Three headlines have grabbed my attention today. First, is the cyber attack because what person my age doesn’t get the chills from the thought we still have a very hot cold war going on with the Russians. All of this combined with the breaking news that the Pentagon is shutting out the Biden transition briefings is just frightening. Second, it looks like Santa Trump has a shit sack full of pardons coming up. More on these further on down the thread
If everyone lit their hair on fire over the Defense Dept stopping the daily briefs to Biden and his team the way the fuckers did over being rightly called fuckers…what would happen, do you think?
Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller ordered a Pentagon-wide halt to cooperation with the transition of President-elect Biden, shocking officials across the Defense Department, senior administration officials tell Axios.
Behind the scenes: A top Biden official was unaware of the directive. Administration officials left open the possibility cooperation would resume after a holiday pause. The officials were unsure what prompted Miller’s action, or whether President Trump approved.
Why it matters: Miller’s move, which stunned officials throughout the Pentagon, was the biggest eruption yet of animus and mistrust toward the Biden team from the top level of the Trump administration.
Fury at the Biden team among senior Pentagon officials escalated after the Washington Post published a story on Wednesday night revealing how much money would be saved if Biden halted construction of Trump’s border wall.
Trump officials blame the leak on the Biden transition team (Though, it should be noted, they have no evidence of this, and both reporters on the byline cover the Trump administration and have historically been prolific beneficiaries of leaks.)
What happened: Meetings between President Trump’s team and the Biden team are going on throughout the government, after a delayed start as the administration dragged its feet on officially recognizing Biden as president-elect.
Then on Thursday night, Miller — who was appointed Nov. 9, when Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper right after the election — ordered officials throughout the building to cancel scheduled transition meetings.
President Donald Trump’s most powerful advisor, Jared Kushner, approved the creation of a campaign shell company that secretly paid the president’s family members and spent almost half of the campaign’s $1.26 billion war chest, a person familiar with the operation told Insider.
The operation acted almost like a campaign within a campaign. It paid some of Trump’s top advisors and family members while shielding financial and operational details from public scrutiny.
When Kushner and others created the company in April 2018, they picked Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, to become its president, Vice President Mike Pence’s nephew John Pence as its vice president, and Trump campaign CFO Sean Dollman as its treasurer and secretary, the person who spoke on the condition of anonymity said.
Insider independently verified details of this person’s account with other sources close to the Trump campaign.
The shell company — incorporated as American Made Media Consultants Corporation and American Made Media Consultants LLC — allowed Trump’s campaign to skirt federally mandated disclosures. The tactic could attract scrutiny from federal election regulators.
Campaign finance records show Trump’s reelection effort and its affiliated committee with the Republican National Committee spent more than $600 million through American Made Consultants since its formation.
For months, some of Trump’s own top advisors and campaign staff have told Insider they had no idea how the shell company functioned, casting an air of mystery about the operation.
Trump’s campaign leaders even launched an internal audit of the shell company and operations under former campaign manager Brad Parscale but never reported the results of that review.
Some of those same advisors said they didn’t learn about John Pence and Lara Trump’s involvement until Insider contacted them for this story.
But throughout, the mystery hid in plain sight: Kushner, Lara Trump, John Pence, and Dollman, were often just feet away in the Trump campaign’s headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, a Washington suburb.
“They like to say they don’t know, but that’s not true,” the person familiar with AMMC said. “What they wanted was excuses so they could blame other people. If they thought that, why did they keep using it?”
From January 2019 through the middle of November 2020, the Trump campaign and an affiliated political committee together spent $617 million through American Made Media Consultants.
It was almost half of everything they spent in the failed effort to reelect Trump, according to an Insider review of Federal Election Commission records and analysis provided by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
Some Trump advisors have long accused Parscale of trying to hide money from the now-outgoing president, occasionally citing AMMC as an example of his obfuscation.
But the campaign actually spent the bulk of the money at AMMC — $415 million — after Trump fired Parscale as campaign manager on July 15.
Deflated by a loss he has yet to acknowledge, Mr. Trump has cushioned the blow by coaxing huge sums of money from his loyal supporters — often under dubious pretenses — raising roughly $250 million since Election Day along with the national party.
More than $60 million of that sum has gone to a new political action committee, according to people familiar with the matter, which Mr. Trump will control after he leaves office. Those funds, which far exceed what previous outgoing presidents had at their disposal, provide him with tremendous flexibility for his post-presidential ambitions: He could use the money to quell rebel factions within the party, reward loyalists, fund his travels and rallies, hire staff, pay legal bills and even lay the groundwork for a far-from-certain 2024 run.
The post-election blitz of fund-raising has cemented Mr. Trump’s position as an unrivaled force and the pre-eminent fund-raiser of the Republican Party even in defeat. His largest single day for online donations actually came after Election Day — raising almost $750,000 per hour on Nov. 6. So did his second biggest day. And his third.
The scale of a sophisticated cyberattack on the U.S. government that was unearthed this week is much bigger than first anticipated.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a summary Thursday that the threat “poses a grave risk to the federal government.”
It added that “state, local, tribal, and territorial governments as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations” are also at risk.
CISA believes the attack began at least as early as March. Since then, multiple government agencies have reportedly been targeted by the hackers, with confirmation from the Energy and Commerce departments so far.
“This threat actor has demonstrated sophistication and complex tradecraft in these intrusions,” CISA said. “Removing the threat actor from compromised environments will be highly complex and challenging.”
CISA has not said who it thinks is the “advanced persistent threat actor” behind the “significant and ongoing” campaign, but many experts are pointing to Russia.
“The magnitude of this ongoing attack is hard to overstate,” former Trump Homeland Security Advisor Thomas Bossert said in a piece for The New York Times on Thursday. “The Russians have had access to a considerable number of important and sensitive networks for six to nine months.”
It is also said that Trump’s planning pardons today will be those involved in Russian interference in the 2016 election resulting in the Mueller investigation. It is also likely that the Hunter Biden probe is payback for Trump’s ongoing obsession with the role of that probe as an obstacle to his regime.
It seems he can still wear us out even though he’s basically staying hunkered down on the White House Toilet with his cell phone and big macs. He may be tweeting his election conspiracy theories and egging on the Senate to reject the results. However, he’s radio silence on Russia.
Lawmakers are raising questions about whether the attack on the federal government widely attributed to Russia constitutes an act of war.
The hacking may represent the biggest cyberattack in U.S history, and officials are scrambling to respond.
The response is further complicated by the presidential transition — President Trump has yet to comment publicly on the attack — and the fact that the U.S. has no clear cyber warfare strategy.
“We can’t be buddies with Vladimir Putin and have him at the same time making this kind of cyberattack on America,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said of the attack during an interview Wednesday on CNN. “This is virtually a declaration of war by Russia on the United States and we should take that seriously.”
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Thursday compared the incident to Russian bombers “flying undetected over the entire country,” and harshly criticized Trump for not doing enough to counter the attack.
“Our national security is extraordinarily vulnerable,” Romney said on SiriusXM’s “The Big Picture with Olivier Knox.” “In this setting, not to have the White House aggressively speaking out and protesting and taking punitive action is really, really quite extraordinary.”
Hackers believed to be part of a nation state have had access to federal networks since March after exploiting a vulnerability in updates to IT group SolarWinds’s Orion software. The hack has compromised the Treasury, State and Homeland Security departments and branches of the Pentagon, though it is expected to get worse. SolarWinds counts many more federal agencies as customers, along with the majority of U.S. Fortune 500 companies.
On Thursday, Politico reported that the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, was also compromised, further raising the stakes.
The dark mornings and low temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere may lead one to think that winter is well on its way. However, the astronomical start of the chilly season will not be until December 21, 2020. Called the winter solstice, it is the point in time when the Northern Hemisphere is farthest away from the sun, resulting in less sunlight to the region this year. 2020’s longest night will coincide with two exciting celestial events — the peak of the Ursids meteor shower and a “great conjunction” of the solar system’s two largest planets, Jupiter and Saturn.
A conjunction occurs when two planets appear close to each other in the sky because they line up with Earth in their respective orbits around the Sun. While observing the celestial bodies alongside each other is always exciting, Jupiter and Saturn’s alignment is even more so since it occurs once about every 20 years.
Cold Nights! Cold Snow! Cold War! What will 2021 bring? Whatever it is, our community will be here keeping each other informed and surrounded by loving, caring like-minds! Stay warm!!!!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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I’ve been considering searching for old episodes of Mr. Rogers that the girls and I used to watch back in the appropriate age range day just because I always remembered feeling so good just knowing some one like him was around. I used to even sneak watches at him when I was a teenager during the Nixon Years. He was fairly new to PBS but wow, it was so nice to see a kind and gentle man. Anyway, we now have TikTok and Nick Cho who is @yourKoreanDad. I’m going to start out with this before we have to take another trip on the Trump Crazy Train because every one needs a good daily dose of a kind and gentle man,
Also, please enjoy these selections of Korean art!
And, have a lot of love and fun with your Korean dad! We all need something after over four years of Trumpist Terrorism!
Meet Nick Cho, the Korean dad behind the most wholesome TikTok account there is pic.twitter.com/XXDaXDWGUH
Heading into this season, Tom Brady signed a two-year, $50 million contract with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It was a deal that was signed about a week after the coronavirus pandemic forced sports to essentially shut down in the country.
And those ensuing months would prove to be a challenging time for the U.S. as nearly 300,000 people have died along with millions of COVID-19 cases and jobs lost. To help counteract the economic impact, congress passed the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) to assist businesses during the crisis.
Well, Brady’s own company, TB12, was among the businesses to receive a PPP loan — a loan of $960,000 — but you probably won’t be surprised to see that the Bucs quarterback hasn’t exactly struggled financially.
According to a report from TMZ, Brady recently purchased a multi-million-dollar, custom boat that was delivered to him in St. Petersburg, Fla., on Thursday. The 40-foot boat was named “Viva a Vida” after Gisele’s environmental initiative.
Ship-jangsaeng the Twelve “Ten Symbols of Longevity”
I’m not sure why he felt the need for the government to subsidize his business while he’s getting paid like that but you know, that’s just what deplorables do these days.
Then, there are these deplorables who showed up Michigan’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s house late Saturday while she and her son were finishing up their Holiday Decorations. What was the purpose of this neighborhood visit? Well, in typical deplorable style it included death threats and the usual horrible taunts plus guns. Lots of gun toting and lots of rage by the usual set of deplorable white men.
Jocelyn Benson just released a statement: “As my four year old son and I were finishing up decorating the house for Christmas on Saturday night … dozens of armed individuals stood outside my home shouting obscenities and chanting into bullhorns in the dark of night.” pic.twitter.com/LqwHNBa72U
About 20-30 protesters, some open-carrying guns, gathered outside Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s home Saturday night to challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s win in Michigan, police said.
Officers responded to a public disturbance around 9:50 p.m., Dec. 5 outside of Benson’s Detroit residence, said the Michigan State Police. Some of the protesters carried weapons, police said, and the crowd dispersed once officers arrived. No protesters were arrested, police said. Detroit police were called to the scene, as well.
Protesters posted two livestream videos of the rally, which showed people chanting for election audits and to “Stop the steal.” At least one individual shouted “you’re murderers” in the videos, according to a joint statement by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy.
The rally was a threat against not only Benson and her family, but also Michigan voters, Benson said in a statement.
“The demands made outside my home were unambiguous, loud and threatening,” she said in the release. “They targeted me in my role as Michigan’s Chief Election Officer. But the threats of those gathered weren’t actually aimed at me – or any other elected officials in this state. They were aimed at the voters.”
She noted in the release that she and her 4-year-old son were decorating the house for Christmas when the protesters arrived.
The big picture: The Trump talk could create a split-screen moment: the outgoing president addressing a roaring crowd in an airport hangar while the incoming leader is sworn in before a socially distanced audience outside the Capitol, as NBC News first reported.
Immediately announcing he is running for re-election in 2024 would set up four years of Trump playing Biden’s critic-in-chief.
The visual also would embody the vast difference in the two leaders’ approaches to the pandemic.
And flying off from the South Lawn before landing in Florida would let Trump escape protests, the normal pleasantries of welcoming the incoming president to the White House — and sitting there while Biden takes the oath of office.
Well, look who is hospitalized with the Corona Virus?
The 76-year-old former New York mayor was admitted to Georgetown University Hospital on Sunday. Giuliani, who has frequently appeared without a mask in recent weeks, may have spread the virus among public officials. https://t.co/uQfRck4Egp
Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney and the face of his longshot legal challenges to overturn the presidential election results, has been hospitalized after testing positive for Covid-19.
The 76-year-old former New York mayor was admitted to Georgetown University Hospital on Sunday, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to CNN. Giuliani appeared to confirm his positive diagnosis, hours after it was announced on Twitter by Trump, by tweeting that he’s “getting great care and feeling good.”
There have been no additional details provided about his condition, and it is unclear when Giuliani received a positive test for Covid-19. He and his spokeswoman have not responded to CNN’s requests for comment.
This story comes from Stephanie Ruhle whose entire family has tested positive.
Stephanie Ruhle: My family's Covid diagnosis shows how our broken, confusing system exploits privilege https://t.co/jHWrEffXB7
One of the people who did take my call seriously, the woman who cuts my hair, canceled her Thanksgiving, took her kids out of school, stopped going to work and made no money for nearly two weeks. Her test, which she spent three hours waiting to get, came back eight days later. It was negative. But how many people can put their lives, livelihoods and jobs on hold just to do the right thing?
Hourly wage workers are going to work sick because they can’t afford not to work. Many of their employers are ignoring the symptoms, because they are trying to keep business alive.
Testing remains a challenge — and there are no consequences for people who don’t self-isolate while they wait several days just to get results, especially if they have no or minimal symptoms.
And then there are people who may know they are spreading the coronavirus and simply don’t care. Any of these scenarios is possible, because there is no comprehensive national containment plan.
I think it’s pretty obvious to most of us by now that Trump and his Trumpists don’t give a damn about any one but themselves.
Oh, and there’s rumors that Bill Barr is bailing early. Good Riddance to the lot of them! I would like to live in a world where never have to hear a word about any of them again unless it has to do with a pending jail term.
Take care this week! Be safe! We care and love you here our beloved community! We just got to hang in here for a few more months and then ride the change!
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Today’s Caturday illustrations are by Japanese artist Tetsuo Takahara.
We are getting our first Nor’easter of the season today and tomorrow. I don’t know how much snow we will get yet, but it’s already stormy out there.
[*UPDATE*] For those in New England, a Nor'easter will be tracking just off the coast today through early tomorrow bringing heavy rain and snow, as well as gusty winds. pic.twitter.com/H9Kpvs8gEE
BOSTON — A nasty Nor’easter has taken aim at Southern New England Saturday, with snow totals again upped to more than a foot in parts of the state. What started as a rainy day will turn into snow, leading to messy conditions across the state.
The National Weather Service has continued to raise the expected snow totals in the days leading up to the storm, with Saturday morning’s updated forecast showing parts of the state could see as much as 18 inches of accumulation. A winter storm warning is in effect from 1 p.m. Saturday until 7 a.m. Sunday.
Most of the state should see the first flakes fall by early-to-mid afternoon, though the northwest corner of the state could see snow as early as 10 a.m. Worcester is expected to be hit hardest, with a foot to a foot and a half of snow expected.\
The combination of the wet, heavy snow with high winds could lead to downed trees, power lines and widespread power outages. While the Cape and islands aren’t expected to see too much snow accumulation, they’ll be hit the hardest by the winds, which could top out at 65 mph in Provincetown. Keep electronic devices charged in case of a power outage.
A rapidly intensifying nor’easter will bring heavy rain and snow from the Mid-Atlantic through New England this weekend, triggering winter weather alerts in several Northeastern states….
“As the system rapidly intensifies, it will also bring windy conditions, especially along the coast from the mid-Atlantic through Maine,” said CNN meteorologist Taylor Ward. “Expect winds to gust 30 to 40 mph Saturday, with some gusts perhaps even topping 50 mph in areas like Cape Cod.”
Gale warnings are in effect along the coast from the Carolinas to Maine. A reduction in visibility, along with strong winds, are expected to cause hazardous seas, which could capsize or damage vessels.
This storm could intensify fast enough to become a “bomb cyclone,” a phenomenon characterized by a pressure drop of at least 24 millibars within 24 hours and increased precipitation and winds.
The heaviest rain will fall along the Eastern Seaboard, particularly from Richmond, Virginia, to Boston, where rainfall totals of 2 to 4 inches are expected.
The heaviest snow will likely fall between Worcester, Massachusetts and Caribou, Maine, where 8 to 12 inches is forecast. Over one foot of snow is possible for isolated locations, especially in Maine.
So if you’re in the path of the storm, stay inside, get cozy and comfortable with a good book or other favorite indoor activity.
If you’re getting the feeling I’m avoiding the political news, you’re absolutely right. But I’ll force myself. Here are some of today’s top stories.
A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to fully restore an Obama-era program designed to shield young, undocumented immigrants from deportation, dealing what could be a final blow to President Trump’s long-fought effort to end the protections.
The program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, was created by President Barack Obama in 2012. Over the years, it has protected more than 800,000 individuals, known as “dreamers,” who met a series of strict requirements for eligibility.
But those protections have been under legal and political siege from Republicans for years, leaving the immigrants who were enrolled in DACA uncertain whether the threat of deportation from the United States could quickly return with a single court order or presidential memorandum.
Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis of the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn directed the administration on Friday to allow newly eligible immigrants to file new applications for protection under the program, reversing a memorandum issued in the summer by Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of Homeland Security, which restricted the program to people who were already enrolled. As many as 300,000 new applicants could now be eligible, according to the lawyers who pushed for the reinstatement.
The memo from the Department of Homeland Security also limited benefits under the program, including permits to work, to one year, but the judge ordered the government to restore them to a full two years. Judge Garaufis, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, also said the government must find a way to contact all immigrants who are eligible for the program to inform them of the change.
The judge said the government must announce the changes to the program on its website by Monday.
President Donald Trump and his legal allies earned a platinum sombrero Friday, striking out five times in a matter of hours in states pivotal to the president’s push to overturn the election results — and losing a sixth in Minnesota for good measure.
It was another harsh milestone in a monthlong run of legal futility, accompanied by sharp rebukes from county, state and federal judges who continue to express shock at the Trump team’s effort to simply scrap the results of an election he lost. Several of the most devastating opinions, both Friday and in recent weeks, have come from conservative judges and, in some federal cases, Trump appointees.
The losses included a rejection in Wisconsin from the state Supreme Court, where the majority was gobsmacked at the effort by a conservative group to invalidate the entire election without any compelling evidence of voter fraud or misconduct.
“The relief being sought by the petitioners is the most dramatic invocation of judicial power I have ever seen,” said Brian Hagedorn, a conservative elected justice, in a concurring opinion. “Judicial acquiescence to such entreaties built on so flimsy a foundation would do indelible damage to every future election. Once the door is opened to judicial invalidation of presidential election results, it will be awfully hard to close that door again. This is a dangerous path we are being asked to tread.”
An Arizona county judge, similarly, tossed a suit brought by state GOP chair Kelli Ward. “The court finds no misconduct, no fraud and no effect on the outcome of the election.” Ward has vowed to appeal that ruling.\A Nevada judge issued a point-by-point rejection of every claim lodged by the Trump team, emphasizing that the facts they presented were sparse and unpersuasive. Carson City District Judge James Russell’s opinion repeatedly emphasized their case would not have succeeded “under any standard of proof.” [….]
In one of the most prominent cases — a suit in Georgia brought by controversial lawyers Sidney Powell and Lin Wood — a federal appeals court dismissed an appeal seeking to expand a restraining order a district court judge issued Sunday barring any alterations to voting machines in three Georgia counties.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the appeal without even hearing oral arguments from the litigants.
Read more at Politico.
Trump is headed to Georgia today for a rally supposedly to support incumbent Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, but he’s more likely to use the event to whine about h.is election loss. The New York Times: A Gathering Political Storm Hits Georgia, With Trump on the Way.
ATLANTA — Some of the biggest names in national politics jumped into the fiercely contested runoffs for two Georgia Senate seats on Friday, even as a second recount showed that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had maintained his lead in the state and Republicans braced for a visit by President Trump, who has railed against his loss there with baseless claims of fraud.
With Mr. Trump set to campaign for the two Republican incumbents, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, on Saturday, Vice President Mike Pence and former President Barack Obama held dueling events to underscore the vital stakes in the special elections: If both Republicans are defeated, control of the Senate will shift to Democrats just as Mr. Biden moves into the Oval Office.
Mr. Obama appeared virtually at a turn-out-the-vote event for Jon Ossoff, the Democrat facing Mr. Perdue, and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, Ms. Loeffler’s opponent, and spoke of his frustration in seeing his initiatives blocked by the Republican-controlled Senate when he was in office. “If the Senate is controlled by Republicans who are interested in obstruction and gridlock, rather than progress and helping people, they can block just about anything,” Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Pence — with Mr. Perdue and Ms. Loeffler by his side — attended a Covid-19 briefing at the Atlanta headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and said later at a rally for the Republican candidates that “we’re going to save the Senate, and then we’re going to save America.”
Yeah, right.
The Senate races are playing out at a hyperpartisan moment in American politics that has led to a civil war among Georgia Republicans divided over whether to support Mr. Trump as he persists with false assertions that the election was stolen from him. In Georgia and elsewhere, the president’s lawyers remain engaged in a failing, last-minute effort to throw the election to Mr. Trump.
Even as he tweeted this week that he wanted “a big David and Kelly WIN,” Mr. Trump called Brian Kemp, the state’s Republican governor, “hapless” for failing to work to overturn the election results, while also criticizing Georgia’s top election official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. His sustained assault on Georgia’s voting system prompted an extraordinary rebuke this week from another high-ranking elections official, who warned of violent threats against poll workers and publicly pleaded with the president to cool down his conspiratorial rhetoric.
Meanwhile the coronavirus pandemic is surging everywhere. Here in Massachusetts, the numbers of new cases have climbed to 5,000 or more every day. Deaths are fewer than in the spring, but people are still dying on a daily basis.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, public-health experts have warned of one particular nightmare. It is possible, they said, for the number of coronavirus patients to exceed the capacity of hospitals in a state or city to take care of them. Faced with a surge of severely ill people, doctors and nurses will have to put beds in hallways, spend less time with patients, and become more strict about whom they admit into the hospital at all. The quality of care will fall; Americans who need hospital beds for any other reason—a heart attack, a broken leg—will struggle to find space. Many people will unnecessarily suffer and die….
Yet that worst-case scenario never came to pass at a national level. At the springtime peak, even as northeastern hospitals faced a deluge, 60,000 people were hospitalized nationwide. When the Sun Belt frothed with cases this summer, hospitalizations again reached the 60,000 mark before they started to fall.
A month ago, in early November, hospitalizations passed 60,000—and kept climbing, quickly. On Wednesday, the country tore past a nauseating virus record. For the first time since the pandemic began, more than 100,000 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in the United States, nearly double the record highs seen during the spring and summer surges.
The pandemic nightmare scenario—the buckling of hospital and health-care systems nationwide—has arrived. Several lines of evidence are now sending us the same message: Hospitals are becoming overwhelmed, causing them to restrict whom they admit and leading more Americans to needlessly die.
The current rise in hospitalizations began in late September, and for weeks now hospitals have faced unprecedented demand for medical care. The number of hospitalized patients has increased nearly every day: Since November 1, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 has doubled; since October 1, it has tripled.
HOUSTON — The United States is winding up a particularly devastating week, one of the very worst since the coronavirus pandemic began nine months ago.
On Friday, a national single-day record was set, with more than 226,000 new cases. It was one of many data points that illustrated the depth and spread of a virus that has killed more than 278,000 people in this country, more than the entire population of Lubbock, Texas, or Modesto, Calif., or Jersey City, N.J.
“It’s just an astonishing number,” said Caitlin Rivers, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “We’re in the middle of this really severe wave and I think as we go through the day to day of this pandemic, it can be easy to lose sight of how massive and deep the tragedy is.”
In California, where daily case reports have tripled in the last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a new round of regional stay-at-home orders to address a mounting crisis over intensive-care beds. Some counties in the Bay Area said they were enacting tough new restrictions this weekend, before the state rules come into effect. And in South Florida, which is in the early stages of a new surge, physicians and politicians alike worried that there might not be enough resources to treat the sick.
Head over to the NYT for the rest. It’s worth a read.
That’s it for me today. I’m going to hunker down with a good book while I ride out the storm. Take care, Sky Dancers! I hope you’ll stop by today if you have the time and inclination. I’ll be checking in.
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We have 46 more days of the Trumpist Regime. Get ready for the Bronco Chases.
I’ve been on pardon watch especially since we’ve learned there’s been a bribery for pardons investigation. Watching Trump’s first batch of corrupt crony pardon recipients while they suggesting we become a dictatorship with specific suggestions has been pretty appalling too! It’s going to be fun watching Club Pardoneer grow its membership! I’m personally watching my Pardoneer Bingo card for anything with the last name of Trump.
Trump campaign attorney Joe DiGenova said that Chris Krebs, the election security official whom Trump fired by tweet last month after he defended the integrity of the election, should be “drawn and quartered” and “taken out at dawn and shot.” Stalin couldn’t have said it better himself when talking about his perceived enemies in the Soviet bureaucracy.
Former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell—who was dismissed last month after pushing conspiracy theories (including that the long-deceased Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez intervened to help Joe Biden) that were recognized as deranged even by the conspiracy-mongerers surrounding Trump—retweeted a call to invoke the Insurrection Act, suspend the meeting of the Electoral College, and set up military tribunals to deal with Trump’s enemies.
The following day, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, coming off a recent presidential pardon from Trump, urged his erstwhile boss to declare martial law, suspend the Constitution, and order new presidential elections under the supervision of the military.
And Trump himself—America’s isolated, mad, lonely king—seems increasingly besotted by a version of his story in which he rides in as the knight in shining armor to save America from a “rigged” electoral disaster. On Wednesday, Trump posted on Facebook a bizarre 46-minute video in which he regurgitated a myriad of conspiracy theories. He said it may be the “most important” speech he has ever given. Critics were less impressed. The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker interpreted the rambling speech as a call to arms and wrote that it called into question the peaceful transfer of power.
Roughly 20 top aides and associates are on tap for a potential pardon, though the list is evolving, according to one of the people. The list includes Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, who run the family’s namesake business, and Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, a husband-and-wife duo who are both senior aides at the White House. All four were involved in Trump’s reelection campaign.
Trump has even mused on Twitter that he has “the absolute right to PARDON” myself — a legally contested (but untested) claim.
Still, Trump is hesitant to pardon any of them, particularly Giuliani, because it may appear that members of his inner circle are criminals, said one of the three people, who spoke to Trump this week. The Giuliani pardon has been discussed more seriously, the person added.
A Republican who speaks to Trump and supports his potential 2024 bid predicted the pardons would not hurt the president. “It’s a big deal to Beltway types but not regular Americans,” the person said.
The pardons would be designed to prevent Trump’s allies from being ensnared in any more federal investigations.
Trump Jr. had been investigated for contacts that he had during the 2016 with Russians offering damaging information on his father’s 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton. Later, congressional investigators told the Justice Department that Trump Jr. may have lied to them during their examination of Russia’s 2016 election interference.
Kushner similarly received scrutiny for providing inaccurate information to federal authorities about his contacts with foreigners when he applied for his security clearance.
Neither was charged.
But the clemency would not extend to any state charges, congressional investigations or lawsuits — of which there are plenty.
The New York attorney general and the Manhattan district attorney, for example, have been investigating the Trump Organization for possible financial fraud. D.C. authorities also sued the Trump Organization and Trump’s inaugural committee, alleging the committee misused funds and funneled money back to Trump’s company. Ivanka Trump gave a deposition in that suit earlier this week.
Remember in February when Attorney General Bill Barr trashed his department’s reputation to override the recommended prison term for Roger Stone and push for a much shorter sentence? Because, apparently, Stone has forgotten—and has gone on the attack against the AG. Trumpworld has reacted with fury to Barr’s statement Tuesday that there’s no evidence of voter fraud that could change the outcome of the 2020 election, and Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden. Stone, one of Trump’s longest standing allies, is particularly angry, even though Barr did him a huge favor earlier this year. In a video posted to Parler, Stone said he’s not surprised that Barr has “suddenly determined” there is no voter fraud, adding: “Bill Barr’s job is to block for the ‘deep state.’” Stone, who had his prison sentence commuted by Trump in July, also complained of a “two-tiered justice system.”
Former Trump adviser Roger Stone claimed without evidence on Wednesday that North Korea had interfered in the U.S. presidential election. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump continued to assert that fraudulent activity was prevalent during the November election.
Stone, who has previously spoken of his respect for some members of the QAnon conspiracy theory movement, was sentenced to 40 months in prison for lying to investigators in connection with the Mueller probe into Russian election meddling during Trump’s 2016 campaign. Trump commuted Stone’s sentence in July.
Stone never fails to disappoint those riding the Trump Crazy Train.
Talk Of 'Preemptive' Pardons By Trump Raises Questions: What Can He Do? https://t.co/w505scDrP0
A presidential preemptive pardon sounds unusual, but it has been done before, most famously when President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, who resigned because of the Watergate scandal in 1973 but had not been charged with any crimes.
“A preemptive pardon is a presidential pardon granted before any formal legal process has begun,” American University professor Jeffrey Crouch tells NPR.
In an email, Crouch, author of The Presidential Pardon Power, says that “someone must have committed a federal offense, but as soon as that happens, the president can grant them clemency. He does not need to wait until the alleged offender is charged, stands trial, and so on.”
Crouch continues: “These pardons are not common, but they do happen occasionally.”
Accordingly, Trump could “pardon his children, his aides, his supporters, and so on for federal offenses and be on firm legal ground,” Crouch says. “The really unclear scenario would be if he attempted to pardon himself.”
Trump has asserted he has the power to pardon himself but has said he didn’t need to use it because he hasn’t done anything wrong. Not only might his denial about any lawbreaking be complicated by events following his departure from office, the merits of a self-pardon are controversial and have never been tested in court.
And although the potential legal problems facing Trump are thought to be well understood, at least in principle, it’s not clear what if any criminal offenses with which Trump’s children might be charged.
Breaking NYT: DOJ investigated as recently as this summer the roles of Elliott Broidy, a top fundraiser for Trump, and Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Jared Kushner, in a suspected scheme to offer a bribe in exchange for clemency for a tax crimes convict.https://t.co/WPnbexW2t7
The Justice Department investigated as recently as this summer the roles of a top fund-raiser for President Trump and a lawyer for his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in a suspected scheme to offer a bribe in exchange for clemency for a tax crimes convict, according to two people familiar with the inquiry.
A federal judge in Washington unsealed heavily redacted court documents on Tuesday that disclosed the existence of the investigation into possible unregistered lobbying and bribery. The people said it concerned efforts by the lawyer for Mr. Kushner, Abbe Lowell, and the fund-raiser, Elliott Broidy, who pleaded guilty in October to a charge related to a different scheme to lobby the Trump administration.
A billionaire real estate developer from the San Francisco area, Sanford Diller, enlisted their help in securing clemency for a Berkeley psychologist, Hugh L. Baras, who had received a 30-month prison sentence on a conviction of tax evasion and improperly claiming Social Security benefits, according to the filing and the people familiar with the case. Under the suspected scheme, Mr. Diller would make “a substantial political contribution” to an unspecified recipient in exchange for the pardon. He died in February 2018, and there is no evidence that the effort continued after his death.
As part of the effort, someone approached the White House Counsel’s Office to “ensure” that the “clemency petition reached the targeted officials,” according to the court documents. They did not say who made the contact or how the White House responded.
There’s a lot of discussion about what exactly we should do when the Trump Family Crime Syndicate and all its high crimes and misdemeanors. Here’s some things to read about prosecuting–or not–Trump and his cronies after they’re gone pecans.
This was always going to be a dilemma for Trump’s successor. After an openly self-dealing president like Trump, the nation needs to see that no American is above the law, and that there will be consequences for anyone—even a former president—who enriches himself at the nation’s expense or abuses his power.
But any prosecution of Trump, no matter how fair, will draw criticism from Trump’s supporters in an already-divided nation. Even non-partisan observers have reason to be concerned by the spectacle of the administration of a new president prosecuting the president who just left office. It’s essential for any stable democracy that elected leaders don’t use their new powers to punish their opponents after they’ve lost. No president has ever done it.
The president faces a slew of legal issues on the federal and state levels once he’s out of office on January 20. New York Attorney General Letitia James is conducting a civil investigation into the Trump Organization’s business practices. And a federal court filing from Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance suggested he was conducting an investigation into Trump and the Trump Organization on suspicion of bank and insurance fraud, The New York Times reported.
Trump was also named “Individual-1” in a filing by the Southern District of New York when his former attorney Michael Cohen was charged with making hush-money payments. And a lawsuit from two attorneys general alleged he violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause. His inaugural committee also faces a lawsuit alleging it schemed to funnel nonprofit money into the Trump family business.
The Trump aide serving as the president’s eyes and ears at the Justice Department has been banned from the building after trying to pressure staff members to give up sensitive information about election fraud and other matters that she could relay to the White House, three people familiar with the matter say.
Heidi Stirrup, an ally of top Trump advisor Stephen Miller, was quietly installed at the Justice Department as a White House liaison a few months ago. She was told within the last two weeks to vacate the building after top Justice officials learned of her efforts to collect inside information about ongoing cases and the department’s work on election fraud, the people told the Associated Press.
Stirrup is accused of approaching staffers in the department and demanding that they give her information about investigations, including election fraud matters, the people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.
The effort came as Trump continues to level baseless claims that he won the election and alleges without evidence that massive voting fraud was responsible for his defeat to President-elect Joe Biden.
Biden’s list of contenders for the job — from Sally Yates, former deputy attorney general, to Doug Jones, soon to be former senator from Alabama who was defeated in November — largely centers on former prosecutors whose history at the department could lend credibility with the public and career officials.
Others said to be in contention include Deval Patrick, former Massachusetts governor and former Justice Department civil rights chief; Jeh Johnson, the Homeland Security secretary under Obama; California Attorney General Xavier Becerra; and Lisa Monaco, a former Homeland Security adviser in the Obama White House and who previously worked at the FBI and as top national security prosecutor at Justice.
Biden, along with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, are interviewing contenders and weighing the decision. They are not expected to announce a decision until next week at the earliest, people familiar with the matter told CNN, but with a goal of doing so well before the holidays. The timing is also contingent on the nomination of a Secretary of Defense.
The job, for whomever Biden picks, will be a heavy lift. The pick will be stepping into a Justice Department damaged by the Trump administration and with low morale among career officials, many of whom have been publicly called out by President Donald Trump, Barr and other Republicans.
This is definitely going to be a long ride. I’m wondering if it will involve at least one White Bronco at some point. And, no we’re not there yet …
Have a good weekend! Take care!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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This morning, I’m grateful for my family and friends; I’m grateful for this blog and my Sky Dancer friends; I’m grateful to have a safe and comfortable place to live; and I’m grateful that the monster who currently sits in the Oval Office will soon be gone and we will once again have a normal president. I hope you all have a lovely Thanksgiving day.
Today, I'm thankful that enough Americans recognized creeping Fascism when they saw it.
Unfortunately, we still have to survive 55 more days until Trump is gone, but we can do it together! Here are some news stories to check out if you need a break today:
The Supreme Court late Wednesday night barred restrictions on religious services in New York that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had imposed to combat the coronavirus.
The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s three liberal members in dissent. The order was the first in which the court’s newest member, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, played a decisive role.
The court’s ruling was at odds with earlier ones concerning churches in California and Nevada. In those cases, decided in May and July, the court allowed the states’ governors to restrict attendance at religious services.
The Supreme Court’s membership has changed since then, with Justice Barrett succeeding Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September. The vote in the earlier cases was also 5 to 4, but in the opposite direction, with Chief Justice Roberts joining Justice Ginsburg and the other three members of what was then the court’s four-member liberal wing.
The court has decided that religion “trumps” government efforts to promote public health. Churches are now free to hold frequent super-spreader events and put lives at risk.
Foreign observers are watching with trepidation — and at times disbelief — as coronavirus cases surge across the United States, and masses of Americans are choosing to follow through with plans to visit family and friends for this week’s Thanksgiving holiday anyway.
It’s been a grueling year. Many have gone months without seeing their loved ones. Thanksgiving travel is down and many families are opting against their usual festivities. But as the pandemic drags on, with shorter days and chillier weather forcing more people indoors, the social isolation is becoming more difficult to bear.
Decisions over whether to gather have turned divisive, as experts warn that Thanksgiving includes the key ingredients — a shared, indoor meal and inter-household mixing — that could spark an even worse surge in cases in the coming weeks.
It’s a scenario that officials in other countries are trying to avert ahead of other upcoming holidays, such as Christmas and New Year’s.
“From Australia, this looks like a mindbogglingly dangerous chapter in the out-of-control American COVID-19 story,” Ian Mackay, an associate professor of virology at the University of Queensland, wrote in an email. “Sadly, for some, this will be a Thanksgiving that is remembered for all the wrong reasons.”
In a move no less appalling for it being no surprise, President Trump has pardoned Michael Flynn, his disgraced former national security adviser. Add him to the rogue’s gallery — among them Joe Arpaio, Dinesh D’Souza, Rod Blagojevich, Bernard Kerik and Roger Stone — of criminals and reprobates to whom Trump has given executive clemency, their loyalty and obsequiousness winning them an escape from full accountability for their misdeeds.
But Flynn stands apart from the rest, because his whole story contains so much of the Trump era in microcosm.
And in pardoning Flynn, Trump has waged what may be his final biggest act of war on our country.
Back in 2016, Flynn was given a close advisory role to the Republican candidate, mostly because he was one of the few retired flag officers who would stand behind Trump. The fact that he was a loony conspiracy theorist and venomous Islamophobe (he once said Islam is “a malignant cancer”) only helped. At the time, he was also secretly working on behalf of the Turkish government.
Flynn’s 24-day tenure as national security adviser came to an end when routine government surveillance of the Russian ambassador discovered the two officials in conversation before Trump was inaugurated. When the FBI questioned Flynn about it, he lied to the agents about the substance of their conversations, as well as to others in the Trump White House.
Flynn pleaded guilty to his crime, and that could have been the end of it. But then — and this is where his story becomes even more a Trump story — he was adopted by the far right as a martyr, a victim of the so-called deep state, a hero whose only crime was service to Donald Trump.
Attorney General William P. Barr injected himself into the case this past May, seeking to undo Flynn’s guilty plea. To say it’s unusual for the nation’s chief prosecutor to come to the side of someone who has already pleaded guilty would be an understatement. Along with the commutation given to Stone, it was as vivid an illustration of the corruption of the Justice Department as one could imagine.
But before Flynn’s case could be resolved by the court, Trump stepped in with a pardon. Not because Flynn was innocent. Not because he received some draconian sentence (he hadn’t been sentenced yet) and justice demanded it. But simply because he’s one of Trump’s guys, one of a long list of criminals and thugs with whom this president has surrounded himself.
As Andrew McCabe pointed out on CNN yesterday, the entire Russia investigation might not have happened if Flynn had not lied to the FBI. That led to an FBI investigation that Trump tried to get FBI director James Comey to end. Comey’s refusal led Trump to fire him, leading to the appointment of Robert Mueller as special prosecutor. Now Flynn, who twice pled guilty, has been pardoned.
Here’s the first and most important thing to understand about the crime for which President Trump just pardoned former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn: Flynn did not lie to protect himself. He lied to protect Donald Trump.
At the end of December 2016, Flynn had a series of conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. A month later, on January 24, 2017, Flynn was asked about those conversations by the FBI agent Peter Strzok.
In the first set of conversations, Flynn urged Kislyak to oppose a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity. The second set occurred a week later, while Flynn was on holiday in the Dominican Republic. There, Flynn sought to convince Kislyak to persuade the Russian government not to retaliate against the United States, over a round of sanctions punishing Russia for intervening in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump.
From Flynn’s own narrow personal point of view, there was no reason to lie about any of these conversations. Yes, he was pushing the limits a little bit, doing diplomacy before the new administration took office. A more elegant diplomat would have found a way to honor the rule that there’s only one administration at a time, while also communicating what he wanted the Russians to know about the differing intentions of the incoming administration. But such limit-pushing has surely happened often before in the history of American foreign policy. All Flynn had to say to avoid legal jeopardy was, “Yes, I spoke to Ambassador Kislyak. Possibly I was premature. My bad.”
Read the rest at The Atlantic. Trump’s pardon of Flynn is corrupt and he should be prosecuted for it. I don’t know who the next attorney general will be, but Biden says he won’t interfere with the Department of Justice. We can only hope that Trump will suffer some consequences for what he has done to our country.
President Donald Trump called into a bizarre “hearing” on voter fraud organized by Rudy Giuliani and Pennsylvania Republicans on Wednesday—part of a doomed attempt to overturn an election result that has been certified by the state.
After canceling an in-person appearance, Trump called campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis’ phone, which was held up to a microphone as people in the Gettysburg hotel room cheered.
“We have to turn the election over because there’s no doubt we have all the evidence, we have all the affidavits, we just need some judge to listen to it properly,” Trump said, after weeks of not producing any evidence of mass fraud in court. “Evidence is pouring in now as we speak.” [….]
In his rambling phone call from the Oval Office, Trump repeated his vague claims about the entire election being rigged, about winning every swing state, and about Republican poll watchers in Pennsylvania being “treated like dogs.” (In fact, COVID-19 restrictions meant all observers couldn’t be nearer than 25 feet to counters—a decision the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld.)
“This election was lost by the Democrats, they cheated, it was a fraudulent election, they flooded the market, they flooded everybody with ballots and I just want to thank everybody for being there,” Trump said. “This is a very important moment in the history of our country.”
Giuliani said he wanted a special prosecutor to probe those who ran the election.
“I think you have more than enough to say that this election, the numbers don’t add up,” he said. “It’s easy to figure out what the right numbers are by excluding the illegal votes. Out of the honest votes, the winner of the election changes.”
A lawyer for President Donald Trump’s campaign on Wednesday revealed that the campaign could be relying on pulling off a complicated — and possibly unprecedented — legal and legislative trick shot to undo President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania and possibly in other states.
That far-fetched strategy would require a federal court to invalidate Pennsylvania’s certification of its election results, and then get the state’s General Assembly to agree to send Trump electors to the Electoral College.
The idea is buried in a footnote in a three-page letter that campaign attorney Marc Scaringi wrote to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.
The Trump campaign is asking that appeals court to hear its bid to block the effect of Tuesday’s certification of a win for Biden in Pennsylvania.
A lawyer who was dropped from President Donald Trump’s legal team filed typo-strewn lawsuits in Michigan and Georgia alleging massive election fraud.
Sidney Powell, who has pushed some of the most extreme conspiracy theories around the election of Joe Biden, filed the lawsuits late Wednesday, according to a post on Twitter. The two cases have similar themes of problems linked to voting machines, mail-in ballots and deceased Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.
Powell was kicked off Trump’s legal team this week after her claims about a vast Democratic conspiracy against the president. Days earlier she had appeared at a press conference alongside Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, where she alleged a plot to swing the election to Biden that involved voting-machine tampering and Venezuela.
The pre-Thanksgiving lawsuits, which target elected officials in both states, also include other claims about forged ballots and observers being unable to watch the vote count.
Despite numerous allegations of voter fraud and irregularities from Trump and his supporters, no evidence has emerged of widespread problems that would have changed the results of the election, which Biden won with 306 electoral votes.
Hang in there Sky Dancers. Just 55 more days to go. Have a safe and healthy Thanksgiving Day.
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Good Day Sky Dancers!
No wonder Santa Trump is pulling Pardons out of his big old sack of shit. This is from Business Insider: This is an exclusive from Business Insider by journalists Tom LoBianco and Dave Levinthal .
Trump’s future may actually have some more possibilities for fleecing as long as he can continue to get suckers to contribute to his ‘campaign’ efforts. 
CISA was the agency that 
This hack is on such a scale that many are suggesting it’s an act of war
So, if this is true, I’ve got to find a new new for the Deplorable-in Chief. Alyana Treena of Axios reports this: 
Of course, he’s getting great care!
So, I’m still scheduled to teach in a classroom with about 35 people with no windows on Saturday because that’s what some of the most vocal students wanted to do. My grad assistant Rose will be there too. This
Sorry for the local news, but this is quite a shock. It’s very early for us to be getting a winter storm. This storm is actually impacting the entire East coast from the Carolinas to Maine. CNN: 
If you’re getting the feeling I’m avoiding the political news, you’re absolutely right. But I’ll force myself. Here are some of today’s top stories.
And then there were the baseless claims of election fraud. 
In one of the most prominent cases — a suit in Georgia brought by controversial lawyers Sidney Powell and Lin Wood — a federal appeals court dismissed an appeal seeking to expand a restraining order a district court judge issued Sunday barring any alterations to voting machines in three Georgia counties.
The Senate races are playing out at a hyperpartisan moment in American politics that has led to a civil war among Georgia Republicans divided over whether to support Mr. Trump as he persists with false assertions that the election was stolen from him. In Georgia and elsewhere, the president’s lawyers remain engaged in a failing, last-minute effort to throw the election to Mr. Trump.
The pandemic nightmare scenario—the buckling of hospital and health-care systems nationwide—has arrived. Several lines of evidence are now sending us the same message: Hospitals are becoming overwhelmed, causing them to restrict whom they admit and leading more Americans to needlessly die.
Good Day Sky Dancers! 
Politico reports that 20 cronies (aides and associates) are on Trump’s buddy list to become a Merry Pardoneer! But wait! I thought no one did anything wrong!
Roger Stone was not to be outdone by others’ batshittery demonstrating the chutzpah required to be one of the original Pardoneers! “
There’s a lot of discussion about what exactly we should do when the Trump Family Crime Syndicate and all its high crimes and misdemeanors. Here’s some things to read about prosecuting–or not–Trump and his cronies after they’re gone pecans.
It’s possible that New York state may have the first go at him. 
I think this can be termed digging your own grave. Biden has basically said he’d let the Justice Department be the Justice Department and stay out of it. The DOJ appointment–including the AG–position are forthcoming. 
The Supreme Court’s membership has changed since then, with Justice Barrett succeeding Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 
It’s a scenario that officials in other countries are trying to avert ahead of other upcoming holidays, such as Christmas and New Year’s.
Flynn’s 24-day tenure as national security adviser came to an end when routine government surveillance of the Russian ambassador discovered the two officials in conversation before Trump was inaugurated. When the FBI questioned Flynn about it, he lied to the agents about the substance of their conversations, as well as to others in the Trump White House.
At the end of December 2016, Flynn had a series of conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. A month later, on January 24, 2017, Flynn was asked about 
“We have to turn the election over because there’s no doubt we have all the evidence, we have all the affidavits, we just need some judge to listen to it properly,” Trump said, after weeks of not producing any evidence of mass fraud in court. “Evidence is pouring in now as we speak.” [….]
A lawyer for President Donald Trump’s campaign on Wednesday revealed that the campaign could be relying on pulling off a complicated — and possibly unprecedented — legal and legislative trick shot to undo President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania and possibly in other states.
Powell was kicked off Trump’s legal team this week after her claims about a vast Democratic conspiracy against the president. Days earlier she had appeared at a press conference alongside Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, where she alleged a plot to swing the election to Biden that involved voting-machine tampering and Venezuela.
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