National

Members of Congress, shaken and angry following a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of President Trump’s supporters, put a final stamp on President-elect Joe Biden’s victory early Thursday morning and brought an end to a historically turbulent post-election period. Republicans had at one point planned to object to the electoral college votes in a series of states won by Biden, but after the storming of the Capitol, several GOP senators changed course, disputing only Arizona and Pennsylvania. Both challenges failed. … In the final moments of the joint session, Senate Chaplain Barry C. Black said a prayer lamenting “the desecration of the United States Capitol building, the shedding of innocent blood, the loss of life and the quagmire of dysfunction that threaten our democracy,” and Vice President Pence gaveled the meeting to a close, as the Democrats present gave only a half-hearted show of applause. The lawmakers convened Wednesday evening, after hours of delay, in a show of defiance. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she had consulted with fellow congressional leaders, the Pentagon, the Justice Department and Vice President Pence before concluding that Congress should move ahead with the ceremony interrupted earlier in the day by rioters provoked to action by Trump at a morning rally. “Today, a shameful assault was made on our democracy. It was anointed at the highest level of government. It cannot, however, deter us from our responsibility to validate the election of Joe Biden,” wrote Pelosi (D-Calif.). … Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) earned sustained applause from his colleagues for a thundering speech in which he said elected leaders should show respect for voters by telling them the truth, not fueling groundless doubts about the election. “We gather due to a selfish man’s injured pride and the outrage of supporters who he has deliberately misinformed for the past two months and stirred to action this very morning,” Romney said. “What happened here today was an insurrection incited by the president of the United States.”

Full Article: Congress affirms Biden’s presidential win following riot at U.S. Capitol – The Washington Post

National: Election Officials Warned ‘Someone’s Going To Get Shot,’ But That Didn’t Stop Trump | Miles Parks/NPR

Over the four years of Donald Trump’s presidency, people in charge of elections in both major parties have warned that his continued peddling of falsehoods about elections could one day lead to violence. Now, as a mob took over the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, those predictions have come true. “Every elected leader who helped spread lies about American elections paved the way to today,” said Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold. While many Americans looked at their televisions in shock Wednesday, those in charge of elections seem to have seen it as the natural evolution of a growing problem: A large portion of the country now falsely believes that the electoral process is rigged and that therefore there may be no other alternative than taking to the streets. It’s a theme that predated Trump within the Republican Party and one that will probably plague American democracy long after Joe Biden is sworn in as president on Jan. 20. A month ago, a top election official in Georgia, Gabriel Sterling, begged his fellow Republicans to stop spreading conspiracy theories about voting, as it was leading to death threats against officials overseeing that state’s recount. “Someone’s going to get hurt, someone’s going to get shot, someone’s going to get killed,” Sterling said at the time.

Full Article: Election Officials Warned ‘Someone’s Going To Get Shot,’ But That Didn’t Stop Trump – capradio.org

National: Capitol Rioters Planned for Weeks in Plain Sight. The Police Weren’t Ready. | Logan Jaffe, Lydia DePillis, Isaac Arnsdorf and J. David McSwane/ProPublica

The invasion of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday was stoked in plain sight. For weeks, the far-right supporters of President Donald Trump railed on social media that the election had been stolen. They openly discussed the idea of violent protest on the day Congress met to certify the result.“ We came up with the idea to occupy just outside the CAPITOL on Jan 6th,” leaders of the Stop the Steal movement wrote on Dec. 23. They called their Wednesday demonstration the Wild Protest, a name taken from a tweet by Trump that encouraged his supporters to take their grievances to the streets of Washington. “Will be wild,” the president tweeted. Ali Alexander, the founder of the movement, encouraged people to bring tents and sleeping bags and avoid wearing masks for the event. “If D.C. escalates… so do we,” Alexander wrote on Parler last week — one of scores of social media posts welcoming violence that were reviewed by ProPublica in the weeks leading up to Wednesday’s attack on the capitol. Thousands of people heeded that call. For reasons that remained unclear Wednesday night, the law enforcement authorities charged with protecting the nation’s entire legislative branch — nearly all of the 535 members of Congress gathered in a joint session, along with Vice President Mike Pence — were ill-prepared to contain the forces massed against them. On Wednesday afternoon, a thin line of U.S. Capitol Police, with only a few riot shields between them and a knot of angry protesters, engaged in hand-to-hand combat with rioters on the steps of the West Front. They struggled with a flimsy set of barricades as a mob in helmets and bulletproof vests pushed its way toward the Capitol entrance. Videos showed officers stepping aside, and sometimes taking selfies, as if to usher Trump’s supporters into the building they were supposed to guard.

Full Article: Capitol Rioters Planned for Weeks in Plain Sight. The Police Weren’t Ready. — ProPublica

National: State capitals come under siege by pro-Trump mobs | Reid Wilson/The Hill

Protests at state capitals across the country turned threatening Wednesday as demonstrators entered legislative buildings and police escorted elected officials from their offices in response to violent threats. The protests against the November presidential election results, fueled in large part by unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud that were repeated often by President Trump and the White House, coincided with mob violence in the nation’s capital where Trump supporters overran U.S. Capitol Police and officers drew their firearms to protect lawmakers in the House and Senate. In state capitals, police moved to protect elected officials who were threatened by pro-Trump mobs. Staffers at the Utah state Capitol were ordered to evacuate the building, wrote Bryan Schott, who covers the legislature for the Salt Lake Tribune. In Georgia, police escorted Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to safety as militia members gathered outside the Capitol building in Atlanta. In Olympia, the perimeter of Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s (D) mansion was breached by a large group of pro-Trump protesters. Inslee was home at the time, according to public radio reporter Austin Jenkins. The governor and his wife have been moved to a safe location. Protesters at a rally in Salem burned Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) in effigy, as city police urged people to avoid the area around the statehouse. Fistfights broke out in Sacramento, where police struggled to contain clashes between dueling groups of demonstrators. In Kansas, state police monitored a group of protesters who entered the statehouse in Topeka. The state Highway Patrol said they had no plans to increase security, according to the Topeka Capital-Journal. The protesters later dispersed without incident.

Full Article: State capitals come under siege by pro-Trump mobs | TheHill

National: Kid gloves for pro-Trump mob as Black Lives Matter face strongarm tactics | Robert Klemko, Kimberly Kindy, Kim Bellware and Derek Hawkins/The Washington Post

When Chanelle Helm helped organize protests after the March 13 killing of Breonna Taylor, Louisville police responded with batons, stun grenades and tear gas. The 40-year-old Black Lives Matter activist still bears scars from rubber bullets fired at close range. So Helm was startled and frustrated Wednesday to see a White, pro-Trump mob storm the U.S. Capitol — breaking down barricades, smashing windows and striking police officers — without obvious consequence. “Our activists are still to this day met with hyper-police violence,” Helm said. “And today you see this full-on riot — literally a coup — with people toting guns, which the police knew was coming and they just let it happen. I don’t understand where the ‘law and order’ is. This is what white supremacy looks like.” Helm and other activists across the country who spent much of 2020 facing off with law enforcement officers while protesting police brutality and racial inequality watched with a mixture of outrage and validation as the president’s supporters stormed the Capitol building during sessions of the House and Senate.

Full Article: Kid gloves for pro-Trump mob as Black Lives Matter face strongarm tactics – The Washington Post

National: Protesters swarm Statehouses across US; some evacuated | Morgan Lee and Ben Nadler/Associated Press

Protesters backing President Donald Trump massed outside statehouses from Georgia to New Mexico on Wednesday, leading some officials to evacuate while cheers rang out at several demonstrations as a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol. Hundreds of people gathered in state capitals nationwide to oppose President-elect Joe Biden’s win, waving signs saying “Stop the steal” and “Four more years.” Most of them didn’t wear masks amid the coronavirus pandemic, and some carried guns in places like Oklahoma, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Washington state. There were some scuffles in states like Ohio and California, with some instances of journalists or counterprotesters being pepper-sprayed or punched, but most demonstrations were peaceful — some of them quite small — and only a few arrests were reported. New Mexico police evacuated staff as a precaution from a Statehouse building that includes the governor’s office and the secretary of state’s office, shortly after hundreds of flag-waving supporters arrived in a vehicle caravan and on horseback. Demonstrators sang “God Bless America,” honked horns and wrongly announced on a megaphone that Trump was the rightful election winner — though Biden won the vote in New Mexico by a margin of roughly 11%. “It’s the first time in the history of the United States that the peaceful transfer of power has been slowed by an act of violence,¨ Democratic House Speaker Brian Egolf said. “It is a shameful moment, and I hope that the Congress can recover soon.” Violent protests in Washington, D.C., came as Congress tried to affirm Biden’s Electoral College victory. News that protesters had breached the U.S. Capitol set off cheers at pro-Trump protests in Minnesota, Nevada and Arizona, where armed protesters marched at the Capitol in Phoenix and several men displayed a guillotine.

Full Article: Protesters swarm Statehouses across US; some evacuated

National: A harrowing photo shows a Trump supporter carrying a Confederate flag inside the US Capitol, flanked by portraits of Civil War-era figures | Aria Bendix/Business Insider

As rioters stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday, a photographer named Saul Loeb managed to encapsulate the siege’s dark historical context in a single image. His photo shows a man waving a Confederate battle flag in front of two portraits of Civil War-era figures in the Capitol Rotunda. To the man’s right is a portrait of Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts senator who protested slavery. To his left is a portrait of John C. Calhoun, the seventh US vice president, who was a staunch defender of slavery and heavily influenced the ideology that ultimately led to the South’s secession. The proximity of the two portraits calls to mind the fractured nature of US civil society in the 1860s — and the recent cleft that has widened in the lead-up and response to the 2020 election. “What I find fascinating about that juxtaposition is its connections to violence, because of course [Sumner] was a victim of violence in the Capitol when he was attacked for having had made a speech critical of slavery,” Judith Giesberg, a Civil War historian at Villanova University, told Business Insider. “What that image should remind us of is that there’s a history of having violent political confrontations in Congress.”

Full Article: Historian analyzes photo of rioter with Confederate flag in US Capitol – Business Insider

National: ‘Be There. Will Be Wild!’: Trump All but Circled the Date | Dan Barry and Sheera Frenkel/The New York Times

For weeks, President Trump and his supporters had been proclaiming Jan. 6, 2021, as a day of reckoning. A day to gather in Washington to “save America” and “stop the steal” of the election he had decisively lost, but which he still maintained — often through a toxic brew of conspiracy theories — that he had won by a landslide. And when that day came, the president rallied thousands of his supporters with an incendiary speech. Then a large mob of those supporters, many waving Trump flags and wearing Trump regalia, violently stormed the Capitol to take over the halls of government and send elected officials into hiding, fearing for their safety. But if the chaos in the Capitol shocked the country, one of the most disturbing aspects of this most disturbing day was that it could be seen coming. The president himself had all but circled it on the nation’s calendar. “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Mr. Trump tweeted on Dec. 19, just one of several of his tweets promoting the day. “Be there, will be wild!” And his supporters took the president at his word. “If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism,” a member of the Red-State Secession group on Facebook posted on Tuesday, the eve of the appointed day, Jan. 6. Beneath it, dozens of people posted comments that included photographs of the weaponry — including assault rifles — that they said they planned to bring to the rally. There were also comments referring to “occupying” the Capitol and forcing Congress to overturn the November election that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had won — and Mr. Trump had lost.

Full Article: ‘Be There. Will Be Wild!’: Trump All but Circled the Date – The New York Times

‘Trump blows up US democracy’: the world watches on in horror | Tom Phillips and Helen Sullivan/The Guardian

World leaders have reacted with horror to the chaos that has consumed Washington, describing the insurrectionist attempt on the US Capitol building as “disgraceful”, “pitiful”, and “shocking”. Prime ministers and presidents around the world have urged US president Donald Trump and his supporters to accept the result of November’s presidential election and accede to a peaceful transition of power. President-elect Joe Biden’s administration is set to be inaugurated in 14 days. “Inflammatory words turn into violent acts – on the steps of the Reichstag, and now in the #Capitol,” Germany’s foreign minister, Heiko Maas, tweeted, as Trump loyalists led a violent assault on the heart of the American republic. Maas urged Trump and his supporters to “finally accept the decision of the American voters and stop trampling democracy”. “The outcome of this democratic election must be respected,” Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato secretary general and former Norwegian prime minister, tweeted on Wednesday evening after US president-elect Joe Biden condemned “this godawful display” and warned: “The world is watching”.

Full Article: ‘Trump blows up US democracy’: the world watches on in horror | US news | The Guardian

North Carolina: ‘The President bears responsibility’ for Capitol riot, GOP Senator Burr says | Lucille Sherman and Brian Murphy/Raleigh News & Observer

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina said President Donald Trump “bears responsibility” for Wednesday’s Capitol riots by “promoting the unfounded conspiracy theories that have led to this point.” Burr issued a statement about 7 p.m. Wednesday, hours after the U.S. House and Senate were evacuated as rioters who support Trump broke into the Capitol, interrupting the planned certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory. One woman was fatally shot, but details about who shot her have not been released, The New York Times reports. Burr, a Republican, called the day’s events an “attack” on our democracy. “Let me be clear: these actions are not a defense of this country, but an attack on it,” Burr said in a statement. “It is past time to accept the will of American voters and to allow our nation to move forward.” Burr and Sen. Thom Tillis voted not to accept the objection to Arizona’s electoral votes on Wednesday night. The objection was defeated 93-6 in the Senate and 303-121 in the House, meaning the votes from the state will be counted. Both chambers were debating the certification of Arizona’s election results when the Capitol building was breached by rioters who smashed glass and broke through locked doors. At least one reached the Senate floor and sat in the same seat occupied minutes earlier by Vice President Mike Pence. The House and Senate resumed the certification process Wednesday night after the Capitol was cleared and bomb-sniffing dogs had inspected it.

Full Article: NC Congress members react to Capitol riot, Burr blames Trump | Raleigh News & Observer

Utah: Protesters outside the Capitol in Salt Lake City prompt the building to be evacuated | Taylor Stevens , Bryan Schott , Bethany Rodgers and Sara Tabin/Salt Lake Tribune

About 400 pro-Trump demonstrators turned up on Utah’s Capitol Hill on Wednesday to show their continued loyalty to the White House occupant who so far as refused to accept his reelection defeat. The protest in Salt Lake City was one of more than a dozen at state Capitols around the nation, according to news reports. But…

National: After years of fealty, Pence prepares for a final performance likely to anger Trump | Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey/The Washington Post

Vice President Pence and his team have huddled for hours with the Senate parliamentarian. They have studied historical examples of other vice presidents who have presided over election results. And they have begun anticipating the ire of President Trump — likely to come in the form of angry tweets — in the aftermath of Wednesday’s certification of the electoral college vote count before a joint session of Congress. The role of Pence, who will preside over the certification, is largely ceremonial, one of the few official duties of the vice president in his capacity as president of the Senate. But Trump’s continued and baseless insistence that he won the 2020 presidential election has thrust Pence into a vise between the Constitution he swore to uphold and the president he has promised his fealty. Pence’s performance Wednesday in the Senate chamber will serve as a fitting coda for a vice president who — through a combination of deference, obsequiousness and studied self-effacement — has made navigating the whims and loyalty requirements of his mercurial boss a full-time pursuit. Pence’s team views the vice president’s role as procedural and limited, not unlike an umpire calling balls and strikes but ultimately hemmed in by the rules of the game. Trump, meanwhile, has expressed a desire for Pence to use Wednesday’s session to overturn the election results and snatch victory from President-elect Joe Biden — a stunning subversion of democracy that Pence has no authority to carry out, even if he so desired.

Full Article: After years of fealty, Pence prepares for a final performance likely to anger Trump – The Washington Post

National: Trump Says Pence Can Overturn His Loss in Congress. That’s Not How It Works. | Michael S. Schmidt/The New York Times

President Trump on Tuesday escalated his efforts to force Vice President Mike Pence to overturn President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, falsely asserting that Mr. Pence had the power to unilaterally throw out electoral votes on Wednesday when Congress meets to certify the election results. But there is nothing in the Constitution or the law that explicitly gives a vice president that power, and aides close to Mr. Pence, who concede that he is facing a politically perilous moment, are convinced he will follow the normal procedures and confirm Mr. Biden’s election. Still, most agree that Wednesday promises to be a long and confusing day on Capitol Hill — and a potentially agonizing one for Mr. Pence — as Mr. Trump’s Republican allies move to challenge Mr. Biden’s victory and force at least three votes on the matter, all expected to fail. The proceeding will test what had long been considered little more than a paperwork exercise in American democracy: the official count by Congress of electoral votes. The vice president’s role is to be the master of ceremonies rather than arbiter of the outcome, declaring the winner based on who has the most electoral votes. But despite Mr. Trump’s clear loss to Mr. Biden, the president and a group of loyalist House and Senate Republicans are plotting to upend the process by objecting to the certification of several states. Lacking the votes to prevail, Mr. Trump is now pressuring Mr. Pence to take matters into his own hands to delay the vote tabulation or alter it in Mr. Trump’s favor.

Full Article: Trump Pressures Pence to Reject Electoral Votes – The New York Times

National: Trump leans harder on Pence to flip election results, even though he lacks that power | Shannon Pettypiece, Monica Alba, Alex Moe and Kristen Welker/NBC

President Donald Trump turned up the pressure Tuesday to enlist Vice President Mike Pence in a futile effort to reverse the presidential election and keep them in office for four more years. With a president who has excelled at remaining the focus of Washington, Pence has largely played the role of quiet support character, never publicly rebuking his boss and sticking to his script with unwavering consistency. But Trump’s effort to keep from being evicted from the White House on Jan. 20 has pushed Pence into the limelight and left him in a position that a person close to Trump said he is “dreading.” Pence has a constitutional role in officially making President-elect Joe Biden the commander-in-chief. On Wednesday, he will be responsible for overseeing Congress’ count of the Electoral College votes submitted by the states. A group of Republican lawmakers have announced that they plan to object, although they are unlikely to succeed in throwing out the Biden votes.

Full Article: Trump leans harder on Pence to flip election results, even though he lacks that power

National: Pence Said to Have Told Trump He Lacks Power to Change Election Result | Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni/The New York Times

Vice President Mike Pence told President Trump on Tuesday that he did not believe he had the power to block congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the presidential election despite Mr. Trump’s baseless insistence that he did, people briefed on the conversation said. Mr. Pence’s message, delivered during his weekly lunch with…

National: With brazen assault on election, Trump prompts critics to warn of a coup | David Nakamura/The Washington Post

During four years in office, President Trump has trampled political norms, attacked democratic institutions, sought to discredit government agencies, peddled baseless conspiracy theories and been impeached by the House. Since his defeat in the November election, Trump’s critics have warned that his scorched-earth effort to invalidate the outcome amounts to a new level of danger: the first attempted coup d’etat in U.S. history to illegally maintain power. The chorus of alarm grew this week after the disclosure that Trump bullied and threatened Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in an hour-long private phone call Saturday, during which the president demanded that Raffensperger find thousands of votes for Trump that do not exist. On social media, conservative and liberal pundits alike used the word “coup.” So did former George W. Bush aide Nicolle Wallace, Trump biographer Timothy L. O’Brien, political analyst Larry Sabato and Garry Kasparov, the Russian chess grandmaster and founder of the Renew Democracy Initiative. The Atlantic, the New Yorker, the Nation, Vanity Fair, New York magazine and the BBC have invoked the term to explore the ramifications of Trump’s assault on the nation’s democratic foundations.

Full Article: Trump’s assault on election prompts critics to warn of a coup – The Washington Post

National: Cleta Mitchell, Lawyer on Trump Election Call, Quits Firm After Uproar | Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman/The New York Times

A lawyer advising President Trump in recent weeks has resigned from her law firm after it was revealed that she participated in the call where Mr. Trump pressured Georgia officials to help him reverse the state’s election results, the firm said in a statement on Tuesday. The lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, has been advising Mr. Trump despite a policy at her firm, Foley & Lardner, that none of its lawyers should represent clients involved in relitigating the presidential election. “Cleta Mitchell has informed firm management of her decision to resign from Foley & Lardner effective immediately,” the firm said in its statement. “Ms. Mitchell concluded that her departure was in the firm’s best interests, as well as in her own personal best interests. We thank her for her contributions to the firm and wish her well.” Ms. Mitchell’s resignation was the latest evidence of the problems Mr. Trump has created for law firms throughout his time in office, as their employees and clients object to ties with the president. In an email to her clients and friends, Ms. Mitchell blamed her departure on “a massive pressure campaign in the last several days mounted by leftist groups via social media and other means against me, my law firm and clients of the law firm.” She vowed to “redouble” her efforts on what she called “election integrity.”

Full Article: Lawyer on Trump Election Call Quits Firm After Uproar – The New York Times

MAGA marchers plot final D.C. stand on Jan. 6 | Tina Nguyen/Politico

Since Election Day, President Donald Trump’s followers have marched on state capitol buildings and the Supreme Court, protesting the election results. They have demonstrated in front of vote-counting centers, filed lawsuits and floated illogical conspiracy theories. Now, those efforts will come to a head on Wednesday, when the most zealous members of MAGA nation — activists, fans and militia groups — plan to rally one more time in Washington in a dying attempt to keep President Donald Trump in the White House. Timed to the day when Congress will formally certify President-elect Joe Biden’s win, the MAGA crowd is trying to pressure Vice President Mike Pence and Republican lawmakers to refuse to seat Biden over fabricated voter-fraud claims. It’s a doomed plan, given the makeup of Congress, the absent evidence behind the rigged election allegations and the fact that every important state has already certified Biden’s win. Yet that hasn’t stopped a swell of Trump supporters from making plans — and the president from teasing his own appearance. According to disinformation and extremist researchers, the Jan. 6 gathering will look similar to November’s Million MAGA March — a mashup of garden-variety Trump supporters and more extreme members of the far right, with no apparent central organizing apparatus. Stop the Steal, a group affiliated with pro-Trump super PACs and allies of Trump adviser Roger Stone, has filed for permits and plans to protest outside the Capitol, but other groups have also claimed to be the true official planners. There’s one key difference with this march, however. After weeks of failed lawsuits, flailing investigations and Republicans unhitching themselves from Trump’s quest to keep the presidency, the Wednesday rally might be the last one while there’s still a plan — even if it’s an ill-fated one — to subvert the election.

Full Article: MAGA marchers plot final D.C. stand on Jan. 6 – POLITICO

National: Republican plan to stall certification of Biden’s win could hurt future election security, experts say | Tonya Riley/The Washington Post

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: Republican plan to stall certification of Biden’s win could hurt future election security, experts say – The Washington Post

Nearly a dozen Republican senators are following Sen. Ted Cruz’s lead and threatening to not certify Joe Biden’s win until Congress launches a 10-day audit of the 2020 election based on President Trump’s baseless allegations of voting fraud. Election and legal experts say the last-ditch effort to stall Joe Biden’s win is unlikely to succeed. Even if it did, it would almost certainly fail to change the results of the 2020 election. But the effort could have lasting implications for election integrity in future votes. “It could certainly throw another wrench in our democracy and undermine voter confidence in our elections,” David Levine, elections integrity fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, told me. Elevating false allegations – especially after the courts have roundly dismissed the election challenges – plays right into the hands of foreign adversaries while undermining trust in local and state election officials, who stand by election results, experts say. The intelligence community and former attorney general William P. Barr said there was no evidence of widespread election fraud or foreign interference that altered the results of the 2020 election. Election officials called it “the most secure in American history.” “This is not going to stop Joe Biden and Kamala D. Harris from taking the oath. The legal and factual arguments are flimsy and laughable,” said Michael Waldman, the president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. “But it reinforces the idea for millions of people that there was something wrong with the election.”

National: Alexander Keyssar, leading historian of U.S. democracy, issues an urgent warning | Greg Sargent/The Washington Post

President Trump’s extraordinary effort to browbeat the Georgia secretary of state into rigging the election for him reveals more than just a deranged, desperate man potentially willing to commit crimes to overturn his loss. It also crystallizes the true nature of what will unfold on Wednesday, when dozens of congressional Republicans will join Trump’s effort by objecting to Joe Biden’s electors. This quest to overturn millions of votes in numerous states will fail when the Democratic House scuttles those objections. You’d think many of them would now refrain from challenging Biden’s electors. You’d think the appalling contempt for democracy driving Trump’s effort is now so glaringly clear that they would want no association with it, or would see refraining as a way to demonstrate that this latest lawless display is intolerable. But that’s extremely unlikely. Which raises a question: In a future presidential election, if Republicans control both chambers of Congress and similar objections are brought against a victorious Democrat’s electors, mightn’t they succeed in invalidating them? “It’s become a lot easier to envision that in the last month,” Alexander Keyssar, the leading historian of U.S. democracy, told me. “I find this to be very worrisome — very disturbing.”

Full Article: Opinion | Alexander Keyssar, leading historian of U.S. democracy, issues an urgent warning – The Washington Post

National: All Pence Can Do Is Count | Alan Charles Raul and Richard Bernstein/Wall Street Journal

Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert has argued that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 is unconstitutional. Therefore, he claims, Vice President Mike Pence is empowered by the 12th Amendment to reject 73 Biden-Harris electoral votes from five states when Congress meets to certify the 2020 election results on Jan. 6. A dozen Republican senators and many more House members also argue that Congress has this power. They are all wrong. Neither the vice president nor Congress has the power to reject electoral votes. This is because the 12th Amendment vests no power in the vice president or Congress to judge who won a state’s electoral votes when the authorized branches of the state’s government agree, as they do here, on which electors won. The 12th Amendment left intact the Constitution’s Electors Clause. As the Supreme Court’s three originalist justices wrote in Bush v. Gore (2000), under the Electors Clause, each state’s legislature by statute makes the exclusive “apportionment of responsibility” to state officials to “oversee election disputes” that decide which presidential ticket won the most votes in that state. Election officials and courts from each of the five states in question did exactly that. And by Dec. 14, the states certified that the electors who won were those who voted for Biden-Harris. All the 12th Amendment says is that in a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, “the [electoral] votes shall then be counted.” The word “counted” provides no basis for anyone to override anything. When a person counts the number of games his favorite team has won, that person has no power to alchemize losses into wins.

Full Article: All Pence Can Do Is Count – WSJ

National: Dominion Voting Systems CEO plans to sue Sidney Powell imminently | Joseph Choi/The Hill

Dominion Voting Systems CEO John Poulos told Axios on Monday that his company plans on suing former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell imminently for defamation over her claims about its voting machines. “Our focus right now is on Sidney Powell, and there’s very good reason for that. She is by far in our opinion the most egregious and prolific purveyor of the falsities against Dominion. Her statements have caused real damage. They’re demonstrably false,” Poulos said. Powell, formerly part of President Trump‘s team seeking to overturn the 2020 election, has baselessly claimed that Dominion’s algorithm flipped votes and that the company paid Georgia GOP officials to stay quiet on the alleged scheme. “We were originally quiet and we sat back as a company,” he added. “Because our hope was that all of these claims would be filed in a process in court where procedure and evidence is important. And it’s become clear to us that there is absolutely no interest to reveal this evidence because we know it doesn’t exist. And there’s no effort to actually put it in front of the court proceedings so that these allegations and all of the evidence can follow a proper process and be litigated right to the end.” When asked by Axios’s Dan Primack when the lawsuit would be filed, Poulos said, “It’s imminent.” A Dominion spokesperson speaking to The Hill confirmed that a lawsuit would be filed, possibly as soon as this week.

Full Article: Dominion Voting Systems CEO plans to sue Sidney Powell imminently | TheHill

National: Trump’s Insurgency From Inside the Oval Office | Peter Baker/The New York Times

President Trump’s relentless effort to overturn the result of the election that he lost has become the most serious stress test of American democracy in generations, one led not by outside revolutionaries intent on bringing down the system but by the very leader charged with defending it. In the 220 years since a defeated John Adams turned over the White House to his rival, firmly establishing the peaceful transfer of authority as a bedrock principle, no sitting president who lost an election has tried to hang onto power by rejecting the Electoral College and subverting the will of the voters — until now. It is a scenario at once utterly unthinkable and yet feared since the beginning of Mr. Trump’s tenure. The president has gone well beyond simply venting his grievances or creating a face-saving narrative to explain away a loss, as advisers privately suggested he was doing in the days after the Nov. 3 vote. Instead, he has stretched or crossed the boundaries of tradition, propriety and perhaps the law to find any way he can to cling to office beyond his term that expires in two weeks. That he is almost certain to fail and that President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. will be inaugurated on Jan. 20 does not mitigate the damage he is doing to democracy by undermining public faith in the electoral system. Mr. Trump’s hourlong telephone call over the weekend with Georgia’s chief election official, Brad Raffensperger, pressuring him to “find” enough votes to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory in that state only brought into stark relief what the president has been doing for weeks. He has called the Republican governors of Georgia and Arizona to get them to intervene. He has summoned Michigan’s Republican Legislature leaders to the White House to pressure them to change their state’s results. He called the Republican speaker of the Pennsylvania House multiple times seeking help to reverse the outcome there. Mr. Trump and his staff have floated the idea of delaying Mr. Biden’s inauguration, even though it is set in stone by the Constitution, and the president met with a former adviser who has publicly urged him to declare martial law to “rerun” the election in states he lost. Mr. Trump’s erratic behavior has so alarmed military commanders who fear he might try to use troops to stay in the White House that every living former defense secretary — including two he appointed himself — issued a warning against the armed forces becoming involved.

Full Article: Trump’s Insurgency From Inside the Oval Office – The New York Times

National: Cleta Mitchell, a key figure in president’s phone call, was an early backer of Trump’s voter fraud claims | Michael Kranish and Tom Hamburger/The Washington Post

On Nov. 7, the day that major media organizations projected Joe Biden had won the presidency, Republican attorney Cleta Mitchell appeared on Fox News with her own projection: The election was far from over. “We’re already double checking and finding dead people having voted, we’re going to be finding people have voted across state lines, voted in two states, illegal voting, noncitizens and that sort of thing. So we are building that case,” Mitchell said, referring to the work of the Trump campaign’s legal team and foreshadowing many of its claims of fraud. In the following days, Mitchell took particular aim at Biden’s win in Georgia, tweeting that the state’s recount was a “total sham” and “A FAKE!!!” She wrote that the effort was “cover for the SOS,” referring to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Responding to criticism of her appearance, she tweeted, “Happy to be considered a nut job because I believe in the rule of law.” Mitchell largely stayed out of the spotlight in the following weeks as legions of lawyers for the Trump campaign failed in high-profile court cases across the country to get the election overturned. Behind the scenes, however, her role had escalated to the point that when President Trump on Saturday made a last-ditch phone call to get Raffensperger to “find” thousands of votes for him, it was the Washington-based Mitchell who emerged as a key player. It wasn’t the first time Mitchell alleged election fraud. In a case that foreshadowed her work for Trump, Mitchell worked for the campaign of Sharron Angle, who ran against Sen. Harry M. Reid of Nevada in 2010. Mitchell wrote a letter soliciting campaign contributions, alleging that “Reid intends to steal this election if he can’t win it outright….Understand, EVERYTHING we have worked for in the last year could be destroyed by dirty tricks and criminal acts.”

Full Article: Cleta Mitchell, a key figure in president?s phone call, was an early backer of Trump?s voter fraud claims – The Washington Post

‘I just want to find 11,780 votes’: In extraordinary hour-long call, Trump pressures Georgia secretary of state to recalculate the vote in his favor | Amy Gardner/The Washington Post

Read the full transcript of the Trump-Raffensperger call

President Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that legal scholars described as a flagrant abuse of power and a potential criminal act. The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk.” Throughout the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected Trump’s assertions, explaining that the president is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate. Trump dismissed their arguments. “The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you’ve recalculated.” Raffensperger responded: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.” At another point, Trump said: “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

Full Article: Trump pressures Georgia’s Raffensperger to overturn his defeat in extraordinary call – The Washington Post

National: As Understanding of Russian Hacking Grows, So Does Alarm | David E. Sanger, Nicole Perlroth and Julian E. Barnes/The New York Times

On Election Day, General Paul M. Nakasone, the nation’s top cyberwarrior, reported that the battle against Russian interference in the presidential campaign had posted major successes and exposed the other side’s online weapons, tools and tradecraft. “We’ve broadened our operations and feel very good where we’re at right now,” he told journalists. Eight weeks later, General Nakasone and other American officials responsible for cybersecurity are now consumed by what they missed for at least nine months: a hacking, now believed to have affected upward of 250 federal agencies and businesses, that Russia aimed not at the election system but at the rest of the United States government and many large American corporations. Three weeks after the intrusion came to light, American officials are still trying to understand whether what the Russians pulled off was simply an espionage operation inside the systems of the American bureaucracy or something more sinister, inserting “backdoor” access into government agencies, major corporations, the electric grid and laboratories developing and transporting new generations of nuclear weapons. At a minimum it has set off alarms about the vulnerability of government and private sector networks in the United States to attack and raised questions about how and why the nation’s cyberdefenses failed so spectacularly. Those questions have taken on particular urgency given that the breach was not detected by any of the government agencies that share responsibility for cyberdefense — the military’s Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, both of which are run by General Nakasone, and the Department of Homeland Security — but by a private cybersecurity company, FireEye.

Full Article: As Understanding of Russian Hacking Grows, So Does Alarm – The New York Times

National: ‘Traitors and patriots’: Republican push to keep Trump in power seems doomed | Martin Pengelly/The Guardian

All 12 Republican senators who have pledged not to ratify the electoral college results on Wednesday, and thereby refuse to confirm Joe Biden’s resounding victory over Donald Trump in the presidential election, declined to defend their move on television, a CNN host said on Sunday. “It all recalls what Ulysses S Grant once wrote in 1861,” Jake Tapper said on State of the Union, before quoting a letter the union general wrote at the outset of a civil war he won before becoming president himself: ‘There are [but] two parties now: traitors and patriots.’ “How would you describe the parties today?” Tapper asked. The attempt to overturn Trump’s defeat seems doomed, a piece of political theatre mounted by party grandees eager to court supporters loyal to the president before, in some cases, mounting their own runs for the White House. Nonetheless on Saturday Ted Cruz of Texas and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin led 11 senators and senators-elect in calling for “an emergency 10-day audit” of results in states where the president claims electoral fraud, despite failing to provide evidence and repeatedly losing in court. The senators followed Josh Hawley of Missouri – like Cruz thought likely to run for president in 2024 – in pledging to object to the electoral college result. A majority of House Republicans are also expected to object, after staging a Saturday call with Trump to plan their own moves.

Full Article: ‘Traitors and patriots’: Republican push to keep Trump in power seems doomed | Donald Trump | The Guardian

National: Trump Call to Georgia Official Might Violate State and Federal Law | Eric Lipton/The New York Times

The call by President Trump on Saturday to Georgia’s secretary of state raised the prospect that Mr. Trump may have violated laws that prohibit interference in federal or state elections, but lawyers said on Sunday that it would be difficult to pursue such a charge. The recording of the conversation between Mr. Trump and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of Georgia, first reported by The Washington Post, led a number of election and criminal defense lawyers to conclude that by pressuring Mr. Raffensperger to “find” the votes he would need to reverse the election outcome in the state, Mr. Trump either broke the law or came close to it. “It seems to me like what he did clearly violates Georgia statutes,” said Leigh Ann Webster, an Atlanta criminal defense lawyer, citing a state law that makes it illegal for anyone who “solicits, requests, commands, importunes or otherwise attempts to cause the other person to engage” in election fraud. At the federal level, anyone who “knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds or attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a state of a fair and impartially conducted election process” is breaking the law. Matthew T. Sanderson, a Republican election lawyer who has worked on several presidential campaigns — including those of Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Rick Perry, the former Texas governor — said that while it did appear that Mr. Trump was trying to intimidate Mr. Raffensperger, it was not clear that he violated the law.

Full Article: Trump Call to Georgia Official Might Violate State and Federal Law – The New York Times

National: Will 2020’s vote lead to more federal oversight in US elections? | Joseph Stepansky/Al Jazeera