zawistowski's ad but agreed that Trump had a right to file challenges to ensure "legal" votes were counted.
"We need to use the process in place to ensure that every legal ballot will be counted and every illegal ballot will be challenged," Suffecool said.
Flynn twice pleaded guilty to a charge of lying to the F.B.I. about his conversations with the Russian ambassador during the Trump presidential transition in 2016.
Pro-Trump attorney Lin Wood also tweeted out a link to the post from the We The People Convention.
CNN's John Avlon on Wednesday highlighted all of the death threats that state election officials have faced at the hands of President Donald Trump's supporters.
During his latest "Reality Check" segment, Avlon began by playing Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling's emotional plea for the president to stop inciting hatred against election officials who are simply doing their jobs and obeying the law.
"Trump's desperate attempt to overturn a democratic election is inflaming hate in our country," Avlon said. "It's spreading like wildfire through the ranks of his hardcore supporters, some who are now making threats against election officials."
He then ran through several examples of Trump supporters threatening officials.
"One of the Trump campaign's lawyers, Joe diGenova, said Chris Krebs, who Trump fired about telling the truth about election security, should be executed," he said. "No less than six election officials around the country, many of them Republicans, have received serious death threats to date. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger requires security, his wife is getting messages on her cellphone that read, 'Your husband deserves to face a firing squad.' His deputy, Gabriel Sterling, is getting threats while an election technician was accused of treason and sent a noose."
The bottom line, says Avlon, is that the president is inflaming his supporters and creating a dangerous situation.
"It's got to stop because we are playing with fire here," he said.
On Wednesday, The Daily Beast reported that outgoing President Donald Trump's former strategist and ally Roger Stone is attacking Attorney General William Barr on social media for his handling of election fraud investigations — despite Barr going out on a limb to protect him legally.
“Bill Barr’s job is to block for the ‘deep state,’” wrote Stone on Parler, the Twitter alternative favored by Trump supporters. He added that he is not surprised Barr "suddenly determined" there was no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud and it is indicative of a "two-tiered justice system."
Earlier this year, Barr's DOJ overrode sentencing recommendations for Stone after he was convicted of obstruction, witness tampering, and false statements in connection with the Russiainvestigation, prompting three federal prosecutors to resign from the case in protest, and one to step down from the DOJ altogether.
Trump later commuted Stone's sentence, complying with Stone's request in place of a full pardon so that Stone would not have to admit guilt.
Ivanka Trump is harboring political ambitions after she leaves the White House after her father's election loss.
It's not clear where President Donald Trump's eldest daughter will live, along with her husband and fellow White House adviser Jared Kushner, but their former friends, colleagues and associates believe Ivanka Trump will try to build up her influence in the Republican Party, reported the Washington Post.
“I think she’d want to be the [first] female president,” said Marissa Velez Kraxberger, a film producer who worked for Ivanka for two years at her now-defunct company. “I don’t think she’s actually ever had any interest in fashion but everything was an angle to gain more power in whatever possible way.”
Ivanka Trump garnered only 4 percent support in a recent Newsmax poll, behind Vice President Mike Pence, her brother Donald Trump Jr. and other possible GOP hopefuls, but sources close to her say she almost certainly will consider a presidential bid of her own.
“Everyone is saying that she’s running for office, and that’s the ultimate compliment for her," said one source from her New York social circle. “Her recent stance as pro-life was making her ambitions very clear that she is laying the groundwork."
But her brother also harbors political ambitions and is more popular among the GOP base.
"[There will] will definitely be a power struggle between [Ivanka] and her brother, who is obviously more connected to the base," and one top Republican fundraiser.
But their ambitions may be thwarted by New York's fraud investigations into the president and his businesses, and former Trump Organization consigliere Michael Cohen suspects that will ultimately be their undoing.
“There’s too much potential dirt that she doesn’t want released,” said Cohen, the president's former personal attorney who pleaded guilty in 2018 in two criminal cases related to his work for Trump. “It’s easy to say, 'I‘m doing this, I’m doing that,’ but it’s different to put your entire life out there for the media to excoriate you.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) is still spouting conspiracy theories about the election being "stolen" from President Donald Trump -- but according to one former Wisconsin Republican official, Johnson understands that Trump lost.
Mark Becker, the former Chairman of the Brown County Republican Party, writes at The Bulwark that he had a conversation with Johnson after the election in which the senator acknowledged Trump's defeat.
However, Johnson said that he was loath to admit it publicly because of the strong support the president had received from Wisconsin GOP voters, despite the fact that the president narrowly lost the state this year.
Or as Becker writes, Johnson believes contradicting Trump in public would be tantamount to "political suicide."
"Our discussion was mostly based in reality," writes Becker. "The senator understands Joe Biden’s victory. The problem is he refuses to live in that reality publicly, because of political considerations."
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough mocked Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) for demanding proof of something that doesn't exist.
Attorney General William Barr announced the Department of Justice had found no evidence of voter fraud, as President Donald Trump has claimed, and Johnson called on Barr to "show everybody" the proof that the election had not been stolen.
"The man Guinness Book of World Records has called the dumbest senator to ever be sworn in in this constitutional republic," Scarborough said. "I'm speaking, of course, of Ron Johnson, who said that William Barr must show his evidence that he has no evidence."
"'Mr. Attorney General, you must prove a negative,'" the "Morning Joe" host added.
