Would you vote for Biden if it's never proven to be true?
Not proven to be false. Just never proven to be true.
I'm not voting for Biden either way
What would it take to get you to vote for Biden?
Pick Jared Polis as VP? The Democrats this cycle, Biden included, haven't really focused on issues that I look to them for - less militarism, criminal justice reform, drug policy. There's been much more of a focus on stuff I disagree with - government run health care to varying degrees, student loan forgiveness, etc. A lot of stuff that I think is bad economic policy.
Thx for thoughtful answer.
What would it take to get you to vote for Trump?
I can't think of anything that could get me to vote for Trump
Seems like voting voting Biden is the logical option for you then. Voting D obviously gets the country closer to where you want it to be. It may not be the perfect option, but it's a compromise. And that's what our government is built on.
What would it take for you not to 'sit this one out'?
I don't understand why any citizen would do that.
I only picked sitting out because there was no Libertarian option. If Amash runs and gets the nomination, easy one for me. If it's Jim Gray, I'd vote for him but not be terribly passionate. The rest of the field is no bueno and I'm back to sitting out.
Biden doesn't bring anything to the table for me, like I said. My support would be about Polis, which is not a thing that's going to happen. I could have similarly explained all the ways Republicans have drifted away from the things I relied on them for, but I'm pretty sure no one around here is interested in that.
🙄
The US government is a two-party system. Our checks and balances lie in the three branches of government. We are not a multi-party system. Voting libertarian represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how our government functions.
Seriously, this kind of shortsightedness has cost 2 supreme court justice seats, and countless federal judge appointments. These are lifetime appointments that will take a generation to fix. Because people with your Veruca Salt mentality would rather cut their nose off to spite their face. Lifetime appointments that will side in favor of more militarism, no criminal justice reform, no drug policy reform. You get nothing. Fundamental lack of understanding of how our government functions. Enjoy your shit sandwich.
Biden or Trump...honesty, whats the difference?.. Yeah I'm in that kinda mood today! hahaha
Will either help and fight for workers? NO...
Will either push for an improved healthcare system that covers all Americans? NO......
Will both continue bailouts for Corporations? Yes....
Will either enact policies and taxes that will help rise up and give security to the lower and middle class? NO...
Will either fight to reverse their own parties policies of the last 50 years to fix the problems caused by letting corporations dictate law through a corrupt system? NO......
Will either break up the big monopolies that have been allowed to form once again? No.....(How many times must we learn this lesson?)
So then what's the difference between the two? A big D or R next to their names? GO TEAM!!!!
One is the village idiot and the other is a plagiarizing life long politician with a clear record of not helping anyone but the donor class and his own career ... not just Biden.. Since pandemic both Hillary Clinton and Pelosi both have yelled "OPEN THE OBAMACARE EXCHANGES!
(That worse than "Let them eat cake" its more like.... "Let them buy cake" )
I know I'll get yelled at... But it's TRUMP... but But but..I know.. I hate him too....
Bottom line... A real leader is either going to fight for the people, some even willing to give their lives in that pursuit. or they're aren't and are part of the broke system. ... right now in American history I don't see anyone fighting for the people..
So yeah I'll vote Biden.. then go home and wash my hands a bunch of times to try to wash the dirty feeling away...
WE NEED A 3rd PARTY!!!!!!!
....sigh....
The US isn't set up to be a multiparty system. The checks and balances are in the 3 branches of government. There will never ever ever be a viable 3rd party option, or 3 party system of government here.
The last election cost us 2 Supreme Court seats and countless lifetime appointments to federal judges. This will now take an entire generation to undo.
Biden or Trump...honesty, whats the difference?.. Yeah I'm in that kinda mood today! hahaha
Will either help and fight for workers? NO...
Will either push for an improved healthcare system that covers all Americans? NO......
Will both continue bailouts for Corporations? Yes....
Will either enact policies and taxes that will help rise up and give security to the lower and middle class? NO...
Will either fight to reverse their own parties policies of the last 50 years to fix the problems caused by letting corporations dictate law through a corrupt system? NO......
Will either break up the big monopolies that have been allowed to form once again? No.....(How many times must we learn this lesson?)
So then what's the difference between the two? A big D or R next to their names? GO TEAM!!!!
One is the village idiot and the other is a plagiarizing life long politician with a clear record of not helping anyone but the donor class and his own career ... not just Biden.. Since pandemic both Hillary Clinton and Pelosi both have yelled "OPEN THE OBAMACARE EXCHANGES!
(That worse than "Let them eat cake" its more like.... "Let them buy cake" )
I know I'll get yelled at... But it's TRUMP... but But but..I know.. I hate him too....
Bottom line... A real leader is either going to fight for the people, some even willing to give their lives in that pursuit. or they're aren't and are part of the broke system. ... right now in American history I don't see anyone fighting for the people..
So yeah I'll vote Biden.. then go home and wash my hands a bunch of times to try to wash the dirty feeling away...
WE NEED A 3rd PARTY!!!!!!!
....sigh....
The US isn't set up to be a multiparty system. The checks and balances are in the 3 branches of government. There will never ever ever be a viable 3rd party option, or 3 party system of government here.
The last election cost us 2 Supreme Court seats and countless lifetime appointments to federal judges. This will now take an entire generation to undo.
Absolutely correct. The only solutions are winning local elections to protect states in teh short term and federal elections to create a federal 'choice' law, federal marriage law, etc. The supremacy clause is well established (for now) so hopefully there isn't a way that a state could circumvent the fed.
0
brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 43,564
Biden or Trump...honesty, whats the difference?.. Yeah I'm in that kinda mood today! hahaha
Will either help and fight for workers? NO...
Will either push for an improved healthcare system that covers all Americans? NO......
Will both continue bailouts for Corporations? Yes....
Will either enact policies and taxes that will help rise up and give security to the lower and middle class? NO...
Will either fight to reverse their own parties policies of the last 50 years to fix the problems caused by letting corporations dictate law through a corrupt system? NO......
Will either break up the big monopolies that have been allowed to form once again? No.....(How many times must we learn this lesson?)
So then what's the difference between the two? A big D or R next to their names? GO TEAM!!!!
One is the village idiot and the other is a plagiarizing life long politician with a clear record of not helping anyone but the donor class and his own career ... not just Biden.. Since pandemic both Hillary Clinton and Pelosi both have yelled "OPEN THE OBAMACARE EXCHANGES!
(That worse than "Let them eat cake" its more like.... "Let them buy cake" )
I know I'll get yelled at... But it's TRUMP... but But but..I know.. I hate him too....
Bottom line... A real leader is either going to fight for the people, some even willing to give their lives in that pursuit. or they're aren't and are part of the broke system. ... right now in American history I don't see anyone fighting for the people..
So yeah I'll vote Biden.. then go home and wash my hands a bunch of times to try to wash the dirty feeling away...
WE NEED A 3rd PARTY!!!!!!!
....sigh....
The US isn't set up to be a multiparty system. The checks and balances are in the 3 branches of government. There will never ever ever be a viable 3rd party option, or 3 party system of government here.
The last election cost us 2 Supreme Court seats and countless lifetime appointments to federal judges. This will now take an entire generation to undo.
"There will never ever ever be a viable 3rd party option..."
If there has been in the past- Millard Fillmore was elected president and was a member of the Whig party- how can we know there will "never ever" be a third party?
Biden or Trump...honesty, whats the difference?.. Yeah I'm in that kinda mood today! hahaha
Will either help and fight for workers? NO...
Will either push for an improved healthcare system that covers all Americans? NO......
Will both continue bailouts for Corporations? Yes....
Will either enact policies and taxes that will help rise up and give security to the lower and middle class? NO...
Will either fight to reverse their own parties policies of the last 50 years to fix the problems caused by letting corporations dictate law through a corrupt system? NO......
Will either break up the big monopolies that have been allowed to form once again? No.....(How many times must we learn this lesson?)
So then what's the difference between the two? A big D or R next to their names? GO TEAM!!!!
One is the village idiot and the other is a plagiarizing life long politician with a clear record of not helping anyone but the donor class and his own career ... not just Biden.. Since pandemic both Hillary Clinton and Pelosi both have yelled "OPEN THE OBAMACARE EXCHANGES!
(That worse than "Let them eat cake" its more like.... "Let them buy cake" )
I know I'll get yelled at... But it's TRUMP... but But but..I know.. I hate him too....
Bottom line... A real leader is either going to fight for the people, some even willing to give their lives in that pursuit. or they're aren't and are part of the broke system. ... right now in American history I don't see anyone fighting for the people..
So yeah I'll vote Biden.. then go home and wash my hands a bunch of times to try to wash the dirty feeling away...
WE NEED A 3rd PARTY!!!!!!!
....sigh....
The US isn't set up to be a multiparty system. The checks and balances are in the 3 branches of government. There will never ever ever be a viable 3rd party option, or 3 party system of government here.
The last election cost us 2 Supreme Court seats and countless lifetime appointments to federal judges. This will now take an entire generation to undo.
"There will never ever ever be a viable 3rd party option..."
If there has been in the past- Millard Fillmore was elected president and was a member of the Whig party- how can we know there will "never ever" be a third party?
The Whigs were one of the two major parties. There was no R party. It was D and Whig, along with Free Soil party (which received 0 EC votes). If you want to see what a 2+ party system looks like, look at the election of 1824. That led to the "corrupt bargain".
Biden or Trump...honesty, whats the difference?.. Yeah I'm in that kinda mood today! hahaha
Will either help and fight for workers? NO...
Will either push for an improved healthcare system that covers all Americans? NO......
Will both continue bailouts for Corporations? Yes....
Will either enact policies and taxes that will help rise up and give security to the lower and middle class? NO...
Will either fight to reverse their own parties policies of the last 50 years to fix the problems caused by letting corporations dictate law through a corrupt system? NO......
Will either break up the big monopolies that have been allowed to form once again? No.....(How many times must we learn this lesson?)
So then what's the difference between the two? A big D or R next to their names? GO TEAM!!!!
One is the village idiot and the other is a plagiarizing life long politician with a clear record of not helping anyone but the donor class and his own career ... not just Biden.. Since pandemic both Hillary Clinton and Pelosi both have yelled "OPEN THE OBAMACARE EXCHANGES!
(That worse than "Let them eat cake" its more like.... "Let them buy cake" )
I know I'll get yelled at... But it's TRUMP... but But but..I know.. I hate him too....
Bottom line... A real leader is either going to fight for the people, some even willing to give their lives in that pursuit. or they're aren't and are part of the broke system. ... right now in American history I don't see anyone fighting for the people..
So yeah I'll vote Biden.. then go home and wash my hands a bunch of times to try to wash the dirty feeling away...
WE NEED A 3rd PARTY!!!!!!!
....sigh....
The US isn't set up to be a multiparty system. The checks and balances are in the 3 branches of government. There will never ever ever be a viable 3rd party option, or 3 party system of government here.
The last election cost us 2 Supreme Court seats and countless lifetime appointments to federal judges. This will now take an entire generation to undo.
"There will never ever ever be a viable 3rd party option..."
If there has been in the past- Millard Fillmore was elected president and was a member of the Whig party- how can we know there will "never ever" be a third party?
The Whigs were one of the two major parties. There was no R party. It was D and Whig, along with Free Soil party (which received 0 EC votes). If you want to see what a 2+ party system looks like, look at the election of 1824. That led to the "corrupt bargain".
Yep. The two-party system stinks but the electoral college would probably render a third (or more) significant party even worse...at the presidential level, at least. Sure, seven competitive parties sounds great, but we'd never see an electoral college majority.
1995 Milwaukee 1998 Alpine, Alpine 2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston 2004 Boston, Boston 2006 Hartford, St. Paul (Petty), St. Paul (Petty) 2011 Alpine, Alpine 2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin 2024 Napa, Wrigley, Wrigley
come to canada! we have a six party system! and one of them only represents one province! nothing gets done, and that's how we like it! LOL
I don’t think they’d let many PJ fans in, as most of us are well over 45. Heck, I’m between Ed and Mike, so no way a wealthy country like Canada is letting me in. Wish I knew that when I was younger, I could have moved to maybe Ottawa, or perhaps Perth. I really like the warmer climate, but the chance to live in Metropolis Noir speaks to me
0
brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 43,564
Biden or Trump...honesty, whats the difference?.. Yeah I'm in that kinda mood today! hahaha
Will either help and fight for workers? NO...
Will either push for an improved healthcare system that covers all Americans? NO......
Will both continue bailouts for Corporations? Yes....
Will either enact policies and taxes that will help rise up and give security to the lower and middle class? NO...
Will either fight to reverse their own parties policies of the last 50 years to fix the problems caused by letting corporations dictate law through a corrupt system? NO......
Will either break up the big monopolies that have been allowed to form once again? No.....(How many times must we learn this lesson?)
So then what's the difference between the two? A big D or R next to their names? GO TEAM!!!!
One is the village idiot and the other is a plagiarizing life long politician with a clear record of not helping anyone but the donor class and his own career ... not just Biden.. Since pandemic both Hillary Clinton and Pelosi both have yelled "OPEN THE OBAMACARE EXCHANGES!
(That worse than "Let them eat cake" its more like.... "Let them buy cake" )
I know I'll get yelled at... But it's TRUMP... but But but..I know.. I hate him too....
Bottom line... A real leader is either going to fight for the people, some even willing to give their lives in that pursuit. or they're aren't and are part of the broke system. ... right now in American history I don't see anyone fighting for the people..
So yeah I'll vote Biden.. then go home and wash my hands a bunch of times to try to wash the dirty feeling away...
WE NEED A 3rd PARTY!!!!!!!
....sigh....
The US isn't set up to be a multiparty system. The checks and balances are in the 3 branches of government. There will never ever ever be a viable 3rd party option, or 3 party system of government here.
The last election cost us 2 Supreme Court seats and countless lifetime appointments to federal judges. This will now take an entire generation to undo.
"There will never ever ever be a viable 3rd party option..."
If there has been in the past- Millard Fillmore was elected president and was a member of the Whig party- how can we know there will "never ever" be a third party?
The Whigs were one of the two major parties. There was no R party. It was D and Whig, along with Free Soil party (which received 0 EC votes). If you want to see what a 2+ party system looks like, look at the election of 1824. That led to the "corrupt bargain".
Well OK, then. I'm a little more educated today, thanks!
come to canada! we have a six party system! and one of them only represents one province! nothing gets done, and that's how we like it! LOL
I don’t think they’d let many PJ fans in, as most of us are well over 45. Heck, I’m between Ed and Mike, so no way a wealthy country like Canada is letting me in. Wish I knew that when I was younger, I could have moved to maybe Ottawa, or perhaps Perth. I really like the warmer climate, but the chance to live in Metropolis Noir speaks to me
Winnipeg is really nice no time of year! and it's flat AF! you can see saskatchewan from yer house!
Hugh Freaking Dillon is currently out of the office, returning sometime in the fall
come to canada! we have a six party system! and one of them only represents one province! nothing gets done, and that's how we like it! LOL
I don’t think they’d let many PJ fans in, as most of us are well over 45. Heck, I’m between Ed and Mike, so no way a wealthy country like Canada is letting me in. Wish I knew that when I was younger, I could have moved to maybe Ottawa, or perhaps Perth. I really like the warmer climate, but the chance to live in Metropolis Noir speaks to me
I looked into it in 2016 when I was (slightly) short of 45. It would have been really difficult for someone my age with education but no particularly special skills (my wife, a social worker would have maybe had a slightly better shot). I honestly don't know if we'd have done it if moving to Toronto was roughly as easy as moving to Nashville but it was disheartening to know that it wasn't really an option.
1995 Milwaukee 1998 Alpine, Alpine 2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston 2004 Boston, Boston 2006 Hartford, St. Paul (Petty), St. Paul (Petty) 2011 Alpine, Alpine 2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin 2024 Napa, Wrigley, Wrigley
The US isn't set up to be a multiparty system. The checks and balances are in the 3 branches of government. There will never ever ever be a viable 3rd party option, or 3 party system of government here.
The last election cost us 2 Supreme Court seats and countless lifetime appointments to federal judges. This will now take an entire generation to undo.
Seriously, this kind of shortsightedness has cost 2 supreme court justice seats, and countless federal judge appointments. These are lifetime appointments that will take a generation to fix. Because people with your Veruca Salt mentality would rather cut their nose off to spite their face. Lifetime appointments that will side in favor of more militarism, no criminal justice reform, no drug policy reform. You get nothing. Fundamental lack of understanding of how our government functions. Enjoy your shit sandwich.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Judge: Sen. Graham must testify in Georgia election probe
By KATE BRUMBACK
18 mins ago
ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge on Monday said U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham must testify before a special grand jury in Atlanta that is investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies broke any laws while trying to overturn his narrow 2020 general election loss in the state.
Attorneys for Graham, R-S.C., had argued that his position as a U.S. senator provided him immunity from having to appear before the investigative panel and asked the judge to quash his subpoena. But U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May wrote in an order Monday that immunities related to his role as a senator do not protect him from having to testify. Graham's subpoena instructs him to appear before the special grand jury on Aug. 23, but his office said Monday he plans to appeal to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis opened the investigation last year, and a special grand jury with subpoena power was seated at her request this year. Last month she filed petitions seeking to compel testimony from seven Trump advisers and associates.
Graham had argued that a provision of the Constitution provides absolute protection against a senator being questioned about legislative acts. But the judge found there are “considerable areas of potential grand jury inquiry” that fall outside that provision’s scope. The judge also rejected Graham’s argument that the principle of “sovereign immunity” protects a senator from being summoned by a state prosecutor.
Graham also argued that Willis, a Democrat, had not demonstrated extraordinary circumstances necessary to compel testimony from a high-ranking official. But the judge disagreed, finding that Willis has shown “extraordinary circumstances and a special need” for Graham’s testimony on issues related to an alleged attempt to influence or disrupt the election in Georgia.
May, the judge, last month rejected a similar attempt by U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., to avoid testifying before the special grand jury. Former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani had argued he couldn't travel to Atlanta to testify because of health issues, but Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who's overseeing the special grand jury, instructed him to appear on Wednesday.
Graham's office said in a statement Monday that the senator disagrees with the judge's interpretation of the provision of the Constitution he believes protects him from being questioned by a state official. His lawyers have said that he was making inquiries that were clearly part of his legislative duties, related to certification of the vote and to the proposal of election-related legislation.
But the judge wrote that that ignores "the fact that individuals on the calls have publicly suggested that Senator Graham was not simply engaged in legislative factfinding but was instead suggesting or implying that Georgia election officials change their processes or otherwise potentially alter the state’s results.”
In calls made shortly after the 2020 general election, Graham “questioned Secretary Raffensperger and his staff about reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump,” Willis wrote in a petition.
Graham also “made reference to allegations of widespread voter fraud in the November 2020 election in Georgia, consistent with public statements made by known affiliates of the Trump Campaign,” she wrote.
Republican and Democratic state election officials across the country, courts and even Trump's attorney general found there was no evidence of any voter fraud sufficient to affect the outcome of his 2020 presidential election loss.
Trump-allied lawmakers were planning to challenge the tallies from several battleground states when Congress convened on Jan. 6, 2021, to certify the results under the Electoral Count Act, but after the Capitol attack that day Georgia’s tally was never contested.
Willis has confirmed that the investigation’s scope includes a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Raffensperger during which Trump urged Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn his loss in Georgia.
“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said during that call.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has described his call to Raffensperger as “perfect.”
___
Associated Press writers Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C., and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed reporting.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Trump-allied lawyers pursued voting machine data in multiple states, records reveal By Emma Brown, Jon Swaine, Aaron C. Davis and Amy Gardner August 15, 2022 at 12:13 ET A team of computer experts directed by lawyers allied with President Donald Trump copied sensitive data from election systems in Georgia as part of a secretive, multistate effort to access voting equipment that was broader, more organized and more successful than previously reported, according to emails and other records obtained by The Washington Post. As they worked to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat, the lawyers asked a forensic data firm to access county election systems in at least three battleground states, according to the documents and interviews. The firm charged an upfront retainer fee for each job, which in one case was $26,000. Attorney Sidney Powell sent the team to Michigan to copy a rural county’s election data and later helped arrange for them to do the same in the Detroit area, according to the records. A Trump campaign attorney engaged the team to travel to Nevada. And the day after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol the team was in southern Georgia, copying data from a Dominion voting system in rural Coffee County.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Another year, another high-profile voter-fraud summit goes bust By Philip Bump August 15, 2022 at 13:37 ET It was just over a year ago that MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell convened supporters and data experts in South Dakota for a multiday summit at which he pledged to show his evidence that foreign actors had interfered in the 2020 election. As presented, the idea was straightforward: Lindell, who believed fervently that the election had been stolen, would finally offer up the raw information that he claimed showed how voting machines had been hacked and the results altered from overseas. This wasn’t his analysis, obviously; he’d hired guys who said they’d uncovered a pattern that could be replicated by others. But when the moment came … it couldn’t. The data was invalid and/or useless. There was no proof. None has since emerged. But Lindell was in a corner. He’d kept stringing people along for months, promising a big reveal. Whether he knew he didn’t have anything or not, someone did. And this is how cons work: The stakes keep getting increased until the whole thing collapses. This episode sprang to mind immediately when I started watching “The Pit,” a symposium held in Arizona over the weekend by 2022′s in-vogue election conspiracy theorists, the leaders of the group True the Vote. Same elevation of hype. Same collapse of what was promised.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Trump legal adviser ordered to testify in Ga. election probe
By KATE BRUMBACK
Today
ATLANTA (AP) — A judge in Colorado on Tuesday ordered a legal adviser for former President Donald Trump's campaign to travel to Georgia to testify before a special grand jury that's looking into whether Trump and others illegally tried to influence the 2020 election in Georgia.
Judge Gregory Lammons in Fort Collins, Colorado, made the decision after holding a hearing on a request from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to compel testimony from attorney Jenna Ellis. Prosecutors are interested in Ellis's role in helping to coordinate and plan legislative hearings in Georgia and others states where false allegations of election fraud were pushed, according to testimony in court.
Fulton County prosecutors have purchased plane tickets and made a hotel reservation in preparation for Ellis to testify on Aug. 25.
The investigation, prompted by a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, began early last year. During that call, Trump suggested Raffensperger could “find” the votes to overturn his narrow election loss in the state. It has become clear since the special grand jury was seated in May that the focus of the investigation extends well beyond that call.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Graham effort to delay testimony in election probe rejected
By KATE BRUMBACK
1 hour ago
ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge on Friday said Sen. Lindsey Graham's appearance before a special grand jury investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to influence the 2020 election in Georgia should not be delayed to allow him to continue to challenge it in court.
Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May ordered Graham to honor his subpoena for the special grand jury. Graham's attorneys appealed that order to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and asked May to stay her ruling and prohibit the special grand jury from questioning him while that appeal plays out. May declined that request in her order on Friday.
“Under the circumstances, further delay of Senator Graham’s testimony would greatly compound the overall delay in carrying out the grand jury’s investigation,” May wrote. “Further delay thus poses a significant risk of overall hindrance to the grand jury’s investigation, and the Court therefore finds that granting a stay would almost certainly result in material injury to the grand jury and its investigation.”
Graham is currently scheduled to testify on Tuesday. But he still has another motion to stay May's ruling pending before the 11th Circuit.
Representatives for Graham did not immediately respond to messages on Friday seeking comment.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis opened the investigation early last year and in July filed petitions seeking to compel testimony from seven Trump advisers and associates, including Graham.
Former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who's been told he's a target of the investigation, testified before the special grand jury for nearly six hours on Wednesday. Two other lawyers who advised Trump, John Eastman and Jenna Ellis, were ordered this week to appear before the panel later this month. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp filed a motion Wednesday seeking to quash a subpoena for his testimony.
The investigation, originally prompted by a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, is one of several pending legal threats Trump faces. Willis has said she's considering seeking to compel the former president himself to testify before the special grand jury.
Attorneys for Graham, a South Carolina Republican, have argued that a provision of the U.S. Constitution provides absolute protection against a senator being questioned about legislative acts. But the judge found there are “considerable areas of potential grand jury inquiry” that fall outside that provision’s scope. The judge also rejected Graham’s argument that the principle of “sovereign immunity” protects a U.S. senator from being summoned by a state prosecutor.
Graham also argued that Willis, a Democrat, had not demonstrated extraordinary circumstances necessary to compel testimony from a high-ranking official. But the judge disagreed, finding that Willis had shown “extraordinary circumstances and a special need” for Graham’s testimony on issues related to an alleged attempt to influence or disrupt the election in Georgia.
Willis and her team have said they want to ask Graham about two phone calls they say he made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his staff shortly after the 2020 general election. During those calls, Graham asked about “reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump,” Willis wrote in a petition.
Graham also “made reference to allegations of widespread voter fraud in the November 2020 election in Georgia, consistent with public statements made by known affiliates of the Trump Campaign,” she wrote.
Republican and Democratic state election officials across the country, courts and even Trump’s attorney general found there was no evidence of voter fraud sufficient to affect the outcome of the election.
In asking May to stay her decision, Graham's lawyers argued that his rights to immunity would be violated the moment he was questioned.
Willis' team responded that delaying Graham's testimony would harms the investigation. In addition to facts he knows, he's also expected to shed light on other sources of information that the special grand jury may want to pursue, they wrote. So waiting to talk to him “could ultimately delay” the entire investigation.
In the separate motion for a stay filed with the 11th Circuit, Graham's attorneys argue that on Wednesday Chief Senior Assistant District Attorney Donald Wakeford agreed to postpone the scheduled testimony pending the outcome of the appeal. They included a voicemail Wakeford left for Graham attorney Brian Lea.
Lea says in a declaration filed with the motion that later that same afternoon Wakeford confirmed Graham's grand jury appearance wouldn't move forward until the appeal was resolved. But then Wakeford sent an email 20 minutes later “stating that he did not ‘want to characterize the contents of our response before it is written,’” Lea wrote.
Lea said he reached out to Wakeford several more times by phone and email but got no response until Wakeford sent an email at 4:40 a.m. Friday saying the district attorney's office intended to oppose the stay and would argue that Graham should appear before the special grand jury as planned.
___
Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed reporting.
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Pages 5 through 8, from April 2020, are a hoot but more importantly, how much credit does Brandon deserve for getting quite a bit of the progressive agenda implemented? Anyone ask Bernie of late?
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Video fills in details on alleged Ga. election system breach
By KATE BRUMBACK
Today
ATLANTA (AP) — Two months after the 2020 presidential election, a team of computer experts traveled to south Georgia to copy software and data from voting equipment in an apparent breach of a county election system. They were greeted outside by the head of the local Republican Party, who was involved in efforts by then-President Donald Trump to overturn his election loss.
A security camera outside the elections office in rural Coffee County captured their arrival. The footage also shows that some local election officials were at the office during what the Georgia secretary of state’s office has described as “alleged unauthorized access” of election equipment.
Security footage from two weeks later raises additional alarms — showing two people who were instrumental in Trump's wider efforts to undermine the election results entering the office and staying for hours.
The security video from the elections office in the county about 200 miles (320 kilometers) southeast of Atlanta offers a glimpse of the lengths Trump's allies went in service of his fraudulent election claims. It further shows how access allegedly was facilitated by local officials entrusted with protecting the security of elections while raising concerns about sensitive voting technology being released into the public domain.
Georgia wasn't the only state where voting equipment was accessed after the 2020 presidential election. Important information about voting systems also was compromised in election offices in Pennsylvania,Michigan and Colorado. Election security experts worry the information obtained — including complete copies of hard drives — could be exploited by those who want to interfere with future elections.
"The system is only as secure as the people who are entrusted to keep it secure,” said lawyer David Cross, who represents plaintiffs in a long-running lawsuit over Georgia’s voting machines.
The Coffee County security footage was obtained through that lawsuit, which alleges that Georgia’s touchscreen voting machines are vulnerable to attack and should be replaced by hand-marked paper ballots. The suit long predates and is unrelated to false allegations of widespread election fraud pushed by Trump and his allies after the 2020 election.
The alleged breach in Coffee County's elections office also has caught the attention of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is overseeing an investigation into whether Trump and his allies illegally tried to influence the 2020 election results in Georgia.
Last month, Willis cited the Coffee County activity, among other things, when she sought to compel testimony from Sidney Powell, an attorney who was deeply involved in Trump's effort to undo the election results.
Emails and other records show Powell and other attorneys linked to Trump helped arrange for a team from data solutions company SullivanStrickler to travel to Coffee County, which Trump won by nearly 40 percentage points.
The surveillance video, emails and other documents that shed light on what happened there in January 2021 were produced in response to subpoenas issued in the voting machine lawsuit and were obtained by The Associated Press. Parts of the security video appear to contradict claims by some of the local officials:
— Footage captures Cathy Latham, then chair of the Coffee County Republican Party, arriving at the elections office shortly after 11:30 a.m. on Jan. 7, 2021, the day after the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol. Just a few weeks earlier, she was one of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate falsely stating that Trump had won the state and declaring that they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.
A few minutes after her arrival, she is seen outside greeting SullivanStrickler Chief Operating Officer Paul Maggio and two other people. Less than 10 minutes later, she escorts two other men into the building.
The video shows her leaving the elections office just before 1:30 p.m., roughly two hours after she greeted the SullivanStrickler team. She returns a little before 4 p.m. and then leaves around 6:15 p.m.
Latham said under oath during a deposition in August that she stopped by the elections office that evening for “Just a few minutes” and left before 5 p.m. Pressed on whether she had been there earlier in the day, Latham said she couldn’t recall but suggested her schedule as a teacher would not have allowed it.
A lawyer for SullivanStrickler said in an email attached to a court filing that Latham was a “primary point of contact” in coordinating the company’s work and “was on site” while that work was done.
Robert Cheeley, a lawyer for Latham said in an emailed statement that his client doesn't remember all the details of that day. But he said she “would not and has not knowingly been involved in any impropriety in any election" and “has not acted improperly or illegally.”
— The video also shows Eric Chaney, a member of Coffee County's election board, arriving shortly before 11 a.m. the same day and going in and out several times before leaving for the night around 7:40 p.m. Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the voting machine lawsuit wrote in a court filing that a photo produced by SullivanStrickler's COO shows Chaney in the office as the copying is happening.
During a deposition last month, Chaney declined to answer many questions about that day, citing the Fifth Amendment. But when an attorney representing the county reached out to him in April regarding questions from the The Washington Post, Chaney wrote, “I am not aware of nor was I present at the Coffee County Board of Elections and Registration's office when anyone illegally accessed the server or the room in which it is contained.” Chaney resigned from the elections board last month, days before his deposition.
Attempts to reach Chaney by phone were unsuccessful, and his lawyer did not respond to an email seeking comment.
— About two weeks after the initial breach, video shows Misty Hampton — then the county elections director — arriving at the elections office at 4:20 p.m. on Jan. 18, when it was closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. She unlocked the door and let in two men — Doug Logan and Jeff Lenberg, who have been active in efforts to challenge the 2020 election results.
Logan founded Cyber Ninjas, which participated in a partisan and ultimately discredited review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona. The two men remained inside until just after 8 p.m. and then spent more than nine hours there the next day. Lenberg returned for brief visits on at least three more days later that month.
Hampton resigned as elections supervisor in February 2021 after elections board officials said she falsified her timesheets. Attempts by the AP to reach her were unsuccessful.
In a statement released by its attorney, SullivanStrickler said the company was retained by attorneys to forensically copy voting machines used in the 2020 election and had no reason to believe they would ask its employees to do anything improper.
The Georgia secretary of state’s office said it opened an investigation in March and asked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for assistance last month. State officials have said the system remains secure because of multiple protections in place.
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Lindsey Graham must testify in 2020 election investigation, court rules By Ann E. Marimow October 20, 2022 at 17:10 ET Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) must appear before a Georgia grand jury investigating possible attempts by former president Donald Trump and his allies to disrupt the state’s 2020 presidential election, a federal appeals court said Thursday. Graham’s lawyers had asked the court to block a subpoena from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D), claiming that a sitting senator is shielded from such investigations. But a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit denied Graham’s request and upheld a lower-court ruling narrowing the range of questions prosecutors can ask. “Senator Graham has failed to demonstrate that this approach will violate his rights under the Speech and Debate Clause,” according to the six-page order. Graham can appeal the order to the full appeals court or could ask the Supreme Court to intervene.
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Graham asks Supreme Court to intervene after election ruling
By MEG KINNARD
10 mins ago
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham on Friday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene after a lower court ordered him to testify before a special grand jury in Georgia investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to influence the 2020 election in the state.
In a filing with the court, attorneys for Graham, a top ally of Trump's, sought to halt his possible testimony while he continues to appeal the order to appear before the Fulton County special grand jury.
Graham's office described the South Carolina Republican's filing as an attempt “to defend the Constitution and the institutional interest of the Senate.” The lower court's ruling, Graham's office said, “would significantly impact the ability of senators to gather information in connection with doing their job.”
The legal move is the latest in Graham's ongoing fight to prevent his testimony in a case that has ensnared allies and associates of the former president. Some have already made their appearances before the special grand jury, including former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani — who’s been told he could face criminal charges in the probe — attorneys John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro, and former White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
Paperwork has been filed seeking testimony from others, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Graham, a four-term senator who last won reelection in 2020, was first subpoenaed in July by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who opened her investigation shortly after a recording of a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was made public. In that call, Trump suggested Raffensperger could “find” the votes needed to overturn his narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
Willis wants to question Graham about two phone calls he made to Raffensperger and his staff in the weeks after the election.
During those calls, Graham asked about “reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump,” Willis wrote in a petition seeking to compel his testimony.
Graham also “made reference to allegations of widespread voter fraud in the November 2020 election in Georgia, consistent with public statements made by known affiliates of the Trump Campaign,” she wrote. She said in a hearing last month that Graham may be able to provide insight into the extent of any coordinated efforts to influence the results.
Raffensperger said he took Graham’s question about absentee ballots as a suggestion to toss out legally cast votes. Graham has dismissed that interpretation as “ridiculous.” Graham has also argued that the call was protected because he was asking questions to inform his decisions on voting to certify the 2020 election and future legislation.
Graham challenged his subpoena in federal court, but a judge refused to toss it out. Graham then appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and a three-judge panel ruled Thursday in favor of Willis. Graham can appeal to the full court.
Graham’s lawyers argued that the Constitution’s speech or debate clause, which protects members of Congress from having to answer questions about legislative activity, shields him from having to testify.
Graham is represented by former White House counsel Don McGahn, who was involved in a lengthy court fight over a congressional subpoena for his own testimony related to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. After years of back-and-forth, the two sides reached an agreement and McGahn answered investigators' questions in a private session.
Graham's filing Friday was directed to Justice Clarence Thomas, who handles emergency appeals from Georgia and several other Southern states. Thomas can act on his own or refer the matter to the full court.
Trump's lawyers recently submitted a Supreme Court application to Thomas asking the Supreme Court to step into a legal fight over the classified documents seized during an FBI search of Trump's Florida estate.
Thomas has previously come under scrutiny for his vote in a different Trump documents case, in which he was the only member of the court to vote against allowing the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot to obtain Trump records held by the National Archives and Records Administration.
Thomas’ wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, is a conservative activist and staunch Trump supporter who attended the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse and wrote to Meadows in the weeks following the election encouraging him to work to overturn Biden’s victory and keep Trump in office.
She also contacted lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin in the weeks after the election, though no evidence has emerged that she contacted Georgia officials. Thomas was recently interviewed by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, and she stood by the false claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent, despite the fact that numerous federal and local officials, a long list of courts, top former campaign staffers and even Trump's own attorney general have all said there is no evidence of mass fraud.
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Trump aide Meadows ordered to testify in election probe
By KATE BRUMBACK
Today
ATLANTA (AP) — A judge on Wednesday ordered former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to testify before a special grand jury that's investigating whether President Donald Trump and his allies illegally tried to sway Georgia's results in the 2020 election.
Meadows, a former GOP congressman, is a key figure in the investigation. He traveled to Georgia, sat in on Trump’s phone calls with state officials and coordinated and communicated with outside influencers who were either encouraging or discouraging the pressure campaign.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis opened the investigation last year into actions taken by Trump and others to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the state. Meadows is just one of several associates and advisers of the Republican former president whose testimony Willis has sought.
Because Meadows doesn't live in Georgia, Willis, a Democrat, had to use a process that involved getting a judge where he lives in South Carolina to order him to appear. First, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who's overseeing the special grand jury, signed off on a petition certifying that Meadows was a “necessary and material witness."
Now, Circuit Court Judge Edward Miller in Pickens County, South Carolina, has honored McBurney's finding and ordered Meadows to testify, Willis spokesman Jeff DiSantis confirmed.
Meadows attorney Jim Bannister told The Associated Press that his client was “weighing all options,” including appeals.
“Nothing final until we see the order,” he said.
Willis has been fighting similar battles — mostly with success — in courts around the country as she seeks to compel Trump allies to testify. But an appeals court in Texas has indicated it may not recognize the validity of the Georgia summonses, and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene after a federal appeals court last week ordered him to testify.
In the petition seeking Meadows’ testimony, Willis wrote that he attended a Dec. 21, 2020, meeting at the White House with Trump and others “to discuss allegations of voter fraud and certification of Electoral College votes from Georgia and other states.”
The next day, Willis wrote, Meadows made a “surprise visit” to Cobb County, just outside Atlanta, where an audit of signatures on absentee ballot envelopes was being conducted. He asked to observe the audit but wasn’t allowed to because it wasn’t open to the public, the petition says.
Meadows also sent emails to Justice Department officials after the election alleging voter fraud in Georgia and elsewhere and requesting investigations, Willis wrote. And he took part in a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, during which Trump suggested that Raffensperger, the state’s top elections official and a Republican, could “find” enough votes to overturn the president's narrow loss in the state.
According to a transcript of the call with Raffensperger, Meadows said Trump's team believed that “not every vote or fair vote and legal vote was counted. And that's at odds with the representation from the secretary of state's office.” He goes on to say he hopes they can agree on a way “to look at this a little bit more fully.”
Raffensperger disputed the assertions, addressing Trump, “We don't agree that you have won.”
After the election, Meadows was widely seen in the White House as a chief instigator of Trump’s fixation on the election, passing along debunked conspiracies about fraud that other officials were forced to swat down. He pushed one theory that people in Italy had changed votes in the U.S. with satellite technology, a claim that former Justice Department official Richard Donoghue labeled “pure insanity.”
On the legal front, in a court filing this week, Meadows' lawyer Bannister argued that executive privilege and other rights shield his client from testifying.
Bannister asserted in a filing that Meadows has been instructed by Trump “to preserve certain privileges and immunities attaching to his former office as White House Chief of Staff.” And Willis' petition calls for him “to divulge the contents of executive privileged communications with the President," Bannister wrote.
Meadows has been fighting investigations into the violent 2021 insurrection since last year and has so far avoided having to testify about his role and his knowledge of the former president’s actions. He turned over thousands of texts to the House Jan. 6 committee before eventually refusing to do an interview.
Special grand juries in Georgia cannot issue indictments. Instead, they can gather evidence and compel testimony and then can recommend further action, including criminal charges, in a final report. It is ultimately up to the district attorney to decide whether to seek an indictment from a regular grand jury.
Grand jury secrecy is “paramount” in South Carolina, Bannister wrote. Because the special grand jury is expected to ultimately issue a public report, ordering Meadows to testify would violate his state right to privacy, Bannister argued.
McBurney, the Fulton County Superior Court judge, has made clear in rulings on other attempts by potential witnesses to avoid or delay testimony that he considers the special grand jury's investigation to be a criminal proceeding. He has also stressed a need for secrecy for the panel's workings.
____
Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington and Jill Colvin and Meg Kinnard in New York contributed.
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2 conservatives accused in hoax robocall scheme plead guilty
By MARK GILLISPIE
24 Oct 2022
CLEVELAND (AP) — Two right-wing operatives pleaded guilty on Monday in Cleveland to single felony counts of telecommunications fraud for having placed thousands of false robocalls in Ohio that told people they could be arrested or be forced to receive vaccinations based on information they submitted in votes by mail.
Jacob Wohl, 24, of Irvine, California, and Jack Burkman, 56, of Arlington, Virginia, could each receive a year in prison when they are sentenced Nov. 29 in common pleas court. They were indicted in October 2020 on numerous counts of telecommunications fraud and bribery.
Wohl's attorney, Mark Wieczorek, declined to comment about the his client's plea. Burkman's attorney, Brian Joslyn, did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment.
The two men were accused of arranging for a voice broadcast service to make about 85,000 robocalls to predominantly Black neighborhoods in Ohio, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois during the runup to the 2020 general election. Prosecutors said the pair were responsible for 3,500 calls to residents of Cleveland and East Cleveland.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O'Malley at the time the pair were charged said they "clearly infringed upon that right in a blatant attempt to suppress votes and undermine the integrity of this election.”
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, whose consumer protection unit assisted in the investigation, issued a statement Monday saying “voter intimidation won't be tolerated in Ohio.”
The calls warned people that information included in their mailed ballots could be used by law enforcement agencies to enforce arrest warrants, to collect outstanding debts, and lead to tracking by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for mandatory vaccines.
Wohl and Burkman have a history of staging hoaxes and spreading false smears against Democrats and public officials.
The Associated Press reported in May 2019 that a 21-year-old college student from Michigan said the men recruited him to falsely claim he was raped by then-Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, and published the smear without the student's permission.
Wohl denied the accusation, saying the student had reached out to him. Burkman said on Twitter that he believed the student’s initial account of the alleged assault was “accurate and true.”
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Trump aide Meadows ordered to testify in election probe
By KATE BRUMBACK
Today
ATLANTA (AP) — A judge on Wednesday ordered former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to testify before a special grand jury that's investigating whether President Donald Trump and his allies illegally tried to sway Georgia's results in the 2020 election.
Meadows, a former GOP congressman, is a key figure in the investigation. He traveled to Georgia, sat in on Trump’s phone calls with state officials and coordinated and communicated with outside influencers who were either encouraging or discouraging the pressure campaign.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis opened the investigation last year into actions taken by Trump and others to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the state. Meadows is just one of several associates and advisers of the Republican former president whose testimony Willis has sought.
Because Meadows doesn't live in Georgia, Willis, a Democrat, had to use a process that involved getting a judge where he lives in South Carolina to order him to appear. First, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who's overseeing the special grand jury, signed off on a petition certifying that Meadows was a “necessary and material witness."
Now, Circuit Court Judge Edward Miller in Pickens County, South Carolina, has honored McBurney's finding and ordered Meadows to testify, Willis spokesman Jeff DiSantis confirmed.
Meadows attorney Jim Bannister told The Associated Press that his client was “weighing all options,” including appeals.
“Nothing final until we see the order,” he said.
Willis has been fighting similar battles — mostly with success — in courts around the country as she seeks to compel Trump allies to testify. But an appeals court in Texas has indicated it may not recognize the validity of the Georgia summonses, and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene after a federal appeals court last week ordered him to testify.
In the petition seeking Meadows’ testimony, Willis wrote that he attended a Dec. 21, 2020, meeting at the White House with Trump and others “to discuss allegations of voter fraud and certification of Electoral College votes from Georgia and other states.”
The next day, Willis wrote, Meadows made a “surprise visit” to Cobb County, just outside Atlanta, where an audit of signatures on absentee ballot envelopes was being conducted. He asked to observe the audit but wasn’t allowed to because it wasn’t open to the public, the petition says.
Meadows also sent emails to Justice Department officials after the election alleging voter fraud in Georgia and elsewhere and requesting investigations, Willis wrote. And he took part in a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, during which Trump suggested that Raffensperger, the state’s top elections official and a Republican, could “find” enough votes to overturn the president's narrow loss in the state.
According to a transcript of the call with Raffensperger, Meadows said Trump's team believed that “not every vote or fair vote and legal vote was counted. And that's at odds with the representation from the secretary of state's office.” He goes on to say he hopes they can agree on a way “to look at this a little bit more fully.”
Raffensperger disputed the assertions, addressing Trump, “We don't agree that you have won.”
After the election, Meadows was widely seen in the White House as a chief instigator of Trump’s fixation on the election, passing along debunked conspiracies about fraud that other officials were forced to swat down. He pushed one theory that people in Italy had changed votes in the U.S. with satellite technology, a claim that former Justice Department official Richard Donoghue labeled “pure insanity.”
On the legal front, in a court filing this week, Meadows' lawyer Bannister argued that executive privilege and other rights shield his client from testifying.
Bannister asserted in a filing that Meadows has been instructed by Trump “to preserve certain privileges and immunities attaching to his former office as White House Chief of Staff.” And Willis' petition calls for him “to divulge the contents of executive privileged communications with the President," Bannister wrote.
Meadows has been fighting investigations into the violent 2021 insurrection since last year and has so far avoided having to testify about his role and his knowledge of the former president’s actions. He turned over thousands of texts to the House Jan. 6 committee before eventually refusing to do an interview.
Special grand juries in Georgia cannot issue indictments. Instead, they can gather evidence and compel testimony and then can recommend further action, including criminal charges, in a final report. It is ultimately up to the district attorney to decide whether to seek an indictment from a regular grand jury.
Grand jury secrecy is “paramount” in South Carolina, Bannister wrote. Because the special grand jury is expected to ultimately issue a public report, ordering Meadows to testify would violate his state right to privacy, Bannister argued.
McBurney, the Fulton County Superior Court judge, has made clear in rulings on other attempts by potential witnesses to avoid or delay testimony that he considers the special grand jury's investigation to be a criminal proceeding. He has also stressed a need for secrecy for the panel's workings.
____
Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington and Jill Colvin and Meg Kinnard in New York contributed.
Nothing will come of it and he will never have to testify! The judicial and appeals process in this country is a fucking joke!
Supreme Court clears way for Graham testimony in Georgia
By MARK SHERMAN
35 mins ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for Sen. Lindsey Graham's testimony in a Georgia investigation of possible illegal interference in the 2020 election by then-President Donald Trump and his allies in the state.
The court lifted a temporary hold on Graham's appearance before a special grand jury, now scheduled for Nov. 17.
But in an unsigned order, the justices noted that Graham still could raise objections to some questions.
“Today, the Supreme Court confirmed that the Constitution s Speech or Debate Clause applies here. They also affirmed that Senator Graham may return to the District Court if the District Attorney tries to ask questions about his constitutionally protected activities. The Senator s legal team intends to engage with the District Attorney s office on next steps to ensure respect for this constitutional immunity.”
The South Carolina senator, a top Trump ally, had argued that a provision of the Constitution, the speech and debate clause, shields him from being forced to testify at all.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had told the justices that “the delay resulting from a stay would be unavoidably harmful” to the grand jury investigation.
Graham's legal team plans to reach out to Willis' office about what happens next, according to a statement from the senator's office.
Graham, a four-term senator who last won reelection in 2020, was first subpoenaed in July by Willis. The district attorney opened her investigation shortly after a recording of a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was made public. In that call, Trump suggested Raffensperger could “find” the votes needed to overturn his narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
Willis wants to question Graham about two phone calls he made to Raffensperger and his staff in the weeks after the election.
During those calls, Graham asked about “reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump,” Willis wrote in a petition seeking to compel his testimony.
Graham also “made reference to allegations of widespread voter fraud in the November 2020 election in Georgia, consistent with public statements made by known affiliates of the Trump Campaign,” she wrote. She said in a hearing last month that Graham may be able to provide insight into the extent of any coordinated efforts to influence the results.
Raffensperger said he took Graham’s question about absentee ballots as a suggestion to toss out legally cast votes. Graham has dismissed that interpretation as “ridiculous.” Graham has also argued that the call was protected because he was asking questions to inform his decisions on voting to certify the 2020 election and future legislation.
Lower courts already have told Willis that she “may not ask about any investigatory conduct,” which is protected under the Constitution.
The justices wrote Tuesday that their intervention is unnecessary because the courts “have held that Senator Graham may not be questioned about such activities.”
He also can return to federal court if disputes arise over the questioning in front of the grand jury, the justices wrote.
Thomas initially dealt with Graham's appeal, but involved the rest of the court in Tuesday's order, as is customary.
But Thomas did not step aside from the case, and indeed he has participated in all the election-related disputes brought to the court by Trump and his allies, despite the involvement of the justice's wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, in efforts to question Trump's defeat in 2020.
Ginni Thomas, a conservative activist and staunch Trump supporter, attended the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse and wrote to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the weeks following the election, encouraging him to work to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory and keep Trump in office.
She also contacted lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin in the weeks after the election, though no evidence has emerged that she contacted Georgia officials.
Ginni Thomas was recently interviewed by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, and she stood by the false claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent, despite the fact that numerous federal and local officials, a long list of courts, top former campaign staffers and even Trump’s own attorney general have all said there is no evidence of mass fraud.
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Opinion | If the GOP can’t get rid of Trump, maybe Georgia’s prosecutors can Opinion by Jennifer Rubin November 14, 2022 at 7:45 ET Despite dragging his party to defeat in the midterms, former president Donald Trump is expected to announce his 2024 presidential campaign this week. This would not only obliterate the GOP’s chance to win the runoff election for Georgia’s U.S. Senate seat, but also threaten his party’s prospects two years from now. But Republicans will likely learn in the near future that Trump’s latest political humiliation is the least of his worries. He remains in grave legal peril on multiple fronts, and no criminal investigation is a greater threat to him that the one being conducted by Fani Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County, Ga. Willis is teeing up a strong criminal case against Trump for his attempt to pressure Georgia election officials to overturn the state’s 2020 results. She has been calling the former president’s cronies to testify before a grand jury and is successfully beating back specious challenges to subpoenas from key figures — including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey O. Graham. A voluminous new report from the Brookings Institution provides a legal road map for the potential prosecution of Trump. The report debunks defenses that Trump will likely deploy and underscores the real possibility that his closest associates might flip in the case, given how many might face criminal liability. The report sums up the damning facts in the case: [Trump] and those around him, including his chief of staff and others, made multiple attempts to intervene and overturn the state’s election results. His personal attorneys testified falsely in the state legislature. His campaign pursued a plan to organize false electors that included a bogus slate in Georgia. Trump attempted to replace his own attorney general to seek the unlawful intervention of the Georgia legislature. . . . Most notably, on Saturday, January 2, 2021, Trump placed a call to Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump urged and ultimately threatened Raffensperger to reverse the election outcome — including a demand that Raffensperger “find 11,780 votes” that could be deemed fraudulent and tossed out. That number was exactly one more vote than the margin of Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in the state. If Raffensperger’s office complied with his request, Trump would be named the winner of the state’s presidential election, and presumably could use that development to seek a broader unraveling of the certified election results in other states confirming his defeat.
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"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
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Well OK, then. I'm a little more educated today, thanks!
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ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge on Monday said U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham must testify before a special grand jury in Atlanta that is investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies broke any laws while trying to overturn his narrow 2020 general election loss in the state.
Attorneys for Graham, R-S.C., had argued that his position as a U.S. senator provided him immunity from having to appear before the investigative panel and asked the judge to quash his subpoena. But U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May wrote in an order Monday that immunities related to his role as a senator do not protect him from having to testify. Graham's subpoena instructs him to appear before the special grand jury on Aug. 23, but his office said Monday he plans to appeal to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis opened the investigation last year, and a special grand jury with subpoena power was seated at her request this year. Last month she filed petitions seeking to compel testimony from seven Trump advisers and associates.
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Prosecutors have indicated they want to ask Graham about phone calls they say he made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his staff in the weeks following Trump's election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
Graham had argued that a provision of the Constitution provides absolute protection against a senator being questioned about legislative acts. But the judge found there are “considerable areas of potential grand jury inquiry” that fall outside that provision’s scope. The judge also rejected Graham’s argument that the principle of “sovereign immunity” protects a senator from being summoned by a state prosecutor.
Graham also argued that Willis, a Democrat, had not demonstrated extraordinary circumstances necessary to compel testimony from a high-ranking official. But the judge disagreed, finding that Willis has shown “extraordinary circumstances and a special need” for Graham’s testimony on issues related to an alleged attempt to influence or disrupt the election in Georgia.
May, the judge, last month rejected a similar attempt by U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., to avoid testifying before the special grand jury. Former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani had argued he couldn't travel to Atlanta to testify because of health issues, but Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who's overseeing the special grand jury, instructed him to appear on Wednesday.
Graham's office said in a statement Monday that the senator disagrees with the judge's interpretation of the provision of the Constitution he believes protects him from being questioned by a state official. His lawyers have said that he was making inquiries that were clearly part of his legislative duties, related to certification of the vote and to the proposal of election-related legislation.
But the judge wrote that that ignores "the fact that individuals on the calls have publicly suggested that Senator Graham was not simply engaged in legislative factfinding but was instead suggesting or implying that Georgia election officials change their processes or otherwise potentially alter the state’s results.”
In calls made shortly after the 2020 general election, Graham “questioned Secretary Raffensperger and his staff about reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump,” Willis wrote in a petition.
Graham also “made reference to allegations of widespread voter fraud in the November 2020 election in Georgia, consistent with public statements made by known affiliates of the Trump Campaign,” she wrote.
Republican and Democratic state election officials across the country, courts and even Trump's attorney general found there was no evidence of any voter fraud sufficient to affect the outcome of his 2020 presidential election loss.
Trump-allied lawmakers were planning to challenge the tallies from several battleground states when Congress convened on Jan. 6, 2021, to certify the results under the Electoral Count Act, but after the Capitol attack that day Georgia’s tally was never contested.
Willis has confirmed that the investigation’s scope includes a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Raffensperger during which Trump urged Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn his loss in Georgia.
“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said during that call.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has described his call to Raffensperger as “perfect.”
___
Associated Press writers Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C., and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed reporting.
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Trump-allied lawyers pursued voting machine data in multiple states, records reveal
By Emma Brown, Jon Swaine, Aaron C. Davis and Amy Gardner
August 15, 2022 at 12:13 ET
A team of computer experts directed by lawyers allied with President Donald Trump copied sensitive data from election systems in Georgia as part of a secretive, multistate effort to access voting equipment that was broader, more organized and more successful than previously reported, according to emails and other records obtained by The Washington Post.
As they worked to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat, the lawyers asked a forensic data firm to access county election systems in at least three battleground states, according to the documents and interviews. The firm charged an upfront retainer fee for each job, which in one case was $26,000.
Attorney Sidney Powell sent the team to Michigan to copy a rural county’s election data and later helped arrange for them to do the same in the Detroit area, according to the records. A Trump campaign attorney engaged the team to travel to Nevada. And the day after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol the team was in southern Georgia, copying data from a Dominion voting system in rural Coffee County.
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By Philip Bump
August 15, 2022 at 13:37 ET
It was just over a year ago that MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell convened supporters and data experts in South Dakota for a multiday summit at which he pledged to show his evidence that foreign actors had interfered in the 2020 election.
As presented, the idea was straightforward: Lindell, who believed fervently that the election had been stolen, would finally offer up the raw information that he claimed showed how voting machines had been hacked and the results altered from overseas. This wasn’t his analysis, obviously; he’d hired guys who said they’d uncovered a pattern that could be replicated by others. But when the moment came … it couldn’t. The data was invalid and/or useless. There was no proof. None has since emerged.
But Lindell was in a corner. He’d kept stringing people along for months, promising a big reveal. Whether he knew he didn’t have anything or not, someone did. And this is how cons work: The stakes keep getting increased until the whole thing collapses.
This episode sprang to mind immediately when I started watching “The Pit,” a symposium held in Arizona over the weekend by 2022′s in-vogue election conspiracy theorists, the leaders of the group True the Vote. Same elevation of hype. Same collapse of what was promised.
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ATLANTA (AP) — A judge in Colorado on Tuesday ordered a legal adviser for former President Donald Trump's campaign to travel to Georgia to testify before a special grand jury that's looking into whether Trump and others illegally tried to influence the 2020 election in Georgia.
Judge Gregory Lammons in Fort Collins, Colorado, made the decision after holding a hearing on a request from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to compel testimony from attorney Jenna Ellis. Prosecutors are interested in Ellis's role in helping to coordinate and plan legislative hearings in Georgia and others states where false allegations of election fraud were pushed, according to testimony in court.
Fulton County prosecutors have purchased plane tickets and made a hotel reservation in preparation for Ellis to testify on Aug. 25.
The investigation, prompted by a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, began early last year. During that call, Trump suggested Raffensperger could “find” the votes to overturn his narrow election loss in the state. It has become clear since the special grand jury was seated in May that the focus of the investigation extends well beyond that call.
continues....
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ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge on Friday said Sen. Lindsey Graham's appearance before a special grand jury investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to influence the 2020 election in Georgia should not be delayed to allow him to continue to challenge it in court.
Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May ordered Graham to honor his subpoena for the special grand jury. Graham's attorneys appealed that order to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and asked May to stay her ruling and prohibit the special grand jury from questioning him while that appeal plays out. May declined that request in her order on Friday.
“Under the circumstances, further delay of Senator Graham’s testimony would greatly compound the overall delay in carrying out the grand jury’s investigation,” May wrote. “Further delay thus poses a significant risk of overall hindrance to the grand jury’s investigation, and the Court therefore finds that granting a stay would almost certainly result in material injury to the grand jury and its investigation.”
Graham is currently scheduled to testify on Tuesday. But he still has another motion to stay May's ruling pending before the 11th Circuit.
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Representatives for Graham did not immediately respond to messages on Friday seeking comment.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis opened the investigation early last year and in July filed petitions seeking to compel testimony from seven Trump advisers and associates, including Graham.
Former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who's been told he's a target of the investigation, testified before the special grand jury for nearly six hours on Wednesday. Two other lawyers who advised Trump, John Eastman and Jenna Ellis, were ordered this week to appear before the panel later this month. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp filed a motion Wednesday seeking to quash a subpoena for his testimony.
The investigation, originally prompted by a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, is one of several pending legal threats Trump faces. Willis has said she's considering seeking to compel the former president himself to testify before the special grand jury.
Attorneys for Graham, a South Carolina Republican, have argued that a provision of the U.S. Constitution provides absolute protection against a senator being questioned about legislative acts. But the judge found there are “considerable areas of potential grand jury inquiry” that fall outside that provision’s scope. The judge also rejected Graham’s argument that the principle of “sovereign immunity” protects a U.S. senator from being summoned by a state prosecutor.
Graham also argued that Willis, a Democrat, had not demonstrated extraordinary circumstances necessary to compel testimony from a high-ranking official. But the judge disagreed, finding that Willis had shown “extraordinary circumstances and a special need” for Graham’s testimony on issues related to an alleged attempt to influence or disrupt the election in Georgia.
Willis and her team have said they want to ask Graham about two phone calls they say he made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his staff shortly after the 2020 general election. During those calls, Graham asked about “reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump,” Willis wrote in a petition.
Graham also “made reference to allegations of widespread voter fraud in the November 2020 election in Georgia, consistent with public statements made by known affiliates of the Trump Campaign,” she wrote.
Republican and Democratic state election officials across the country, courts and even Trump’s attorney general found there was no evidence of voter fraud sufficient to affect the outcome of the election.
In asking May to stay her decision, Graham's lawyers argued that his rights to immunity would be violated the moment he was questioned.
Willis' team responded that delaying Graham's testimony would harms the investigation. In addition to facts he knows, he's also expected to shed light on other sources of information that the special grand jury may want to pursue, they wrote. So waiting to talk to him “could ultimately delay” the entire investigation.
In the separate motion for a stay filed with the 11th Circuit, Graham's attorneys argue that on Wednesday Chief Senior Assistant District Attorney Donald Wakeford agreed to postpone the scheduled testimony pending the outcome of the appeal. They included a voicemail Wakeford left for Graham attorney Brian Lea.
Lea says in a declaration filed with the motion that later that same afternoon Wakeford confirmed Graham's grand jury appearance wouldn't move forward until the appeal was resolved. But then Wakeford sent an email 20 minutes later “stating that he did not ‘want to characterize the contents of our response before it is written,’” Lea wrote.
Lea said he reached out to Wakeford several more times by phone and email but got no response until Wakeford sent an email at 4:40 a.m. Friday saying the district attorney's office intended to oppose the stay and would argue that Graham should appear before the special grand jury as planned.
___
Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed reporting.
___
Follow AP's coverage of the Trump investigations at: https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump
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ATLANTA (AP) — Two months after the 2020 presidential election, a team of computer experts traveled to south Georgia to copy software and data from voting equipment in an apparent breach of a county election system. They were greeted outside by the head of the local Republican Party, who was involved in efforts by then-President Donald Trump to overturn his election loss.
A security camera outside the elections office in rural Coffee County captured their arrival. The footage also shows that some local election officials were at the office during what the Georgia secretary of state’s office has described as “alleged unauthorized access” of election equipment.
Security footage from two weeks later raises additional alarms — showing two people who were instrumental in Trump's wider efforts to undermine the election results entering the office and staying for hours.
The security video from the elections office in the county about 200 miles (320 kilometers) southeast of Atlanta offers a glimpse of the lengths Trump's allies went in service of his fraudulent election claims. It further shows how access allegedly was facilitated by local officials entrusted with protecting the security of elections while raising concerns about sensitive voting technology being released into the public domain.
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Georgia wasn't the only state where voting equipment was accessed after the 2020 presidential election. Important information about voting systems also was compromised in election offices in Pennsylvania,Michigan and Colorado. Election security experts worry the information obtained — including complete copies of hard drives — could be exploited by those who want to interfere with future elections.
"The system is only as secure as the people who are entrusted to keep it secure,” said lawyer David Cross, who represents plaintiffs in a long-running lawsuit over Georgia’s voting machines.
The Coffee County security footage was obtained through that lawsuit, which alleges that Georgia’s touchscreen voting machines are vulnerable to attack and should be replaced by hand-marked paper ballots. The suit long predates and is unrelated to false allegations of widespread election fraud pushed by Trump and his allies after the 2020 election.
The alleged breach in Coffee County's elections office also has caught the attention of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is overseeing an investigation into whether Trump and his allies illegally tried to influence the 2020 election results in Georgia.
Last month, Willis cited the Coffee County activity, among other things, when she sought to compel testimony from Sidney Powell, an attorney who was deeply involved in Trump's effort to undo the election results.
Emails and other records show Powell and other attorneys linked to Trump helped arrange for a team from data solutions company SullivanStrickler to travel to Coffee County, which Trump won by nearly 40 percentage points.
The surveillance video, emails and other documents that shed light on what happened there in January 2021 were produced in response to subpoenas issued in the voting machine lawsuit and were obtained by The Associated Press. Parts of the security video appear to contradict claims by some of the local officials:
— Footage captures Cathy Latham, then chair of the Coffee County Republican Party, arriving at the elections office shortly after 11:30 a.m. on Jan. 7, 2021, the day after the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol. Just a few weeks earlier, she was one of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate falsely stating that Trump had won the state and declaring that they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.
A few minutes after her arrival, she is seen outside greeting SullivanStrickler Chief Operating Officer Paul Maggio and two other people. Less than 10 minutes later, she escorts two other men into the building.
The video shows her leaving the elections office just before 1:30 p.m., roughly two hours after she greeted the SullivanStrickler team. She returns a little before 4 p.m. and then leaves around 6:15 p.m.
Latham said under oath during a deposition in August that she stopped by the elections office that evening for “Just a few minutes” and left before 5 p.m. Pressed on whether she had been there earlier in the day, Latham said she couldn’t recall but suggested her schedule as a teacher would not have allowed it.
A lawyer for SullivanStrickler said in an email attached to a court filing that Latham was a “primary point of contact” in coordinating the company’s work and “was on site” while that work was done.
Robert Cheeley, a lawyer for Latham said in an emailed statement that his client doesn't remember all the details of that day. But he said she “would not and has not knowingly been involved in any impropriety in any election" and “has not acted improperly or illegally.”
— The video also shows Eric Chaney, a member of Coffee County's election board, arriving shortly before 11 a.m. the same day and going in and out several times before leaving for the night around 7:40 p.m. Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the voting machine lawsuit wrote in a court filing that a photo produced by SullivanStrickler's COO shows Chaney in the office as the copying is happening.
During a deposition last month, Chaney declined to answer many questions about that day, citing the Fifth Amendment. But when an attorney representing the county reached out to him in April regarding questions from the The Washington Post, Chaney wrote, “I am not aware of nor was I present at the Coffee County Board of Elections and Registration's office when anyone illegally accessed the server or the room in which it is contained.” Chaney resigned from the elections board last month, days before his deposition.
Attempts to reach Chaney by phone were unsuccessful, and his lawyer did not respond to an email seeking comment.
— About two weeks after the initial breach, video shows Misty Hampton — then the county elections director — arriving at the elections office at 4:20 p.m. on Jan. 18, when it was closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. She unlocked the door and let in two men — Doug Logan and Jeff Lenberg, who have been active in efforts to challenge the 2020 election results.
Logan founded Cyber Ninjas, which participated in a partisan and ultimately discredited review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona. The two men remained inside until just after 8 p.m. and then spent more than nine hours there the next day. Lenberg returned for brief visits on at least three more days later that month.
Hampton resigned as elections supervisor in February 2021 after elections board officials said she falsified her timesheets. Attempts by the AP to reach her were unsuccessful.
In a statement released by its attorney, SullivanStrickler said the company was retained by attorneys to forensically copy voting machines used in the 2020 election and had no reason to believe they would ask its employees to do anything improper.
The Georgia secretary of state’s office said it opened an investigation in March and asked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for assistance last month. State officials have said the system remains secure because of multiple protections in place.
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By Ann E. Marimow
October 20, 2022 at 17:10 ET
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) must appear before a Georgia grand jury investigating possible attempts by former president Donald Trump and his allies to disrupt the state’s 2020 presidential election, a federal appeals court said Thursday.
Graham’s lawyers had asked the court to block a subpoena from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D), claiming that a sitting senator is shielded from such investigations. But a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit denied Graham’s request and upheld a lower-court ruling narrowing the range of questions prosecutors can ask.
“Senator Graham has failed to demonstrate that this approach will violate his rights under the Speech and Debate Clause,” according to the six-page order.
Graham can appeal the order to the full appeals court or could ask the Supreme Court to intervene.
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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham on Friday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene after a lower court ordered him to testify before a special grand jury in Georgia investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to influence the 2020 election in the state.
In a filing with the court, attorneys for Graham, a top ally of Trump's, sought to halt his possible testimony while he continues to appeal the order to appear before the Fulton County special grand jury.
Graham's office described the South Carolina Republican's filing as an attempt “to defend the Constitution and the institutional interest of the Senate.” The lower court's ruling, Graham's office said, “would significantly impact the ability of senators to gather information in connection with doing their job.”
The legal move is the latest in Graham's ongoing fight to prevent his testimony in a case that has ensnared allies and associates of the former president. Some have already made their appearances before the special grand jury, including former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani — who’s been told he could face criminal charges in the probe — attorneys John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro, and former White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
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Paperwork has been filed seeking testimony from others, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Graham, a four-term senator who last won reelection in 2020, was first subpoenaed in July by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who opened her investigation shortly after a recording of a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was made public. In that call, Trump suggested Raffensperger could “find” the votes needed to overturn his narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
Willis wants to question Graham about two phone calls he made to Raffensperger and his staff in the weeks after the election.
During those calls, Graham asked about “reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump,” Willis wrote in a petition seeking to compel his testimony.
Graham also “made reference to allegations of widespread voter fraud in the November 2020 election in Georgia, consistent with public statements made by known affiliates of the Trump Campaign,” she wrote. She said in a hearing last month that Graham may be able to provide insight into the extent of any coordinated efforts to influence the results.
Raffensperger said he took Graham’s question about absentee ballots as a suggestion to toss out legally cast votes. Graham has dismissed that interpretation as “ridiculous.” Graham has also argued that the call was protected because he was asking questions to inform his decisions on voting to certify the 2020 election and future legislation.
Graham challenged his subpoena in federal court, but a judge refused to toss it out. Graham then appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and a three-judge panel ruled Thursday in favor of Willis. Graham can appeal to the full court.
Graham’s lawyers argued that the Constitution’s speech or debate clause, which protects members of Congress from having to answer questions about legislative activity, shields him from having to testify.
Graham is represented by former White House counsel Don McGahn, who was involved in a lengthy court fight over a congressional subpoena for his own testimony related to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. After years of back-and-forth, the two sides reached an agreement and McGahn answered investigators' questions in a private session.
Graham's filing Friday was directed to Justice Clarence Thomas, who handles emergency appeals from Georgia and several other Southern states. Thomas can act on his own or refer the matter to the full court.
Trump's lawyers recently submitted a Supreme Court application to Thomas asking the Supreme Court to step into a legal fight over the classified documents seized during an FBI search of Trump's Florida estate.
Thomas has previously come under scrutiny for his vote in a different Trump documents case, in which he was the only member of the court to vote against allowing the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot to obtain Trump records held by the National Archives and Records Administration.
Thomas’ wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, is a conservative activist and staunch Trump supporter who attended the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse and wrote to Meadows in the weeks following the election encouraging him to work to overturn Biden’s victory and keep Trump in office.
She also contacted lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin in the weeks after the election, though no evidence has emerged that she contacted Georgia officials. Thomas was recently interviewed by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, and she stood by the false claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent, despite the fact that numerous federal and local officials, a long list of courts, top former campaign staffers and even Trump's own attorney general have all said there is no evidence of mass fraud.
___
Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP
___
Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report.
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ATLANTA (AP) — A judge on Wednesday ordered former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to testify before a special grand jury that's investigating whether President Donald Trump and his allies illegally tried to sway Georgia's results in the 2020 election.
Meadows, a former GOP congressman, is a key figure in the investigation. He traveled to Georgia, sat in on Trump’s phone calls with state officials and coordinated and communicated with outside influencers who were either encouraging or discouraging the pressure campaign.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis opened the investigation last year into actions taken by Trump and others to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the state. Meadows is just one of several associates and advisers of the Republican former president whose testimony Willis has sought.
Because Meadows doesn't live in Georgia, Willis, a Democrat, had to use a process that involved getting a judge where he lives in South Carolina to order him to appear. First, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who's overseeing the special grand jury, signed off on a petition certifying that Meadows was a “necessary and material witness."
Now, Circuit Court Judge Edward Miller in Pickens County, South Carolina, has honored McBurney's finding and ordered Meadows to testify, Willis spokesman Jeff DiSantis confirmed.
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Meadows attorney Jim Bannister told The Associated Press that his client was “weighing all options,” including appeals.
“Nothing final until we see the order,” he said.
Willis has been fighting similar battles — mostly with success — in courts around the country as she seeks to compel Trump allies to testify. But an appeals court in Texas has indicated it may not recognize the validity of the Georgia summonses, and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene after a federal appeals court last week ordered him to testify.
In the petition seeking Meadows’ testimony, Willis wrote that he attended a Dec. 21, 2020, meeting at the White House with Trump and others “to discuss allegations of voter fraud and certification of Electoral College votes from Georgia and other states.”
The next day, Willis wrote, Meadows made a “surprise visit” to Cobb County, just outside Atlanta, where an audit of signatures on absentee ballot envelopes was being conducted. He asked to observe the audit but wasn’t allowed to because it wasn’t open to the public, the petition says.
Meadows also sent emails to Justice Department officials after the election alleging voter fraud in Georgia and elsewhere and requesting investigations, Willis wrote. And he took part in a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, during which Trump suggested that Raffensperger, the state’s top elections official and a Republican, could “find” enough votes to overturn the president's narrow loss in the state.
According to a transcript of the call with Raffensperger, Meadows said Trump's team believed that “not every vote or fair vote and legal vote was counted. And that's at odds with the representation from the secretary of state's office.” He goes on to say he hopes they can agree on a way “to look at this a little bit more fully.”
Raffensperger disputed the assertions, addressing Trump, “We don't agree that you have won.”
After the election, Meadows was widely seen in the White House as a chief instigator of Trump’s fixation on the election, passing along debunked conspiracies about fraud that other officials were forced to swat down. He pushed one theory that people in Italy had changed votes in the U.S. with satellite technology, a claim that former Justice Department official Richard Donoghue labeled “pure insanity.”
On the legal front, in a court filing this week, Meadows' lawyer Bannister argued that executive privilege and other rights shield his client from testifying.
Bannister asserted in a filing that Meadows has been instructed by Trump “to preserve certain privileges and immunities attaching to his former office as White House Chief of Staff.” And Willis' petition calls for him “to divulge the contents of executive privileged communications with the President," Bannister wrote.
Meadows previously invoked that privilege in a fight against subpoenas issued by the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Meadows has been fighting investigations into the violent 2021 insurrection since last year and has so far avoided having to testify about his role and his knowledge of the former president’s actions. He turned over thousands of texts to the House Jan. 6 committee before eventually refusing to do an interview.
The House held Meadows in contempt of Congress for defying the subpoena, but the Justice Department declined to prosecute.
Special grand juries in Georgia cannot issue indictments. Instead, they can gather evidence and compel testimony and then can recommend further action, including criminal charges, in a final report. It is ultimately up to the district attorney to decide whether to seek an indictment from a regular grand jury.
Grand jury secrecy is “paramount” in South Carolina, Bannister wrote. Because the special grand jury is expected to ultimately issue a public report, ordering Meadows to testify would violate his state right to privacy, Bannister argued.
McBurney, the Fulton County Superior Court judge, has made clear in rulings on other attempts by potential witnesses to avoid or delay testimony that he considers the special grand jury's investigation to be a criminal proceeding. He has also stressed a need for secrecy for the panel's workings.
____
Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington and Jill Colvin and Meg Kinnard in New York contributed.
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CLEVELAND (AP) — Two right-wing operatives pleaded guilty on Monday in Cleveland to single felony counts of telecommunications fraud for having placed thousands of false robocalls in Ohio that told people they could be arrested or be forced to receive vaccinations based on information they submitted in votes by mail.
Jacob Wohl, 24, of Irvine, California, and Jack Burkman, 56, of Arlington, Virginia, could each receive a year in prison when they are sentenced Nov. 29 in common pleas court. They were indicted in October 2020 on numerous counts of telecommunications fraud and bribery.
Wohl's attorney, Mark Wieczorek, declined to comment about the his client's plea. Burkman's attorney, Brian Joslyn, did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment.
The two men were accused of arranging for a voice broadcast service to make about 85,000 robocalls to predominantly Black neighborhoods in Ohio, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois during the runup to the 2020 general election. Prosecutors said the pair were responsible for 3,500 calls to residents of Cleveland and East Cleveland.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O'Malley at the time the pair were charged said they "clearly infringed upon that right in a blatant attempt to suppress votes and undermine the integrity of this election.”
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Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, whose consumer protection unit assisted in the investigation, issued a statement Monday saying “voter intimidation won't be tolerated in Ohio.”
The calls warned people that information included in their mailed ballots could be used by law enforcement agencies to enforce arrest warrants, to collect outstanding debts, and lead to tracking by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for mandatory vaccines.
Wohl and Burkman have a history of staging hoaxes and spreading false smears against Democrats and public officials.
The Associated Press reported in May 2019 that a 21-year-old college student from Michigan said the men recruited him to falsely claim he was raped by then-Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, and published the smear without the student's permission.
Wohl denied the accusation, saying the student had reached out to him. Burkman said on Twitter that he believed the student’s initial account of the alleged assault was “accurate and true.”
The men have been sued in federal court in New York City and face a $5.1 million fine levied by the Federal Communications Commission. Wohl and Burkman are appealing criminal charges filed against them in Detroit stemming from a similar bogus robocall scheme targeting Black voters.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for Sen. Lindsey Graham's testimony in a Georgia investigation of possible illegal interference in the 2020 election by then-President Donald Trump and his allies in the state.
The court lifted a temporary hold on Graham's appearance before a special grand jury, now scheduled for Nov. 17.
But in an unsigned order, the justices noted that Graham still could raise objections to some questions.
“Today, the Supreme Court confirmed that the Constitution s Speech or Debate Clause applies here. They also affirmed that Senator Graham may return to the District Court if the District Attorney tries to ask questions about his constitutionally protected activities. The Senator s legal team intends to engage with the District Attorney s office on next steps to ensure respect for this constitutional immunity.”
The South Carolina senator, a top Trump ally, had argued that a provision of the Constitution, the speech and debate clause, shields him from being forced to testify at all.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had told the justices that “the delay resulting from a stay would be unavoidably harmful” to the grand jury investigation.
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Lower courts had rebuffed Graham’s plea for a pause while the legal case plays out.
Tuesday's order dissolved a temporary hold that Justice Clarence Thomas had placed on the testimony while he and his colleagues weighed the arguments.
Graham's legal team plans to reach out to Willis' office about what happens next, according to a statement from the senator's office.
Graham, a four-term senator who last won reelection in 2020, was first subpoenaed in July by Willis. The district attorney opened her investigation shortly after a recording of a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was made public. In that call, Trump suggested Raffensperger could “find” the votes needed to overturn his narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
Willis wants to question Graham about two phone calls he made to Raffensperger and his staff in the weeks after the election.
During those calls, Graham asked about “reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump,” Willis wrote in a petition seeking to compel his testimony.
Graham also “made reference to allegations of widespread voter fraud in the November 2020 election in Georgia, consistent with public statements made by known affiliates of the Trump Campaign,” she wrote. She said in a hearing last month that Graham may be able to provide insight into the extent of any coordinated efforts to influence the results.
Raffensperger said he took Graham’s question about absentee ballots as a suggestion to toss out legally cast votes. Graham has dismissed that interpretation as “ridiculous.” Graham has also argued that the call was protected because he was asking questions to inform his decisions on voting to certify the 2020 election and future legislation.
Lower courts already have told Willis that she “may not ask about any investigatory conduct,” which is protected under the Constitution.
The justices wrote Tuesday that their intervention is unnecessary because the courts “have held that Senator Graham may not be questioned about such activities.”
He also can return to federal court if disputes arise over the questioning in front of the grand jury, the justices wrote.
Thomas initially dealt with Graham's appeal, but involved the rest of the court in Tuesday's order, as is customary.
But Thomas did not step aside from the case, and indeed he has participated in all the election-related disputes brought to the court by Trump and his allies, despite the involvement of the justice's wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, in efforts to question Trump's defeat in 2020.
Ginni Thomas, a conservative activist and staunch Trump supporter, attended the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse and wrote to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the weeks following the election, encouraging him to work to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory and keep Trump in office.
She also contacted lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin in the weeks after the election, though no evidence has emerged that she contacted Georgia officials.
Ginni Thomas was recently interviewed by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, and she stood by the false claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent, despite the fact that numerous federal and local officials, a long list of courts, top former campaign staffers and even Trump’s own attorney general have all said there is no evidence of mass fraud.
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Opinion by Jennifer Rubin
November 14, 2022 at 7:45 ET
Despite dragging his party to defeat in the midterms, former president Donald Trump is expected to announce his 2024 presidential campaign this week. This would not only obliterate the GOP’s chance to win the runoff election for Georgia’s U.S. Senate seat, but also threaten his party’s prospects two years from now.
But Republicans will likely learn in the near future that Trump’s latest political humiliation is the least of his worries. He remains in grave legal peril on multiple fronts, and no criminal investigation is a greater threat to him that the one being conducted by Fani Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County, Ga.
Willis is teeing up a strong criminal case against Trump for his attempt to pressure Georgia election officials to overturn the state’s 2020 results. She has been calling the former president’s cronies to testify before a grand jury and is successfully beating back specious challenges to subpoenas from key figures — including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey O. Graham.
A voluminous new report from the Brookings Institution provides a legal road map for the potential prosecution of Trump. The report debunks defenses that Trump will likely deploy and underscores the real possibility that his closest associates might flip in the case, given how many might face criminal liability.
The report sums up the damning facts in the case:
[Trump] and those around him, including his chief of staff and others, made multiple attempts to intervene and overturn the state’s election results. His personal attorneys testified falsely in the state legislature. His campaign pursued a plan to organize false electors that included a bogus slate in Georgia. Trump attempted to replace his own attorney general to seek the unlawful intervention of the Georgia legislature. . . .
Most notably, on Saturday, January 2, 2021, Trump placed a call to Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump urged and ultimately threatened Raffensperger to reverse the election outcome — including a demand that Raffensperger “find 11,780 votes” that could be deemed fraudulent and tossed out. That number was exactly one more vote than the margin of Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in the state. If Raffensperger’s office complied with his request, Trump would be named the winner of the state’s presidential election, and presumably could use that development to seek a broader unraveling of the certified election results in other states confirming his defeat.
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