A federal judge has rejected former President Donald Trump’s effort to block Jan. 6 investigators from accessing White House records related to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, determining that he has no authority to overrule President Joe Biden’s decision to waive executive privilege and release the materials to Congress. “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President,” Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote in her ruling. Trump immediately appealed the decision. The National Archives, which houses the White House records, has indicated it plans to hand over the sensitive documents by Friday afternoon unless a court intervenes. The decision is a crucial victory for the Jan. 6 committee in the House, albeit one that may ring hollow if an appeals court — or, potentially, the U.S. Supreme Court — steps in to slow the process down. The documents Trump is seeking to block from investigators include files drawn from former chief of staff Mark Meadows, adviser Stephen Miller and White House deputy counsel Patrick Philbin, as well as call and visitor logs.
Arizona Election Audit Reinforced Doubt About 2020 Election Results | Erin Snodgrass/Business Insider
When organizers of the troubled GOP-led election audit in Maricopa County, Arizona, finally released results from the months-long, oft-delayed recount in September, the findings confirmed that President Joe Biden beat former President Donald Trump fairly in the largest county in the once-solidly red state. But despite the additional proof of Biden’s success, the controversial “audit” actually played a role in increasing the level of doubt surrounding the historic presidential election, according to a new Monmouth University poll. Earlier this year, the state’s GOP-controlled Senate chose Cyber Ninjas, a private firm, to carry out another count of the 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County, where Biden beat Trump by more than 45,000 votes. Billed by Senate Republicans as a mechanism to instill faith in US elections, the controversial audit was funded by right-wing donors and widely criticized, even by other local Republicans in the state. Maricopa County’s GOP-led Board of Supervisors said the recount’s draft reports were “littered with errors and faulty conclusions.” Even still, the effort found that Biden did beat Trump, resulting in an additional 99 votes for Biden and a loss of 261 votes for Trump. In a Monmouth University poll of 811 adults in the US by telephone from November 4 to 8 of this year, the majority of Americans, 36% said the review proved that Biden won the county fairly and another 21% said they aren’t sure about the report but guess that it probably showed Biden’s legitimate victory.
Full Article: Arizona Election Audit Reinforced Doubt About 2020 Election Results