monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

For some reason, some of the discussion here - lamenting the loss of the collegiality and insightful commentary of conservative A2Kers made me flash on a scene from the 1992 movie The Last of the Mohicans.

But something changed for me in 2016. I see Trump's level of ignorance and evil as unprecedented for a president of the United States in my lifetime. I have tried - in person with real people that I would much rather be collegial with - but I cannot wrap my head or twist my heart around into shapes that accommodate just overlooking the fact that they give moral and financial support to an evil and grossly destructive man.

I see less and less room for compromise. I think republicans as a political force need to be crushed and brought to heel.

After The Washington Post on Sunday published an extraordinary phone call between President Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), many observers shared one question: Did Trump break the law?

During that hour-long call on Saturday, Trump urged Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat and threatened him with vague legal consequences, seemingly encouraging his fellow Republican to fix the election results.

As the sole Democrat on Georgia’s state election board on Sunday urged Raffensperger to investigate the president over the call, some lawyers and legal scholars say Trump’s actions indeed appeared to violate both state and federal criminal statutes.

On social media, much of the conversation among legal observers and Trump critics revolved around a federal statute, 52 U.S. Code 20511, that makes it a crime to “knowingly and willfully” deprive or defraud a state’s residents of a free or fair election — or to attempt to do so.
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Since 52 U.S. Code 20511 was adopted as part of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, it has been used sparingly by federal prosecutors. It was used in 2005 to go after Milwaukee woman Kimberly Prude, who voted illegally in the city while still on probation. But Levitt said there is no precedent to use it against someone of Trump’s stature.

Other legal scholars said that Trump possibly violated 18 U.S. Code 241, which makes it illegal to participate in a conspiracy against people exercising their civil rights. That long-standing statute has been used frequently to prosecute acts of voter intimidation, especially those committed by the Ku Klux Klan against Black voters.
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But charging Trump under that code would require prosecutors to show that someone else on the phone call was also aiding and abetting a scheme, Levitt said.

Additionally, Trump’s apparent threat of criminal consequences if Raffensperger failed to act could be seen as an attempt at extortion, The Post reported.

On the state level, Trump’s call could also have violated a Georgia statute.

Leigh Ann Webster, a criminal defense attorney in Atlanta, told The Post that in Georgia, Trump could run afoul of a state law that makes it illegal to cause someone else to partake in election fraud — by soliciting, requesting or commanding it.
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And whether Trump broke federal state law, it’s a different question of whether any prosecutor would try to charge him.

Until Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20, legal scholars say there is virtually no chance of federal charges being filed. Besides the short time frame, Levitt said, the Justice Department maintains a long-standing principle that a federal prosecutor may not prosecute a sitting president.

dreamer

Quite a few people have gone, I have wondered if they just left or if they have gotten sick or something.

A new Congress convened Sunday with Republicans in open warfare as several GOP senators unleashed salvos against at least a dozen Republican colleagues who are planning to challenge the results of the presidential election later this week.

The bitter split among Republicans, virtually unprecedented during the ironclad tenure of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), came as the traditionally celebratory moment unfolded instead against the backdrop of a pandemic that is killing thousands of Americans each day.

The conflict played out in public as dissenting senators said they only wanted to “get the facts out” and critics said they were sabotaging democracy. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) called the challenge “a very, very, bad idea,” adding, “I’m concerned about the division in America — that’s the biggest issue — but obviously this is not healthy for the Republican Party, either.”

It was the starkest illustration yet of the civil war that could engulf the Republican Party in the post-Trump era as factions prepare to battle over whether the party will continue down the unorthodox, scorched-earth path forged by President Trump or return to a more traditional brand of conservative politics. The back-and-forth came two days before a pair of special elections in Georgia that will determine whether the GOP retains control of the Senate.

Sunday’s clash was triggered by the plans of 12 senators to challenge as many as six states’ electoral vote tallies at Wednesday’s joint session of Congress, a usually routine procedure that this year is shaping up as the final opportunity of Trump loyalists to insist, without evidence, that President-elect Joe Biden’s win was somehow illegitimate.

In the House, a similar split developed: Several dozen GOP members have signaled they will question the results, prompting a top Republican leader to call the idea “an exceptionally dangerous precedent.”
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While the chances of derailing Biden’s victory are virtually nonexistent — doing so would require the Democratic-controlled House, for instance, to reject electoral votes for Biden — the event provides a stage for Republican lawmakers seeking to court Trump loyalists, who may be influential in the GOP for years to come, by proclaiming their fealty to the president.

The conflict began Saturday evening, when a group of 11 Republican senators announced they would join Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) in challenging the electoral tally of one or more states, making it clear the revolt would not be a minor affair but would involve more than one-fifth of Senate Republicans.

Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) responded in a blistering statement that the effort “directly undermines” Americans’ right to choose their leaders, and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) called it an “egregious ploy.” Hawley shot back that Toomey and others were engaging in “shameless personal attacks.”

The back-and-forth spread throughout the party on Sunday as lawmakers returned to the Capitol for the swearing-in. Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), among the challengers, argued the effort was no different from Democratic objections to the 1969 and 2005 counts. In those instances, however, the losing candidate had long since conceded, and the dissent was marginal.
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The rare open conflict was an embarrassing spectacle for McConnell, who has for weeks urged Republicans to refrain from disputing the electoral tally. McConnell fears it will force his members into a politically difficult choice of either defying Trump or rejecting the electorate’s verdict.

While that is not expected to create an immediate problem for McConnell’s authority — he was reelected GOP leader by acclamation in November — it demonstrates that Trump’s departure from the White House will not diminish the intraparty tensions that made the past four years a high-wire act for many Republicans.

McConnell declined on Sunday to address the dissension in his ranks. “We’ll be dealing with all of that on Wednesday,” he said.

Democrats, for their part, warned that the dissenters’ actions could damage the country for years to come.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Republicans are “hurting themselves and hurting the democracy . . . to try to please somebody who has no fidelity to elections or even the truth.”

Democrats have been particularly exasperated by Trump supporters’ tactic of groundlessly claiming the election was unfair, then citing the voter doubts fueled by those claims as a reason for further investigation. Dozens of judges, including several appointed by Trump, have summarily rejected allegations that any fraud capable of changing the outcome occurred.

I'm so ashamed.

What Congress is doing on Wednesday: Congress will meet in a joint session, meaning both the House and Senate are together (with precautions taken for the coronavirus). Pence will preside over the process. He could delegate the job to another senator, but we don’t expect him to.
They will go through the states alphabetically. For each state, clerks sitting below Pence will hand him the envelopes, tell him the votes, and he is supposed to read them out loud. Then Congress will vote on accepting states’ results.

How challenges to state’s electors will work: For a challenge to proceed, at least one lawmaker from each chamber must object to a state’s electors. More than two dozen House Republicans have said they will try to challenge results, and a dozen GOP senators will join them.
If there’s an objection to a state’s electors raised by both a House and Senate lawmaker, the chambers have to split up and vote on that objection. They have up to two hours to debate each one.

How we expect voting on challenges to happen: Let’s say a Republican House member and a Republican senator challenge the electoral count in Arizona. The Senate splits off and debates this challenge for up to two hours, then each senator gets a vote on which electors to approve. The House does the same.
The Democratic-controlled House has the votes to knock down all challenges.

What happens if one chamber votes to accept a challenge to a state’s electors: Now we are almost certainly getting out of the realm of possibility, given the numbers. But if the Senate decided to vote in favor of a challenge to a state’s electors, there are still many hurdles to overturning Biden’s win.
The law requires both chambers of Congress to affirmatively vote to object to a state’s electors, which won’t happen with a Democratic-controlled House.
Even if both chambers somehow agreed to accept the challenge, the tiebreaker would go to the governor of the state. And all governors in contested states have certified results that Biden won.

Why this could stretch well into the night anyway: Trump lost about six swing states, and they’re spread out throughout the alphabet — Arizona to Wisconsin. Republicans who question the election results have indicated they will try to challenge all of them. Each time there’s a challenge supported by at least one member of each chamber, Congress has to split off and vote on it. Then they come back together and keep counting states. Voting will also take longer than normal because of coronavirus precautions to space lawmakers apart from each other.

Pence’s role in all this: Pence’s part here is administrative. He has no real authority to refuse to accept electoral results. If he did, it would be in blatant violation of the law. It might even face a court challenge (although legal experts have said they don’t think he would face criminal charges). A majority of Congress would probably quickly vote down any bogus challenges he brought up, just as we expect them to vote down any challenges from lawmakers.

What’s happened in past challenges to electoral results: Members of the party that lost the presidential election have raised objections after nearly every election since 2000. All have failed, and only one succeeded in splitting the chambers to force them to debate one challenge.
When certifying the contentious 2000 election, House Democrats tried to challenge Vice President Al Gore’s loss using Florida’s electoral votes, but they couldn’t find a Senate partner to get things started.
In 2005, House Democrats challenged President George W. Bush’s reelection the same way over the result in Ohio. Then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) joined them, but the effort was quashed pretty quickly, including by her fellow Democrats in the Senate. House Democrats tried again in 2016 to challenge Trump’s win, but no senator was willing to stand with them.
For that challenge, it was then-Vice President Joe Biden who was presiding over everything. “It is over,” he told Democrats.

Eric Kleefeld
@EricKleefeld
Fox “news side” anchor gives advice on Trump's rally tonight for Georgia Senate races: “I think that the president has a decision to make when he goes out there. Is it going to be about him, or is it going to be about the things that he cares about?”

Is it going to be about him, or is it going to be about the things that he cares about?”

a theoretical self-pardon would not absolve him of these potential crimes committed against the state of Georgia...

Did Trump break the law in his call to Georgia’s secretary of state? Some lawyers say yes.

Spending time in Scotland is hardly an escape from anything.