2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[N.E. Brigand]

On the Dept. of Justice website:

"Florida Residents Plead Guilty To Conspiracy To Commit Interstate Transportation Of Stolen Property. Pleas Follow Filing of Criminal Information Alleging Defendants Stole Property Belonging to Immediate Family Member of a Then-Former Government Official." Nowhere at that link will you find the names Trump or Biden, but here's what happened. Joe Biden's daughter Ashley kept a diary while she was in rehab. In the spring of 2020, she was rooming at a home in Florida. She moved out in June but got permission to store some of her personal items there, including that diary and a flash drive with family photos. Later that month, a woman named Aimee Harris stayed at the house, discovered Ashley Biden's things, and stole some of them. In August, she reached out to a man named Robert Kurlander, and they plotted to sell Biden's belongings. They hoped to make a lot of money selling the diary. ...

Kurlander has agreed to cooperate with the government. Project Veritasa may be in some trouble here.

After many delays, Aimee Harris, who was paid $20,000 (and was supposed to have been paid $20,000 more) by the conservative organization Project Veritas for a diary belonging to Joe Biden's daughter Ashley -- which she and a friend named Robert Kurlander first tried, unsuccessfully, to sell to Donald Trump's campaign -- was finally sentenced today in a New York courtroom to one month of imprisonment and three months' probation. The judge in the case said what Harris did was "despicable." Kurlander is apparently still cooperating.

[N.E. Brigand]

I appreciate Paul Farhi's point concerning the media's reluctance to publish the Hunter Biden laptop story a few weeks before the 2020 election: ask Dan Rather how it worked out in 2004 to rush to publish a story (about George W. Bush's National Guard service) that wasn't thoroughly sourced. (No one ever won the Doonesbury contest, though.)

[N.E. Brigand]

CNN: "Judge schedules Newsmax case over 2020 election lies for September trial. ... Newsmax and the voting technology company Smartmatic could still reach an out-of-court settlement, and further delays are possible. But if the September 24 trial date holds, the fallout from former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election will be on full display as he tries to return to the White House. The trial would also be the first of more than a dozen high-profile defamation cases to face a jury, all stemming from the false claims that Smartmatic and another voting company, Dominion Voting Systems, rigged the 2020 election by flipping millions of votes from Trump to Joe Biden. Those lies — championed by Trump and his allies in Congress and the right-wing press — fueled the deadly insurrection on January 6, 2021." Judge Eric Davis, who will preside in Delaware Superior Court, is the same judge who oversaw Dominion's lawsuit against Fox News that was settled at the last minute in 2023 when Fox agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million.

The voting machine company Smartmatic, in addition to suing Newsmax, has been separately suing Fox News and One America News. I don't know the status of the Fox case, but today Smartmatic and One America News announced that they have reached a confidential settlement.

That article notes that "the lawsuit ... in recent months devolved into messy discovery disputes, wherein Smartmatic and its attorney J. Erik Connolly went so far as to lob allegations that OAN execs had potentially 'engaged in criminal activities' by 'appear[ing] to have violated state and federal laws regarding data privacy.' The plaintiff alleged that an email exchange between 'Kraken' lawyer Sidney Powell and OAN President Charles Herring indicated that the network had access to a spreadsheet with Smartmatic employees' passwords".

[N.E. Brigand]

And the Dept. of Justice is still charging people for their actions on January 6th. In this case, there's a quasi-celebrity connection, because the defendant, Tyler Campanella, is the stepson of a matchmaker named Siggy Flicker, who was in the "cast" of two reality TV shows, Why Am I Still Single? (VH1) and The Real Housewives of New Jersey (Bravo). I have seen neither show. But I see that Flicker is well known as a Trump supporter, sometimes seen at Mar-a-Lago, and apparently friends with Trump's attorney Alina Habba. The phone that Campanella used is actually on Flicker's Verizon account, and the FBI identified Campanella in part from pictures on Flicker's Instagram feed. Campanella was in the Capitol on Jan. 6th and is charged with trespassing in a restricted building and disorderly conduct meant to disrupt an official proceeding.

[N.E. Brigand]

And the Dept. of Justice is still charging people for their actions on January 6th. In this case, there's a quasi-celebrity connection, because the defendant, Tyler Campanella, is the stepson of a matchmaker named Siggy Flicker, who was in the "cast" of two reality TV shows, Why Am I Still Single? (VH1) and The Real Housewives of New Jersey (Bravo).

Ryan Reilly notes that there is video apparently showing Campanella in Speaker Pelosi's office.

[N.E. Brigand]

One possible answer to Karen Piper's question is that Rep. Barry Laudermilk is attempting to assist future attacks on the Capitol.



Remember, it was Laudermilk who led a suspicious tour of the Capitol shortly before Jan. 6th.

But there also may be some other more innocent explanation.

[N.E. Brigand]

Meanwhile, Michigan attorney general charges 'false electors' over efforts to overturn the 2020 election

ABC reports today: "Trump, Giuliani, Meadows are unindicted co-conspirators in Michigan fake elector case, hearing reveals."

[N.E. Brigand]

And going some 1,600 miles south-by-southwest from Michigan:

"Arizona grand jury has indicted Trump allies for 2020 election interference" (Politico).

Donald Trump is "Unindicted Co-Conspirator 1." (Ken Chesebro is "Unindicted Co-Conspirator 4.") Only some of the eighteen people who have been indicted by a grand jury in Arizona are named in the document, but reporters quickly identified Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, and Mike Roman based on descriptions of their roles and actions. The named defendants thus far comprise only "the 11 Republicans who falsely posed as the state’s presidential electors" including "former Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward, state senators Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern, and Arizona’s RNC committeeman Tyler Bowyer."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm sure there are reasons, but it seems wrong to me (and I would guess to you as well) that Trump is an uninvited co-conspirator in both states. He is the head of the snake.

[N.E. Brigand]

Mother Jones has obtained audio of Steve Bannon on Oct. 31, 2020 discussing election strategy with Guo Wengui, the exiled Chinese billionaire on whose yacht Bannon had been arrested earlier that year....

Guo Wengui (real name Ho Wan Kwok), the exiled Chinese billionaire and Steve Bannon's erstwhile funder and host ... was charged today in a $1 billion fraud scheme.

Additional charges were brought against Steve Bannon's backer, Guo Wengui. "Bannon is not referenced in the indictment, but the companies that he promoted and ran with Guo are."

Mother Jones reports that Steve Bannon is named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a government filing in the prosecution of Bannon's billionaire buddy Guo Wengui.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

And going some 1,600 miles south-by-southwest from Michigan:

"Arizona grand jury has indicted Trump allies for 2020 election interference" (Politico).

Donald Trump is "Unindicted Co-Conspirator 1." (Ken Chesebro is "Unindicted Co-Conspirator 4.") Only some of the eighteen people who have been indicted by a grand jury in Arizona are named in the document, but reporters quickly identified Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, and Mike Roman based on descriptions of their roles and actions. The named defendants thus far comprise only "the 11 Republicans who falsely posed as the state’s presidential electors" including "former Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward, state senators Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern, and Arizona’s RNC committeeman Tyler Bowyer."

Boris Epshteyn is apparently also one of the ones who have been indicted.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Christina Bobb, too

[N.E. Brigand]

Guo Wengui (real name Ho Wan Kwok), the exiled Chinese billionaire and Steve Bannon's erstwhile funder and host ... was charged today in a $1 billion fraud scheme.

Additional charges filed against Steve Bannon's backer, Guo Wengui. "Bannon is not referenced in the indictment, but the companies that he promoted and ran with Guo are."

Mother Jones reports that Steve Bannon is named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a government filing in the prosecution of Bannon's billionaire buddy Guo Wengui.

There was also a reference here in January to Guo Wengui in the 2024 election thread because Donald Trump thanked the disgraced casino magnate Steve Wynn (but not any of Trump's campaign staff or family) after winning the New Hampshire primary, and Wynn had previously been in the news in 2022 when a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit the Dept. of Justice had filed against Wynn that attempted to require Wynn to register as a foreign agent based on his prior work on behalf of Guo. The judge didn't find that Wynn hadn't been acting as Guo's agent (nor that he had), but rather that the law didn't allow the government to force someone to retroactively register as a foreign agent.

But because Steve Bannon, although not charged with any crime in this case, was eventually mentioned by name in a superseding indictment against Guo for a massive fraud conspiracy, this is where I'll note something that was reported yesterday and fleshed out today: Guo's former chief of staff and alleged co-conspirator, Yvette Wang, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and wire fraud, and she has agreed to "pay restitution of $1,400,000,000 and to forfeit $1,400,000,000 to the United States." Yes, you read that right: she's coughing up $2.8 billion. Both Guo and Wang were deemed flight risks and have been in custody for over a year.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Sixth, a new documentary about the events of Jan. 6th, was released yesterday, but Politico reports that the Hollywood studio that paid for it now seems to want to bury it, for unclear reasons. It wasn't mentioned on the studio's website until after Politico called to ask, the studio hasn't been promoting it on social media, and a previously announced livestream on Amazon Prime has been postponed until late fall. The documentary "depicts the day through the experiences of six people (a photographer, a Hill aide, a member of Congress [Rep. Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland] and three police officers) who were trying to do their jobs as the mob descended. The film received a rapturous response at a standing-room-only D.C. screening last week."

- - - - - - - - - -
L. (Leo) Brent Bozell IV, who sometimes goes by the nickname "Zeeker," a 45-year-old Pennsylvania man, is the scion of a very influential Republican family as the grandson of L. Brent Bozell, Jr. (1926-1997) and Patricia Buckley, the sister of William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925-2008), with whom Bozell Jr. partnered in 1954 to write McCarthy and His Enemies, a defense of Sen. Joe McCarthy's witch-hunt. A few years later, William Buckley, often described as the father of modern conservatism, founded National Review (which is still publishing) and worked to put a kinder, gentler face on the right wing by denouncing the John Birch Society. Bozell ran unsuccessfully for public office, worked for Barry Goldwater, and founded an arch-Catholic magazine, Triumph, that ran from 1966 to 1976. Bozell's oldest son, L. Brent Bozell III, "founded the Media Research Center, Parents Television Council and other conservative media organizations." Buckley also ran for office without success, hosted the PBS news program Firing Line from 1966 to 1999, and saw his political views triumphant with the election of an actual conservative, Ronald Reagan, as president in 1980. (Richard Nixon is rightly seen as awful by liberals for his criminality, but many of his policies were centrist and pragmatist.) A recent PBS documentary on Buckley gently asked what he would think of Donald Trump, who represents the populist howl beneath conservativism that Buckley tried to suppress but not remove, and didn't come to a definitive answer.

I don't think the documentary mentioned that Buckley's grand-nephew Zeeker participated in the events of Jan. 6th. Bozell IV was convicted of ten counts including five felonies in a bench trial last September. He was supposed to have been sentenced in January but that's been postponed until next week. The government's sentencing memo notes that he was all over the Capitol that day and took part in multiple violent events. They're asking for a terrorist enhancement and twelve years' imprisonment, and I think they rightly compare him to Dominic Pezzola, a member of the Proud Boys who was acquitted of seditious conspiracy but convicted of multiple other counts. Pezzola famously stole a riot shield from a police officer and used it to break a Capitol window. Prosecutors asked for twenty years' imprisonment in his case; he was sentenced to ten years. Prosecutors now note that:

... unlike Pezzola, Bozell:

--entered the Senate Chamber--both in the Gallary and on the Floor;
--entered numerous sensitive spaces, including Speaker Pelosi's office and a private meeting room outside the Senate Chamber;
--aided the mob in forcing open another major breach point at the East Rotunda Doors; and
--repeatedly ploughed through police lines. For example, Bozell not only joined the mob in overrunning police lines in the Northwest Stairs (like Pezzola), but he also joined rioters in overrunning office lines in the Senate Carriage Door and near the Senate Chamber, and he helped to force open the East Rotunda Doors, which were guarded by police officers who were visibly crushed between the rioters and the doors.

This all may have been presaged way back in 1954, when William F. Buckley and L. Brent Bozell wrote that while their focus then was on rooting out only communists, "Some day, the patience of America may at last be exhausted, and we will strike out against the Liberals."