After five years spent bullying the Republican Party into submission, President Donald Trump finally met his match in Aaron Van Langevelde. Who? That’s right. In the end, it wasn’t a senator or a judge or a general who stood up to the leader of the free world. There was no dramatic, made-for-Hollywood collision of cosmic egos. Rather, the death knell of Trump’s presidency was sounded by a baby-faced lawyer, looking over his glasses on a grainy Zoom feed on a gloomy Monday afternoon, reading from a statement that reflected a courage and moral clarity that has gone AWOL from his party, pleading with the tens of thousands of people watching online to understand that some lines can never be uncrossed. “We must not attempt to exercise power we simply don’t have,” declared Van Langevelde, a member of Michigan’s board of state canvassers, the ministerial body with sole authority to make official Joe Biden’s victory over Trump. “As John Adams once said, ‘We are a government of laws, not men.’ This board needs to adhere to that principle here today. This board must do its part to uphold the rule of law and comply with our legal duty to certify this election.” Van Langevelde is a Republican. He works for Republicans in the Statehouse. He gives legal guidance to advance Republican causes and win Republican campaigns. As a Republican, his mandate for Monday’s hearing—handed down from the state party chair, the national party chair and the president himself—was straightforward. They wanted Michigan’s board of canvassers to delay certification of Biden’s victory. Never mind that Trump lost by more than 154,000 votes, or that results were already certified in all 83 counties.
Nevada’s Attorney General did not admit to changing signature verification manually in election | Doug Stanglin/USA Today
The aftermath of the presidential election has prompted a cascade of claims of deliberate manipulation of vote counting. One Facebook user on Nov. 16 claimed: “Nevada AG Admits to Changing Signature Verifications Manually for Over 200,000 Votes. Everyone Knows this, right?” At first, the claim seems puzzling, given the gravity of the charge and the fact that Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford is a Democrat. James Dehaven, political reporter for the Reno Gazette-Journal, says he has no knowledge of any such explosive quote by Ford. Jon Ralston, a political reporter and editor of The Nevada Independent, says the claim that the attorney general made the statement statement is “crazy talk.” “I don’t even know what to say about this because it’s so insane,” Ralston tells USA TODAY in an email. “Ford would not have the ability to do this, nor has he ever said he did so.”
Full Article: Fact check: False claim on Nevada AG and signature verifications