2020 Election Fallout 14: Arrests And The Big Lie

[GeraldineGrainger]

Every night, my husband and I have the same conversation about whether Trump will ever be held accountable for any of the shit he's done. Our consensus is....probably not?  Then yesterday, I read this article, and now my feelings can best be described as "doom and despair." I just don't see how I can live through this crap again, and I don't understand how it can even be possible after January 6th.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/11/trump-nightmare-looms-again/

I was complaining about this to a friend last night, and she said, "Maybe he'll die before he can run again." I actually thought to myself, "We should be so lucky." Then I felt guilty because it seems very wrong to wish for someone's death, but how else can we ever be free of him? And even if he's dead, his fanatical leghumpers will still exist. He is a stain we can never scrub out.

I'm so depressed.

[Cartmann99]

Trump won Hood County in a landslide. His supporters still hounded the elections administrator until she resigned.

Quote

An elections administrator in North Texas submitted her resignation Friday, following a monthslong effort by residents and officials loyal to former President Donald Trump to force her out of office.

Michele Carew, who had overseen scores of elections during her 14-year career, had found herself transformed into the public face of an electoral system that many in the heavily Republican Hood County had come to mistrust, which ProPublica and The Texas Tribune covered earlier this month.

Her critics sought to abolish her position and give her duties to an elected county clerk who has used social media to promote baseless allegations of widespread election fraud.

Carew, who was hired to run elections in Hood County two-and-a-half months before the contested presidential race, said in an interview that she worried that the forces that tried to drive her out will spread to other counties in the state.

“When I started out, election administrators were appreciated and highly respected,” she said. “Now we are made out to be the bad guys.”

Critics accused Carew of harboring a secret liberal agenda and of violating a decades-old elections law, despite assurances from the Texas secretary of state that she was complying with Texas election rules.

Carew said she is joining an Austin-based private company and will work to help local elections administrator offices across the country run more efficiently. She will oversee her final election in early November before leaving Nov. 12.

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonprofit that seeks to increase voter participation and improve the efficiency of elections administration, said Carew’s departure is the latest example of an ominous trend toward independent election administrators being forced out in favor of partisan officials.

“She is not the first and won’t be the last professional election official to have to leave this profession because of the toll it is taking, the bullies and liars who are slandering these professionals,” said Becker, a former Department of Justice lawyer who helped oversee voting rights enforcement under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. “We are losing a generation of professional expertise. We are only beginning to feel the effects.”

Though experts say it is difficult to determine how many elections officials have left their positions nationally, states like Pennsylvania and Ohio have seen numerous departures. According to the AP, about a third of Pennsylvania’s county election officials have left in the last year and a half; in Ohio, one in four directors or deputy auditors of elections have left in the southwestern part of the state, according to The New York Times.

Hood County would seem an unlikely place for disputes over the last presidential election given that Trump won 81% of the vote there, one of his largest margins of victory in the state. Across the country, partisans’ demands for audits have mostly focused on counties and states carried by President Joe Biden, particularly those that went for Trump four years earlier.

But Texas, despite going for Trump by 6 percentage points, has seen its fair share of blowback. Last month, the Texas secretary of state announced a “comprehensive forensic audit” of four of the state’s largest counties hours after Trump issued a public letter demanding audits of the state’s results.

Before that, in July, Texas passed sweeping voting legislation that critics say disenfranchises vulnerable voters and unfairly targets administrators and other elections officials. Among the law’s provisions are new criminal penalties for election workers accused of interfering with expanded powers given to poll watchers.

On Saturday, after blasting the four-county audit plan as “weak,” Trump threatened the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives with a primary challenge if the speaker didn’t advance a bill that would allow audits in more counties.

In Hood County, the local GOP executive committee likewise issued warnings to Republican officials who defended Carew. In July, the committee threatened County Judge Ron Massingill with a social media campaign that would tell voters he was “incapable of providing them with free and fair elections” if he didn’t convene the county’s elections commission to discuss Carew’s termination.

Massingill refused, arguing that no political party should be able to direct the activities of the independent elections administrator. Katie Lang, the county clerk and vice chair of the county’s election commission, convened the meeting and moved to fire Carew. Carew survived the vote by a 3-2 margin, with Massingill and the county tax assessor, both Republicans, joining the Hood County Democratic chair.

Republican County Chair David Fischer called on county commissioners to dissolve the independent office of elections administrator and transfer election duties to Lang, which he said would make the election administration process more accountable to the county’s Republican majority.

Counties in Texas can choose between hiring an independent elections administrator, who is meant to be insulated from political pressures, or letting a county official, often an elected county clerk, run elections. County clerks, who manage functions like property records and birth certificates, run elections in many of the state’s smallest counties.

Fischer has declined to speak with ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

On social media, Lang has shared “Stop the Steal” and “Impeach Biden” memes and videos. Lang made national headlines in 2015 after refusing to issue a marriage license to a gay couple following the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision legalizing same-sex marriage. Lang did not respond to a request for comment on Monday, but she previously told the Hood County News she wished Carew “the best in her future endeavors.”

Over the last year, Carew has come under fire for everything from her connection with the League of Women Voters, which critics say is anti-Trump, to her interest in a $29,000 grant, funded in part by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, that would have been used to pay for costs related to the pandemic.

She was also accused of harboring a hidden agenda after refusing to allow a reporter with the fervently pro-Trump One America News Network into a private training for election professionals in March when she headed the Texas Association of Elections Administrators.

The most sustained criticism of Carew came from critics who accused her of violating the law by not adhering to an obscure election law that requires ballots to be consecutively numbered.

But seven election experts and administrators told ProPublica and the Tribune that consecutively numbering ballots is out of step with best practices in election security and voter privacy, and that consecutive numbering is not required to conduct effective election audits.

Despite the toll the last year has taken on her, Carew on Monday remained defiant. “I’m leaving on my own accord,” she said. “I’m the one who wins in the end.”

 

[Xan]

20 hours ago, GeraldineGrainger said:

Every night, my husband and I have the same conversation about whether Trump will ever be held accountable for any of the shit he's done. Our consensus is....probably not?  Then yesterday, I read this article, and now my feelings can best be described as "doom and despair." I just don't see how I can live through this crap again, and I don't understand how it can even be possible after January 6th.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/11/trump-nightmare-looms-again/

I was complaining about this to a friend last night, and she said, "Maybe he'll die before he can run again." I actually thought to myself, "We should be so lucky." Then I felt guilty because it seems very wrong to wish for someone's death, but how else can we ever be free of him? And even if he's dead, his fanatical leghumpers will still exist. He is a stain we can never scrub out.

I'm so depressed.

I agree.  Somehow, lately, I'm just so distressed over what's happening in this country.  None of this is okay.  We've got a fair percentage of citizens who are now anti-science and, apparently, happy with public aggression.  They're punching flight attendants, attacking store clerks, and harassing school children.  I don't see Trump or any of his inner circle being prosecuted for anything.  And Trump and his pet senators and congresscritters are out there lying about everything and no one really calls them on it.  The Supreme Court is larded with conservatives and they're now doing end runs around standard procedures.  Rightwingers are going to be in charge of a lot of state election boards.  We are teetering on an edge here and I don't see anyone rushing to pull us back from the abyss.  

I'm depressed about it all too.

[formergothardite]

It is depressing. I'm not sure the democrats have it in them to do what needs to be done. 

[Cartmann99]

Texas Florist Who Bragged About Storming Pelosi’s Office Pleads Guilty to Misdemeanor

Quote

A Texas woman and florist accepted a plea deal on Wednesday over her participation on the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Jenny Louise Cudd originally made headlines when she requested a bail accommodation from the court in order to travel to Mexico for a pre-planned business trip. That request was eventually granted.

Facing the prospect of serious prison time if convicted as charged, Cudd’s attorney depicted Washington D.C. as something akin to enemy territory. In a legal brief brimming with culture war-infused bromides, defense attorney Marina Medvin pleaded for a change of venue.

Offering Texas as an alternative, the defense motion argued:

A modern-day liberal D.C. jury that is readily swayed by the socio-political concept of “social justice” will be prejudiced against rendering a not guilty verdict for a defendant who actively supported a President that has been politically deemed “racist,” especially against a defendant who they believe has “white privilege.” Democrats believe that, “in a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be antiracist.” How would being actively “anti-racist” translate on a D.C. jury overseeing the case of a Capitol “insurrectionist” with “white privilege” who supports a “racist President”? A Washington D.C. Democrat venire is greatly prejudiced and socio-ethically compelled to “cancel” such a defendant by finding her guilty in the name of “social justice.” As stated previously, this case is political, through and through.

Multiple Jan. 6 defendants made similar arguments, which federal judges have routinely rejected, sometimes indignantly. Prosecutors noted that the defense failed during the prosecution of former President Richard Nixon’s top officials during the Watergate era. The failure of the defense motion paved the way for negotiations, reportedly taking the form of multiple plea offers, according to BuzzFeed News’s Zoe Tillman.

On Tuesday, Cudd’s co-defendant Elial Rosa was handed down a lenient sentence of 12 months probation, 100 hours of community service, and $500 in restitution.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Fretto reportedly said Cudd accepted the government’s “most recent” and “most lenient” offer. Medvin said this was the only actual offer on paper and that they were holding out for the same deal that Rosa received.

Combined, the two were both indicted on one count each of: (1) obstruction of an official proceeding (with aiding and abetting); (2) entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds; (3) disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; (4) disorderly conduct in a capitol building; and (5) parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a capitol building.

Rosa pleaded out on the fifth charge and, against the government’s request for a month on home confinement and lengthy probation, received the relatively light sentence described above.

Per the terms of the deal, Cudd is likely to face zero to six months in jail.

The government reserves the right to seek a higher sentence—known as an “upward departure”—on a terrorism enhancement at the time of sentencing, but the defense said they will oppose any such argument. Cudd’s attorney reportedly argued such sentencing enhancements are not available for the equivalent of a misdemeanor charge.

The defendant is currently slated to be sentenced on March 18, 2022.

 

[Dandruff]

8 hours ago, formergothardite said:

It is depressing. I'm not sure the democrats have it in them to do what needs to be done. 

I'm pretty sure they don't but I'd love to be surprised.

[fraurosena]

12 hours ago, formergothardite said:

It is depressing. I'm not sure the democrats have it in them to do what needs to be done. 

Sadly, they are also part of the system that allows lobbyists to dictate politics. When policies can be bought, democracy dies.

I am usually quite hopeful and positive, but what I see happening now is a slow motion implosion of the US. Everybody is looking on, and relying on the system to fix things, when in reality it is the system that needs to be fixed.

 

[Howl]

On 10/12/2021 at 1:27 PM, Cartmann99 said:

Trump won Hood County in a landslide. His supporters still hounded the elections administrator until she resigned.

I found this whole thing shocking, actually, and especially this: "Republican County Chair David Fischer called on county commissioners to dissolve the independent office of elections administrator and transfer election duties to Lang, which he said would make the election administration process more accountable to the county’s Republican majority." 

It's just blatant.  Also note that Republican county chairs in Texas can be absolute wingnuts and this scenario is likely to be happening in a lot of counties. 

[GreyhoundFan]

I love it!

 

More under spoiler:

Spoiler

 

[church_of_dog]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I love it!

 

More under spoiler:

  Hide contents

 

I want one of these visible from the Mar-a-Lago golf course, or at least on the road towards it.

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, church_of_dog said:

I want one of these visible from the Mar-a-Lago golf course, or at least on the road towards it.

Why restrict yourself? There should be one outside of every single one of his properties. Like Bedminster, where he's holed up right now.

[fraurosena]

50 year old Capitol Police Officer:

"Hey [...] im a capitol police officer who agrees with your political stance. Take down the part about being in the building they are currently investigating and everyone who was in the building is going to charged. Just looking out!" [sic]

Thread (sorry, no unroll available):

 

[Cartmann99]

Spoiler

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is true:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is an excellent speech:

 

This was from a hearing today. A little background as to why Gym and Matt were there:

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

Dear Louie, sit down and shut up:

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[SPHASH]

If this is true I'm not surprised 

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/exclusive-jan-6-organizers-met-congress-white-house-1245289/

Rolling Stone separately confirmed a third person involved in the main Jan. 6 rally in D.C. has communicated with the committee. This is the first report that the committee is hearing major new allegations from potential cooperating witnesses. While there have been prior indications that members of Congress were involved, this is also the first account detailing their purported role and its scope. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Madison can't bring himself to say he isn't concerned about NC because his orange lord and master won NC. And, of course there is no concern that he may have been the recipient of fraudulent votes. If his opponent had won, no doubt he would have been screaming and crying.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Jamie is right:

 

[fraurosena]

9 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Jamie is right:

 

This is so important! Follow the money and you find who is behind the curtains pulling at the strings. If you only go after the puppets, the puppeteers will keep on undermining democracy. Get at the people funding and organizing everything in the darkness behind the scenes and shine a bright light on them, and you have a chance to save the freedom of the country.

[Howl]

7 hours ago, fraurosena said:

This is so important! Follow the money and you find who is behind the curtains pulling at the strings.

Yup, there is so much dark money everywhere.  I'm also hoping these investigations will shed more light on the huge amounts of dirty Russian money being laundered in various ways (remember the NRA?) and injected into various PACs during the 2016 race.  

[Howl]

8 hours ago, fraurosena said:

This is so important! Follow the money and you find who is behind the curtains pulling at the strings.

Yup, there is so much dark money everywhere.  I'm also hoping these investigations will shed more light on the huge amounts of dirty Russian money being laundered in various ways (remember the NRA?) and injected into various PACs during the 2016 race.  

On 10/13/2021 at 12:32 PM, formergothardite said:

It is depressing. I'm not sure the democrats have it in them to do what needs to be done. 

They don't. 

I was thinking about the appt. of Merrick Garland as AG and am certain he was an appeasement appt for Republicans.  Democrats are a sliver ahead in the House and Senate and they appoint this a**hole as AG when they could have had Sally Yates or a Preet Bharara or any one of a number of attack dogs willing to pursue the rampant corruption during TFG years. 

Bear with me: We all saw his gentle countenance when put up by Obama when an appeasement appt really was needed and assumed he was an honorable man, but he's a member of the Federalist Society and much much worse. 

Sarah Kendzior lays him bare  in this twitter thread: 

Teaser from Sarah's thread: 

Here is the Merrick Garland Villain Origin Story: "Garland was mentored by operative Jamie Gorelick. Gorelick is Garland’s Roy Cohn. She's an exemplar of Big Law corruption: where state crime, organized crime, and corporate crime meet under the protection of a shady network of lawyers and lobbyists."

For all nonTwitterati, unroll of thread here: "You may be wondering, 'What the hell is wrong with Merrick Garland? Why is he enabling all these elite criminals? Who is he trying to protect?'"

 

[GreyhoundFan]

You couldn't make this up: "Rep. Mo Brooks, denying planning role in Jan. 6 rally, says he’d be ‘proud’ if his staff helped out"

Quote

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) on Monday disputed a report that he had a role in organizing the rally on Jan. 6 that immediately preceded the riot at the U.S. Capitol. But his denial came with a note: Brooks said he would be “proud” if any of his staff had a role in planning the rally held moments before a riot that caused five deaths and hundreds of people being injured.

Brooks responded to a Rolling Stone report that found the GOP congressman or his staff to have been in contact with two unnamed organizers of the Jan. 6 rally and similar gatherings following the 2020 presidential election.

He told AL.com that the “beginning” of his involvement in the rally was when the White House asked him to speak the day before, saying he “had no intentions of going to that rally until Jan. 5.” While the congressman could not say whether any of his staff worked on the Jan. 6 rally, he acknowledged that he would be happy if they had helped organize it.

“Quite frankly, I’d be proud of them if they did help organize a First Amendment rally to protest voter fraud and election theft,” Brooks said of his staff to the outlet.

Brooks, who has pushed falsehoods about “massive voter fraud” during the 2020 election without evidence, repeated his answer to CNN’s Melanie Zanona on Monday, specifying that he would be proud if any of his staff had a role in planning the Jan. 6 rally “at the Ellipse.”

A spokesman for Brooks did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Tuesday from The Post. Brooks has previously said he did not do anything wrong by speaking at the event.

The Alabama congressman’s response comes at a time when Brooks, who is running for a U.S. Senate seat next year, has been accused in a lawsuit of helping to incite the riot.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) filed a lawsuit earlier this year against Brooks, former president Donald Trump and several others for giving speeches at the Jan. 6 rally in which they falsely claimed the 2020 election results were fraudulent and encouraged rallygoers to march on the Capitol, where Congress was holding an accounting of the electoral college votes that would make Joe Biden president. Brooks, who told the crowd at the rally to “start taking down names and kicking a--,” asked a federal judge in August to grant him immunity from the lawsuit.

Earlier this month, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection issued another round of subpoenas for those connected to the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the violent insurrection at the Capitol. In the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, right-wing provocateur Ali Alexander, the leader of Stop the Steal, said in a since-deleted video that he had planned to put “maximum pressure on Congress” during the vote to certify the electoral college votes. In that video, he claimed he had help from three GOP lawmakers: Brooks and Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.) and Paul A. Gosar (Ariz.). Brooks and Biggs previously denied aiding Alexander with planning the rally.

On Sunday, Rolling Stone reported that Brooks was among a GOP group of House lawmakers, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Madison Cawthorn (N.C.) and Lauren Boebert (Colo.), who either planned or had top staff members plan the Jan. 6 rally. The report did not specify the level of involvement that Brooks or his staff had in organizing the rally.

Brooks told the Montgomery Advertiser that he only agreed to speak at the rally that day if he was given an early time slot and enough time to speak, saying he was focused on speeches intended for Congress as the chambers certified the election results. He maintained that he had no role in fundraising for the rally or overseeing logistics.

“I was really busy,” Brooks said to the newspaper. “I was working on speeches for the House floor debates.”

Yet Brooks, who acknowledged he was wearing body armor at the rally, urged the Trump supporters gathered on the Ellipse near the White House to fight back against voter fraud. The congressman later claimed he was referring to elections in 2022 and 2024.

Brooks, without evidence, blamed “militants,” such as the Proud Boys and QAnon, for the riot instead of Trump supporters.

“They executed that attack by using the rally as cover, and also using the rally to induce other people to attack the Capitol,” he told the Advertiser.

Democrats and critics were quick to note Tuesday how Brooks appeared to suggest his own staff played a role in the Jan. 6 rally. Joyce White Vance, a professor at the University of Alabama Law School who was appointed as a U.S. district judge under President Barack Obama, tweeted that Brooks’s response to his role in the Jan. 6 rally raised more questions about why he was there in the first place.

“It takes a little time & a good bit of money to get the right body armor & it’s not particularly comfortable to wear,” she said. “It seems fair to ask Mo Brooks, under oath, what made him think it was worth going to the trouble.”

Michael Fanone, the D.C. police officer who was dragged into a pro-Trump mob and beaten while fighting insurrectionists at the Capitol, reiterated Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” the danger surrounding those who continue to downplay the events of Jan. 6.

“If you describe that day as anything other than brutal and violent and a disgrace to this country, you’re lying to yourself and you’re lying to those around you,” he said.