Fogbow

Volkonski wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 6:27 pm
Former President Trump says he will ban transgender women from participating in women’s sports nationwide if he is re-elected president. https://t.co/9HWmgs9bcu

Trump Had Role in Weighing Proposals to Seize Voting Machines
New accounts show that the former president was more directly involved than previously known in plans developed by outside advisers to use national security agencies to seek evidence of fraud.

Published Jan. 31, 2022
Updated Feb. 1, 2022, 9:07 a.m. ET

Six weeks after Election Day, with his hold on power slipping, President Donald J. Trump directed his lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to make a remarkable call. Mr. Trump wanted him to ask the Department of Homeland Security if it could legally take control of voting machines in key swing states, three people familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Giuliani did so, calling the department’s acting deputy secretary, who said he lacked the authority to audit or impound the machines.

Mr. Trump pressed Mr. Giuliani to make that inquiry after rejecting a separate effort by his outside advisers to have the Pentagon take control of the machines. And the outreach to the Department of Homeland Security came not long after Mr. Trump, in an Oval Office meeting with Attorney General William P. Barr, raised the possibility of whether the Justice Department could seize the machines, a previously undisclosed suggestion that Mr. Barr immediately shot down.

The new accounts show that Mr. Trump was more directly involved than previously known in exploring proposals to use his national security agencies to seize voting machines as he grasped unsuccessfully for evidence of fraud that would help him reverse his defeat in the 2020 election, according to people familiar with the episodes.

The existence of proposals to use at least three federal departments to assist Mr. Trump’s attempt to stay in power has been publicly known. The proposals involving the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security were codified by advisers in the form of draft executive orders.

But the new accounts provide fresh insight into how the former president considered and to some degree pushed the plans, which would have taken the United States into uncharted territory by using federal authority to seize control of the voting systems run by states on baseless grounds of widespread voting fraud.



https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/31/us/p ... hines.html

much ado wrote: ↑Tue Feb 01, 2022 3:34 pm Now we know why AG Barr resigned in December, not four weeks before the end of the Trump administration.

Dangerous Trump Is In 'Burn-It-All-Down Mode,' Warns NYT Reporter Maggie Haberman

Mary Papenfuss
Tue, February 1, 2022, 1:26 AM

Former President Donald Trump’s chilling comments at his Texas rally last week offering pardons to Jan. 6 rioters if he’s elected and calling for “massive protests” if prosecutors take action against him are signs that he’s in “burn-it-all-down mode,” New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman warned Monday.

“He’s in burn-it-all-down mode and has been for some time,” Haberman told CNN’s John King, who also asked about Trump’s insistence Sunday that former Vice President Mike Pence had every right to single-handedly “overturn” a presidential election.

Haberman raised the possibility of new legal trouble for Trump, given his incendiary statements, and wondered if anyone is reviewing his remarks before he blurts them out or issues them in a statement.

“It raises questions for me, candidly, about the vetting process around these statements going out because that was a jarring statement,” she noted, referring to Trump’s claim that Pence had a right to throw out election results.

Not only does it sound alarms for the House select committee investigating the attack on Congress last year but also “probably for lawyers involved in the civil suits against Donald Trump related to the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6,” she warned.

Haberman also pointed out the similarities between Trump’s call for the “biggest protests” the nation has ever seen if he is criminally charged now to his call at his Jan. 6, 2021, rally to “fight” and march on the U.S. Capitol.

Now “you have him saying, ‘If there is a move against me from prosecutors,’ essentially saying, ‘Go rise up.’ That can have real consequences,” Haberman said. “There are people who take him at his word and carry [out] what they think that word means.”

A key factor in his behavior, Haberman said, is that the unfettered Trump has so far suffered no significant consequences other than losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.

“You see the portrait of somebody who really doesn’t care anymore and wants to put it all on his terms and who knows that he can keep pushing the bounds, and there basically, so far, other than losing the election ... there have not been that many penalties,” Haberman said.



https://www.yahoo.com/news/dangerous-tr ... 48578.html

Trump: Pence Should Be Investigated for Not Reversing My Election Loss
Jamie Ross
Tue, February 1, 2022, 3:19 PM

Former President Donald Trump has urged congressional Jan. 6 investigators to open up a probe against his former vice president, Mike Pence, over his refusal to help Trump overturn the 2020 election result.

Pence and Trump haven’t been on speaking terms since last year, when the then-VP went against Trump’s orders and fulfilled his duty to certify Joe Biden’s election victory in Congress. But their relationship plumbed new depths Tuesday, when Trump released a statement saying that Pence should be under investigation for not reversing the 2020 election result.

In a furious statement posted by Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington on Tuesday, the former president once against attacked the House committee investigating the Capitol riot, and said the panel should be focusing on Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, rather than himself.

The ex-president wrote: “The Unselect Committee should be investigating why Nancy Pelosi did such a poor job of overseeing security and why Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval, in that it has now been shown that he clearly had the right to do so!”



https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-pence- ... 05154.html

Anderson Cooper Spots Most 'Revealing Statement' From Donald Trump's Rally
Lee Moran
Tue, February 1, 2022, 9:43 AM

Anderson Cooper on Monday rolled the tape on just some of the many times Donald Trump has said “the quiet part out loud.”

The CNN anchor showed footage from Trump’s rally in Texas on Saturday, and noted that the former president “loudly and proudly confessed” to trying to overturn the 2020 election, for which he is being investigated by a House select committee.

It was Trump’s most “revealing statement,” per CNN. But it was also familiar because Trump is “consciously or not, a serial confessor,” Cooper said.



https://www.yahoo.com/news/anderson-coo ... 32801.html

Haberman wrote:It raises questions for me, candidly, about the vetting process around these statements going out because that was a jarring statement,” she noted, referring to Trump’s claim that Pence had a right to throw out election results.

RTH10260 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 01, 2022 4:14 pm losing some marbles?

Trump: Pence Should Be Investigated for Not Reversing My Election Loss
Jamie Ross
Tue, February 1, 2022, 3:19 PM

Former President Donald Trump has urged congressional Jan. 6 investigators to open up a probe against his former vice president, Mike Pence, over his refusal to help Trump overturn the 2020 election result.

Pence and Trump haven’t been on speaking terms since last year, when the then-VP went against Trump’s orders and fulfilled his duty to certify Joe Biden’s election victory in Congress. But their relationship plumbed new depths Tuesday, when Trump released a statement saying that Pence should be under investigation for not reversing the 2020 election result.

In a furious statement posted by Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington on Tuesday, the former president once against attacked the House committee investigating the Capitol riot, and said the panel should be focusing on Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, rather than himself.

The ex-president wrote: “The Unselect Committee should be investigating why Nancy Pelosi did such a poor job of overseeing security and why Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval, in that it has now been shown that he clearly had the right to do so!”



https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-pence- ... 05154.html

Donald Trump will charge top-paying guests $250,000 to attend a “Take Back Congress Candidate Forum” at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida this month – with proceeds going to his own Super Pac, rather than Republicans who will actually try to take back Congress.

Nor is the top price tag, which guarantees a private dinner and picture with Trump as well as VIP seating at the forum, necessarily the full cost for any couple who chooses to pay it. On Twitter on Wednesday, the New York Times reporter and Trump watcher Maggie Haberman said: “$250k lets you pay for a Mar-a-Lago guest room.”

Further down the menu, a couple paying $100,000 will get a photo with Trump and seating at a private dinner with endorsed candidates, with comments from Trump. For $50,000, guests will get the dinner and the Trump comments, but a picture only with “endorsed candidates”.

Price tags descend to $5,000 per couple, for attendance – but presumably less than primo seating – at the dinner with comments from Trump.

Emphasising Trump’s grip on the Republican party, Haberman pointed out that the former president “is spending almost no money on other candidates.

noblepa wrote: ↑Tue Feb 01, 2022 9:24 pm Al Gore must really be kicking himself, now that we know that the Vice President has the authority to arbitrarily choose the winner of a presidential election.

Former President Donald Trump’s political action committee donated $1 million to the conservative nonprofit organization where his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, is a senior partner, according to a campaign finance report filed with the Federal Election Commission Monday night.

In December, the House voted to recommend that the Justice Department pursue contempt of Congress charges against Meadows over his refusal to cooperate with an investigation into the Trump-inspired Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The tax-deductible seven-figure contribution to the Conservative Partnership Institute is by far the largest chunk of $1.35 million in donations Trump’s “Save America” PAC made to political allies over the last six months of 2021, according to the campaign finance report.