National

As she asked the U.S. Supreme Court this month to overturn President Trump’s election loss, the attorney Sidney Powell cited testimony from a secret witness presented as a former intelligence contractor with insights on a foreign conspiracy to subvert democracy. Powell told courts that the witness is an expert who could show that overseas corporations helped shift votes to President-elect Joe Biden. The witness’s identity must be concealed from the public, Powell has said, to protect her “reputation, professional career and personal safety.” The Washington Post identified the witness by determining that portions of her affidavit match, sometimes verbatim, a blog post that the pro-Trump podcaster Terpsichore Maras-Lindeman published in November 2019. In an interview, Maras-Lindeman confirmed that she wrote the affidavit and said she viewed it as her contribution to a fight against the theft of the election. “This is everybody’s duty,” she said. “It’s just not fair.” In a recent civil fraud case, attorneys for the state of North Dakota said that Maras-Lindeman falsely claimed to be a medical doctor and to have both a PhD and an MBA. They said she used multiple aliases and social security numbers and created exaggerated online résumés as part of what they called “a persistent effort . . . to deceive others.” Powell’s reliance on Maras-Lindeman’s testimony may raise further questions about her judgment and the strength of her arguments at a time when she is becoming an increasingly influential adviser to the president. Trump’s legal team distanced itself from Powell last month after she falsely claimed Republican state officials took bribes to rig the election. But she has visited the White House three times in the past week, once to participate in an Oval Office meeting. Trump has weighed naming Powell a special counsel to investigate the election, according to previous reports.

Full Article: Sidney Powell secret witness is Terpsichore Maras-Lindeman - The Washington Post

National: Frustrated Trump met with Pence before holiday break – ‘confused’ about Vice President’s role | Pamela Brown and Kevin Liptak/CNN

Se: Frustrated Trump met with Pence before holiday break - CNNPolitics

Hours before President Donald Trump retweeted a message for his vice president to "act" in stopping the ratification of the Electoral College, he met for more than an hour in the Oval Office with Mike Pence, whom he has complained recently isn't doing enough to support his bid to overturn the election. The discussion was "entirely unrelated" to the eventual tweet, one person familiar with the matter said, though would not specify whether the issue of the January 6 ratification in Congress arose. The two men went separate ways for the holiday. As Trump enters the holiday stretch as fixated as ever on overturning the results of the election, the Electoral College certification is becoming a focal point for his efforts. On Wednesday evening, as he was flying to Florida for his vacation, Trump retweeted a call from one of his supporters for Pence to refuse to ratify the Electoral College results on January 6 -- a prospect that has captured his imagination even if it remains completely impossible. Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani was with Trump aboard Air Force One before the President sent out the tweet. Giuliani is joining Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate for the holidays, where the men are expected to discuss their election efforts. Arriving at his golf club Thursday afternoon, Trump received a warm welcome from members and vowed to continue fighting to overturn the election, a person familiar with the matter said. "He's very resolute in continuing to want to fight the Electoral College," this person said. "And he still thinks it's not over." Later, he spent much of Christmas Eve tweeting grievances, including one aimed at Senate Republicans, vowing that he will "NEVER FORGET!" what he sees as their abandonment.

National: Pence faces pressure as final step nears in formalizing Biden win | Colby Itkowitz and Josh Dawsey/The Washington Post

Vice President Pence urged an audience of conservative youth activists earlier this week to “stay in the fight,” as they chanted “Four more years” and “Stop the steal” to trumpet their embrace of the groundless notion that President Trump was the true victor of the recent election. “I’ll make you a promise: We’re going to keep fighting until every legal vote is counted, we’re going to keep fighting until every illegal vote is thrown out,” Pence said at the event Tuesday. “So — for all we’ve done, for all we have yet to do — stay in the fight.” But in less than two weeks, it will fall to Pence to declare that fight over — and lost. A joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 will take the last step in formalizing President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, and Pence, in his role as president of the Senate, will preside over the session after four years of ceaseless efforts to demonstrate his loyalty to Trump. Some die-hard Trump supporters are declaring that Pence will be a traitor if he does not somehow derail the proceedings. There is no evident way for him to do that even if he wanted to, but such demands ratchet up the pressure on Pence, who is unlikely to escape their wrath — or Trump’s. “Trump would probably tell Pence, ‘Just go declare us reelected,’ ” said Joel Goldstein, a professor at the Saint Louis University School of Law. “Part of his constitutional duty is to be responsible. Just because you’re vice president doesn’t mean you get to engage in behavior that is threatening the underpinning of democratic institutions of the country.”

Full Article: Pence faces pressure as final step nears in formalizing Biden win - The Washington Post

The Toll Of Conspiracy Theories: A Voting Security Expert Lives In Hiding | Bente Birkelund/NPR

More than a month ago, Eric Coomer went into hiding. The voting conspiracy theories that have led millions of Republicans to feel as though the election was stolen from them, which are still spreading, have also led to calls for Coomer's head. Coomer oversees product strategy and security for Dominion Voting Systems, the Denver-based company that has suddenly found itself at the center of many of President Trump's false claims about November's election, spread by allies and pro-Trump media. Some of Trump's supporters have focused on Coomer as the supposed evil mastermind. "I actually am in fear for my safety," Coomer said recently, speaking by video call from an undisclosed location to Colorado Public Radio. "I'm in fear for my family's safety. These are real, tangible things coming out of these baseless accusations." On Tuesday, Coomer sued the Trump campaign and a number of allies, alleging defamation.

Full Article: Dominion Voting Systems Official Is In Hiding After Threats : NPR

National: Dominion, Smartmatic Strike Back: Trump And His Lawyers Face Possible Legal Consequences For Flimsy Election Challenges | Alison Durkee/Forbes

Dominion employee Eric Coomer filed a federal lawsuit alleging the Trump campaign and its allies have spread “false and baseless assertions” linking Coomer to the debunked Dominion voter fraud conspiracy, which has “invaded [Coomer’s] privacy, threatened his security, and fundamentally defamed his reputation across this country.” Dominion has also threatened to take legal action as a company against GOP figures—namely Powell, who’s primarily responsible for spreading the conspiracy theory—and voting company Smartmatic has made its own legal threats over similar baseless fraud allegations, leading right-wing news networks to publicly walk back their own claims. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and the city of Detroit are seeking sanctions against Powell and other attorneys involved in failed lawsuits alleging widespread fraud, which Detroit said in a court filing are “devoid of any factual or legal merit” and aim to “damage democracy.” The NAACP sued President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee for allegedly violating the Voting Rights Act and Ku Klux Klan Act through Trump’s post-election efforts, which they argue tried to disenfranchise voters of color, and want the court to block Trump and the RNC from engaging in any subsequent post-election efforts like recounts without court approval. Conservative attorney Lin Wood, who has joined Powell’s lawsuits and led his own legal challenges, may be removed from representing former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page in an unrelated Delaware lawsuit, because the judge believes Wood’s post-election lawsuits may violate Delaware’s code of conduct for attorneys. A judge in Arizona suggested in a court filing that the state’s Republican Party could face sanctions for appearing to have “constructive knowledge, at least, of facts that contradicted the allegations” in one of their post-election lawsuits.

Full Article: Dominion, Smartmatic Strike Back: Trump And His Lawyers Face Possible Legal Consequences For Flimsy Election Challenges

National: 2020 Shows the Danger of a Decapitated Cyber Regime | Andy Greenberg/WIRED

When it comes to cybersecurity policy, the Trump administration's head and body have rarely seemed to agree. Take the past two months, for instance. In late October, the president made an absurd declaration at a campaign rally that “nobody gets hacked.” That same week, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration (CISA), Justice Department, and Treasury Department all took separate, landmark steps to counter Russian hacking—unsealing an indictment against six hackers in Russia's GRU military intelligence agency, imposing new sanctions on the Moscow research institute responsible for a uniquely dangerous piece of malware, and warning of an ongoing hacking campaign believed to be carried out by the FSB. A few weeks later, Donald Trump lost the election and laid the blame on false conspiracy theories about electoral hacking and fraud. When CISA released a statement lauding the election as the "most secure in American history," contradicting the president's claims, Trump summarily fired CISA director Chris Krebs. This year was finally capped off by revelations of a disastrous hacking campaign that hijacked the software updates of IT management firm SolarWinds to breach a slew of federal agencies and tech firms. Now, even as attorney general William Barr and secretary of state Mike Pompeo have pointed to Russia as the culprit, Trump has responded by downplaying the crisis, suggesting intrusions might have been carried out by China instead. On almost every significant cybersecurity issue of the past year, President Trump has appeared to be either AWOL or at war with his own federal agencies. But cybersecurity observers on both sides of the political divide say the results of that disconnect have been a surprisingly mixed bag: The ongoing SolarWinds debacle shows how Trump's disjointed, self-serving failures of leadership have left the federal government struggling to pull together a coherent response to one of America's most serious cybersecurity failures in years. But in other cases, Trump's inattention to and ignorance of cyber issues led him to empower and then largely ignore leaders at agencies like CISA, the NSA, and Cyber Command, allowing them to carry out aggressive new tactics that often were effective, if uncoordinated.

Full Article: 2020 Shows the Danger of a Decapitated Cyber Regime | WIRED

National: Trump leans on QAnon figures in flailing effort to overturn election | Tina Nguyen/Politico

With his presidency dwindling, Donald Trump is turning to QAnon heroes, contemplating QAnon ideas and boosting QAnon accounts. At the White House, Trump has recently hosted three of the conspiracy movement’s most prominent figures. On Twitter, he has surged his activity boosting QAnon-linked accounts. And he’s been toying with a series of suggestions — such as seizing the voting machines — that are circulating in QAnon circles. Trump has long flirted with QAnon figures and equivocated when asked to denounce the movement, which believes Trump is fighting a Satan-worshiping cabal of pedophile elites who control Washington. But Trump’s recent moves are perhaps the most he has directly engaged with QAnon-beloved figures as president in such a short time period. In a matter of several days, he met multiple times with Sidney Powell, the controversial attorney who is a hero in the QAnon community, and talked multiple times with Rep. elect-Marjorie Taylor Greene, the first QAnon-booster to get elected to Congress. He also met with Michael Flynn, the former Trump national security adviser who became a celebrated QAnon figure after seeking to rescind a guilty plea for lying to the FBI. And on Sunday, Trump retweeted 11 QAnon-linked accounts — the most he had elevated Q content since July 4, according to Media Matters for America, a progressive watchdog site monitoring far-right media. The behavior itself does not prove that Trump is specifically targeting a QAnon audience or embracing the ideas of the movement itself. But it does show how the president is increasingly turning to the most extreme and loyal corners of his base as more and more Republicans back away from his flailing effort to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s win. And, whether he intended it or not, the confluence of events was received as a signal among QAnon adherents. In their eyes, “it's big ‘end of days’ stuff for those people to all be meeting — it means the final blow is about to be delivered,” said Mike Rothschild, a conspiracy theory researcher working on a book about QAnon. In the apocalyptic QAnon community, the final blow is “The Storm,” a long-predicted day of reckoning where Trump institutes martial law and the elites are arrested, tried in front of military tribunals and executed.

Full Article: Trump leans on QAnon figures in flailing effort to overturn election - POLITICO

National: Iran behind pro-Trump ‘hit list’ of U.S. election officials, FBI says | Kevin Collier/NBC

Iran created an online "hit list" of U.S. government officials who helped conduct and certify the 2020 U.S. presidential election, federal officials announced Wednesday. Titled "Enemies of the people," the list was framed as a call to arms for supporters of President Donald Trump to take revenge on more than a dozen federal and state officials, as well as employees of the voting equipment manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems. The FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity Agency “possess highly credible information indicating Iranian cyber actors almost certainly were responsible” for the site, which has since been taken down from its initial URL, the agencies wrote in a statement. The agencies didn’t elaborate how they were able to make that attribution. The list included photos and purported home addresses and contact information of people who some Trump supporters have tied to baseless conspiracy theories for why he lost the election: FBI Director Christopher Wray; the former director of the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Christopher Krebs; and Govs. Brian Kemp of Georgia and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.

Full Article: <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/iran-behind-pro-trump-hit-list-u-s-election-officials

National: Despite smooth election, GOP leaders seek vote restrictions | Anthony Izaguirre and Christina A. Cassidy

Changes to the way millions of Americans voted this year contributed to record turnout, but that’s no guarantee the measures making it easier to cast ballots will stick around for future elections. Republicans in key states that voted for President-elect Joe Biden already are pushing for new restrictions, especially to absentee voting. It’s an option many states expanded amid the coronavirus outbreak that proved hugely popular and helped ensure one of the smoothest election days in recent years. President Donald Trump has been unrelenting in his attacks on mail voting as he continues to challenge the legitimacy of an election he lost. Despite a lack of evidence and dozens of losses in the courts, his claims of widespread voter fraud have gained traction with some Republican elected officials. They are vowing to crack down on mail ballots and threatening to roll back other steps that have made it easier for people to vote. “This myth could not justify throwing out the results of the election, nor can it justify imposing additional burdens on voters that will disenfranchise many Americans,” said Wendy Weiser, head of the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law. An estimated 108 million people voted before Election Day, either through early in-person voting or by mailing or dropping off absentee ballots. That represented nearly 70% of all votes cast, after states took steps to make it easier to avoid crowded polling places during the pandemic. A few states sent ballots to every registered voter while others dropped requirements that voters needed a specific excuse to cast an absentee ballot. Many states added drop boxes and expanded early voting options. The changes were popular with voters and did not lead to widespread fraud. A group of election officials including representatives of the federal cybersecurity agency called the 2020 presidential election the “most secure” election in U.S. history, and U.S. Attorney General William Barr told The Associated Press there had been no evidence of fraud that would change the outcome of the election.

Full Article: Despite smooth election, GOP leaders seek vote restrictions

National: Trump’s Fraud Claims Died in Court, but the Myth of Stolen Elections Lives On | Jim Rutenberg, Nick Corasaniti and Alan Feuer/The New York Times

President Trump’s baseless and desperate claims of a stolen election over the last seven weeks — the most aggressive promotion of “voter fraud” in American history — failed to get any traction in courts across seven states, or come anywhere close to reversing the loss he suffered to Joseph R. Biden Jr. But the effort has led to at least one unexpected and profoundly different result: A thorough debunking of the sorts of voter fraud claims that Republicans have used to roll back voting rights for the better part of the young century. In making their case in real courts and the court of public opinion, Mr. Trump and his allies have trotted out a series of tropes and canards similar to those Republicans have pushed to justify laws that in many cases made voting disproportionately harder for Blacks and Hispanics, who largely support Democrats. Their allegations that thousands of people “double voted” by assuming other identities at polling booths echoed those that have previously been cited as a reason to impose strict new voter identification laws. Their assertion that large numbers of noncitizens cast illegal votes for Mr. Biden matched claims Republicans have made to argue for harsh new “proof of citizenship” requirements for voter registration. And their tales about large numbers of cheaters casting ballots in the name of “dead voters” were akin to those several states have used to conduct aggressive “purges” of voting lists that wrongfully slated tens of thousands of registrations for termination. After bringing some 60 lawsuits, and even offering financial incentive for information about fraud, Mr. Trump and his allies have failed to prove definitively any case of illegal voting on behalf of their opponent in court — not a single case of an undocumented immigrant casting a ballot, a citizen double voting, nor any credible evidence that legions of the voting dead gave Mr. Biden a victory that wasn’t his.

Full Article: Trump’s Fraud Claims Died in Court, but the Myth of Stolen Elections Lives On - The New York Times

National: Trump attorneys risk disciplinary action over wave of election suits | John Kruzel/The Hill

The attorneys behind President Trump’s failing effort to overturn the election are facing mounting ethics complaints for advancing what critics say is a frivolous legal campaign designed to delegitimize President-elect Joe Biden’s win and bolster Trump’s post-election fundraising. Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, as well as allies Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, have been accused of pressing lawsuits larded up with unreliable assertions, flimsy claims and even outright lies, in violation of their obligations as officers of the court. As a result, judges and bar associations may soon face the task of sorting out whether these legal efforts amount to hard-fought advocacy, or if they’ve crossed a line. According to experts in legal ethics, disciplinary sanctions could include fines, private or public censure, law-license suspension or even disbarment. The possibility of Trump-allied attorneys facing disciplinary action was in many ways sparked by their woeful win-loss record in court. By some estimates, the campaign and its allies have prevailed in only a minor case affecting a sliver of Pennsylvania mail ballots, while at the same time losing or withdrawing in more than 50 rounds in state and federal court. “Essentially, the rules require lawyers to screen out junk from the court in order to protect judicial resources, which are limited. Lawyers have a gatekeeper function,” said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University. “The abysmal failure rate of the campaign's claims, and the fact that claims were filed even after many losses, reveal almost certain violations of these rules.”

Full Article: Trump attorneys risk disciplinary action over wave of election suits | TheHill

Georgia: Judge dismisses GOP lawsuit to limit ballot drop box hours | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A Fulton County judge dismissed a Republican Party lawsuit Thursday that tried to close absentee ballot drop boxes after normal business hours. Superior Court Judge Kimberly Esmond Adams’ ruling allows voters to continue using drop boxes 24 hours a day under video surveillance until polls close for the U.S. Senate runoffs Jan. 5. She rejected the case after an online court hearing. The decision is the latest defeat for Republicans who have filed a series of lawsuits in the wake of the presidential election seeking to invalidate its results or change election procedures in the runoffs. None of these lawsuits has been successful in federal or state courts in Georgia. The lawsuit from the Republican National Committee and Georgia Republican Party had argued that drop boxes should be limited to the same hours as county election offices. But an attorney for the secretary of state’s office said drop boxes are allowed to remain open at all hours under a State Election Board rule approved earlier this year. “The public has confidence that the rules of the game will not be altered to indulge the needs of a political party who is trying to benefit their particular candidates,” said Russ Willard, a senior assistant attorney general. “Plaintiffs want to poke at the bear and adjust the election machinery when we only have one week of early advance voting and one week of absentee voting left to go.”

Full Article: Republican lawsuit to restrict ballot drop box hours dismissed

The US has suffered a massive cyberbreach. It’s hard to overstate how bad it is | Bruce Schneier/The Guardian

December 24, 2020

Recent news articles have all been talking about the massive Russian cyber-attack against the United States, but that’s wrong on two accounts. It wasn’t a cyber-attack in international relations terms, it was espionage. And the victim wasn’t just the US, it was the entire world. But it was massive, and it is dangerous.Espionage is internationally allowed in peacetime. The problem is that both espionage and cyber-attacks require the same computer and network intrusions, and the difference is only a few keystrokes. And since this Russian operation isn’t at all targeted, the entire world is at risk – and not just from Russia. Many countries carry out these sorts of operations, none more extensively than the US. The solution is to prioritize security and defense over espionage and attack. Here’s what we know: Orion is a network management product from a company named SolarWinds, with over 300,000 customers worldwide. Sometime before March, hackers working for the Russian SVR – previously known as the KGB – hacked into SolarWinds and slipped a backdoor into an Orion software update. (We don’t know how, but last year the company’s update server was protected by the password “solarwinds123” – something that speaks to a lack of security culture.) Users who downloaded and installed that corrupted update between March and June unwittingly gave SVR hackers access to their networks. This is called a supply-chain attack, because it targets a supplier to an organization rather than an organization itself – and can affect all of a supplier’s customers. It’s an increasingly common way to attack networks. Other examples of this sort of attack include fake apps in the Google Play store, and hacked replacement screens for your smartphone. SolarWinds has removed its customers list from its website, but the Internet Archive saved it: all five branches of the US military, the state department, the White House, the NSA, 425 of the Fortune 500 companies, all five of the top five accounting firms, and hundreds of universities and colleges. In an SEC filing, SolarWinds said that it believes “fewer than 18,000” of those customers installed this malicious update, another way of saying that more than 17,000 did.

Full Articl: The US has suffered a massive cyberbreach. It's hard to overstate how bad it is | Technology | The Guardian

National: Inside Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn the election | Anita Kumar and Gabby Orr/Politico

December 24, 2020

It started with a phone call. In mid-November, President Donald Trump rang Monica Palmer, the Republican chair of an obscure board in Michigan that had just declared Joe Biden winner of the state’s most populous county. Within 24 hours, Palmer announced she wanted to “rescind” her vote. Her reasoning mirrored Trump’s public and private rants: The Nov. 3 election may have been rife with fraud. “The Wayne County election had serious process flaws which deserve investigation,” she wrote in an affidavit. “I continue to ask for information to assure Wayne County voters that these elections were conducted fairly and accurately.” The reversal came too late — the results were already confirmed. But Trump was just getting started. Over the next month, the president would conduct a sweeping campaign to personally cajole Republican Party leaders across the country to reject the will of the voters and hand him the election. In his appeals, he used specious and false claims of widespread voter fraud, leaning on baseless allegations that corrupt Democrats had conspired at every level to steal a presidential election. In total, the president talked to at least 31 Republicans, encompassing mostly local and state officials from four critical battleground states he lost — Michigan, Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania. The contacts included at least 12 personal phone calls to 11 individuals, and at least four White House meetings with 20 Republican state lawmakers, party leaders and attorneys general, all people he hoped to win over to his side. Trump also spoke by phone about his efforts with numerous House Republicans and at least three current or incoming Senate Republicans.

Full Article: Inside Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn the election - POLITICO

National: Dominion Voting Systems Employee Sues Trump Campaign | Amanda Pampuro/Couthouse News

December 24, 2020

A man caught in the center of 2020 election fraud conspiracy theories — who says ongoing threats and harassment have driven him into hiding — accused the Trump campaign in a lawsuit filed in Denver on Tuesday of defamation and inflicting emotional distress. The 52-page lawsuit claims Trump’s campaign team and attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell grabbed onto an unsubstantiated narrative and led a social media army against Eric Coomer, an employee of Dominion Voting Systems. The lawsuit also names as defendants Trump supporter Joseph Oltmann, One America News Network correspondent Chanel Rion, Newsmax and other individuals and organizations. “The widespread dissemination of false conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election has had devastating consequences both for me personally and for many of the thousands of American election workers and officials, both Republican and Democratic, who put aside their political beliefs to run free, fair, and transparent elections,” Coomer said in a statement. “Elections are not about politics; they are about accurately tabulating legally cast votes,” Coomer said. Following his loss for reelection, President Donald Trump was quick to blame the election system as his campaign team scoured the country for examples of voter fraud. The Trump campaign has pursued and lost lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and many others in efforts to overturn the results.

Full Article: Dominion Voting Systems Employee Sues Trump Campaign

National: Former Election Security Official Says It Will Take ‘Years’ To Undo Disinformation | Pam Fessler/NPR

One of the top federal officials responsible for securing the nation's elections is speaking out days after leaving his job with the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Matthew Masterson was a senior cybersecurity adviser at CISA, primarily responsible for elections, and his departure comes amid persistent, but baseless, claims that the 2020 elections were riddled with fraud. Many of those have come from President Trump, who last month fired Masterson's former boss, Christopher Krebs, after Krebs joined others in calling the 2020 election the "most secure in American history." Trump's allegations have been widely disputed by election experts and numerous courts, where his campaign has tried unsuccessfully to overturn the election results. In his first interview since leaving his job, Masterson told NPR that the biggest challenge for the nation now is restoring public faith in the voting process. Recent polls have shown that a large segment of the electorate, including a majority of Republicans, does not trust that this year's results were legitimate. Masterson believes, on the contrary, that the 2020 vote was "as smooth a presidential election as I've ever seen." He noted recent improvements in election security and transparency, including expanded use of paper ballots and audits, as well as streaming live video of vote counts. "Yet we're still beating back disinformation and claims of technical manipulation that just simply aren't true," he said. "So we've got to continue to explore how to offer voters more and more evidence, in a transparent fashion, to reassure them that their vote was counted as cast."

Full Article: First Interview With Matthew Masterson, Former CISA Election Security Official : NPR

National: In Trump’s ‘coup,’ everyone is waiting for someone else to act first | Jonathan Masur/The Washington Post

What if they held a coup and nobody came? President Trump has made clear that he believes the election was rigged — somehow — and has called for its reversal. He’s been joined by a chorus of supporters: not just ordinary Trump voters but some members of Congress, including Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) — who has said the results in Georgia and Pennsylvania were the result of “flawed election systems” and wants his colleagues to reject President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral victory. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) have suggested they might join that effort. Meanwhile, former national security adviser Michael Flynn has pitched the idea of imposing martial law, in several states, to rerun the election, first on Newsmax and then, according to reports, to Trump in the Oval Office. Overall, these efforts have been widely described as an “attempted coup.” But what is most striking about this attempted coup, at least so far, is that almost nobody has actually done anything. Instead, nearly everyone involved in the coup has asked someone else to do something. Trump met with Michigan’s Republican state legislative leaders to suggest that they overturn the results there, and made similar appeals by phone to Republican state legislative leaders in Pennsylvania, and to the governor of Georgia. He’s phoned Tuberville, too, and has filed dozens of lawsuits in state and federal courts across the country. And he has whipped his followers into a frenzy, asking them to “stop the steal.” But these are all requests that someone else take action. Trump has not summoned the military, attempted to seize ballots or otherwise used the power of the presidency.

Full Article: In Trump’s ‘coup,’ everyone is waiting for someone else to act first - The Washington Post

National: President Trump: Unhappy, Unleashed and Unpredictable | Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt/The New York Times

With four weeks left in President Trump’s term, he is at perhaps his most unleashed — and, as events of the last few days have demonstrated, at the most unpredictable point in his presidency. He remains the most powerful person in the world, yet he is focused on the one area in which he is powerless to get what he wants: a way to avoid leaving office as a loser. He spends his days flailing for any hope, if not of actually reversing the outcome of the election then at least of building a coherent case that he was robbed of a second term. When he has emerged from his relative isolation in recent days, it has been to suggest out of the blue that he would try to blow up the bipartisan stimulus package, driving a wedge through his party in the process, and to grant clemency to a raft of allies and supporters, mostly outside the normal Justice Department process. He has otherwise sequestered himself in the White House, playing host to a cast of conspiracy theorists and hard-core supporters who traffic in ideas like challenging the election’s outcome in Congress and even invoking martial law, seeking to give some of them government jobs.

Full Article: President Trump: Unhappy, Unleashed and Unpredictable - The New York Times

National: FBI links Iran to ‘Enemies of the People’ hit list targeting officials who?ve refuted election fraud claims | Ellen Nakashima, Amy Gardner and Aaron C. Davis/The Washington Post

The FBI has concluded that Iran was behind online efforts earlier this month to incite lethal violence against the bureau’s director, a former top U.S. cyber expert and multiple state elections officials who have refuted claims of widespread voter fraud promoted by President Trump and his allies, federal and state officials said Tuesday. FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and ousted Homeland Security Department official Christopher Krebs were among more than a dozen people whose images, home addresses and other personal information were posted on a website titled “Enemies of the People.” Crosshairs were superimposed over the photos. Many of these officials in one way or another have attested to the security of November’s election, saying they had not seen evidence of widespread fraud — a conclusion at odds with Trump’s baseless claims that the election was rigged. “The following individuals have aided and abetted the fraudulent election against Trump,” the website falsely claimed. Iran was active in seeking to interfere in the U.S. election, targeting Democratic voters in October with fake but menacing emails that purported to be from a far-right group threatening recipients to vote for Trump “or we will come after you.” Iran condemned the revelations — made by the top U.S. intelligence official, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe — as “baseless” and “absurd.”

Full Article: FBI links Iran to 'Enemies of the People' hit list targeting officials who?ve refuted election fraud claims - The Washington Post

National: SolarWinds breach raises stakes for NDAA Trump still threatens to veto | Jory Heckman/Federal News Network

Agencies are still unraveling the full extent of a massive cybersecurity breach that has affected wide swaths of government and industry. But two of the leading voices on cybersecurity issues in Congress have called the discovery of the breach, made possible through malware embedded in SolarWinds network management software, a warning shot to agencies of how vulnerable they are to cyber intrusions. Amid bipartisan calls to double down on cybersecurity within government, the leadership of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission said Thursday that the SolarWinds breach has further raised the stakes for the National Defense Authorization Act that President Donald Trump has threatened to veto. Congress included a third of the solarium’s final recommendations into the 2021 NDAA, chief among them provisions that would elevate and empower the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and put a Senate-confirmed national cyber director position back in the White House. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said the breach makes a clear case for the work of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission and the cyber provisions that made it into the annual defense policy bill passed by the House and Senate.

Full Article: SolarWinds breach raises stakes for NDAA Trump still threatens to veto | Federal News Network

National: Despite Trump’s intense hunt for voter fraud, officials in key states have so far identified just a small number of possible cases | Rosalind S. Helderman, Jon Swaine and Michelle Ye Hee Lee/The Washington Post

Full Article: Despite Trump’s intense hunt for voter fraud, officials in key states have so far identified just a small number of possible cases - The Washington Post

In Pittsburgh, the local police department this year received 10 complaints of possible fraudulent voting in the November election. Eight of those cases have already been closed without charges or findings of wrongdoing. Wisconsin officials have charged one woman with voter fraud — a resident of suburban Milwaukee accused of attempting to cast a ballot in the name of her partner, who died in July. In Michigan, two people have been charged with fraud, both accused of forging the names of their own daughters to obtain or cast a ballot. After an intense hunt by President Trump’s allies to surface voting irregularities in this year’s election, law enforcement agencies in six key swing states targeted by the president have found just a modest number of complaints that have merited investigation, according to cases tracked by state officials.

National: Republicans plunge into open battle over attempts to overturn Trump’s loss to Biden | Seung Min Kim, Josh Dawsey and Toluse Olorunnipa/The Washington Post

The GOP is plunging into open warfare over President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory — with President Trump taunting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and threatening primary challenges against other Republicans, House lawmakers egging on senators to contest the counting of electoral college votes next month, and senior GOP senators rebuffing that effort as a pointless political exercise. And while the internal Republican Party conflict festers, White House officials are scrambling in private to rein in Trump’s increasing embrace of conspiracy theorists as the defeated president and his most ardent allies continue to plot efforts to subvert the outcome of the Nov. 3 election. But it all appears to have hardened Trump, who — having been out of sight for more than a week — is continuing to push baseless claims of election fraud, while those closest to him are unwilling to challenge him publicly and are instead only bolstering his efforts.

Full Article: Republicans plunge into open battle over attempts to overturn Trump?s loss to Biden - The Washington Post

National: Giuliani told to preserve all records as lawyers for Dominion warn legal action is ‘imminent’ | Kaitlan Collins/CNN

Since he lost the election, Trump, his attorneys and his supporters have baselessly alleged that machines made by the voting machine manufacturer were manipulated to change votes from Trump to President-elect Joe Biden or delete votes for Trump. Dominion's CEO has defended the company's work repeatedly, and now appears prepared to take legal action against those in the President's inner circle. There is no evidence that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, and his administration and election officials have called it the "most secure" election in US history. Biden won the popular vote by more than 7 million votes and the electoral map 306 to 232. Dominion is being represented by Tom Clare and Megan Meier from Clare Locke LLP, a law firm that specializes in defamation cases. In the letter to Giuliani, which was shown to CNN, the attorneys caution Giuliani that "litigation regarding these issues is imminent." "With this letter you are on notice of your ongoing obligations to preserve documents related to Dominion's claims for defamation based on allegations that the company acted improperly during the November 2020 presidential election and somehow rigged the election in favor of President-Elect Joe Biden," the letter to Giuliani reads.

Full Atyicle: Giuliani told to preserve all records as lawyers for Dominion warn legal action is 'imminent' - CNNPolitics

National: Former CIA chief says Trump knows Russia helped him so he gives them a pass | Gino Spocchi/The Independent

Donald Trump cannot denounce Russia’s alleged cyber attack on US government agencies because “he realises that Russia has helped him” in the past, a former CIA director has claimed. John Brennan, who was head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) between 2013 and 2017, said on Monday that the US president’s comments on Russia were against “reality,” and always have been. And that, said Mr Brennan, was because the country had helped his one-time election win. “He refuses to accept reality. I think it’s because he doesn’t see Russia as a threat to him personally,” said Mr Brennan, as he appeared on CNN’s Out Front. “In fact, I think he realises that Russia has helped him prior to the 2016 election and even afterward, which is why he’s given them a pass”.

Full Article: Former CIA chief says Trump knows Russia helped him so he gives them a pass | The Independent

National: The Postal Service Delivered On Election Day. But the Agency Remains in Peril | Alana Abramson/Time

In early November, after news organizations called the Presidential race for Joe Biden, throngs of revelers poured into the streets, where they cheered not only for the new President-elect, but for the United States Postal Service (USPS), which had overcome enormous obstacles to deliver mail-in ballots largely on time amidst a raging global pandemic. Shouts of “USPS” erupted in New York City and a child dressed as a USPS mailbox danced in the streets of Oakland, California. In the weeks leading up to the election, U.S. Postal workers had worked around the clock, often risking their personal safety, to sift through mail-in ballots, trying to reassure voters that, despite President Trump’s attacks on their agency, voting by mail was safe, secure, and wouldn’t lead to accidental disenfranchisement. When those fears never materialized, the Postal Service’s performance was saluted, with relief. But as the Presidential election has faded in the rearview mirror, the underlying issues that stoked anxiety about the efficacy of the USPS remain—even as the public and the news cycle has largely moved on. The agency’s finances are still precarious; its 644,000 person workforce remains exhausted and depleted as thousands quarantine after exposure to COVID-19; and with Christmas fast approaching, USPS facilities are, as one Postal union representative put it in a text message to TIME, “buried and short staffed.”

Full Article: The Postal Service Remains in Peril Even After Election Day | Time

National: Trump assembles a ragtag crew of conspiracy-minded allies in flailing bid to reverse election loss | Toluse Olorunnipa, Josh Dawsey, Rosalind S. Helderman and Emma Brown/The Washington Post

With his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud rejected by dozens of judges and GOP leaders, President Trump has turned to a ragtag group of conspiracy theorists, media-hungry lawyers and other political misfits in a desperate attempt to hold on to power after his election loss. The president’s orbit has grown more extreme as his more mainstream allies, including Attorney General William P. Barr, have declined to endorse his increasingly radical plans to overturn the will of the voters. Trump’s unofficial election advisory council now includes a pardoned felon, adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory, a White House trade adviser and a Russian agent’s former lover. Members of the group assembled in the Oval Office on Friday for a marathon meeting that lasted more than four hours and included discussion of tactics ranging from imposing martial law in swing states to seizing voting machines through executive fiat. The meeting exploded into shouting matches as outside advisers and White House aides clashed over the lack of a cohesive strategy and disagreed about the constitutionality of some of the proposed solutions. Trump’s desire to remain in power was dampened further Monday as Barr said that he saw no basis for the federal government to seize voting machines and that he did not intend to appoint a special counsel to investigate allegations of voter fraud. “If I thought a special counsel at this stage was the right tool and was appropriate, I would name one, but I haven’t, and I’m not going to,” Barr said during a news conference.

Full Article: Trump assembles a ragtag crew of conspiracy-minded allies in flailing bid to reverse election loss - The Washington Post

National: William Barr: No need for special counsels to investigate election fraud, Hunter Biden | Matt Zapotosky/The Washington Post

Outgoing Attorney General William P. Barr said Monday that he saw no basis for the federal government seizing voting machines and that he did not intend to appoint a special counsel to investigate allegations of voter fraud — again breaking with President Trump as the commander in chief entertains increasingly desperate measures to overturn the election. At a news conference to announce charges in a decades-old terrorism case, Barr — who has just two days left in office — was peppered with questions about whether he would consider steps proposed by allies of the president to advance Trump’s claims of massive voter fraud. Barr said that while he was “sure there was fraud in this election,” he had not seen evidence that it was so “systemic or broad-based” that it would change the result. He asserted he saw “no basis now for seizing machines by the federal government,” and he would not name a special counsel to explore the allegations of Trump and his allies. “If I thought a special counsel at this stage was the right tool and was appropriate, I would name one, but I haven’t, and I’m not going to,” Barr said. Similarly, Barr said he would not name a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, President-elect Joe Biden’s son, who revealed earlier this month he was under investigation for possible tax crimes. Barr said the investigation was “being handled responsibly and professionally” by regular Justice Department prosecutors, and he hoped that would continue in the next administration. “To this point, I have not seen a reason to appoint a special counsel, and I have no plan to do so before I leave,” Barr said.

Full Article: William Barr: no need for special counsels to investigate election fraud, Hunter Biden - The Washington Post

National: Fox News, Newsmax shoot down aired election claims after voting machine companies threaten legal action | David Bauder/Associated Press

Two election technology companies whose names have come up in President Donald Trump’s false charges of widespread voter fraud in the presidential election are fighting back, prompting unusual public statements from Fox News and Newsmax. The statements, over the weekend and on Monday, came after the companies Smartmatic and Dominion raised the prospect of legal action for reporting what they said was false information about them. Both companies were referenced in the campaign’s suggestion that vote counts in swing states were manipulated to the advantage of President-elect Joe Biden. The companies deny several statements made about them, and there is no evidence any voting system switched or deleted votes in the 2020 election. A nearly two-minute pre-taped segment was aired over the weekend on a Fox Business Network program hosted by Lou Dobbs and Fox News Channel shows with Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro. That came days after Smartmatic sent a letter threatening legal action to Fox and two other networks popular with Trump supporters, Newsmax and One America News Network. The two-minute Fox segments aired in the form of a question-and-answer session between an offscreen voice and Eddie Perez, a voting technology expert at the nonpartisan Open Source Election Technology Institute. “I have not seen any evidence that Smartmatic software was used to delete, change or alter anything related to vote tabulations,” Perez said. The company says its only work that involved the 2020 U.S. election came in Los Angeles. Trump lawyer Rudolph Giuliani has falsely claimed that Smartmatic was founded in Venezuela by former dictator Hugo Chavez for the goal of fixing elections. Smartmatic was started in Florida in 2000. Its founder is Venezuelan, but the company said Chavez was never involved, and its last work in Venezuela came in 2017 when its software found the government had reported false turnout numbers.

Full Article: Fox News, Newsmax shoot down aired election claims after voting machine companies threaten legal action - Chicago Tribune

National: Republicans desperate to avoid floor fight over Electoral College vote | Jonathan Easley/TheHill

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has intervened, asking his members not to join Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) or any other House members looking to object to the results on Jan. 6, when Congress meets to certify the Electoral College count. President Trump is waging a pressure campaign to get senators to revolt. Incoming Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who will be sworn in Jan. 3, has said he’ll join the floor fight and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has said he believes the election was “stolen” from Trump, is always a wild card. Republican strategists are hoping McConnell can quash the insurgency, believing the debate over Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election is tearing the party apart ahead of the Jan. 5 runoff elections in Georgia that will determine the balance of power in the Senate. They say it’s bad for the GOP’s efforts to win back swing suburban voters if the party is associated with erratic flamethrowers, such as pro-Trump attorneys Sidney Powell, Lin Wood and Rudy Giuliani. And after an election in which the GOP became more diverse, Republican strategists are furious over the harm they say is being done with Black voters, as the Trump campaign seeks to have the vote totals thrown out in Atlanta, Milwaukee, Detroit and elsewhere.

Full Article: Republicans desperate to avoid floor fight over Electoral College vote | TheHill

National: No. 2 GOP senator: Efforts to overturn election would ‘go down like a shot dog’ | Jordain Carney/The Hill