In the NY Times is a good piece with lots of detail about the Trump 'disinformation' campaign to "subvert democracy." (gag!)
It starts out ominously enough:
Then it gives background on how Paxton ended up being the state AG who would file the lawsuit provided by Trump, of course. Paxton didn't write it:
The conclusion is dire. There are still a lot of folks who believe the election was dishonest!
There is a backlash coming, as that guy at the end of the piece said while promising this is bigger than any tea party movement. I think it's going to make Jan. 6 look like a clown show.
Final thought: This piece reads like a Shelby Foote narrative of the Civil War. A really good read.
What are your thoughts?
It starts out ominously enough:
Quote:
By Thursday the 12th of November, President Donald J. Trump's election lawyers were concluding that the reality he faced was the inverse of the narrative he was promoting in his comments and on Twitter. There was no substantial evidence of election fraud, and there were nowhere near enough "irregularities" to reverse the outcome in the courts.
Mr. Trump did not, could not, win the election, not by "a lot" or even a little. His presidency would soon be over.
Allegations of Democratic malfeasance had disintegrated in embarrassing fashion. A supposed suitcase of illegal ballots in Detroit proved to be a box of camera equipment. "Dead voters" were turning up alive in television and newspaper interviews.
The week was coming to a particularly demoralizing close: In Arizona, the Trump lawyers were preparing to withdraw their main lawsuit as the state tally showed Joseph R. Biden Jr. leading by more than 10,000 votes, against the 191 ballots they had identified for challenge.
Then it gives background on how Paxton ended up being the state AG who would file the lawsuit provided by Trump, of course. Paxton didn't write it:
Nitty gritty on Paxton and why he was chosen to deliver the payload to subvert democracy:Quote:
For every lawyer on Mr. Trump's team who quietly pulled back, there was one ready to push forward with propagandistic suits that skated the lines of legal ethics and reason. That included not only Mr. Giuliani and lawyers like Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, but also the vast majority of Republican attorneys general, whose dead-on-arrival Supreme Court lawsuit seeking to discount 20 million votes was secretly drafted by lawyers close to the White House, The Times found.
As traditional Republican donors withdrew, a new class of Trump-era benefactors rose to finance data analysts and sleuths to come up with fodder for the stolen-election narrative. Their ranks included the founder of MyPillow, Mike Lindell, and the former Overstock.com chief executive Patrick Byrne, who warned of "fake ballots" and voting-machine manipulation from China on One America News Network and Newsmax, which were finding ratings in their willingness to go further than Fox in embracing the fiction that Mr. Trump had won.
As Mr. Trump's official election campaign wound down, a new, highly organized campaign stepped into the breach to turn his demagogic fury into a movement of its own, reminding key lawmakers at key times of the cost of denying the will of the president and his followers. Called Women for America First, it had ties to Mr. Trump and former White House aides then seeking presidential pardons, among them Stephen K. Bannon and Michael T. Flynn.
As it crossed the country spreading the new gospel of a stolen election in Trump-red buses, the group helped build an acutely Trumpian coalition that included sitting and incoming members of Congress, rank-and-file voters and the "de-platformed" extremists and conspiracy theorists promoted on its home page including the white nationalist Jared Taylor, prominent QAnon proponents and the Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio.
With each passing day the lie grew, finally managing to do what the political process and the courts would not: upend the peaceful transfer of power that for 224 years had been the bedrock of American democracy.
The piece meanders through the facts of what happened, winking towards its readership who knows anyone who believed the election was dishonest is a moron and were played by the president. The NY Times slant.Quote:
Only one type of lawyer can take a case filed by one state against another directly to the Supreme Court: a state attorney general. The president's original election lawyers doubted that any attorney general would be willing to do so, according to one member of the team, speaking on the condition of anonymity. But Mr. Kobach and his colleagues were confident. After all, nine attorneys general were on the Trump campaign's lawyers group, whose recruitment logo featured the president as Uncle Sam, saying: "I want you to join Lawyers for Trump. Help prevent voter fraud on Election Day."
...
The obvious choice to bring the suit was Ken Paxton of Texas, an ardent proponent of the president's voter-fraud narrative who had filed a number of lawsuits and legal memos challenging the pandemic-related expansion of mail-in voting. But he was compromised by a criminal investigation into whether he had inappropriately used his office to help a wealthy friend and donor. (He has denied wrongdoing.)
The Trump allies made a particularly intense appeal to Louisiana's attorney general, Jeffrey M. Landry, a member of Lawyers for Trump and, at the time, the head of the Republican Attorneys General Association.
He declined. Mr. Paxton would be the one. He decided to carry the case forward even after lawyers in his own office argued against it, including his own solicitor general, Kyle D. Hawkins, who refused to let his name be added to any complaint.
The conclusion is dire. There are still a lot of folks who believe the election was dishonest!
Here's my take. Trump truly believes the election was stolen. People around him believe the election was stolen. I think even Bill Barr knows the election was stolen. Like Barr, we can't prove it, and now we can't mention our belief the election was stolen. There was too much silencing of dissent. Too many people ready to condemn anyone for casting doubts on the election. Something was up. Today, we are enduring 180 degree turnaround of whatever was done the previous 4 years. Then there is the impeachment that will enrage us.Quote:
It was all as Ms. Lawrence had predicted. "The MAGA movement is more than just Donald Trump," she said in an interview. "This is not going to go away when he leaves office."
Mr. Lindell [My Pillow guy] now says he has spent $2 million and counting on his continuing investigations of voting machines and foreign interference.
And Mr. Stockton recently announced a new plan on his Facebook page: a "MAGA Sellout Tour."
"What we do now is we take note of the people who betrayed President Trump in Congress and we get them out of Congress," he said. "We're going to make the Tea Party look tiny in comparison."
Source: NY Times. 77 Days: Trump's Campaign to Subvert the Election
There is a backlash coming, as that guy at the end of the piece said while promising this is bigger than any tea party movement. I think it's going to make Jan. 6 look like a clown show.
Final thought: This piece reads like a Shelby Foote narrative of the Civil War. A really good read.
What are your thoughts?
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