National: The Founders didn’t prepare for a president who refuses to step down, historians say | Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post

President Trump continued Friday to deny the results of the election, pressuring state officials in Michigan and Georgia to overturn the will of voters and increasing fears that he might refuse to cede power to President-elect Joe Biden. But those looking to the nation’s Founders, or the Constitution they framed, for answers to such a crisis will come up empty-handed. There is nothing in the Constitution about what to do if a president refuses to step down when his term expires, according to three historians and a constitutional law professor. “No, the framers did not envisage a president refusing to step down or discuss what should be done in such a situation,” Princeton historian Sean Wilentz said. “There’s obviously nothing in the Constitution about it.” “This is a contingency that no one would have actively contemplated until this fall,” said historian Jack Rakove, a professor emeritus at Stanford University.

Full Article: The Founding Fathers and Trump’s refusal to concede: What historians say – The Washington Post

National: Conspiracy theories are all that’s left in Trump’s effort to overturn the election | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

The Trump campaign’s latest effort to overturn the election results pits the allure of conspiracy theories against years of efforts to create the most secure and auditable election in U.S. history.  Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell presented no evidence for their claims during a lengthy news conference that the election was rigged by faulty voting machines, foreign powers and an opaque cast of corrupt politicians. Officials who ran the election and are preparing to certify it, meanwhile, have spent years improving security protections, testing technology and ensuring there are paper records of votes that can be audited after an election to prove they were tallied correctly. Indeed, the same day President Trump’s lawyers lobbed their baseless accusations, Georgia completed a hand count audit of its votes that found no evidence of fraud and upheld Joe Biden’s narrow win in that state. But the Trump argument now is based in paranoia and gut feeling rather than evidence and logic. “It’s very easy to assert nefarious connections and to cast doubt,” Edward Perez, global director of technology development at OSET Institute, a nonprofit election technology organization, told me. “We’d like to believe that official statements from all national election officials and from agencies including DHS about the integrity of the election and the absence of deleted votes or compromised machines should make a difference. It should be enough, but clearly it’s not.”

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: Conspiracy theories are all that’s left in Trump’s effort to overturn the election – The Washington Post

National: Trump campaign cuts ties with attorney Sidney Powell after bizarre election fraud claims | Eric Tucker/Associated Press

Perhaps Sidney Powell has gone too far even for Rudy Giuliani this time. The Trump campaign’s legal team has moved to distance itself from the firebrand conservative attorney after a tumultuous few days in which Powell made multiple incorrect statements about the election voting process, unspooled complex conspiracy theories and vowed to “blow up” Georgia with a “biblical” lawsuit. “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump legal team. She is also not a lawyer for the president in his personal capacity,” Giuliani and another lawyer for Trump, Jenna Ellis, said in a statement on Sunday. Trump himself has heralded Powell’s involvement, tweeting last week that she was part of a team of “wonderful lawyers and representatives” spearheaded by Giuliani. There was no immediate clarification from the campaign and Powell did not immediately return an email seeking comment. The statement hints at chaos in a legal team that has lost case after case in its efforts to overturn the results of the 3 November election. Law firms have withdrawn from cases, and in the latest setback, Matthew Brann, a Republican US district court judge in Pennsylvania, threw out the Trump campaign’s request to disenfranchise almost 7 million voters there. “This claim, like Frankenstein’s Monster, has been haphazardly stitched together from two distinct theories in an attempt to avoid controlling precedent,” he wrote in a damning order, issued on Saturday. On Sunday afternoon, the Trump campaign filed an appeal against Brann’s ruling in Pennsylvania.

Full Article: Trump campaign cuts ties with attorney Sidney Powell after bizarre election fraud claims

Trump’s election power play: Persuade Republican legislators to do what U.S. voters did not | Michael Martina, Karen Freifeld and Jarrett Renshaw/Reuters

President Donald Trump’s strategy for retaining power despite losing the U.S. election is focused increasingly on persuading Republican legislators to intervene on his behalf in battleground states Democrat Joe Biden won, three people familiar with the effort said. … Trump’s lawyers are seeking to take the power of appointing electors away from the governors and secretaries of state and give it to friendly state lawmakers from his party, saying the U.S. Constitution gives legislatures the ultimate authority. A person familiar with the campaign’s legal strategy said it has become a “more targeted approach towards getting the legislators engaged.” As things stand, Biden has captured 306 electoral votes nationwide to Trump’s 232, well ahead of the 270 needed for victory. Were the combined 36 electoral votes in Michigan and Pennsylvania to go to Trump, he would trail by 270-268 electoral votes, meaning his campaign would still need to flip at least one more state to retain the White House. A senior Trump campaign official told Reuters its plan is to cast enough doubt on vote-counting in big, Democratic cities that Republican lawmakers will have little choice but to intercede. The campaign is betting that many of those lawmakers, who come from districts Trump won, will face a backlash from voters if they refuse to act. The campaign believes the longer they can drag this out, the more they will have an opportunity to persuade lawmakers to intervene, the official said.

Full Article: Trump’s election power play: Persuade Republican legislators to do what U.S. voters did not | Reuters

Ousted cyber official: Giuliani press conference ‘most dangerous 1hr 45min’ of TV in US history | Maggie Miller/The Hill

Christopher Krebs, the top federal cybersecurity official who was fired by President Trump this week, called Thursday’s press conference held by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and other Republicans some of the “most dangerous” television in U.S. history. “That press conference was the most dangerous 1hr 45 minutes of television in American history. And possibly the craziest,” Krebs tweeted. “If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re lucky.” Krebs, former director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), was fired on Tuesday after publicly pushing back against disinformation and misinformation surrounding the presidential election. Trump has refused to concede the race to President-elect Joe Biden, making unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud. Former New York City Mayor Giuliani and other members of Trump’s legal team held a press conference Thursday to give an update on the campaign’s legal challenges in various battleground states where vote tallies show Biden with a substantial lead. Giuliani cited multiple now-debunked claims of voter fraud in making the case for Trump, including citing a scene from the film “My Cousin Vinny” in which a character is too far away from a crime scene to be a credible witness to argue the Trump campaign wasn’t allowed close enough to observe ballot counting in Pennsylvania. In his role as head of CISA, Krebs coordinated with state and local officials to boost election security following Russian interference in 2016.

Full Article: Ousted cyber official: Giuliani press conference ‘most dangerous 1hr 45min’ of TV in US history | TheHill

National: Rudy Giuliani baselessly alleges ‘centralized’ voter fraud at free-wheeling news conference | Jane C. Timm/NBC

President Donald Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, took the president’s voter fraud claims even further on Thursday, baselessly alleging during a frenzied news conference that the fraud was nationally coordinated. The president’s legal team alleged already debunked claims of voter fraud, baseless allegations of corrupted and hackable voting machines, election interference by foreign communists, and even references to antifa. The former New York City mayor also offered alternative election results for swing states and argued the president had a viable path to a second term. “It’s not a singular voter fraud in one state,” Giuliani said, speaking at Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington. “This pattern repeats itself in a number of states, almost exactly the same pattern, which any experienced investigator prosecutor, which suggests that there was a plan — from a centralized place to execute these various acts of voter fraud, specifically focused on big cities, and specifically focused on, as you would imagine, big cities controlled by Democrats, and particularly if they focused on big cities that have a long history of corruption.” There’s no evidence of widespread voter fraud, coordinated or isolated, and the Trump campaign has repeatedly seen its claims tossed out of court for a lack of evidence. On Thursday, the president’s legal team instead flooded the zone with false claims.

Full Article: Rudy Giuliani baselessly alleges ‘centralized’ voter fraud at free-wheeling news conference

National: How Sidney Powell inaccurately cited Venezuela’s elections as evidence of U.S. fraud. | Linda Qiu/The New York Times

Sidney Powell, a lawyer on President Trump’s election legal team who represented the former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, has been a major source and promoter of viral conspiracy theories about vote switching. Since the election, Ms. Powell has advanced claims of voluminous voter fraud and a rigged election. She falsely claimed that a supercomputer called Hammer hacked votes, that Mr. Trump won the election by “millions of votes” and that voting software company Dominion Voting Systems altered the tallies. Last week, she promised that coming evidence would overturn the election’s results and said she would “release the Kraken,” a reference to the 1981 movie “The Clash of the Titans,” reprising a catchphrase that began trending on Twitter. On Monday, Ms. Powell posted some of her so-called evidence on Twitter. It consisted of three screenshots of an affidavit that she said was signed by a former military official from Venezuela about elections there. The screenshots were incomplete and did not include a name or signature, and Ms. Powell did not respond to requests to view the full document. But according to her and excerpts from the affidavit, the elections software company Smartmatic helped the Venezuelan government rig its elections by switching votes and leaving no trail. The military official said in the excerpts that the U.S. election was “eerily reminiscent” of what happened in Venezuela’s 2013 presidential election, though no evidence was provided that votes had been switched in the United States.

Full Article: How Sidney Powell inaccurately cited Venezuela’s elections as evidence of U.S. fraud. – The New York Times

National: Trump’s firing of top election security official unsettles lawmakers | Courtney Norris/PBS

The consensus among top election officials was that the Nov. 3 election was the most secure in history. But the president disagreed. In the days since President Donald Trump fired one of those officials — Christopher Krebs, who he had appointed two years earlier to lead the newly formed Cyber & Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA — security experts and lawmakers of both parties have spoken out in defense of the nation’s top election security official.  “Chris Krebs is an extraordinary public servant and exactly the person Americans want protecting the security of our elections. It speaks volumes that the president chose to fire him simply for telling the truth,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In the run-up to the election and in the days after, while the Trump campaign was waging legal battles contesting results on multiple fronts, Krebs was combating disinformation with a rumor control website that knocked down many of the claims that the election had in one way or another been stolen, including claims made by the president and his surrogates.

Full Article: Trump’s firing of top election security official unsettles lawmakers | PBS NewsHour

National: Dominion employees latest to face threats, harassment in wake of Trump conspiracy | Olivia Rubin,Lucien Bruggeman and Matthew Mosk/ABC

The voting machine company that has faced two weeks of false fraud claims from President Donald Trump told ABC News Wednesday their employees have been the subject of threats and online harassment — the latest sign that Trump’s freewheeling online rhetoric has real-world consequences. In the past week, the president has tweeted or retweeted more than a dozen false claims about Dominion Voting Systems used across the country to his 89 million followers, calling the company “horrible, inaccurate and anything but secure,” despite no credible evidence to suggest its platforms were compromised in any way. “We’ve been working around the clock to address issues with law enforcement and take every appropriate measure we can to ensure the safety of employees,” a Dominion spokesperson said. Despite substantial vote margins in Biden’s favor (more than 5 million in the popular vote and tens of thousands or more in battleground states), a crumbling legal effort to challenge election results and no evidence of widespread fraud or irregularities, the president has yet to concede defeat. Instead, he’s resorted to promulgating progressively more outlandish claims online as part of an effort to delegitimize the outcome of the election. More than once, those claims have subjected the president’s targets to public attacks and derision.

Full Article: Dominion employees latest to face threats, harassment in wake of Trump conspiracy – ABC News

National: Trump told ally he’s trying to get back at Democrats for questioning legitimacy of his own election | Dana Bash and Gloria Borger/CNN

President Donald Trump told an ally that he knows he lost, but that he is delaying the transition process and is aggressively trying to sow doubt about the election results in order to get back at Democrats for questioning the legitimacy of his own election in 2016, especially with the Russia investigation, a source familiar with the President’s thinking told CNN on Thursday. The President’s refusal to concede, as CNN has previously reported, stems in part from his perceived grievance that Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama undermined his own presidency by saying Russia interfered in the 2016 election and could have impacted the outcome, people around him have said. Trump continues to hold a grudge against those who he claims undercut his election by pointing to Russian interference efforts, and he has suggested it is fair game to not recognize Joe Biden as the President-elect, even though Clinton conceded on election night in 2016 and the Trump transition was able to begin immediately. Trump is also continuing to process the emotional scars of losing to a candidate he repeatedly said during the campaign was an unworthy opponent whose win would amount to humiliation. He again made no public appearances on Thursday, skipping the first coronavirus task force briefing at the White House in more than six months. He is planning to participate in a virtual Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation summit Friday, a senior administration official told CNN.

Full Article: Trump told ally he’s trying to get back at Democrats for questioning legitimacy of his own election – CNNPolitics

National: Threats and Tensions Rise as Trump and Allies Attack Elections Process | Nick Corasaniti, Jim Rutenberg and Kathleen Gray/The New York Times

President Trump’s false accusations that voter fraud denied him re-election are causing escalating confrontations in swing states across the country, leading to threats of violence against officials in both parties and subverting even the most routine steps in the electoral process. In Arizona on Wednesday, the Democratic secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, issued a statement lamenting the “consistent and systematic undermining of trust” in the elections and called on Republican officials to stop “perpetuating misinformation.” She described threats against her and her family in the aftermath of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory over Mr. Trump in her state. In Georgia, where Mr. Biden holds a narrow lead that is expected to stand through a recount concluding Wednesday night, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, has said he, too, received menacing messages. He also said he felt pressured by Senator Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to search for ways to disqualify votes. In Pennsylvania, statehouse Republicans on Wednesday advanced a proposal to audit the state’s election results that cited “a litany of inconsistencies” — a move Democrats described as obstructionist and unnecessary given Mr. Trump’s failure to present any evidence in court of widespread fraud or other problems. Republicans in Wisconsin filed new lawsuits on Wednesday in the state’s two biggest counties, seeking a recount. Mr. Biden reclaimed both states after Mr. Trump won them in 2016. Nowhere was the confusion and chaos more evident than in Michigan on Tuesday night, when two Republican members of the canvassing board in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, initially refused to certify election results, pointing to minor recording discrepancies. It was a stunningly partisan move that would have potentially disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters from a predominantly Black city, and after a stream of public backlash, the two board members reversed their votes and agreed to certify.

Full Article: Trump Election Results: Tensions Rise as Allies Attack Process – The New York Times

National: No, judges don’t overturn elections because of isolated irregularities. | Jeremy W. Peters/The New York Times

President Trump’s approach to challenging the election has been scattershot and contradictory, as his campaign demands that courts stop ballots from being counted in certain places while insisting that a more thorough review is necessary in other places. Confusing as it may seem, essentially his goal is this: to get judges to invalidate the results in enough counties and states so that President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s lead disappears. Would judges ever actually do that? They have before, though never on the scale that the president and his legal team is attempting. There are numerous examples going back hundreds of years in the United States when courts have been asked to toss out the results of elections on the local, state and federal levels. Losing candidates have prevailed for a variety of reasons: because the court determined that the count was off, or that inconsistent standards were applied in processing ballots, or even that there was voter fraud. But these cases are the exception. And election law experts said that judges have set the bar extremely high. It’s not enough to claim — or even prove — that irregularities occurred. The irregularities have to be significant enough to change the outcome of the race, which is extraordinarily rare. “The prevailing view today is that courts should not invalidate election results because of problems unless it is shown that the problems were of such magnitude to negate the validity of which candidate prevailed,” said Edward B. Foley, director of election law at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law. This is inherently difficult to do, he added, given how hard it is to provide evidence that disputed ballots were cast in favor of a particular candidate.

Full Article: No, judges don’t overturn elections because of isolated irregularities. – The New York Times

Michigan: Trump invites Republican leaders to meet him at White House as he escalates attempts to overturn election results | Tom Hamburger, Kayla Ruble, David A. Fahrenthold and Josh Dawsey/The Washington Post

President Trump has invited the leaders of Michigan’s Republican-controlled state legislature to meet him in Washington on Friday, according to a person familiar with those plans, as the president and his allies continue an extraordinary campaign to overturn the results of an election he lost. Trump’s campaign has suffered defeats in courtrooms across the country in its efforts to allege irregularities with the ballot-counting process, and has failed to muster any evidence of the widespread fraud that the president continues to claim tainted the 2020 election. Trump lost Michigan by a wide margin: at present, he trails President-Elect Joseph R. Biden in the state by 157,000 votes. Earlier this week, the state’s Republican Senate Majority Leader said an effort to have legislators throw out election results was “not going to happen.” But the president now appears to be using the full weight of his office to challenge the election results, as he and his allies reach out personally to state and local officials in an intensifying effort to halt the certification of the vote in key battleground states. In an incendiary news conference in Washington, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor who is now serving as Trump’s lead attorney, made baseless claims that Biden had orchestrated a national conspiracy to rig the vote. Trump’s team appear to be increasingly focused on Michigan as a place where Republican officials — on the state’s Board of Canvassers and in the legislature — might be persuaded to overturn the results.

Full Article: Trump called Monica Palmer, Wayne County official who asked to ‘rescind’ vote certifying election resultsIn Wayne County, Mich., GOP members of canvassing board ask to ‘rescind’ their votes certifying the election – The Washington Post

National: Confrontations in swing states escalate as Trump continues to attack the election process. | Nick Corasaniti, Jim Rutenberg and Kathleen Gray/The New York Times

President Trump’s false accusations that voter fraud denied him re-election are causing escalating confrontations in swing states across the country, leading to threats of violence against officials in both parties and subverting even the most routine steps in the electoral process. In courtrooms, statehouses and election-board meetings across the country, the president is increasingly using the weight of his office to deliver his message to lower-level election workers, hoping they buckle. It has not worked. The extraordinary assault on the voting system by the president and his allies has taken on added intensity as the deadlines for certifying results in several states approach. Once certified, the final tallies will further complicate Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn his loss. Here is a look at some of the states where tensions are rising and local officials are receiving threats of violence.

Full Article: Confrontations in swing states escalate as Trump continues to attack the election process. – The New York Times

National: As defeats pile up, Trump tries to delay vote count in last-ditch attempt to cast doubt on Biden victory | Amy Gardner, Robert Costa, Rosalind S. Helderman and Michelle Ye Hee Lee/The Washington Post

President Trump has abandoned his plan to win reelection by disqualifying enough ballots to reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s wins in key battleground states, pivoting instead to a goal that appears equally unattainable: delaying a final count long enough to cast doubt on Biden’s decisive victory. On Wednesday, Trump’s campaign wired $3 million to election officials in Wisconsin to start a recount in the state’s two largest counties. His personal lawyer, ­Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has taken over the president’s legal team, asked a federal judge to consider ordering the Republican-controlled legislature in Pennsylvania to select the state’s electors. And Trump egged on a group of GOP lawmakers in Michigan who are pushing for an audit of the vote there before it is certified. Giuliani has also told Trump and associates that his ambition is to pressure GOP lawmakers and officials across the political map to stall the vote certification in an effort to have Republican lawmakers pick electors and disrupt the electoral college when it convenes next month — and Trump is encouraging of that plan, according to two senior Republicans who have conferred with Giuliani and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter candidly. But that outcome appears impossible. It is against the law in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin law gives no role to the legislature in choosing presidential electors, and there is little public will in other states to pursue such a path.

Full Article: As defeats pile up, Trump tries to delay vote count in last-ditch attempt to cast doubt on Biden victory – The Washington Post

National: Trump’s effort to overturn the election results may be inept. But it’s still a scandal. | Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Carrie Dann and Melissa Holzberg/NBC

Forget Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Or Trump’s impeachment for asking Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. Arguably the biggest political scandal we’ve ever seen in this country is playing right before our eyes: President Trump and his allies are trying to reverse the election results of a contest he lost. It doesn’t look like the scheme is going to work. The Wayne County (Detroit) Board of Canvassers last night certified its election results after its two Republican members initially withheld support. (Biden won Wayne County, 68 percent to 31 percent, and the state of Michigan by 148,000 votes.) But being unsuccessful doesn’t erase the magnitude of the scandal — or the fact that the president of the United States has cheered it on every step of the way.

Full Article: Trump’s effort to overturn the election results may be inept. But it’s still a scandal.

‘Pathetic’ Trump denounced over Krebs firing as campaign presses for recounts | Maanvi Singh, Sam Levine, Martin Pengelly and Joan E Greve/The Guardian

Donald Trump was condemned by opponents on Wednesday for firing the senior official who disputed his baseless claims of election fraud, as the president pressed on with his increasingly desperate battle to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. The president’s election campaign team continued to press for recounts and investigations in battleground states where Biden has already been declared the winner, including a new request in Wisconsin for a partial recount. And there was uproar over his decision late on Tuesday, announced by tweet, to fire a federal official in charge of election security who dismissed his claims of widespread voter fraud. The firing of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) director, Christopher Krebs, was “pathetic and predictable from a president who views truth as his enemy”, senior House Democrat Adam Schiff said. Officials have declared 3 November’s contest between Trump and Biden the most secure US election ever.

Full Article: ‘Pathetic’ Trump denounced over Krebs firing as campaign presses for recounts | Donald Trump | The Guardian

National: GOP senators blast Trump’s firing of election security official: ‘A terrible mistake’ | Allison Pecorin and Lauren Lantry/ABC

In a rare instance of breaking ranks, GOP senators on Wednesday roundly criticized President Donald Trump’s firing of Chris Krebs, a top election security official who publicly contradicted his claims of voting fraud. “I thought this was a terrible mistake,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine said. Krebs, a political appointee as head of the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency, was highly respected on both sides the political aisle. His dismissal came after he tweeted that the 2020 election was “the most secure election in American history.” “I don’t agree with it,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., told reporters. “I think he’s kept us very well informed. He’s been very professional.” “I was very disappointed when I found out that he had been terminated,” said Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who frequently defends Trump, said while the president has the right to choose his own people, firing Krebs “adds to the confusion and chaos.”

Full Article: GOP senators blast Trump’s firing of election security official: ‘A terrible mistake’ – ABC News

Secretaries of state react to CISA Director Krebs’ firing | Benjamin Freed/StateScoop

 

Some secretaries of state were quick to denounce Trump’s move, which came two weeks after Election Day, a period during which Krebs frequently promoted CISA’s “Rumor Control” website, designed to push back on waves of rumors and misinformation about how the presidential election was conducted, with many of those baseless claims about widespread fraud being pushed by Trump himself. “It’s a dark day when Director Krebs has been fired by tweet for adhering to the truth,” Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos wrote on Twitter. “We have enough work fending off election disinformation campaigns from foreign bad actors without having to fight those same battles within our own government.” And Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill said Krebs’ “ouster is bad for our country’s election cybersecurity, for our national security, and for the goal of free and fair elections untainted by the interference of foreign adversaries.” In a direct message to StateScoop, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson wrote that the White House’s dismantling of CISA’s leadership — along with Krebs, the White House has also dismissed his deputy, Matt Travis, and CISA’s assistant director for cybersecurity, Bryan Ware — will “immediately, negatively impact our national security and Americans’ safety.” “Chris Krebs spoke truth to power, the 2020 elections were safe, secure and legitimate,” California’s Alex Padilla said. Condos, Merrill, Benson and Padilla are all Democrats. Yet in sticking up for a political appointee hired — and now fired — by a president of the opposing political party, they also cited what they described as a nonpartisan approach toward election security. “[Krebs] is the ultimate, consummate professional and leaders on both sides of the aisle appreciate his integrity, experience, and commitment to democracy,” Benson said.

Full Article: Secretaries of state react to CISA Director Krebs’ firing

National: Firing CISA chief leaves Trump unchecked to make false claims about election fraud | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

By firing the government’s top election security official by tweet last night, President Trump showed he’s ready to remove any internal check on his baseless claims about election fraud. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs was dispatched after the government’s top election security official debunked on Twitter the baseless claim by Trump and his allies that the recent election was widely manipulated. Trump has refused to concede the contest to President-elect Joe Biden despite no evidence of systematic irregularities at the voting booth. “This is the first business in history where the surest way of getting fired is doing your job” Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) told me when rumors about Krebs’s firing began circulating. Krebs’s firing is part of a government effort to clean house at the Homeland Security Department agency that vouched for the security of the 2020 election. Krebs’s agency also ran a “Rumor Control” page that knocked back phony election fraud claims — including some made by the president. Following that move, acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf told Krebs’s deputy Matthew Travis that the White House was also forcing him to resign, effectively purging CISA of its top leadership, Ellen Nakashima and Nick Miroff report. The assistant director for CISA’s cybersecurity division, Bryan Ware, was forced to resign last week. Krebs shepherded the federal government from playing virtually no role in protecting elections against foreign interference before 2016 to serving as a go-to source for cybersecurity know-how, testing and intelligence. His agency was widely credited with helping to ensure the 2020 election was free of foreign interference four years after Russia upended the 2016 contest.

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: Firing CISA chief leaves Trump unchecked to make false claims about election fraud – The Washington Post

National: How The U.S. Fended Off Serious Foreign Election Day Cyberattacks | Tim Mak and Dina Temple-Raston/NPR

On Election Day, Geoff Brown watched lines of text flow by on monitors at New York City Cyber Command in downtown Manhattan. Brown, the head of the city’s cybersecurity operation, was plugged into a bank of virtual conference rooms, checking in with partners at the local, state and federal levels working together to monitor election systems for any security breaches or disinformation campaigns that might target the voting process. After all the waiting, after months of hardening defenses, the serious threats never came. “It was a long night. It was sort of a lonely night, perhaps, because we’re all in our own rooms in this day and age,” Brown reflected. He singled out for particular praise his counterparts at the Department of Homeland Security, especially Christopher Krebs, “who I think has done an absolute, tremendous job in their mission.” President Trump’s Tuesday evening firing of Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at DHS, which oversaw federal efforts on election security and countering voting system disinformation, highlights a broader point: After all the concerns raised about foreign adversaries hacking into systems and launching disinformation campaigns such as those that marred the 2016 presidential election, the 2020 race went smoothly on both fronts.

Full Article: Foreign Hacking In 2020 Election Averted; Domestic Disinformation Still A Threat : NPR

The dead voter conspiracy theory peddled by Trump voters, debunked | Tom Perkins/The Guardian

Late last week, Students for Trump founder Ryan Fournier declared on social media that he had unearthed definitive proof of widespread voter fraud in Detroit. He pointed to an absentee ballot cast by “118-year-old William Bradley”, a man who had supposedly died in 1984. “They’re trying to steal the election,” Fournier warned in a since-deleted Facebook post, though the election had already been called for Joe Biden by every major news network days before. But the deceased Bradley hadn’t voted. Within days, Bradley’s son, also named William Bradley, but with a different middle name, told PolitiFact that he had cast the ballot. That was confirmed by Michigan election officials, who said a clerk had entered the wrong Bradley as having voted. Though the living Bradley had also received an absentee ballot for his father, he said he threw it away, “because I didn’t want to get it confused with mine”. The false claim that the deceased Bradley had voted in the 3 November election is one of a barrage of voter fraud conspiracy theories fired off by Trump supporters across the country during recent weeks, and all have been debunked while failing to prove that widespread irregularities exist. Instead, the theories often reveal Trump supporters’ fundamental misunderstandings of the election system while creating a game of conspiracy theory whack-a-mole for election officials.

Full Article: The dead voter conspiracy theory peddled by Trump voters, debunked | US news | The Guardian

National: Giuliani peddles election conspiracy theories and falsehoods. | Linda Qiu/The New York Times

Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, has spread a litany of falsehoods and conspiracy theories in media appearances and social media over the past week. Mr. Giuliani, who has a long history of fudging the truth and who has led the Trump campaign’s largely unsuccessful legal fight over the election, has focused particularly on debunked claims of barred poll workers and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about a voting software company affecting the election’s outcome. In interviews on Fox News, Mr. Giuliani has repeatedly claimed that Democratic officials blocked Republican poll watchers from observing ballot counting in “10 different crooked Democratic cities,” including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Milwaukee, Reno, Phoenix and Atlanta. And in the counties where Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are, he has said, the lack of access affected over 680,000 votes. There’s no evidence to support any of these allegations. Mr. Trump’s own legal filings acknowledged the presence of Republican observers in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona and there were at least 134 Republican poll challengers present inside TCF Center in Detroit, a convention center where votes were counted. Mr. Giuliani has brought up Philadelphia and Pittsburgh several times. That’s because a Trump campaign lawsuit had claimed that some 682,000 ballots in those cities’ two counties were processed “when no observation was allowed” and sought to have those votes thrown out.

Full Article: Giuliani peddles election conspiracy theories and falsehoods. – The New York Times

Editorial: Trump is testing democracy. Nine out of 10 senior elected Republicans are failing. | Max Boot/The Washington Post

President Trump is cynically trying to overturn the election results based on claims of fraud that are themselves fraudulent. He is unlikely to succeed. But if he did, the United States’ 232-year history as a democracy would be finished. Now is a time of testing: Do you stand with the democrats or the autocrats? Unfortunately, most Republicans are failing this test — just as they have failed every other test during Trump’s presidency. According to Axios, only six Republican senators (out of 53), seven Republican governors (out of 26) and 10 Republican members of the House (out of 197) have thus far acknowledged that Joe Biden won. That means fewer than 1 in 10 of the most senior elected Republicans publicly stands behind our electoral system. Even fewer have followed Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) in warning that Trump’s unfounded claim of election-rigging “damages the cause of freedom.” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) has often championed freedom abroad, but now he is a threat to freedom at home. The Republican secretary of state in Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, says that the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee pressured him to throw out as many ballots as possible in a state that Biden won narrowly. (Graham denies it.) Anyone who thought that Lickspittle Lindsey would grow a spine now that he has been reelected — and Trump defeated — will be disabused of that illusion.

Full Article: Opinion | Trump is testing democracy. Nine out of 10 senior elected Republicans are failing. – The Washington Post

Georgia: Lindsey Graham faces ethics complaint over call to Georgia official | Christal Hayes/USA Today

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a staunch ally of the president, is the target of an ethics complaint after his controversial phone call with a key election official in Georgia over how the state counts ballots. Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger accused Graham earlier this week of pressuring him to find ways to exclude or invalidate legally cast absentee ballots and reverse Trump’s loss in the state, an accusation the South Carolina Republican called “ridiculous.”  Graham said he had also spoken with Arizona’s Republican Gov. Doug Ducey and was briefed about the process in Nevada, both swing states that helped Joe Biden beat President Donald Trump for the White House. The senator’s contact with other states over election counting efforts came as  Trump and his campaign have lodged multiple lawsuits over baseless voter fraud allegations in a longshot attempt to overturn the election results. A complaint filed Wednesday to the Senate Select Committee on Ethics asks the panel to investigate Graham’s phone call with Raffensperger, whether Graham suggested not counting all legal votes and whether he had threatened election officials, who are in the midst of a recount, with a Senate investigation. The complaint was filed by Walter Shaub, a former top ethics watchdog for the federal government under President Barack Obama; Richard Painter, the top ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush; and Claire Finkelstein, who heads the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law. “If these allegations are true, Senator Graham’s conduct constitutes an abuse of office and conduct unbecoming of a senator,” the complaint states.

Full Article: Lindsey Graham faces ethics complaint over call to Georgia official

Trump fires Christopher Krebs, top DHS official who refuted his claims that the election was rigged | Ellen Nakashima and Nick Miroff/The Washington Post

President Trump on Tuesday fired a top Department of Homeland Security official who led the agency’s efforts to help secure the election and was vocal about tamping down unfounded claims of ballot fraud. In a tweet, Trump fired Christopher Krebs, who headed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) at DHS and led successful efforts to help state and local election offices protect their systems and to rebut misinformation. Earlier Tuesday, Krebs in a tweet refuted allegations that election systems were manipulated, saying that “59 election security experts all agree, ‘in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.’ ” Krebs’s statement amounted to a debunking of Trump’s central claim that the November election was stolen. Trump, who has not conceded the election to President-elect Joe Biden, said on Twitter: “The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 Election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud — including dead people voting, Poll Watchers not allowed into polling locations, ‘glitches’ in the voting machines which changed votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more. Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.” Late Tuesday, following Trump’s tweet, acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf called Krebs’s deputy, Matthew Travis, to inform him that the White House had overruled CISA’s succession plan that named him acting director, essentially forcing him to resign, Travis said.

Full Article: Trump fires top DHS official who refuted his claims that the election was rigged – The Washington Post

National: After Trump tweets Defcon hacking video, voting security experts call BS | Dan Goodin/Ars Technica

As President Trump continues to make unfounded claims of widespread election fraud, 59 of the world’s foremost experts on electronic voting are hitting back, saying that recent allegations of actual voting machine hacking “have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.” Monday’s letter came after almost two weeks of baseless and unfounded claims from Trump and some of his supporters that this month’s presidential election had been “rigged” in favor of President-elect Joe Biden. On Thursday, Trump started a new round of disinformation when he took to Twitter to say that polling machines made by Dominion Voting deleted 2.7 million Trump votes around the country. Over the weekend, Trump tweeted a video from last year’s Defcon hacker convention. It showed attendees participating in an event called the voting machine hacking village. Organizers of the event held it to raise awareness about the importance of security in electronic voting. Some of the event organizers were beside themselves that Trump was using the video as innuendo that voting machine hacking played a role in the results of this month’s election, or in any election ever, for that matter. “Anyone asserting that a US election was ‘rigged’ is making an extraordinary claim, one that must be supported by persuasive and verifiable evidence,” the computer scientists wrote. “Merely citing the existence of technical flaws does not establish that an attack occurred, much less that it altered an election outcome. It is simply speculation.”

Full Article: After Trump tweets Defcon hacking video, voting security experts call BS | Ars Technica

National: Trump Lashes Voting Tech Firm With Barrage of Debunked Claims | Daniel Zuidijk and Kartikay Mehrotra/Bloomberg

Even as many of President Donald Trump’s claims about fraud committed during the 2020 election have fallen by the wayside, the president continues to hold on to one in particular: That a little known election-equipment maker called Dominion Voting Systems Inc. conspired to help Joe Biden steal the vote. Dominion, with headquarters in Toronto and Denver, is the second largest voting machine supplier in the U.S. It was founded in Toronto in 2002 by entrepreneur John Poulos at a time when digital voting machines were replacing paper ballots in the aftermath of the disputed 2000 presidential election in which George W. Bush narrowly defeated Al Gore. But now, the company finds itself buffeted by a disinformation storm that it’s racing urgently to counter, even as a panel of government experts has debunked the central tenet of the conspiracy — that Dominion machines switched votes from Trump to Biden. It has even resorted to using strings of capital letters in press releases, mimicking Trump’s favorite Twitter technique. In a lengthy statement under the all-caps heading “SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT,” Dominion rebutted false claims against the company, denying that it had ties to Venezuela and that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s family and the Clinton Global Initiative had ownership stakes. Dominion also denied that it uses software made by Smartmatic, which — according to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani — has ties to billionaire George Soros, a frequent target of the far right. Both Dominion and Smartmatic denied the claim. To keep up with the growing rumors, Dominion’s had to update its statement three times since Nov. 12.

Full Article: Trump Election Attacks Puts Dominion Voting Systems in Crosshairs – Bloomberg

National: Why US ballot count live streams became misinformation magnets | Clara McMichael/The Guardian

At a vote-counting center in Montgomery county, Maryland, a man sat in a room with other election workers, wearing a grey hat and dark purple rubber gloves. He unfolded a ballot, looked around and leaned forward to mark it. The man appeared on a Yahoo Finance livestream of the center. The video went viral, one version ending up on YouTube, where the narrator said they found it on 4chan. “Do you notice that, folks?” said the narrator. “How he looks around to see if anyone is watching him – as if he’s about to commit a crime?” The video spread across social media, viewers claiming the election worker was committing fraud. Then election officials launched an investigation and found the voter hadn’t used a dark enough pen to mark their ballot; the worker was darkening their selections – a routine practice. Live streams of the ballot count aren’t a new phenomenon. But this year the practice exploded as Donald Trump cast doubts on the integrity of the vote and the pandemic made in-person options of observing the vote difficult. In the aftermath of a fraught election, many are still grappling to figure out if this method of achieving transparency is too vulnerable to being manipulated or taken out of context to further a political agenda.

Full Article: Why US ballot count live streams became misinformation magnets | US elections 2020 | The Guardian

National: Threats to Election Officials Amassed as Trump Refused to Concede | Dan Glaun/PBS

The man’s voice shook with rage as he accused the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office of throwing the election to President-elect Joe Biden. He offered no evidence but included a string of insults, expletives and slurs. “You guys cheated and lied. You guys f****** lied and cheated,” he said in the 27-second long voicemail reviewed by FRONTLINE. “You guys are f****** dead.” The message, received within days of the election, was one of an “abnormal” number of threats to election officials and ballot counters across the country compared to typical presidential races, said Benjamin Hovland, the chairman of the Election Assistance Commission, a bipartisan federal agency that assists state governments with election administration. These threats continued to accumulate as President Donald Trump refused to concede defeat, two weeks after polls closed — despite Joe Biden being projected as the president-elect, based on unofficial tallies from states. The exact number of incidents of poll-worker intimidation is unknown. But a FRONTLINE review, based on questions to a dozen election and law enforcement agencies in five swing states, as well as local media reports, found examples of threats or acute security risks to election workers in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, Arizona and Georgia. “What we’re seeing this year — more than we have historically — is we have, thus far, baseless accusations of fraud and an unwillingness to acknowledge the results as being what they are,” Hovland told FRONTLINE. “You’re seeing that spin out on social media, in particular. You’re seeing it be amplified and various pieces of mis- or disinformation being thrown in — various conspiracy theories about the election administration process.”

Full Article: Threats to Election Officials Amassed as Trump Refused to Concede