Warren Stewart – Page 188 – The Voting News

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has denied a Republican Party effort to reject more absentee ballots in Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoffs by changing how election officials verify voters’ signatures. A three-judge panel ruled unanimously Sunday against the lawsuit brought by the political campaigns of Republican U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, as well as the Georgia Republican Party and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. It’s the latest in a series of court decisions rebuffing challenges to Georgia’s election rules and procedures following President Donald Trump’s 12,000-vote loss to Joe Biden. Loeffler and Perdue face Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in runoffs Jan. 5 that will determine control of the U.S. Senate. The court found that it would be “contrary to state law” to order the secretary of state and State Election Board to conduct a different signature matching process. Elections in Georgia are run at the county level. “Since the secretary and the election board do not conduct the signature matching process, are not the election officials that review the voter’s signature, and do not control whether the signature matching process can be observed, the campaigns’ alleged injury is not traceable to the secretary,” wrote Judges Charles Wilson, Beverly Martin and Robert Luck.

Full Article: 11th Circuit denies appeal over Georgia absentee ballot signatures

Georgia Republican lawmakers say they were right to back Texas lawsuit against state | Maya T. Prabhu and Tia Mitchell/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

For many legal scholars, it was a longshot effort at best: one state’s leaders suing over the elections in other states after their preferred candidate — President Donald Trump — lost. Still, 28 Republican state legislators and seven congressmen from Georgia said there were enough irregularities in the November presidential election that they filed a brief in support of a lawsuit brought by Texas officials against Georgia and other states. The U.S. Supreme Court quickly declined to consider the case, saying Texas did not have legal standing to sue Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin over their handling of the election. In a brief decision, the court said Texas didn’t have the legal right to bring a lawsuit against elections run by other states. Most Georgia politicians — particularly Republicans — jealously guard and regularly cite states’ rights, and they are loath for any other state, or the federal government, to tell them what to do. But many of Georgia’s Republican elected officials were willing to side with Texas in its lawsuit against their state’s handling of the election. Some still say, without evidence, that Trump won the election in Georgia.

Full Article: Georgia Republican lawmakers say they were right to back Texas lawsuit against state

Michigan: Report alleging election fraud in Antrim County is ‘baseless’ | Claire Savage/AFP

A report that is part of a lawsuit against Antrim County, Michigan claims the county’s quickly-corrected election night vote tally glitch was not due to human error, as the state said, but rather intentional election fraud. This is false; Michigan’s secretary of state called the claims “baseless,” and the company that provided the vote tabulation machines denied the allegations. “The Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results,” says the December 13, 2020 report filed as part of the case. Outlets Newsmax, Epoch Times and Gateway Pundit legitimized and spread the false claims, and social media users shared the report findings as fact here and here. The report cites a “significant and fatal error rate” of more than 68 percent, claiming that Dominion Voting Systems “intentionally generates an enormously high number of ballot errors,” leading to “bulk adjudication of ballots with no oversight, no transparency, and no audit trail.” In November, articles shared thousands of times on social media claimed that an Antrim County reporting mistake -- which temporarily misattributed Donald Trump votes to president-elect Joe Biden -- posed a systemic risk to dozens of counties in the battleground state. The Michigan secretary of state’s office published a notice explaining that the glitch resulted from a user error, not a software problem, and that it did not affect the election results or other counties or states.

Source: Report alleging election fraud in Michigan county is ‘baseless’ | Fact Check

New York: Brindisi-Tenney result before start of Congress unlikely after Oneida County setback | Patrick Lohmann/Syracuse Post-Standard

Another delay in the review of ballots in Oneida County will likely mean that the new Congress will convene next month without representation for New York’s 22nd Congressional District. Incumbent Anthony Brindisi (D) and challenger Claudia Tenney (R) have been locked in a courtroom battle for more than a month to determine the winner of the Congressional race. State Supreme Court Justice Scott DelConte said he is waiting to rule on disputed ballots until all of the counties’ vote counts are updated. He hinted today that would mean the 22nd district would go without a federal representative, at least temporarily. “I’m personally disappointed that we’re talking about doing this early next year,” DelConte said. “I think we all know what that means for the voters of the 22nd congressional district. I wish there was something I could do.” Tenney leads Brindisi by just 19 ballots of more than 300,000 cast, according to unofficial returns from the eight counties in the district.

Full Article: Brindisi-Tenney result before start of Congress unlikely after Oneida County setback - syracuse.com

Pennsylvania: Delaware County man charged with registering dead relatives to vote for Trump in presidential election | Vinny Vella/Philadelphia Inquirer

In the weeks leading up to the presidential election, Elizabeth Bartman and Elizabeth Weihman registered to vote as Republicans in Nether Providence Township, Delaware County officials said Monday. There was one problem: Both women had been dead for several years. The man behind those applications, Bruce Bartman, now faces two felony counts of perjury, as well as one count of unlawful voting for successfully casting an absentee ballot for President Donald Trump in the name of Elizabeth Bartman, his long-dead mother. Bartman was arraigned Friday and released on $100,000 unsecured bail. His lawyer, Samuel Stretton, said the 70-year-old takes full responsibility for the crimes, and will cooperate with investigators. “In his political frustration, he chose to do something stupid,” Stretton said. “And for that he is very sorry.” District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said Bartman admitted to casting the illegal ballot to “further the campaign of Donald Trump.” But the top prosecutor cautioned that Bartman’s arrest was an isolated incident, and not an indication of larger voting problems in the county. “For all the conspiracy theorists out there, this case today does not represent widespread voter fraud,” Stollsteimer said. “This case was evidence that one person committed voter fraud by casting an improper and illegal ballot.” Bartman used his mother’s driver’s license to register her to vote online, and then requested and filled out an absentee ballot in her name, Stollsteimer said. He repeated the process for Weihman, his mother-in-law, using her Social Security number. The state’s system flagged the information as belonging to a dead person, but Bartman signed a letter confirming the woman was still alive.

Full Article: Delaware County man charged with registering dead relatives to vote in presidential election

Texas: Ken Paxton’s beefed-up 2020 voter fraud unit closed 16 minor cases, all in Harris County | Taylor Goldenstein/Houston Chronicle

The Texas Attorney General’s office this year almost doubled the amount of time it spent looking into and working on voter fraud cases in 2018 — more than 22,000 staff hours — yet resolved just 16 prosecutions, half as many as in 2018, records show.All 16 cases involved Harris County residents who gave false addresses on their voter registration forms. None of them received any jail time.Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has made the hunt for voter fraud a top priority of his office, between January and October gave the election integrity unit access to eight additional law enforcement sergeants on top of the nine already assigned to it, and doubled the number of prosecutors to four, according to records obtained from the agency by nonprofit government watchdog American Oversight and shared with Hearst Newspapers.In its 15 years of its existence, the unit has prosecuted a few dozen cases in which offenders received jail time, none of them involving widespread fraud. Paxton’s approach to the issue is the same as that of other top Texas Republicans, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott who earlier this month backed the attorney general’s last-ditch election suit at the Supreme Court challenging president-elect Joe Biden’s win in four battleground states — relentlessly insist voter fraud is a major concern while citing no evidence that it is prevalent. As President Donald Trump claimed that the election was stolen from him in early November, Patrick went so far as to offer a $1 million reward for tips leading to voter fraud convictions anywhere in the country.

Full Article: Ken Paxton’s beefed-up 2020 voter fraud unit closed 16 minor cases, all in Harris County - HoustonChronicle.com

Wisconsin: Justices Face Anti-Semitic, Misogynist Attacks After Trump Ruling | Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner

Trump supporters unleashed a barrage of obscenity on Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Jill Karofsky after Karofsky joined the majority in a decision rejecting the Trump campaign’s lawsuit seeking to throw out more than 200,000 votes in Dane and Milwaukee counties. Progressive Magazine editor Bill Lueders has published the contents of some of those messages to Karofsky, which the Progressive received in response to an open records request. In an article co-published by the Wisconsin Examiner, Lueders also reported on the contents of critical voicemail and email messages aimed at conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn, who wrote the majority decision rejecting the Trump campaign’s lawsuit. The messages to Karofsky were both cruder and more aggressive than those directed at Hagedorn. Justice Rebecca Dallet also shared email, voicemail, and written messages denouncing her for joining the decision. Karofsky and Dallet were the targets of an online anti-Semitic attack on a blog reposted by the white supremacist website Daily Stormer that identifies Karofsky and Dallet as “Wisconsin Jews.” “Powerful Jews came together to assure their people hold as many positions of power as possible,” it asserts, and repeats anti-Semitic canards about a cabal of wealthy Jews who dominate Ivy League universities and businesses. Both the blog post and the obscenity-laced messages to Karofsky’s office focus on her comment that the Trump campaign’s effort to throw out votes “smacks of racism.”

Full Article: Justices Face Anti-Semitic, Misogynist Attacks After Trump Ruling » Urban Milwaukee

National: A frustrated Trump redoubles efforts to challenge election result | Felicia Sonmez, Josh Dawsey, Dan Lamothe and Matt Zapotosky/The Washington Post

President Trump has intensified efforts to overturn the election, raising a series of radical measures in recent days, including military intervention, seizing voting machines and a 13th-hour appeal to the Supreme Court. On Sunday, Trump said in a radio interview that he had spoken with Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) about challenging the electoral vote count when the House and Senate convene on Jan. 6 to formally affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. “He’s so excited,” Trump said of Tuberville. “He said, ‘You made me the most popular politician in the United States.’ He said, ‘I can’t believe it.’ He’s great. Great senator.” Tuberville’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Trump’s statement, which the president made in an interview with Rudolph W. Giuliani, his personal lawyer, on New York’s WABC radio station. Trump’s conversation with Tuberville is part of a much broader effort by the defeated president to invalidate the election. He is increasingly reaching out to allies like Giuliani and White House trade adviser Peter Navarro for ideas and searching his Twitter feed for information to promote, according to Trump advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Full Article: Trump says he spoke with Alabama Sen.-elect Tommy Tubervill

Pennsylvania: Trump campaign brings new U.S. Supreme Court challenge over 2020 election | Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and overturn several decisions the Pennsylvania Supreme Court made regarding the 2020 election, saying that the court overstepped its bounds and that “the outcome of the election for the Presidency of the United States hangs in the balance.” But even in the unlikely event the new challenge is successful and the court agrees to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania, it would not change his Electoral College win. Biden amassed 306 electoral votes, the same as Trump four years ago — 36 more votes than the 270 needed to win. Pennsylvania has 20 votes. What the challenge would do, if successful, is defy the will of the Pennsylvania voters who cast ballots in the Nov. 3 election under the rules in place at the time. Specifically, the campaign said in its filing, it would throw out 110,000 votes that it says are invalid because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court inappropriately changed election rules. A lawyer representing the campaign said Sunday it had filed a cert petition and a motion to expedite, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to fast-track the case because of the impending Jan. 6 meeting of Congress to receive the Electoral College results and the Jan. 20 inauguration. The challenge is the latest in a series of increasingly long-shot attempts to overturn the election, which Trump lost in Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes. The latest attempt, like the others, doesn’t center on any specific claims of voter fraud in Pennsylvania, despite Trump’s repeated use of baseless conspiracy theories to attack the election.

Full Article: Trump campaign brings new U.S. Supreme Court challenge over Pennsylvania’s 2020 election

National: How Trump drove the lie that the election was stolen, undermining voter trust in the outcome | Amy Gardner/The Washington Post

Elena Parent, a Democratic state lawmaker from the Atlanta area, listened incredulously in a small hearing room in early December as a stream of witnesses spun fantastical tales of alleged election fraud before the Georgia Senate’s Judiciary Committee. A retired Army colonel claimed the state’s voting machines were controlled by Communists from Venezuela. A volunteer lawyer with President Trump’s campaign shared surveillance video that she said showed election workers in Atlanta counting “suitcases” of phony ballots that swung Georgia’s election to former vice president Joe Biden. The president’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, told the panel: “Every single vote should be taken away from Biden.” “Since this has been debunked repeatedly, what evidence can you give to us that counters what our elections officials presented us with only an hour ago?” Parent asked one of the witnesses, her voice rising in exasperation. When she tried to ask a follow-up question, the Republican committee chairman cut her off. Her questions — and the fact that the claims were misleading, unsubstantiated or just plain false — did little to keep the rumors in check. It didn’t matter that state and local election officials had explained what was in the video and conducted a hand recount to show that the machines were not rigged. It didn’t matter that multiple news outlets detailed, over and over, that there was no evidence of widespread fraud. It didn’t matter that, amid a global pandemic and massive demand for mail ballots, a system under historic strain in fact held up decisively. To preserve his hold on power, Trump has spent the weeks since Election Day promoting falsehoods about voting problems in Georgia and five other states, successfully persuading tens of millions of his supporters to believe a lie — that the election was stolen from him, and from them.

Full Article: How Trump drove the lie that the election was stolen, undermining voter trust in the outcome - The Washington Post

National: The ‘Red Slime’ Lawsuit That Could Sink Right-Wing Media | Ben Smith/The New York Times

Antonio Mugica was in Boca Raton when an American presidential election really melted down in 2000, and he watched with shocked fascination as local government officials argued over hanging chads and butterfly ballots. It was so bad, so incompetent, that Mr. Mugica, a young Venezuelan software engineer, decided to shift the focus of his digital security company, Smartmatic, which had been working for banks. It would offer its services to what would obviously be a growth industry: electronic voting machines. He began building a global company that ultimately provided voting machinery and software for elections from Brazil to Belgium and his native Venezuela. He even acquired an American company, then called Sequoia. Last month, Mr. Mugica initially took it in stride when his company’s name started popping up in grief-addled Trump supporters’ wild conspiracy theories about the election. “Of course I was surprised, but at the same time, it was pretty clear that these people were trying to discredit the election and they were throwing out 25 conspiracy theories in parallel,” he told me in an interview last week from Barbados, where his company has an office. “I thought it was so absurd that it was not going to have legs.” But by Nov. 14, he knew he had a problem. That’s when Rudy Giuliani, serving as the president’s lawyer, suggested that one voting company, Dominion Voting Systems, had a sinister connection to vote counts in “Michigan, Arizona and Georgia and other states.” Mr. Giuliani declared on Twitter that the company “was a front for SMARTMATIC, who was really doing the computing. Look up SMARTMATIC and tweet me what you think?”

Full Article: The ‘Red Slime’ Lawsuit That Could Sink Right-Wing Media - The New York Times

National: Republicans strategize for next elections: ‘Their plan is to make it harder for voters to participate’ | Sam Levine/The Guardian

After record turnout in the 2020 presidential election, Republicans in some states are already signaling they will pursue measures that make it harder to vote in the coming years. The Republican efforts come after an election in which nearly 160 million people voted, the highest in a presidential election in over a century. About half of voters cast their ballots by mail, a big increase from 2016, while about another quarter cast their ballots in person ahead of election day. The GOP backlash underscores how swiftly and severely the party is willing to cut off access to the ballot amid signs of a changing electorate. The baseless accusations of fraud that Donald Trump and other allies continue to levy about the election has offered election officials justification for passing the measures. “There will be some states where it is very clear that the existing power structure is worried about their voters. And part of their job security plan is to make it harder for their voters to participate,” said Myrna Pérez, director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice. Two states that appear to be at the center of the push are Georgia and Texas, where Republicans are already advocating measures to scale back mail-in voting and other access to the ballot. Both states, traditionally seen as Republican strongholds, are increasingly seen as politically competitive because of demographic shifts, with the electorate becoming much more diverse. In Georgia, there has been significant growth among Black, Hispanic and Asian eligible voters over the last two decades, while Texas has seen a surge in its Latino population.

Full Article: Republicans strategize for next elections: 'Their plan is to make it harder for voters to participate' | US news | The Guardian

National: Trump campaign told to preserve all documents related to Sidney Powell and Dominion Voting Systems | Kaitlan Collins, Kevin Liptak and Pamela Brown/CNN

President Donald Trump's campaign legal team sent a memo to dozens of staffers Saturday instructing them to preserve all documents related to Dominion Voting Systems and Sidney Powell in anticipation of potential litigation by the company against the pro-Trump attorney. The memo, viewed by CNN, references a letter Dominion sent to Powell this week demanding she publicly retract her accusations and instructs campaign staff not to alter, destroy or discard records that could be relevant. A serious internal divide has formed within Trump's campaign following the election with tensions at their highest between the campaign's general counsel, Matt Morgan, who sent the memo Saturday, and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Though the campaign once distanced itself from Powell, Trump has been urging other people to fight like she has, according to multiple people familiar with his remarks. He has asked for more people making her arguments, which are often baseless and filled with conspiracy theories, on television. Morgan wrote in the memo, "The Allegations within the letter dated December 16, 2020 reference the Campaign and lawyers who may have performed work for the Campaign. Even with references to the Campaign and some of its outside lawyers, the Campaign does not reasonably anticipate litigation against the Campaign at this time. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Campaign views it as prudent to establish a litigation hold at this time to protect and preserve all rights and privileges that may exist under the law." The Trump campaign has declined to comment.

Full Article: Trump campaign told to preserve all documents related to Sidney Powell and Dominion Voting Systems - CNNPolitics

National: Michael Flynn: Trump could deploy military to ‘rerun’ election | Jordan Williams/The Hill

Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn on Thursday said that President Trump could deploy the military to “rerun” the 2020 election. During an appearance on Newsmax’s “Greg Kelly Reports,” Flynn was asked about the actions the president could take to undo the results of the election. After Flynn suggested that the president could seize every voting machine across the country, he then suggested deploying the military in swing states that the president lost to President-elect Joe Biden. “He could order, within the swing states if he wanted to, he could take military capabilities and basically rerun an election each in those states,” Flynn said. Flynn added that using the military is “not unprecedented,” saying that people talk about it “like it's something that we’ve never done,” but he also said he was “not calling for that.” “Martial law has been instituted 64 times,” he said. “So I'm not calling for that. We have a constitutional process, and that has to be followed.”

Full Article: Michael Flynn: Trump could deploy military to 'rerun' election | TheHill

National: Lou Dobbs debunks his own claims of election fraud — after Smartmatic sends Fox a legal demand | Jeremy Barr/The Washington Post

Something surprising happened Friday night on Lou Dobbs’s top-rated show on the Fox Business Network. Dobbs, an opinion host and conservative ally of President Trump who has consistently raged over the past month that the president was robbed of a second term by a rigged election, introduced a segment that calmly debunked several accusations of fraud that Rudolph W. Giuliani and other Trump supporters have lobbed against the election technology company Smartmatic. “There are lots of opinions about the integrity of the election, the irregularities of mail-in voting, of election voting machines and voting software,” Dobbs told his viewers before introducing Edward Perez, an expert with the nonprofit Open Source Election Technology Institute, to give “his assessment of Smartmatic and recent claims about the company.” Perez then appeared in an apparently pretaped segment, where he shot down various conspiracy theories in response to questions from an off-camera, unidentified voice — not Dobbs’s. The segment, it turns out, was in response to a 20-page legal demand letter that was sent this month by Smartmatic to Fox News Media. Similar letters went to Fox’s smaller competitors on the right, Newsmax and One America News. The letters demanded “a full and complete retraction of all false and defamatory statements and reports” aired by the network in its coverage of the Nov. 3 presidential election.

Full Article: Lou Dobbs debunks his own claims of election fraud — after Smartmatic sends Fox a legal demand – The Washington Post

National: Trump Discussed Naming Sidney Powell as Special Counsel on Election Fraud | Maggie Haberman and Zolan Kanno-Youngs/The New York Times

President Trump on Friday discussed naming Sidney Powell, who as a lawyer for his campaign team unleashed conspiracy theories about a Venezuelan plot to rig voting machines in the United States, to be a special counsel overseeing an investigation of voter fraud, according to two people briefed on the discussion. It was unclear if Mr. Trump will move ahead with such a plan. Most of his advisers opposed the idea, two of the people briefed on the discussion said, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer. In recent days Mr. Giuliani has sought to have the Department of Homeland Security join the campaign’s efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s loss in the election. Mr. Giuliani joined the discussion by phone initially, while Ms. Powell was at the White House for a meeting that became raucous and involved people shouting at each other at times, according to one of the people briefed on what took place. Ms. Powell’s client, retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser whom the president recently pardoned, was also there, two of the people briefed on the meeting said. Some senior administration officials drifted in and out of the meeting. During an appearance on the conservative Newsmax channel this week, Mr. Flynn pushed for Mr. Trump to impose martial law and deploy the military to “rerun” the election. At one point in the meeting on Friday, Mr. Trump asked about that idea.

Full Article: Trump Discussed Naming Sidney Powell as Special Counsel on Election Fraud - The New York Times

National: Fox News retracts Smartmatic voting machine fraud claim in staged video | Richard Luscombe/The Guardian

Fox News has taken a further step back from Donald Trump’s baseless allegations of election fraud with a bizarre apparent legal retraction aired during shows hosted by some of the president’s most fervent supporters. First broadcast on Fox Business on Friday, on Lou Dobbs Tonight, and repeated over the weekend on shows hosted by Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, the segment was presented as a news interview with election technology expert Eddie Perez. In the three-minute video, described as “a closer look at claims about Smartmatic”, Perez answers questions posed by an unidentified interviewer about a Florida company that provided voting systems for the November election. Perez is asked questions such as “Have you seen any evidence that Smartmatic software was used to flip votes anywhere in the US in this election?” and “Have you seen any evidence of Smartmatic sending US votes to be tabulated in foreign countries?” He says he has not seen any such evidence. … Speaking to CNN, Perez said: “My reaction was to observe, as many others have, how kind of strange and unique that particular way at presenting the facts was. “There was nothing in any of the preliminary conversations that I had with Fox News that gave me any indication that Smartmatic would be a matter of conversation. It was never mentioned that this was going to be a discussion about Smartmatic or even claims about private vendors. I was anticipating a broader discussion about the debate around the election [and] election integrity.” Perez said Fox News’ coverage of the election was “speculative and not based in fact” and conspiracy theories peddled by hosts were “harmful to enhancing public confidence in the legitimacy of election outcomes”. “I am not accustomed to seeing Lou Dobbs air very straightforward factual evidence,” he said.

Full Article: Fox News retracts Smartmatic voting machine fraud claim in staged video | Fox News | The Guardian

National: Dominion Voting Systems demands pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell retract ‘defamatory’ accusations | Jonathan Easley/The Hill

Attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems sent a letter to Sidney Powell, a onetime member of President Trump’s legal team, demanding she retract her claims that the voting machine company helped rig the 2020 election. The letter, from the Alexandria, Va.-based law firm Clare Locke, warns Powell that she will expose both herself and the Trump campaign to “substantial legal risk for defamation” if she refuses to publicly recant the many unsubstantiated claims she has made about the company. “As a result of your false accusations, Dominion has suffered enormous harm, and its employees have been stalked, have been harassed, and have received death threats,” the letter states. “We demand that you immediately and publicly retract your false accusations and set the record straight. If you refuse to do so and instead choose to stand by your defamatory falsehoods, that will be viewed as additional evidence of actual malice.” Powell has been among the most vocal and active proponents of allegations — none of which have held up in court — that the election was stolen from Trump through widespread fraud and corruption. Powell has claimed that Dominion used an algorithm to flip some votes from Trump to President-elect Joe Biden. She has also claimed that Dominion paid kickbacks to GOP officials in Georgia and elsewhere to keep quiet about the scheme, among many other allegations.

Full Article: Dominion voting machines demands pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell retract 'defamatory' accusations | TheHill

National: Democrats and Republicans are ending 2020 as far apart as ever on election security | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Any chance of Congress burying old gripes and working together on election security took a serious blow during 2020’s final hearing on the topic. That hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee pitted Christopher Krebs, the former cybersecurity chief fired for affirming the integrity of the election, against allies of President Trump who repeated many of the same debunked election fraud claims already tossed out in dozens of court cases. Republican senators repeatedly asserted the election result was compromised, even though no court has upheld those claims in more than 50 legal cases. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) declared “the election in many ways was stolen,” a claim that has not been endorsed by a single top state election official, Republican or Democrat. Republicans also repeatedly attacked Democrats for expressing concerns about the integrity of the 2016 election, but not the 2020 contest — ignoring the fact that Russian interference in the 2016 election was confirmed by U.S. intelligence agencies and a unanimous report from the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee, while leading state and federal officials have declared there was no such interference in 2020. At one point the hearing even devolved into a shouting match between Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Gary Peters (Mich.), over unrelated investigations into Hunter Biden, the son of President-elect Joe Biden. Johnson said Peters “lied repeatedly in the press, that I was spreading Russian disinformation,” while Peters replied: “This is not about airing your grievances. … I don’t know what rabbit hole you’re running down.” Nor did Republicans acknowledge reforms that Democrats and election security experts have been pushing for years aimed at raising confidence in future elections. They include ensuring there are paper ballots in all counties that lack them, increasing post-election audits and mandating more transparency by voting-machine vendors.

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: Democrats and Republicans are ending 2020 as far apart as ever on election security - The Washington Post

National: Biden and lawmakers raise alarms over cyber breach amid Trump silence | Anne Gearan, Karoun Demirjian, Mike DeBonis and Annie Linskey/The Washington Post

Democrats and some Republicans raised the alarm Thursday about a massive and growing cybersecurity breach that many experts blame on Russia, with President-elect Joe Biden implicitly criticizing the Trump administration for allowing the hacking attack to occur. “We need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyber attacks in the first place,” Biden said in a statement. “Our adversaries should know that, as president, I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults on our nation.” President Trump, by contrast, has said nothing about the hack affecting numerous federal agencies as well as U.S. companies. U.S. national security agencies are still assessing the scope and severity of the breach, which was discovered by a commercial firm. The president’s silence about an organized attack on the U.S. government marks the latest example of his persistent reluctance to criticize Russia, which U.S. intelligence agencies have accused of interfering in the 2016 election to help Trump. Throughout his presidency, Trump has contradicted his own government’s findings about 2016 election hacking and disinformation efforts, and he has publicly accepted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s word that Moscow was blameless.

Full Article: Biden and lawmakers raise alarms over cyber breach amid Trump silence - The Washington Post

National: Federal investigators find evidence of previously unknown tactics used to penetrate government networks | Craig Timberg and Ellen Nakashima/The Washington Post

Federal investigators reported Thursday on evidence of previously unknown tactics for penetrating government computer networks, a development that underscores the disastrous reach of Russia’s recent intrusions and the logistical nightmare facing federal officials trying to purge intruders from key systems. For days it has been clear that compromised software patches distributed by a Texas-based company, SolarWinds, were central to Russian efforts to gain access into U.S. government computer systems. But Thursday’s alert from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency at the Department of Homeland Security said evidence suggested there was other malware used to initiate what the alert described as “a grave risk to the Federal Government and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations.” While many details remained unclear, the revelation about new modes of attack raises fresh questions about the access that Russian hackers were able to gain in government and corporate systems worldwide. “This adversary has demonstrated an ability to exploit software supply chains and shown significant knowledge of Windows networks,” the alert said. “It is likely that the adversary has additional initial access vectors and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that have not yet been discovered.”

Full Article: Federal investigators find evidence of previously unknown tactics used to penetrate government networks - The Washington Post

National: Pence prepares to oversee Trump’s loss — and then leave town | Gabby Ohr and Nahal Toosi/Politico

On Jan. 6, Vice President Mike Pence will oversee final confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. Then he’ll likely skip town. As vice president, Pence has the awkward but unavoidable duty of presiding over the session of Congress that will formalize Biden’s Electoral College victory — a development that is likely to expose him and other Republicans to the wrath of GOP voters who believe President Donald Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen from him. But Pence could dodge their ire by leaving Washington immediately for the Middle East and Europe. According to three U.S. officials familiar with the planning, the vice president is eyeing a foreign trip that would take him overseas for nearly a week, starting on Jan. 6. Though Pence aides declined to confirm details of the trip, which remains tentative, a U.S. government document seen by POLITICO shows the vice president is due to travel to Bahrain, Israel and Poland, with the possibility of more stops being added. A pre-advance team of Pence aides and other U.S. officials left earlier this week to visit the planned stops in preparation for the multicountry tour, which would be Pence’s first trip abroad since last January, when he traveled to Rome and Jerusalem on a whirlwind two-day sojourn.

Full Article: Pence prepares to oversee Trump’s loss — and then leave town - POLITICO

National: Voting machine firm demands pro-Trump attorney retract bogus claims about 2020 election | Olivia Rubin and Matthew Mosk/ABC

The Colorado voting machine company that fringe pro-Trump forces have targeted with dark conspiracy theories of a rigged 2020 election is demanding that conservative lawyer Sidney Powell retract the "wild, knowingly baseless, and false" allegations she has made against them. Dominion Voting Systems made their demands in a letter to Powell, who has taken a central role in pushing the debunked theory that dark forces rigged Dominion machines to flip votes from Trump to former Vice President Joe Biden. The company's letter represents its most aggressive posture to date, and signals the early stages of what could become heavy and costly pushback against the lawyers who have led a post-election campaign to discredit the 2020 election results. Pro-Trump attorneys have filed more than 60 lawsuits as part of the effort, nearly all of which have been dismissed, often with sharply-worded rulings. Despite having been repeatedly disputed by the company and disproven by federal election officials, the bogus conspiracy theory has spread fast and wide on social media and in conservative media outlets.

Full Article: Voting machine firm demands pro-Trump attorney retract bogus claims about 2020 election - ABC News

National: Lawmakers Scrap $500 Million in State Election Security Grants | Billy House/Bloomberg

Congressional negotiators have eliminated $500 million in election security grants to the states from a final version of a measure to fund the U.S. government into 2021, a top House Democrat says. That development comes as President Donald Trump and his allies continue to promote unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud in the Nov. 3 election, even though their allegations have been rejected by courts and state election officials. Mike Quigley, the chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, said Wednesday he’d been told that the omnibus funding package being worked out with Senate negotiators “zeros out” the state assistance money. Quigley, who also serves on the House Intelligence Committee and is an enthusiastic proponent of the grants, called the move short-sighted and the timing “inexplicable,” especially given the threat of cyber attacks and other vulnerabilities faced by voting systems. Evan Hollander, a spokesman for House Appropriations Committee Chair Nita Lowey of New York, declined to confirm that the money was not included. The chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, Ben Hovland, said in an interview Wednesday night that he had not been told officially of the fate of the $500 million and that, “it’s not done until it’s done.”

Full Article: Lawmakers Scrap $500 Million in State Election Security Grants - Bloomberg

Editorial: No, Congress’s Jan. 6 count isn’t another chance for Trump to reverse his loss | Trevor Potter/The Washington Post

Jan. 6 is not another Election Day. Don’t let President Trump convince you it is. What will happen then — a joint session of Congress to receive the presidential and vice-presidential election results transmitted by the states — typically occurs every four years in relative obscurity. But this election cycle has been anything but typical. While there’s no realistic chance of anything happening Jan. 6 to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power consistent with the will of America’s voters and Monday’s electoral college votes, there is still a good chance Trump will try to make the day a super spreader event for the election disinformation with which he is relentlessly trying to infect American democracy. Foreknowledge is, however, a form of inoculation here. By understanding exactly what does and doesn’t happen Jan. 6, all of us can contribute to making that day a reaffirmation of our democratic process rather than part of a continued assault on it. As required by the Constitution’s Twelfth Amendment, the House and Senate will gather in a joint session presided over by Vice President Pence. There, the slates of electors for president and vice president from the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, received by Congress from the state governments and accompanied by certificates from the governors, will be read out, and the vote totals will be counted. This is usually a routine process — as it should be, because federal law urges any disputes over such slates to be resolved in the states by Dec. 8, ahead of the electoral college meeting Dec. 14. That is to say any disputes (which are rare to begin with) are meant to be disposed of well before Congress gathers to count the electoral votes. It’s “really a formality,” as Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) has rightly called the coming session. But it is at least possible for members of Congress to raise objections to one or more slates of electors as they’re read aloud. Under a 130-year-old law called the Electoral Count Act, if one representative and one senator jointly object to a slate, then the whole process pauses while the House and Senate separately debate the objection, then vote on whether to sustain it.

Full Article: No, Congress’s Jan. 6 count isn’t another chance for Trump to reverse his loss - The Washington Post

Georgia GOP Senators Lose Bid to Alter Mail-in Ballot Rules | Erik Larson/Bloomberg

A federal judge in Georgia rejected a lawsuit by the state’s two Republican senators seeking to change the mail-in ballot signature verification rules for their Jan. 5 runoff election, calling their worries about voter fraud “far too speculative.” U.S. District Judge Eleanor L. Ross in Atlanta on Thursday granted the state’s motion to dismiss the suit brought by the Georgia Republican Party and the campaigns of Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, whose races will determine control of the U.S. Senate. Lawyers for Georgia’s embattled Republican elections chief, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, argued at a Thursday hearing that the suit was filed far too late given that the current rules for verifying signatures on mail-in ballots were put in place months ago. Charlene McGowan, a lawyer for Attorney General Chris Carr, also a Republican, argued that the campaigns failed to provide evidence that any mail-in ballots had been cast fraudulently under the current rules, or even that they might be. She also accused the GOP of cherry-picking data about mail-in ballot rejection rates to falsely suggest Georgia rejected too few of them.

Full Article: GOP Georgia Senators Lose Bid to Alter Mail-in Ballot Rules - Bloomberg

Georgia: Judges dismiss two GOP lawsuit challenging absentee ballot rules | David Wickert/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Federal judges Thursday dismissed two Republican lawsuits that sought to change the rules for absentee voting in Georgia amid the hotly contested Jan. 5 runoff election. In the first case, a federal judge in Augusta rejected a Twelfth Congressional District Republican Committee lawsuit that, among other things, sought to eliminate the use of absentee ballot drop boxes in Georgia. In the second, a judge in Atlanta dismissed a request by the state’s two Republican incumbent U.S. senators - Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue - for more scrutiny of signature matching for absentee ballots. The lawsuits are part of an extraordinary effort by Republicans to ask courts to change the rules for absentee ballots amid the runoff election that will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. Through Wednesday, more than 423,000 Georgians had already cast absentee ballots for the runoff. Early in-person voting began Monday. “We are not even on the eve of an election,” J. Randal Hall, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Augusta, said in rejecting one of the lawsuits. “We are, as it relates to this particular election, closing in on halftime.”

Full Article: Judges dismiss two GOP lawsuit challenging Georgia’s absentee ballot rules

Georgia: An outraged Kemp blasts pro-Trump conspiracy theorists harassing his family | Greg Bluestein/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Gov. Brian Kemp is fed up with the unrelenting attacks from conspiracy theorists calling on him to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia. But he’s even more enraged that some of those peddlers of false claims are targeting his wife and three daughters. “It has gotten ridiculous — from death threats, (claims of) bribes from China, the social media posts that my children are getting,” he said. “We have the ‘no crying in politics rule’ in the Kemp house. But this is stuff that, if I said it, I would be taken to the woodshed and would never see the light of day.” The Republican singled out the invective targeting his daughter Lucy, who has received hate-filled messages about inane false conspiracies about the death of her longtime boyfriend, Harrison Deal, who was killed in a traffic accident this month in Savannah. “I can assure you I can handle myself. And if they’re brave enough to come out from underneath that keyboard or behind it, we can have a little conversation if they would like to.” Kemp, speaking to reporters shortly after a vaccine-related event at Grady Memorial, did not blame President Donald Trump for the wrath he’s facing from Republicans, even though the president has stoked the fury by blasting Kemp for refusing to illegally reverse his defeat in Georgia. “As far as I know, my relationship with the president is fine. I know he’s frustrated, and I’ve disagreed on things with him before,” he said, adding: “Look, at the end of the day, I’ve got to follow the laws and the Constitution and the Constitution of this state.” Trump has repeatedly vented his outrage at Kemp, and has called him a “clown,” predicted he would lose the 2022 Republican primary and said he was “ashamed” for endorsing him in 2018. At his rally in Valdosta, Trump encouraged U.S. Rep. Doug Collins to run against Kemp in two years. State elections officials say there is no evidence of systemic irregularities, and courts at every level have tossed out every complaint.

Full Article: An outraged Kemp blasts pro-Trump conspiracy theorists harassing his family

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul falsely claims presidential election was ‘stolen’ | Morgan Watkins/Louisville Courier Journal

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul continues to falsely claim — without proof — voter fraud played a role in the election of President-elect Joe Biden. The Kentucky Republican said during a Wednesday congressional hearing the election "in many ways was stolen." Paul made that baseless comment during a meeting of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held in Washington, D.C., two days after the Electoral College met nationwide and formally awarded Biden 306 electoral votes versus Trump's 232 electoral votes, based on the certified November election results. The Electoral College's vote Monday affirmed Biden's victory. In light of that, Kentucky's other Republican senator, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, finally acknowledged Biden as the president-elect on Tuesday. "The Electoral College has spoken," he said that morning. But Paul, who has represented Kentucky in Congress since 2011, still refuses to recognize Biden's defeat of President Donald Trump. Similarly, Trump himself continues to falsely claim, without evidence, the election was compromised by voter fraud. He has lost numerous legal challenges over the election results in court over the past several weeks.

Full Article: Sen. Rand Paul falsely claims presidential election was 'stolen'

Michigan Antrim County Hand Recount Confirms Accuracy of Machine Recount, with 12-Vote Gain for Trump | Beth LeBlanc/The Detroit News