Political Science: What happens if a president loses an election but won't leave the White House? (Trump)

I been thinking about this and I ask this in all seriousness. The justices on the Supreme Court are locked in for life. At this point, do they really need to prove their allegiance to Trump? they can push the full conservative agenda with or without trump.

I think they will quietly push this dude out the door, because they don't need him at this point.

The Supreme Court can’t push anything....cases have to be brought to them and there is a method and process to that....they can’t just decided they want to talk about abortion....a specific case has to make its way through the courts to them....which literally takes years or decades even
 
The Supreme Court can’t push anything....cases have to be brought to them and there is a method and process to that....they can’t just decided they want to talk about abortion....a specific case has to make its way through the courts to them....which literally takes years or decades even
All those issues are currently or about to be brought to the Supreme Court. My point is they can freely run the table with the Republican agenda without Trump being president or Barr being AG.

Are you saying Trump and Bar are the only ones bringing these cases to the court?
 

IT SURE SOUNDS LIKE TRUMP MAY BARRICADE HIMSELF IN THE OVAL OFFICE AND REFUSE TO COME OUT IF BIDEN WINS
The president has reportedly told allies he’ll never concede.
BY BESS LEVIN
NOVEMBER 7, 2020
BY SAUL LOEB/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES.



By now you’ve likely heard that after pulling ahead in Georgia and, most crucially, Pennsylvania, Joe Biden will very likely be the next president of the United States. As you’ve probably also heard, Donald Trump is taking it as well as everyone had expected, ranting and raving about all kinds of made-up fraud, demanding counts be stopped in one state and continued in others, and filing numerous lawsuits that stand little chance of holding up in court because they have no merit (and, in some cases, have led judges to believe the lawyers attached to them have recently suffered traumatic brain injuries). At this point, a quasi reasonable person might say to himself, Okay, I’m going to cut my losses, salvage my last atom of dignity, and admit defeat. But obviously Donald Trump is not reasonable and he has no dignity. So instead he’s decided he’ll keep fighting this thing well beyond the point that it’s hugely embarrassing to do so, and even after that fails, refuse to acknowledge that he lost and that Joe Biden is going to be president.

Yes, like George Costanza deciding to just go back to the office on Monday as if he didn’t quit the Friday before, Trump apparently thinks he can just go on being president even if the American people have fired him. According to CNN, Trump reportedly has not prepared a concession speech and “in conversations with allies in recent days has said he has no intention of conceding the election.” The decision to go full delusional has obviously been strengthened by staffers, such as Mark Meadows, who “have not attempted to come to terms with the president about the reality of what is happening” and have instead fed into his claims of fraud; Vice President Mike Pence, who’s been soliciting money for a legal defense fund; and his adult children, who’ve been spouting absurd conspiracy theories on Twitter as they watch the ultimate opportunity for nepotism slip away. While Trump has apparently admitted to some people that he knows the electoral math has no chance of working out in his favor, he has “maintained that a prolonged court battle and corrosive rhetoric about election fraud would sow enough doubt to allow him to refuse to accept the results.”

And while the majority of the president’s inner circle is more than happy to go along with this sad alternative reality, a few members have reportedly grown worried that, eventually, someone will have to sit Trump down and explain that little Donny’s not going to be president anymore—and at this point, it seems unlikely anyone will be able to get through to him short of slapping him across the face and screaming, “YOU LOST! IT’S OVER!” Yes, this is an actual thing allies of the president of the United States are actually grappling with:

It is a possibility the president did not consider in a serious way during the election, despite polls showing him with only a narrow path to victory, believing that looking past Election Day was bad luck. The delicate matter of a loss—and a potential postpresidential life—was not discussed widely among his team and was not raised often with the president, who believed adamantly he would win.

Now people around Trump are working to identify who might be able to communicate to him the stark reality. There has been talk of potentially Jared Kushner or Ivanka Trump, though their willingness to lead a difficult intervention wasn’t clear.

Obviously it’s not going to be Kushner or Ivanka, and the only people who think it might be are the ones still laboring under the impression that Ivanka is a “moderating influence” on the president. (Also the first daughter joined her father’s disinformation campaign this morning, tweeting: “Every legally cast vote should be counted. Every illegally cast vote should not. This should not be controversial.” So there’s that.) Hilariously, one idea being floated to convince Trump to accept defeat is “framing potential conversations...around the idea of preserving his brand for life after being president—and explaining that dragging out an election he clearly lost would ruin his businesses and forestall whatever political future he’s hoping for.” This obviously assumes that Trump’s brand up until this point was something other than insane, delusional, and spiteful, or that his followers would suddenly be all, Ooo, this is a side of the guy we never expected. It’s honestly a big turnoff. What happened to the Trump we know?
From the Archive: Donald Trump’s Enablers

On Friday, Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said that the former vice president’s staff wasn’t worried about Trump refusing to leave the White House—not because they don’t believe he’s certifiably insane and might definitely barricade himself in the Oval Office, but because security will simply escort him from the premises. “The U.S. government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House,” he said.

The head of the RNC just needs a little more time to fabricate evidence of voter fraud, okay?

Just give Ronna McDaniel a minute!

“We have seen a lot of irregularities, Bret,” she told [Fox News] anchor Bret Baier, claiming that in Michigan, where the Trump campaign is pushing for a recount, “we’ve been pursuing reports coming in on our hotline, people who were disenfranchised from observing the vote count and some more serious allegations that we’re seeing.”

“We agree with you and we want to look into everything as well. But we just haven’t seen it. It hasn’t been presented,” Baier pointed out. “There’s all kinds of stuff flying on the internet, but when we look into it, it doesn’t pan out.”

Baier continued to push back on McDaniel’s claims, asking whether the country was “going to see” specific allegations of fraud. “You know Bret, we’re working on that. And that’s why I’m saying, give us time,” she said.

WATCH

Everything Ruby Rose Does In a Day
More Vanity Fair Videos

MOST POPULAR
Image may contain: Eric Trump, Human, Person, Audience, Crowd, Jared Kushner, Mike Pence, Hat, Clothing, and Apparel
Trump’s Children Can’t Believe Their Dad Is This Despised

BY KENZIE BRYANT

Image may contain: Human, Person, Crowd, Suit, Coat, Clothing, Overcoat, Apparel, Flag, Symbol, Audience, and Speech
Trump’s Republican Allies Are Going to Help Him Burn It All Down

BY ERIC LUTZ


“She Is a Master”: Joe Biden’s Campaign Manager Told the Political Future—And Was Right

BY CHRIS SMITH

ADVERTISEMENT

Just give her a few days and she’ll have all the evidence she needs, along with enough votes to flip the election to Trump. Patience, please!

Steve Bannon needs a new lawyer

It turns out that when you publicly call for people to be beheaded, people don’t want to be associated with you anymore:

Stephen K. Bannon, the former adviser to President Trump who is known for his right-wing extremism, suggested on Thursday that the F.B.I. director and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci should be beheaded, and Twitter responded by banning one of his accounts. On Friday, a prominent lawyer who was defending Mr. Bannon against fraud charges in federal court in Manhattan abruptly moved to drop him as a client, one person familiar with the matter said. “Mr. Bannon is in the process of retaining new counsel,” the lawyer, William A. Burck, said in a brief letter to the court, giving no explanation.

In August, Bannon was arrested and charged with defrauding donors who’d contributed money to fund Trump’s border wall; prosecutors say that Bannon, along with three codefendants, pledged not to personally take any of the money raised but instead “siphoned off hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for travel, hotels, personal credit card debt and other expenses.” Bannon pleaded not guilty and now would like some extra time before the next hearing in the case to find another lawyer.

Narrator: In fact, Biden never made that claim, but Trump did on Wednesday night when he said, “frankly, we did win this election”





How Stacey Abrams, LaTosha Brown, and other Black women changed the course of the 2020 election (CNBC)

Eric Trump touts line to report voter fraud—but no one answers the phone (NYP)
How the Suburbs Moved Away From Trump (New York Times)
New U.S. coronavirus cases surpass 128,000, setting record for third straight day (Washington Post)
Will Trump’s Lies About Rigged Elections Cost the GOP Senate Control? (Intelligencer)
Stephen Colbert breaks down, says Trump’s fraud claims “cast a dark shadow on our most sacred right” (Washington Post)
I Want as Many Pets as Possible in the White House Again (Jezebel)
French bulldog named Wilbur elected mayor of Rabbit Hash, Kentucky (NBC News)
 
I think a more interesting question might be once Trump is forced to leave the White House, who's job is it to make sure he don't steal shit on the way out? This tacky, cash-strapped muhfucka is liable to try and walk out with artwork and historic knick knacks from all over the residence and the Oval and then try to sell them like he owned them. I ask the question because Trump has already done that shit once. On a visit to the French Ambassador's home in Paris he saw some historic figurines that he liked and once he left he sent a staff member back to take them right out the dude's house. Luckily they were just knockoffs, but the fact of the matter is Trump is mad niggerish and there's certain levels of decorum that he is simply incapable of.

I remember the stories of the Clinton Administration being blamed for removing all the 'W's from keyboards throughout the White House as a petty screw you to George W. Well wait till they get a load of Trump, when they find all the copper pipes and appliances missing., LOL.
 
201116_r37365_rd.jpg
 
When he's no longer the commander in chief, he has absolutely no power. He's unable to order any department, agency, military, or even white house staff to do anything. If he chose to stay in the white house, i'd have his ass arrested for trespassing.....:lol:

Lord, please do me this solid and have him stay there! Please let us record him being forcefully ripped kicking and screaming from the premises. :please::wepraise:In your name we pray, amen!
 
I think a more interesting question might be once Trump is forced to leave the White House, who's job is it to make sure he don't steal shit on the way out? This tacky, cash-strapped muhfucka is liable to try and walk out with artwork and historic knick knacks from all over the residence and the Oval and then try to sell them like he owned them. I ask the question because Trump has already done that shit once. On a visit to the French Ambassador's home in Paris he saw some historic figurines that he liked and once he left he sent a staff member back to take them right out the dude's house. Luckily they were just knockoffs, but the fact of the matter is Trump is mad niggerish and there's certain levels of decorum that he is simply incapable of.

I remember the stories of the Clinton Administration being blamed for removing all the 'W's from keyboards throughout the White House as a petty screw you to George W. Well wait till they get a load of Trump, when they find all the copper pipes and appliances missing., LOL.

LMAOOOOO mf will be taking down the wall paper and shit too! Ol faggot ass!
 
Trump campaign sues to block Pennsylvania from certifying Biden's victory in the state

President Trump's campaign filed a new lawsuit in a Pennsylvania federal court seeking an injunction to block state officials from certifying the state’s results of the 2020 election. Former Vice President Joe Biden was projected as the winner of the presidential race by multiple media networks last week. President Trump has refused to concede to Biden, vowing to fight the results in court.




 
well we are all seeing it now...trumps desperateness level has been kicked up 5 more notches....he's just making things more worst for himself
giving he is his own worst enemy...the slope he's sliding on is as short as his mental capacity and the clock is ticking....
 
Someone said it in another post, these criminal idiots did everything they could to rig the election leading up to it from suppressing votes to voter hacks and they lost that's why they're so upset. It worked the first time around with the help of Russians. This second time around they went to an even more sophisticated scheme. I think when you look back through the four years there were a lot more breaches of people's information (shiidd I was getting small settlement checks left and right over the past 4 years for information hacks. And shiiid what about the got damn explosion in robocalls? True a lot of it was the deregulation by Trump, but it also was some data hacks as well... And how did vote and donate to Trump information get to most of my most used email addresses?) I think they took a lot of those social security numbers and addresses and registered more voters who never voted and hacked many voting machines. They couldn't do it at 100%, but I think because Trump got 70 million votes they hacked at a higher rate, but also underestimated voter democratic mail-in turnout. I was always of the position from experience that if shyt ain't sounding normal then more than likely it ain't normal. And actually I think this pandemic helped because they could only change the voting numbers that was already in the system therefore that's why the mail-vote was so crucial and Trump didn't want any mail-in ballots because they couldn't hack those at a higher percentage.

What's the old saying... believe half of what you see and nothing what you hear... Especially in politics in the United States government at least since my era and 9/11.

I didn't peep this documentary, but I'm sure it has a lot of what I'm talking about broken down a lot better...

 
I wish I had faith like yall do. No one has ever made him do shit. He doesnt listen to courts or subpoenas because no one enforces them. He's nominated 3 SCJs and he'll def try to push everything there
His time is coming. All that shit is gonna come back on him. He's pissed off a lot of powerful people. Nixon did that same bullshit till his lawyers sat him down and said, Bruh, give this shit up or you going to fuckin jail!!!!

JprkfX.jpg
 
Oh he's in failure mode, let him complete his failure. Come January 20th if his ass isn't gone by then, he will be removed from the White House grounds, as per the Constitution. If that happens I want all the networks there. Make sure his names associated with shit forever.

Just hope he doesn't have some scorched earth plans, like Saddam.
 
Last edited:
Oh he's in failure mode, let him complete his failure. Come January 20th if his ass isn't gone by then, he will be removed from the White House grounds, as per the Constitution. If that happens I want all the networks there. Make sure his names associated with shit forever.

Just hope he doesn't have some scorched earth plans, like Saddam.

That part
 
The Supreme Court can’t push anything....cases have to be brought to them and there is a method and process to that....they can’t just decided they want to talk about abortion....a specific case has to make its way through the courts to them....which literally takes years or decades even
If lower court judges keep throwing out cases, don't they eventually make their way to the Supreme Court.
 
He'd be trespassing in the Whitehouse and I think that the secret service would have the authority to remove him and guard him as needed.

Edit.. from what I just read, once the new president is sworn in the secret service reports and takes orders from the new president. So Biden will just order them to forcefully remove li'l Donald from the premises.
No...all former presidents have secret service detail for life. He will still secret service assigned to him so it’ll be a cluster fuck
 
No...all former presidents have secret service detail for life. He will still secret service assigned to him so it’ll be a cluster fuck
Read my first sentence. Also, the White House secret service will remove him but the detail that guards him will guard him.
 
No...all former presidents have secret service detail for life. He will still secret service assigned to him so it’ll be a cluster fuck
No they still will remove him from the White House but your last point about Trump having a Secret Service detail after the White House gig....I would quit the Secret Service if I was assigned to that roll. Also there’s a good chance he may go to jail anyway that’s why he’s fighting like crazy to stay in the White House
 
WHY TRUMP WON'T CONCEDE
Judd LegumNov 10
Photo by ALEX EDELMAN/AFP via Getty Images
https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1888d221-d106-4dd3-9efe-ab6f5da1b5bd_1024x700.jpeg


Joe Biden is the president-elect. Biden won or has significant leads in states that represent 306 electoral votes — far more than the 270 needed to win.
Biden leads by about 10,000 votes in Georgia and 17,000 votes in Arizona, the two most closely contested states. But even if Biden's lead were to somehow be reversed in both states, Biden would still win comfortably.
Every major media outlet, including Fox News, has called the election for Biden. Major international leaders have offered their congratulations. The coverage has largely moved on to Biden's transition. But yet, Trump has refused to concede.
Why? Part of the explanation is narcissism. Trump is having a hard time acknowledging that he lost, even though it is obvious. But another big factor is money. The proof is in the emails.
After Election Day, the Trump campaign sent more than 130 emails soliciting campaign contributions, according to a tally maintained by the Twitter account @TrumpEmail. Most of those emails appear to be soliciting funds to support the legal effort that Trump claims will reverse the results of the election.
The increasingly desperate subject lines of these emails paint a clear picture that the money is essential to contest the results.


DEFEND the integrity of the Election
The Election is under attack
STOP voter fraud
DEFEND THE RESULTS
Democrats will try to STEAL this ELECTION
STOP THE FRAUD
Joe Biden wants to count ILLEGAL ballots
Nothing matters more than the integrity of this Election
STOP COUNTING ILLEGAL BALLOTS

https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F432612fa-d1cd-4d16-8251-549de1cfcb1d_431x705.jpeg



But if you read the fine print, money sent to the Election Defense Task Force will not necessarily be used to finance the Trump campaign's lawsuits. Donors are actually contributing to the Trump Make America Great Again Committee (TMAGAC), a joint fundraising committee of Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. and the Republican National Committee. 60% of the money donated to TMAGAC will go to pay the Trump campaign's debt and 40% will go to the general operating account of the Republican National Committee. Money is only designated for recounts or other legal efforts if an individual donor reaches their legal limit or Trump retires his debt.

60% to DJTP for deposit in DJTP’s 2020 General Election Account for the retirement of general election debt (up to a maximum of $2,800/$5,000) or, if such debt has been retired or any portion of the contribution would exceed the limit to the 2020 General Election Account, for deposit in DJTP’s Recount Account (up to a maximum of $2,800/$5,000); 40% to the RNC’s Operating account (up to a maximum of $35,500/$15,000); and any additional funds to the RNC for deposit in the RNC’s Legal Proceedings account or Headquarters account (up to a maximum of $213,000/$90,000).

Contributions directly to Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. will be split between debt retirement and the recount effort. But the Trump campaign hasn't sent a solicitation from Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. since November 3.

No one knows how much money Trump is raising from this gambit. But the campaign has tens of millions of email addresses. If even a small fraction of the list is responding to these appeals, the campaign is raising millions of dollars each day.

If Trump concedes, that money would come to a halt. You can't pretend to raise money for a legal challenge once you admit you've lost.

The sorry state of Trump's election lawsuits

Trump isn't devoting this new cash to fund his legal challenges to the election results, and it shows. Most of the lawsuits the campaign has filed have been dismissed by the courts. In one case in Michigan, lawyers representing Trump made basic errors in submitting their appeal. The filing was rejected as "defective."

https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Feb6e98f2-fd18-4206-a4b6-eff31bad598d_880x730.jpeg


The initial case was dismissed after Trump's "legal team submitted a sworn affidavit by a designated poll watcher who repeated a rumor that she heard from an unidentified person about what some 'other hired poll workers at her table' allegedly told her."


"Come on now," the Michigan judge said before throwing out the suit.

In Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign continues to claim that its observers in Philadelphia were excluded from watching ballots be counted. In court, however, a Trump lawyer admitted there were observers in place. So who would make such a claim? The main witness featured at Trump's campaign press conference is a registered sex offender from New Jersey:

The first person Rudy Giuliani, the attorney for President Donald Trump, called up as a witness to baseless allegations of vote counting shenanigans in Philadelphia during a press conference last week is a sex offender who for years has been a perennial candidate in New Jersey.

“It’s such a shame. This is a democracy,” Daryl Brooks, who said he was a GOP poll watcher, said at the press conference, held at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Northeast Philadelphia. “They did not allow us to see anything. Was it corrupt or not? But give us an opportunity as poll watchers to view all the documents — all of the ballots.”

...Brooks was incarcerated in the 1990s on charges of sexual assault, lewdness and endangering the welfare of a minor for exposing himself to two girls ages 7 and 11, according to news accounts.

On Monday, "the Trump campaign unveiled a new lawsuit repackaging debunked claims that poll workers gave Trump supporters markers—knowing that those markers would bleed through ballots and that the ballots would not be counted, and all to help Joe Biden win Arizona."
The lawsuit is essentially the same as a lawsuit filed days ago by a group of conservative lawyers, based on a conspiracy theory known as "Sharpiegate." The premise of the lawsuit, that using a Sharpie will invalidate a ballot, is false.



Secretary Katie Hobbs @SecretaryHobbs

IMPORTANT: If you voted a regular ballot in-person, your ballot will be counted, no matter what kind of pen you used (even a Sharpie)! 1/
November 4th 2020
2,050 Retweets8,666 Likes


That lawsuit was quietly withdrawn. The primary difference between the Trump campaign's new lawsuit and the previous one is that, while the initial lawsuit focused on "Sharpies," the revised lawsuit refers to "markers."

In the evening, the Trump campaign filed a sweeping lawsuit in Pennsylvania that does not allege any fraud but argues the state should be prevented from certifying its election because it allowed people to vote by mail.

Georgia's Republican Senators call for the resignation of Georgia's Republican Secretary of State

Georgia Senators Kelly Loeffler (R) and David Perdue (R) released a joint statement calling on Brad Raffensberger, Georgia's Republican Secretary of State to resign. The statement claimed that Raffensberger "failed to deliver honest and transparent elections."



Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney
LOEFFLER and PERDUE jointly attack the Republican secretary of state in Georgia.
November 9th 2020
1,581 Retweets3,605 Likes

They provided no evidence to support their claims. Moments later, Trump tweeted that he would win Georgia.
 
Trump's legal gambit fizzles — but it's still dangerous

Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2f044e17-1db0-4f71-ac4e-1725974b5232_1024x683.jpeg


The Trump campaign continues to send dozens of fundraising emails every day. As Popular Information reported this week, these emails purport to seek cash to support Trump's legal efforts to challenge the election. But the money actually goes to pay down Trump's campaign debt and to the Republican National Committee's general operating account.

But whoever is writing these emails for Trump doesn't seem to have their heart in it anymore. Here's an excerpt from an email sent on Wednesday morning:
I had such a big lead in all of these key battleground states late into Election night, only to see the leads miraculously disappear as the days went by. Perhaps these leads will return as our legal proceedings move forward, but only if we have the resources to KEEP FIGHTING!
This is a campaign known for its bluster and bravado. Now, the strongest statement it can muster is "perhaps these leads will return." What happened?

Trump has suffered a series of humiliating defeats in court. And the campaign's various allegations of fraud have rapidly fallen apart. His lawyers have largely stopped trying to prove fraud and instead are asking courts to prevent states from certifying results — and then hope the state legislatures in multiple states simply declare Trump the winner.

The fact that Trump is trying to convince the courts to declare him the winner of an election he lost is a direct attack on the foundation of American democracy. And the willingness of Republican elected officials to go along with it makes it worse.

Fraudulent fraud allegations

Trump's core claim is that he lost several key states as a result of widespread election fraud. Since Trump trails by tens of thousands of votes in states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, the scale of the alleged fraud would have to be massive.

Yet, when Trump's lawyers appear in court — even to contest a small number of ballots — they've been forced to acknowledge they have no evidence of fraud. For example, an attorney representing the Trump campaign appeared in court to contest about 600 ballots in Pennsylvania. Under questioning from the judge, he admitted that he had no evidence that any of the ballots were fraudulent.

THE COURT: I understand. I am asking you a specific question, and I am looking for a specific answer. Are you claiming that there is any fraud in connection with these 592 disputed ballots?
MR. GOLDSTEIN: To my knowledge at present, no.
THE COURT: Are you claiming that there is any undue or improper influence upon the elector to these 592 ballots?
MR. GOLDSTEIN: To my knowledge at present. no.
The main "deficiency" of these ballots is that the voter did not handwrite their address on the return envelope or wrote the address in the wrong location.

Under further questioning by the judge, the Trump campaign lawyer admitted that the 592 ballots in question had been "segregated" and not yet included in any count. Trump trails in Pennsylvania by nearly 50,000 votes. The existence of this litigation allows the Trump campaign to say it is pursuing litigation. But this case has no chance of impacting the results in Pennsylvania.

In Michigan, the Trump campaign filed suit claiming that late-arriving ballots had been fraudulently backdated. But the Trump campaign lawyer had no admissible evidence to support that claim. Rather, a poll watcher for Trump, Jessica Connarn, said that an unknown person told her that another person had said. In a scathing opinion, the judge dismissed the Trump campaign's case.
The assertion that Connarn was informed by an unknown individual what ‘other hired poll workers at her table’ had been told is inadmissible hearsay within hearsay, and plaintiffs have provided no hearsay exception...that would warrant consideration of the evidence
Trump trails in Michigan by 146,000 votes.

In Georgia, the Trump campaign challenged 53 ballots based on the claim from another poll watcher, Sean Pumphrey, who said they arrived late. But in court, Pumphrey and another witness "admitted under oath that they did not know whether the challenged ballots were received on time."
Meanwhile, an official for the local election board "affirmed that the ballots were on time." The judge quickly dismissed the Trump campaign's case, saying there was "no evidence" to support it. Trump trails in Georgia by more than 14,000 votes.

The Hail Mary
Unable to prove fraud, the Trump campaign has shifted its legal strategy. In Michigan, the campaign filed suit on Wednesday asking the court to enjoin the Michigan Board of State

Canvassers from certifying the results.

The case is based on anecdotes to affidavits the Trump campaign collected from 100 people. In the affidavits, "poll challengers say they were denied access to portions of the vote counting, their challenges were not taken seriously or that several different types of ballot processing errors occurred." But, they "do not show proof of widespread fraud or egregious misconduct."

Several of the afflidavits include allegations that have already been rejected in other cases, including the claim that ballots were backdated. Other poll watchers claimed bias without explaining how that would impact the vote count:
Several Republican challengers at TCF complained about people inside the counting room wearing “Black Lives Matter” shirts. One Republican challenger complained she was called “Karen,” and told to go “back to the suburbs.” The moniker “Karen” has been applied to white women who make false and racially motivated allegations against Black people.
In other words, instead of going through the cumbersome process of proving massive fraud, the Trump campaign is alleging the atmosphere created the possibility of fraud. On that basis, the campaign is asking to prevent the certification of the results.

It goes unstated, but the theory is if the Trump campaign can prevent certification "state legislatures in Republican states could simply appoint a Republican slate of electors for Trump." This theory is also false. While the "Constitution does give state legislatures the right to set the manner for choosing presidential electors" states have "already set the manner: the use of popular election to assign Electoral College votes on a winner-take-all basis in every state but Nebraska and Maine."

Nevertheless, the Trump campaign is seemingly embracing this strategy, filing a similar suit to prevent certification in Pennsylvania. Republican officials know that these suits will almost certainly fail. But at the moment they are "humoring" Trump. It's a very dangerous game.

The legal effort has already provided a pretext to deny Biden resources intended to provide a smooth transition in the midst of a deadly pandemic. And if the Trump campaign can find a judge — and a state legislature — to entertain its radical theories, it could create a genuine crisis.

@fonzerrillii @easy_b
 
President Trump tells advisers that he fears prosecution if he loses the election: report
Trump fears not only the state and local investigations already underway but also possible new federal probes
By ROGER SOLLENBERGER
NOVEMBER 3, 2020 2:02AM (UTC)
Donald Trump (Scott Olson/Getty Images)


With Election Day approaching and his poll numbers still flagging, President Donald Trump has allegedly begun to express concerns to aides about the potential criminal liabilities which may await him in a post-White House life.
The threats are broad: Trump's businesses are currently under investigation by the New York State attorney general and the Manhattan District Attorney's office for possible tax and financial crimes. He is also worried about the potential for new federal investigations, according to a new report from The New York Times.
Advertisement:


Trump has reportedly expressed these concerns to advisers "for weeks." Aside from the known state and local probes, The Times did not specify which specific liabilities might have unnerved the president at the federal level.
The difference is significant, because presidential pardons only apply to federal crimes; they do not extend to state and local levels. The constitutional question of whether Trump would pardon himself before leaving office — which no president has tried — has simmered throughout his term. It even came up during Justice Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation hearings last month.
While former special counsel Robert Mueller's final report did not directly accuse Trump of any crimes, "it also does not exonerate him." Though Mueller laid out what many legal experts called textbook examples of obstruction of justice, he did not make a decision "either way" about whether to prosecute Trump. The lack of conclusion maddened the president's supporters and detractors alike.


That decision largely — but not solely, according to testimony from Attorney General William Barr — hinged on existing Department of Justice guidance which bars a sitting president from be criminally prosecuted. That same guidance deterred federal prosecutors from listing Trump as a co-conspirator by name in the indictment which ultimately sent his former personal attorney Michael Cohen to federal prison.
Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York claimed in that case that Cohen had an accomplice in his hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels, an unindicted co-conspirator whom the charging document against Cohen referred to as "Individual-1" — someone who had run "an ultimately successful campaign for president of the United States."
Because communications about those payments extended into 2017, it may be argued that the five-year statute of limitations would not apply to Trump's involvement in that crime as a co-conspirator if he were to be prosecuted in 2021.
Advertisement:


Ken Starr, the independent prosecutor who investigated former President Bill Clinton, said before Mueller submitted his report in 2018 that he believed the former special counsel would either refer Trump to Congress for impeachment or he would face indictment once he is no longer president.

"Those are the two avenues that I see," Starr said at the time.


Further, there has been no reporting about what happened to the counterintelligence investigation that the FBI opened into Trump in 2017, and Mueller was prevented from digging into Trump's finances as a result of a decision from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in the investigation's early stages.
While it is unclear whether the ongoing investigations at city and state levels may concern issues of federal interest, multiple New York Times reports on various findings in Trump's tax returns have detailed what experts called a number of possible federal violations.
Notably, The Times reported on Monday that the president had been concerned for "weeks" about new federal cases — not old ones. The newspaper published its first report on his tax returns on Sept. 27.
 
A thought experiment
The political scientist Brendan Nyhan has often responded to events during the Trump presidency by asking a question: What would you say if you saw it in another country?
Let’s try that exercise now. Imagine that a president of another country lost an election and refused to concede defeat. Instead, he lied about the vote count. He then filed lawsuits to have ballots thrown out, put pressure on other officials to back him up and used the power of government to prevent a transition of power from starting.​
How would you describe this behavior? It’s certainly anti-democratic. It is an attempt to overrule the will of the people, ignore a country’s laws and illegitimately grab political power.​
President Trump’s efforts will probably fail, but they are unlike anything that living Americans have experienced. “What we have seen in the last week from the president more closely resembles the tactics of the kind of authoritarian leaders we follow,” Michael Abramowitz, the president of Freedom House, which tracks democracy, told The Times. “I never would have imagined seeing something like this in America.”​
It is “one of the gravest threats to democracy” the country has faced, Ryan Enos, a Harvard social scientist, wrote yesterday. He added in an email, “The result is crystal clear and, yet, the incumbent is creating ambiguity by baseless claims.”​
I asked political scientists and historians for analogies, and they offered a few. The ruling party in Mexico probably reversed the true election result in 1988, as did ruling parties in Zimbabwe in 2002, Iran in 2009 and maybe Russia in 1996, Steven Levitsky, a co-author of “How Democracies Die,” told me. The details were different — the fraud sometimes occurred before the results were announced — but all were cases of politicians stealing an election mostly without military force.​
The closest U.S. comparisons are more than a century old. The Federalist Party considered depriving Thomas Jefferson of the presidency in 1800 and used the courts to weaken him. During Reconstruction, parts of the South overturned election results, sometimes through violence. And of course multiple states responded to Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 victory by seceding from the union. (Thomas Edsall’s latest Times column has more details on each of these.)​
What happens next? Republican officials seem to be trying to finesse the situation. They want to avoid angering Trump, who remains popular with Republican voters, as Liam Donovan, a party strategist, notes. That helps explain why most Republican officials have refused to recognize Joe Biden as the president-elect and have made vaguely supportive comments about Trump’s false claims.​
But this support seems halfhearted. Few Republicans are taking their own steps to reverse the election result.​
The two crucial next steps are the certification of state election results and the appointment of Electoral College voters, as Andrew Prokop of Vox explains. Both must happen by mid-December. If Republican officials in some states interfere — say, by trying to appoint electors who ignore the election results and vote for Trump in states he lost — it will be a sign that his attempt to undo the election has reached a more serious stage.​
Eventually, Republican officials will be forced to make a choice, The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent writes — between breaking with Trump and breaking with democracy. Democracy seems much more likely to prevail, but in a damaged state. “Millions of his supporters,” my colleague Maggie Haberman writes, “will believe what he says.”​
Max Fisher, another colleague, offered the following on Twitter yesterday:​
 
President Trump tells advisers that he fears prosecution if he loses the election: report
Trump fears not only the state and local investigations already underway but also possible new federal probes
By ROGER SOLLENBERGER
NOVEMBER 3, 2020 2:02AM (UTC)
Donald Trump (Scott Olson/Getty Images)


With Election Day approaching and his poll numbers still flagging, President Donald Trump has allegedly begun to express concerns to aides about the potential criminal liabilities which may await him in a post-White House life.
The threats are broad: Trump's businesses are currently under investigation by the New York State attorney general and the Manhattan District Attorney's office for possible tax and financial crimes. He is also worried about the potential for new federal investigations, according to a new report from The New York Times.
Advertisement:


Trump has reportedly expressed these concerns to advisers "for weeks." Aside from the known state and local probes, The Times did not specify which specific liabilities might have unnerved the president at the federal level.
The difference is significant, because presidential pardons only apply to federal crimes; they do not extend to state and local levels. The constitutional question of whether Trump would pardon himself before leaving office — which no president has tried — has simmered throughout his term. It even came up during Justice Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation hearings last month.
While former special counsel Robert Mueller's final report did not directly accuse Trump of any crimes, "it also does not exonerate him." Though Mueller laid out what many legal experts called textbook examples of obstruction of justice, he did not make a decision "either way" about whether to prosecute Trump. The lack of conclusion maddened the president's supporters and detractors alike.


That decision largely — but not solely, according to testimony from Attorney General William Barr — hinged on existing Department of Justice guidance which bars a sitting president from be criminally prosecuted. That same guidance deterred federal prosecutors from listing Trump as a co-conspirator by name in the indictment which ultimately sent his former personal attorney Michael Cohen to federal prison.
Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York claimed in that case that Cohen had an accomplice in his hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels, an unindicted co-conspirator whom the charging document against Cohen referred to as "Individual-1" — someone who had run "an ultimately successful campaign for president of the United States."
Because communications about those payments extended into 2017, it may be argued that the five-year statute of limitations would not apply to Trump's involvement in that crime as a co-conspirator if he were to be prosecuted in 2021.
Advertisement:


Ken Starr, the independent prosecutor who investigated former President Bill Clinton, said before Mueller submitted his report in 2018 that he believed the former special counsel would either refer Trump to Congress for impeachment or he would face indictment once he is no longer president.

"Those are the two avenues that I see," Starr said at the time.


Further, there has been no reporting about what happened to the counterintelligence investigation that the FBI opened into Trump in 2017, and Mueller was prevented from digging into Trump's finances as a result of a decision from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in the investigation's early stages.
While it is unclear whether the ongoing investigations at city and state levels may concern issues of federal interest, multiple New York Times reports on various findings in Trump's tax returns have detailed what experts called a number of possible federal violations.
Notably, The Times reported on Monday that the president had been concerned for "weeks" about new federal cases — not old ones. The newspaper published its first report on his tax returns on Sept. 27.

Ask yourself, "Why should Trump fear any court decision?" He's spent his entire term in office putting judges favorable to his interest in power. If for once he's not lying, this proves he can't he do anything right? :smh:
 
Back
Top