National

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

National: Lindsey Graham’s Long-Shot Mission to Unravel the Election Results | Stephanie Saul/The New York Times

In 2016, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina praised the integrity of the nation’s elections system, criticizing claims by Donald J. Trump that the vote was “rigged.” “Like most Americans, I have confidence in our democracy and our election system,” Mr. Graham said in a statement on Twitter. “If he loses, it will not be because the system is ‘rigged’ but because he failed as a candidate.” What a difference four years makes. Mr. Graham, who has transformed during that time to become one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal allies, now seems determined to reverse the election’s outcome on the president’s behalf. On Friday, he phoned Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state of Georgia and a fellow Republican, wondering about the possibility of a slight tinkering with the state’s elections outcome. What if, Mr. Graham suggested on the call, according to Mr. Raffensperger, he had the power to toss out all of the mail-in votes from counties with high rates of questionable signatures on ballots? In an interview with The Washington Post, Mr. Raffensperger said he was stunned that Mr. Graham had appeared to suggest that he find a way to toss legally cast ballots. “It sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road,” Mr. Raffensperger said of the call from Mr. Graham, the chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee.

Full Article: Lindsey Graham’s Long-Shot Mission to Unravel the Election Results – The New York Times

Election Security Experts Contradict Trump’s Voting Claims | Nicole Perlroth/The New York Times

Fifty-nine of the country’s top computer scientists and election security experts rebuked President Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud and hacking on Monday, writing that such assertions are “unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.” The rebuttal, in a letter to be published on various websites, did not mention Mr. Trump by name but amounted to another forceful corrective to the torrents of disinformation that he has posted on Twitter. “Anyone asserting that a U.S. election was ‘rigged’ is making an extraordinary claim, one that must be supported by persuasive and verifiable evidence,” the scientists wrote. In the absence of evidence, they added, it is “simply speculation.” “To our collective knowledge, no credible evidence has been put forth that supports a conclusion that the 2020 election outcome in any state has been altered through technical compromise,” they wrote. The letter followed a similarly strong rebuttal of the president’s claims last week by the Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council, which includes top officials from the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and secretaries of state and state election directors from around the country. In a joint statement on Thursday, that group declared that the 2020 election “was the most secure in American history” and that “there is no evidence” any voting systems had been compromised. Some of those officials expect to be fired in the coming weeks for their refusal to echo the president’s claims.

Full Article: Election Security Experts Contradict Trump’s Voting Claims – The New York Times

National: Trump’s finally talking about election security – but only to spread conspiracy theories | oseph Marks/The Washington Post

They’ve spent years trying to highlight legitimate concerns about hackable vulnerabilities in election technology only to be rebuffed by the White House. Trump, meanwhile, mostly ignored election security during four years in office — except for when he was outright undermining it by disputing the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 contest. Now, he’s finally talking about the topic, but it’s only to spread conspiracy theories, hijacking fears about election hacking to serve his own political ends. “We’d welcome attention from the top down on these issues, but it’s hard not to be cynical about this sudden interest,” Maggie MacAlpine told me. She’s a co-founder of the Voting Village at the annual Def Con cybersecurity conference where ethical hackers expose vulnerabilities in voting equipment. Trump tweeted a video on Saturday an NBC News story about the Voting Village to cast doubt on the voting machine company Dominion, which is at the center of his efforts to blame insecure technology for his loss. He’s touting a debunked conspiracy theory that Dominion altered thousands of votes and claiming without evidence that it’s a “radical left” company with “a bad reputation & bum equipment.” Rudy Giuliani, who is leading the president’s legal efforts to contest the election results, is also soliciting information about Dominion, which supplied voting machines or vote scanners in Georgia and dozens of other states. Another Trump lawyer, Sidney Powell, claimed without evidence on Fox News someone had intentionally changed thousands of votes using Dominion machines — an act that would be easily spotted by an audit of paper ballots. “It’s one thing to say, ‘let’s safeguard democracy.’ It’s another to finger-point at potential vulnerabilities when there’s an outcome you don’t like,” said MacAlpine, a founding partner at the election security firm Nordic Innovation Labs.

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: Trump’s finally talking about election security – but only to spread conspiracy theories – The Washington Post

National: 59 security experts reject Trump’s election fraud claims as ‘incoherent’ | Sean Lyngaas/CyberScoop

A group of 59 computer scientists, researchers and cybersecurity experts on Monday released a letter rejecting President Donald Trump’s claims of widespread electoral fraud as “technically incoherent” and “unsubstantiated” in the latest rebuke of Trump’s campaign to undermine public confidence in the election results. “We are aware of alarming assertions being made that the 2020 election was ‘rigged’ by exploiting technical vulnerabilities,” wrote the group of experts, which included Matt Blaze, a cryptologist and professor at Georgetown University, and Alex Stamos, the former security chief at Facebook. “However, in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.” Since multiple media outlets, including Fox News and the Associated Press, on Nov. 7 projected Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election, Trump and his allies have continuously made false claims of election fraud. The director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has debunked the president’s conspiracy theories while mostly avoiding mentioning Trump by name. “Anyone asserting that a US election was ‘rigged’ is making an extraordinary claim, one that must be supported by persuasive and verifiable evidence,” the security experts wrote in their letter. Trump and his allies have provided no such evidence, and lawyers representing the Trump campaign in court have consistently failed to convince judges of their arguments. “Merely citing the existence of technical flaws does not establish that an attack occurred, much less that it altered an election outcome,” the letter says. “It is simply speculation.”

Full Article: 59 security experts reject Trump’s election fraud claims as ‘incoherent’

National: Why Trump’s claims of massive voting machine fraud have no merit | Alfred Ng/CNET

For years, the security researchers behind Defcon’s Voting Machine Hacking Village have been trying to get lawmakers’ attention on vulnerabilities with outdated election infrastructure. Hackers regularly showed how easy it was to change ballots with full access to voting machines, with warnings that these security vulnerabilities could shake the confidence of elections if there are no paper backups. Three years after it kicked off at the hacking conference in Las Vegas, the group finally got the attention of the highest office in the US. It only took losing the 2020 election by an estimated 5 million votes for President Donald Trump to get there. On Monday, he followed up and wrote, “Dominion is running our Election. Rigged!” Trump’s claims come from a series of false conspiracy theories about the voting machines switching votes for President-elect Joe Biden, part of a broader push by the president to undermine confidence in the election system and its results. They come after the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the National Association of Secretaries of State, the National Association of State Election Directors and members of the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council filed a joint statement, calling 2020’s election the “most secure in American history.” “When states have close elections, many will recount ballots. All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary,” the joint statement said. “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

Full Article: Why Trump’s claims of massive voting machine fraud have no merit – CNET

National: Fact check: The U.S. military has not seized election servers in Germany | Reuters

Social media users have been sharing posts which allege that the U.S. military raided the offices of electronic voting company Scytl in Germany to seize their servers for evidence of manipulation in the 2020 U.S. elections. However, Scytl said in a statement that the U.S. army has not seized anything from them and they do not have offices in Germany. An article (here), called “INTEL: US Military Raided Scytl Servers in Germany For Evidence After Vote Switching Scandal”, was published by GreatGameIndia, and shared on social media here , here and here . The article claims, “According to intelligence sources US Military raided voting machine company Scytl servers in Germany for evidence of manipulation in 2020 US Elections […] The votes cast by Americans in 2020 US election were counted by a bankrupt Spanish company Scytl in Spain.” As supposed proof, the article references comments made without supporting evidence by Representative of Texas first congressional district Louie Gohmert’s on Newsmax (here), and also allegedly on a video call shared widely on social media (here , youtu.be/GbgZzA_mSpE , here). Gohmert said, “I was told there was a tweet in German from Germany that the U.S. anocrat” from the information that Scytl gathered. Gohmert prefaced the claims about the raid with, “I don’t know the truth. I know there was a German tweet in German”.

Full Article: Fact check: The U.S. military has not seized election servers in Germany | Reuters

National: Trump aims to undermine Biden’s legitimacy even as legal challenges fizzle | Pamela Brown, Kevin Liptak and Katelyn Polantz/ CNN

When President Donald Trump learned at the end of last week that his lawyers were dropping their lawsuit seeking a review of ballots in Arizona, the news caught him by surprise. Summoning members of his team to the Oval Office, where he has been spending afternoons and evenings lately when not in the adjoining dining room watching television, Trump demanded to know why it appeared he was giving up a battle he fully intends to continue waging. Even as his legal pathway to challenging Joe Biden’s electoral victory becomes thinner by the day — and as some of his senior-most aides begin signaling publicly that Biden will take office in January — Trump has shown little indication he plans to back off his false claim that he won the election. Instead of an actual attempt to locate more votes or even to reverse the election results, Trump’s legal efforts appear designed instead to seed conspiracy theories among his conservative supporters, raise additional money, preserve power over the Republican Party and cast a pall of illegitimacy over Biden’s tenure — the same shadow Trump has long complained darkened his own time in office. Whether any of those outcomes is his express goal remains unclear. Many around him believe a dejected President is simply making an elaborate attempt at processing his trauma rather than executing a master plan. Asked last week how long his efforts might last, Trump suggested “two weeks, three weeks” — though few believe he will ever acknowledge outright that he lost the election to Biden.

Full Article: Donald Trump aims to undermine Biden’s legitimacy even as legal challenges fizzle – CNNPolitics

National: Trump digs in on baseless election claims even as legal options dwindle | Philip Rucker, Josh Dawsey, Amy Gardner and Jon Swaine/The Washington Post

President Trump began his third straight week of angry defiance of the election results, brooding behind the scenes about the state of his campaign’s legal challenges and of Georgia’s hand recount while refusing the pleas of some advisers to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. Despite mounting legal losses in courts and a retreat by his attorneys in a federal case filed against Pennsylvania election officials, Trump dug in on his false claim that he “won” the election. The president also assailed Georgia for what he described on Twitter as a “Fake” and “MEANINGLESS” recount in that state, which President-elect Joe Biden leads by 14,205 votes and has been projected to win. Trump officials seized late Monday on the discovery of about 2,600 eligible votes in heavily Republican Floyd County that were not included in initial tallies, although they would not be enough to change the outcome statewide. Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, said in an interview Monday that he has come under increasing pressure from fellow Republicans to exclude ballots in an effort to reverse Trump’s narrow loss and that the president’s misinformation campaign has gotten so out of hand that he has received death threats. Trump’s campaign has begun winding down its operations, with employment contracts for a number of aides expiring on Sunday. The president, frustrated that his campaign lawyers were not appearing more frequently on television to amplify his baseless claim that he was the real election winner, has elevated attorneys Rudolph W. Giuliani and Jenna Ellis to run his legal and public-relations efforts to overturn the results.

Full Article: Trump digs in on baseless election claims even as legal options dwindle – The Washington Post

National: True the Vote, conservative group alleging voter fraud, ends its lawsuits | Nomann Merchant/Associated Press

A conservative group on Monday moved to dismiss voter fraud lawsuits it had filed in four states days after the group’s leader made baseless allegations questioning the integrity of the election. Lawyers for True the Vote filed notices to dismiss cases in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania less than a week after suing in all four states. Jim Bopp Jr., an attorney for the group, declined to say why they were ending their lawsuits, but confirmed there were no other cases pending from the group. The action highlighted the dwindling legal options that President Donald Trump has as he continues to insist — against overwhelming evidence to the contrary — that fraud cost him an election he claims to have won. Based in Houston, True the Vote is one of several conservative groups that have tried to sow doubts about President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. Following Trump’s lead, True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht accused states that Biden won of counting illegal votes without presenting evidence. “All we want are the facts — regardless of the final outcome — so that we can determine where vulnerabilities in the election system exist and take steps to fix them,” Engelbrecht said in a statement Friday announcing the group’s Wisconsin lawsuit. Instead, Engelbrecht’s group ended that case and others before the lawsuits could proceed further. Engelbrecht did not return messages seeking comment.

Full Article: Conservative group alleging voter fraud ends its lawsuits

National: Trump Loses String of Election Lawsuits, Leaving Few Vehicles to Fight His Defeat | Alan Feuer/The New York Times

President Trump suffered multiple legal setbacks in three key swing states on Friday, choking off many of his last-ditch efforts to use the courts to delay or block President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. In quick succession, Mr. Trump was handed defeats in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan, where a state judge in Detroit rejected an unusual Republican attempt to halt the certification of the vote in Wayne County pending an audit of the count. The legal losses came as Mr. Biden was declared the victor in Georgia and a day after an agency in the president’s own Department of Homeland Security flatly contradicted him by declaring that the election “was the most secure in American history” and that “there is no evidence” any voting systems malfunctioned. On Friday, 16 federal prosecutors who had been assigned to monitor the election also directly debunked claims of widespread fraud, saying in a letter to Attorney General William P. Barr that there was no evidence of substantial irregularities. In his first public remarks of the week, Mr. Trump ignored the developments during an appearance in the Rose Garden. But he showed a momentary crack in his previously relentless insistence that he would eventually be proclaimed the winner of the campaign, saying at one point, “Whatever happens in the future, who knows, which administration, I guess time will tell.”

Full Article: Trump Loses String of Election Results Lawsuits – The New York Times

National: Trump lost at the ballot box. His legal challenges aren’t going any better. | David A. Fahrenthold, Emma Brown and Hannah Knowles/The Washington Post

President Trump lost his reelection bid at the ballot box. But he said he could win it back in court. In five key states, Trump and his allies filed lawsuits that — according to Trump — would reveal widespread electoral fraud, undo President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, and give Trump another four years. “Biden did not win, he lost by a lot!” Trump tweeted. It’s not going well. Rather than revealing widespread — or even isolated — fraud, the effort by Trump’s legal team has so far done the opposite: It’s affirmed the integrity of the election that Trump lost. Nearly every GOP challenge has been tossed out. Not a single vote has been overturned. “The Trump legal team does not seem to have identified any kind of global litigation strategy that has any prospect of changing the outcome of the election, and all of the court filings to date underscore that — as do all of the court rulings that have been issued to date,” said Robert Kelner, a Republican lawyer who chairs the election and political law practice group at Covington & Burling, an international law firm based in Washington. Part of the problem is that Trump’s approach has been backward: Declare crimes first, then look for proof afterward. Again and again, the president or his allies said they’d found evidence that would stun the public and swing the election. But, when Trump and his team revealed that evidence, it often was far less than they had promised. A “dead” voter turned out to be alive. “Thousands” of problematic ballots turned out to be one. Election-changing problems turned out to involve a few dozen, or a few hundred, ballots.

Full Article: Trump lost at the ballot box. His legal challenges aren’t going any better. – The Washington Post

National: Behind Trump’s Yearslong Effort to Turn Losing Into Winning | Jim Rutenberg and Nick Cora/The New York Times

Obscured by the postelection noise over the president’s efforts to falsely portray the election system as “rigged” against him has been how much Mr. Trump and his allies did ahead of time to promote a baseless conspiracy devised to appeal to his most passionate supporters, providing him with the opportunity to make his historically anomalous bid to cling to power in the face of defeat. That bid is now in its last throes. Judges are dismissing the president’s lawsuits, as various bits of supposed evidence — an alleged box of illegal ballots that was in fact a case containing camera equipment and “dead voters” who are alive — unravel. And yet Mr. Trump has still not given up on seeding doubt about the election’s integrity as he seeks to stain Mr. Biden’s clear victory — by more than 5.5 million votes and also in the Electoral College — with false insinuations of illegitimacy. On Sunday alone, he posted more than two dozen election-related tweets, seeming to briefly acknowledge Mr. Biden’s victory before declaring, “I concede NOTHING!” The roots of Mr. Trump’s approach date to before his election in 2016, and he advanced his plans throughout his term. But his strategy for casting doubt on the outcome of the 2020 campaign took shape in earnest when the coronavirus pandemic upended normal life and led states to promote voting by mail. From the start, the president saw mail-in ballots as a political threat that would appeal more to Democrats than to his followers. And so he and his allies sought to block moves to make absentee voting easier and to slow the counting of mail ballots. This allowed Mr. Trump to do two things: claim an early victory on election night and paint ballots that were counted later for his opponent as fraudulent.

Full Article: Behind Trump’s Yearslong Effort to Turn Losing Into Winning – The New York Times

National: Giuliani adds fuel to discredited theories about voting machines. | Zach Montague/The New York Times

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, continued on Saturday his effort to delegitimize votes cast through electronic voting machines, citing several conspiracies connected to the companies that make the machines and the software they run in a post on Twitter. Looking to sow doubt about the vote count in multiple swing states that were recently called for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Giuliani hinted support for a discredited theory that one of the companies that manufactures the voting machines used in some states, Smartmatic, is controlled by the billionaire philanthropist George Soros. “Look up SMARTMATIC and tweet me what you think?” Mr. Giuliani wrote. “It will all come out.” Hours later, President Trump picked up a similar refrain, stating in a tweet that the election was “stolen” by “privately owned Radical Left company, Dominion,” without providing evidence or explaining why Dominion was distinct among the many other privately owned election system vendors that routinely administer elections in the United States. Speculation that Mr. Soros has any influence over Smartmatic or its operations has been thoroughly debunked, and he does not own the company. Mr. Soros’s distant connection to the company is through his association with Smartmatic’s chairman, Mark Malloch-Brown, who is on the board of Mr. Soros’s Open Society Foundation.

Full Article: Giuliani adds fuel to discredited theories about voting machines. – The New York Times

National: Judges appear increasingly frustrated with Trump’s legal claims about 2020 election | Matthew Mosk, Olivia Rubin and Alex Hosenball/ABC

The recent scene in Clark County, Nevada, has become increasingly common in courthouses around the country as President Donald Trump continues to push thinly supported allegations of election misconduct and fraud. When Republican lawyers in Nevada complained their observers were not close enough if they could not hear everything poll workers were saying, U.S. District Judge Andrew Gordon pushed back. “At what point does this get ridiculous?” the exasperated judge, an appointee of President Barack Obama, asked before ruling against the Republicans. In court hearings and opinions around the country, judges are voicing similar frustrations with the Trump campaign’s legal filings to a degree rarely seen in venues where political rhetoric is generally unwelcome, experts and courthouse veterans said. “Judge after judge after judge has asked, in essence, ‘Where is the beef?'” said Karl Racine, the attorney general for the District of Columbia and a frequent Trump critic, in a call with reporters Friday. “We have seen numerous instances where affidavits have been filed … only to be immediately pulled back once tested in state and federal court,” said Racine, whose own lawsuit against Trump in connection with the president’s Washington, D.C., hotel is on hold pending appeal. “I would not be surprised that if these baseless allegations continue, judges will begin to threaten and indeed issue sanctions.”

Full Article: Judges appear increasingly frustrated with Trump’s legal claims about 2020 election – ABC News

National: GOP leaders in 4 states quash dubious Trump bid on electors | Bob Christie and Nicholas Riccardi/Associated Press

Republican leaders in four critical states won by President-elect Joe Biden say they won’t participate in a legally dubious scheme to flip their state’s electors to vote for President Donald Trump. Their comments effectively shut down a half-baked plot some Republicans floated as a last chance to keep Trump in the White House. State GOP lawmakers in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have all said they would not intervene in the selection of electors, who ultimately cast the votes that secure a candidate’s victory. Such a move would violate state law and a vote of the people, several noted. “I do not see, short of finding some type of fraud — which I haven’t heard of anything — I don’t see us in any serious way addressing a change in electors,” said Rusty Bowers, Arizona’s Republican House speaker, who says he’s been inundated with emails pleading for the legislature to intervene. “They are mandated by statute to choose according to the vote of the people.” The idea loosely involves GOP-controlled legislatures dismissing Biden’s popular vote wins in their states and opting to select Trump electors. While the endgame was unclear, it appeared to hinge on the expectation that a conservative-leaning Supreme Court would settle any dispute over the move.

Full Article: GOP leaders in 4 states quash dubious Trump bid on electors

Top official on U.S. election cybersecurity tells associates he expects to be fired | Christopher Bing, Joseph Menn, and Raphael Satter/Reuters

Top U.S. cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs, who worked on protecting the election from hackers but drew the ire of the Trump White House over efforts to debunk disinformation, has told associates he expects to be fired, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Krebs, who heads the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), did not return messages seeking comment. CISA and the White House declined comment. Separately, Bryan Ware, assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA, confirmed to Reuters that he had handed in his resignation on Thursday. Ware did not provide details, but a U.S. official familiar with his matter said the White House asked for Ware’s resignation earlier this week. The departure is part of the churn in the administration since Republican President Donald Trump was defeated by Democrat Joe Biden in last week’s election, raising concerns about the transition to the president-elect who would take office on Jan. 20. Trump, who has yet to concede and has repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims of electoral fraud, fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper and has installed loyalists in top positions at the Pentagon. Krebs has drawn praise from both Democrats and Republicans for his handling of the election, which generally ran smoothly despite persistent fears that foreign hackers might try to undermine the vote.

Full Article: Exclusive: Top official on U.S. election cybersecurity tells associates he expects to be fired | Reuters

National: Election Officials Directly Contradict Trump on Voting System Fraud | David E. Sanger, Matt Stevens and Nicole Perlroth/The New York Times

Hours after President Trump repeated a baseless report that a voting machine system “deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide,” he was directly contradicted by a group of federal, state and local election officials, who issued a statement on Thursday declaring flatly that the election “was the most secure in American history” and that “there is no evidence” any voting systems were compromised. The rebuke, in a statement by a coordinating council overseeing the voting systems used around the country, never mentioned Mr. Trump by name. But it amounted to a remarkable corrective to a wave of disinformation that Mr. Trump has been pushing across his Twitter feed. The statement was distributed by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is responsible for helping states secure the voting process. Coming directly from one of Mr. Trump’s own cabinet agencies, it further isolated the president in his false claims that widespread fraud cost him the election. The statement also came as a previously unified Republican Party showed signs of cracking on the question of whether to keep backing the president. Across the country, election officials have said the vote came off smoothly, with no reports of systemic fraud in any state, no sign of foreign interference in the voting infrastructure and no hardware or software failures beyond the episodic glitches that happen in any election. President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s lead in the popular vote has expanded to more than five million, and he remains on track to win a solid victory in the Electoral College.

Full Article: Election Officials Directly Contradict Trump on Voting System Fraud – The New York Times

National: Trump spreads baseless claim about Dominion Voting Systems after losing election | Audrey McNamara/CBS

President Trump and campaign surrogates have claimed, without evidence, that widespread voter fraud occurred in the key battleground states that gave President-elect Joe Biden the necessary Electoral College votes to become the projected 46th president of the United States. The latest claim, that Dominion Voting Systems, a voting software company used in 28 states, deleted and switched votes intended for Mr. Trump, also does not hold water. “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” said a statement posted Thursday by the federal Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The joint statement, from the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Executive Committees, called the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.” Nevertheless, the president on Thursday tweeted an unsubstantiated story from the pro-Trump One America News Network that Dominion “deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide,” citing “data analysis.” The post, which was flagged by Twitter, tagged OANN personality Chanel Rion, who earlier in the week amplified the baseless claim that a “glitch” in the system caused Mr. Biden to initially lead in the historically Republican county. The Michigan secretary of state’s office said it was a human error that was quickly corrected.

Full Article: Trump spreads baseless claim about Dominion Voting Systems after losing election – CBS News

National: No, Dominion voting machines did not cause widespread voting problems. | Jack Nicas/The New York Times

President Trump on Thursday spread new baseless claims about Dominion Voting Systems, which makes software that local governments around the nation use to help run their elections, fueling a conspiracy theory that Dominion “software glitches” changed vote tallies in Michigan and Georgia last week. The Dominion software was used in only two of the five counties that had problems in Michigan and Georgia, and in every instance there was a detailed explanation for what had happened. In all of the cases, software did not affect the vote counts. In the two Michigan counties that had mistakes, the inaccuracies were because of human errors, not software problems, according to the Michigan Department of State, county officials and election-security experts. Only one of the two Michigan counties used Dominion software. Issues in three Georgia counties had other explanations. In one county, an apparent problem with Dominion software delayed officials’ reporting of the vote tallies, but did not affect the actual vote count. In two other counties, a separate company’s software slowed poll workers’ ability to check-in voters. “Many of the claims being asserted about Dominion and questionable voting technology is misinformation at best and, in many cases, they’re outright disinformation,” said Edward Perez, an election-technology expert at the OSET Institute, a nonprofit that studies voting infrastructure. “I’m not aware of any evidence of specific things or defects in Dominion software that would lead one to believe that votes had been recorded or counted incorrectly.”

Full Article: No, Dominion voting machines did not cause widespread voting problems. – The New York Times

National: The GOP Keeps Proving There’s No Election Fraud | Lily Hay Newman/WIRED

After repeatedly raising the specter of fraud throughout the campaign season, President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have spent the last week attempting to sow doubt about the validity of the presidential election results. By Saturday, enough mail-in ballots had been counted that major news outlets called the race for Joe Biden. If anything, Trump and the GOP have since then become even more emboldened. But along the way, their legal challenges and other gestures have failed to show any instances of voter fraud. In fact, quite the opposite: They’ve inadvertently been proving the validity of the election’s results. It’s unclear whether President Trump and his allies actually hope to overturn the results of the election. Some reports indicate that the pushback is largely for show. But even if the challenges persist, they collectively don’t seem to be enough right now to overcome Biden’s commanding lead. Still, the Trump reelection campaign has brought lawsuits in states like Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Nevada over ballots they say are ineligible to be counted and votes they claim were cast fraudulently. A number of these challenges have already been dismissed. Those that remain haven’t gained significant traction. In at least one instance, Trump’s lawyers have flat-out acknowledged that they’re not actually alleging fraud despite the president’s insistence. On Tuesday, in a case over 592 disputed ballots in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania—a county where Biden leads by more than 130,000 votes—judge Richard Haaz pressed Trump reelection campaign lawyer Jonathan Goldstein. “Are you claiming that there is any fraud in connection with these 592 ballots?” Haaz asked. “To my knowledge at present, no,” Goldstein responded. “Are you claiming that there is any undue or improper influence upon the elector with respect to these 592 ballots?” Haaz asked. Goldstein again said no.

Full Article: The GOP Keeps Proving There’s No Election Fraud | WIRED

National: Trump Floats Improbable Survival Scenarios as He Ponders His Future | Maggie Haberman/The New York Times

At a meeting on Wednesday at the White House, President Trump had something he wanted to discuss with his advisers, many of whom have told him his chances of succeeding at changing the results of the 2020 election are thin as a reed. He then proceeded to press them on whether Republican legislatures could pick pro-Trump electors in a handful of key states and deliver him the electoral votes he needs to change the math and give him a second term, according to people briefed on the discussion. It was not a detailed conversation, or really a serious one, the people briefed on it said. Nor was it reflective of any obsessive desire of Mr. Trump’s to remain in the White House. “He knows it’s over,” one adviser said. But instead of conceding, they said, he is floating one improbable scenario after another for staying in office while he contemplates his uncertain post-presidency future. There is no grand strategy at play, according to interviews with a half-dozen advisers and people close to the president. Mr. Trump is simply trying to survive from one news cycle to the next, seeing how far he can push his case against his defeat and ensure the continued support of his Republican base. By dominating the story of his exit from the White House, he hopes to keep his millions of supporters energized and engaged for whatever comes next.

Full Article: Trump Floats Improbable Survival Scenarios as He Ponders His Future – The New York Times

Trump’s election challenge looks like a scam to line his pockets | Dana Milbank/The Washington Post

President Trump isn’t really trying to overturn the election. He’s simply running one more scam before he leaves office that would enable him to enrich himself. That’s the way it appears, at least, from the scores of fundraising emails his campaign has sent out since the election. He seems to be asking for funds to challenge the election, but the fine print shows that the money could let him line his own coffers. The tin-pot-dictator routine looks more as if it’s about passing the tin cup. “They’re trying to STEAL this Election,” declared one such Trump campaign fundraising missive Wednesday afternoon. from “Donald J. Trump, President of the United States.” “I promise you my team is fighting the clock to DEFEND the integrity of this Election, but we cannot do it alone. We need EVERY Patriot, like YOU, to step up and make sure we have the resources to keep going. … Please contribute ANY AMOUNT RIGHT NOW to DEFEND the Election.” But at the provided link to the “OFFICIAL ELECTION DEFENSE FUND,” the legalese at the end says something rather different: Sixty percent of the contribution, up to $5,000, goes to “Save America,” Trump’s newly created leadership PAC. And 40 percent of the contribution up to $35,500, goes to the Republican National Committee’s operating account, its political (not legal) fund. Only after reaching the first maximum would a single penny go to Trump’s “Recount Account,” and only after reaching the second maximum would a penny go to the RNC’s legal account.

Full Article: Opinion | Trump’s election challenge looks like a scam to line his pockets – The Washington Post

National: Pressure mounts on state Republicans as lawsuits challenging election results founder | Elise Viebeck, Tom Hamburger, Jon Swaine and Emma Brown/The Washington Post

Pressure mounted on state and local officials in battleground states to accept claims of ballot-counting irregularities and voter fraud in the election despite a lack of evidence, as Republicans sought new ways to block certification of Joe Biden’s clear victory in the presidential race. In Michigan, Republican lawyers lobbied the Wayne County canvassing board to consider evidence of alleged improprieties before certifying the vote. In Pennsylvania, GOP lawmakers were the target of social media campaigns demanding the appointment of electors who favor President Trump. And in Georgia, the Republican secretary of state defended the election and announced a hand audit of the results, despite calls by the state’s Republican senators for him to resign over alleged problems. The efforts in these states — where Biden has won or is leading in the count — come as the Trump campaign struggles to amass genuine evidence of fraud that will pass muster in court. Republican lawsuits seeking to challenge the Nov. 3 election results so far have foundered, and affidavits cited as proof of election fraud in cities such as Detroit have failed to substantiate serious claims that votes were counted illegally. While the Trump campaign’s lawsuits have so far been “summarily dismissed,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) said Wednesday that she is concerned the GOP may try to use baseless claims about irregularities or vote tampering to disrupt the certification of Biden’s win, depriving him of the state’s 16 electoral votes.

Full Article: Pressure mounts on state Republicans as lawsuits challenging election results founder – The Washington Post

National: Few legal wins so far as Trump team hunts for proof of fraud | Maryclaire Dale and Alanna Durkin Richer/Associated Press

During a Pennsylvania court hearing this week on one of the many election lawsuits brought by President Donald Trump, a judge asked a campaign lawyer whether he had found any signs of fraud from among the 592 ballots challenge. The answer was no. “Accusing people of fraud is a pretty big step,” said the lawyer, Jonathan Goldstein. “We’re all just trying to get an election done.” Trump has not been so cautious, insisting without evidence that the election was stolen from him even when election officials nationwide from both parties say there has been no conspiracy. On Wednesday, Trump took aim at Philadelphia, the Democratic stronghold that helped push President-elect Joe Biden over the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the race. The president accused a local Republican election official Al Schmidt, of ignoring “a mountain of corruption & dishonesty.” Twitter added a label that said the election fraud claim is disputed. Trump loyalists have filed at least 15 legal challenges in Pennsylvania alone in an effort to reclaim the state’s 20 electoral votes. There is action, too, in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Michigan.

Full Article: Few legal wins so far as Trump team hunts for proof of fraud

National: Few Courts Have Intervened in Elections in Ways Sought by Trump Campaign | Jacob Gershman/Wall Street Journal

Few courts have considered the types of requests being made by the Trump campaign, such as keeping a state from certifying its election based on allegations that Republican poll observers lacked sufficient access to ballot counting. President Trump’s lawyers in federal court this week asked a judge to take that unprecedented step, arguing that Pennsylvania had inadequate safeguards to detect voting fraud. The campaign is pursuing similar claims in Michigan, where Republicans also are alleging misconduct in the election process. But such relief has rarely, if ever, been awarded to a campaign running behind in an election. “I don’t think there’s any precedent for this,” said Daniel Tokaji, an election-law expert and dean of University of Wisconsin Law School, referring to the Pennsylvania case. “The lawsuit is a Hail Mary pass.” The Trump campaign’s suit in Pennsylvania alleges counties controlled by Democrats processed ballots in unmonitored back rooms or in larger barricaded spaces with poll observers kept at a distance. State election officials have said they followed all laws and have declined to comment on the litigation. Republicans haven’t offered evidence of fraud in Pennsylvania.

Full Article: Few Courts Have Intervened in Elections in Ways Sought by Trump Campaign – WSJ

‘A grand scheme’: Trump’s election defiance consumes GOP | David Siders/Politico