2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[N.E. Brigand]

Oh that's right! I totally forgot about Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, who have also been charged by the district attorney right here in Cleveland, Ohio for similar robo-calls that engaged in voter suppression. There's a former federal prosecutor now in private practice in Los Angeles named Ken White who co-hosts a podcast for radio station KCRW called "All the President's Lawyers." White had joked for a couple years that Wohl, a notorious (but still quite young) mischief maker on the right, would someday go too far and break the law, or as he put it, commit a "big boy federal crime." White recently indicated his disappointment that these antics that got Wohl in real trouble are only state crimes. The problem is, just as with Russia's interference in 2016, it's nearly impossible to quantify what effect these ploys have on the vote. In the case of Russia, researchers have said the phony messaging they created was viewed hundreds of millions of times on Facebook alone. But how many votes for Trump did that translate into? (Whether by changing minds, getting a Trump-leaning viewer to vote for him, or getting a Clinton-leaning viewer to stay home.)

Yeah, but president can't pardon state crimes.

Almost two years later in Cleveland: Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman pleaded guilty to the fifth-degree felony of telecommunications fraud. That state crime carries a maximum possible penalty of one year's imprisonment. It's not clear what they will actually be sentenced to, but they did agree to pay the maximum fine of $2,500 as part a deal in which prosecutors dropped 14 counts of telecommunications and bribery.

NBC: "The Federal Communications Commission says it will serve a $5.1 million fine against conservative activists Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl and J.M. Burkman & Associates over their role in making 1,141 unlawful robocalls ahead of the 2020 election."

Jacob Wohl, a conservative activist best known for his illegal election interference activities, today pled guilty in California to two state felony counts of securities fraud. The criminal act occurred in July 2016. Wohl was charged for it in August 2019.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Fake electors in Nevada indicted.

[N.E. Brigand]

Fake electors in Nevada indicted.

Meanwhile in Wisconsin:

The group of people who submitted fake elector certificates claiming that Donald Trump won Wisconsin in 2020 admitted in a legal settlement announced on Wednesday what’s been clear all along: Trump lost, and the effort was a con.

Ten Republican fake electors from Wisconsin agreed per the terms of a civil settlement not to serve as presidential electors in next year’s election and to withdraw the elector certificates they submitted.

Two electors representing Joe Biden filed the lawsuit last year in Dane County, Wisconsin, accusing the electors and two attorneys who worked on Trump’s effort to reverse his loss of conspiracy to defraud voters.

They admitted they "were not the duly elected presidential electors for the State of Wisconsin for the 2020 presidential election."

The two attorneys, who have not settled with the plaintiffs, are Kenneth Chesebro and Jim Troupis.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The ten defendants who settled also explicitly agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department investigation of the 2020 election.

[N.E. Brigand]

In prosecutors' memo requesting that convicted January 6th participant Alan Hostetter be sentenced to more than 12 years' imprisonment, they note that as Hostetter drove to the District of Columbia for Jan. 6th (he drove rather than flew so that he could bring weapons for himself and a friend), he "recorded a video, where he called for the execution of political officials he viewed of as traitors: 'Some people, at the highest levels, need to be made an example of, with an execution or two or three.'" But apparently that's been known for a while. Marcy Wheeler seems to think the most significant revelation in the memo is that Hostetter recommended a January 6th protest to Ali Alexander, a key organizer of the January 6th events, on December 16, 2020, some three days before Trump announced that he would hold a rally on that day.

Alan Hostetter was sentenced today to a prison term of 11 years 3 months.

Hostetter pushed some Jan. 6th conspiracy theories during the today's hearing, including the claim that Ashlii Babbitt wasn't actually killed. Babbitt's mother was in the room. After the hearing, Babbitt mother said to Hostetter, "I assure you she is dead." Hostetter replied, "Was she cremated?" (Babbitt's mother has herself espoused some conspiracy theories about that day, so one could see some dark twisted justice in this confrontation, but of course the whole thing is tragic. Ashlii Babbitt is dead because she fell for Donald Trump's lies.)

Hostetter cited comments by presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in last night's Republican debate as support for his belief that the 2020 election was stolen.

[N.E. Brigand]

Jared Wise was in the FBI's counterterrorism office in New York, leaving in 2017 to join the conservative pseudo-media outlet Project Veritas where he worked with Trump ally Erik Prince to train personnel in counter-intelligence techniques for the company's sting operations. Project Veritas's secret operations included "female undercover operatives arrang[ing] dates with the F.B.I. employees with the aim of secretly recording them making disparaging comments about Mr. Trump."

Just because this is the most recent thread to reference the right-wing Project Veritas operation: The corn is as high as an elephant's eye.

"Hannah Giles, Project Veritas CEO Who Replaced James O’Keefe, Stepping Down, Cites 'Strong Evidence of Past Illegality'".

[Voronwë the Faithful]

We have another candidate for biggest non-surprise.



That's a hat trick of "I'm going to testify; no, I'm not" following Eric Trump and his father.

[N.E. Brigand]

I see that there is a conspiracy theory circulating on the right that claims the FBI is protecting the person who planted pipe bombs at the DNC and RNC on Jan. 6th.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The jury is in on Shaye Moss' and Ruby Freeman's defamation against Giuliani, and (not surprisingly) he is getting slammed.

[N.E. Brigand]

Some supposedly moderate Republicans said things like this in fall/winter 2020:

We’re warned, “a president is in the Oval Office plotting to overthrow an election.”

Okay… how? Short of a full-on, tanks in the streets, military-takes-over-and-suspends-the-Constititution coup, how is President Trump going to overthrow the election?

Those folks are now arguing that while Donald Trump may attempt to turn the presidency into a dictatorship, he'll be foiled by our system of checks and balances.

[N.E. Brigand]

The jury is in on Shaye Moss' and Ruby Freeman's defamation against Giuliani, and (not surprisingly) he is getting slammed.

Wow. Not as big as what Alex Jones has to pay for defaming Sandy Hook parents or what Fox News agreed to pay for defaming Dominion, but still, $148 million?! Good for Moss and Freeman (who of course are unlikely to see most of this).

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Is Trump next?

[N.E. Brigand]

I agree that this needs to be investigated by the media: what was so sensitive in the required discovery that Rudy Giuliani refused to turn it over and got this $148 million judgement against him as a consequence.

[Sunsilver]

Is Trump next?

Would love to see this become a reality!

N.E. I assume your post above is referring to the missing binder of very sensitive Russian intelligence?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

No he is referring to the discovery that Giuliani refused to provide in the defamation lawsuit, which led to his having a default judgment entered against him.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I guess I'll put this here, though it might eventually become relevant to one or both of the election interference cases against Trump.

'Can't wait until he repeats this in court': Trump mocked as expert hired by ex-POTUS to prove voter fraud says he found all claims to be false

During Block's recent appearance on CNN's 'OutFront', host Erin Burnett asked, "You were hired by team Trump to investigate voter fraud. So, what was the bottom line from everything you looked at, Ken? Did you find the widespread fraud they wanted you to find?"

He replied, "No. In my job looking for voter fraud for the campaign, we didn't find any– we didn't find enough fraud to have impacted the result of any election in any of the swing states that we took a look at," as per Mediaite.

Burnett revealed later in the conversation that the software engineer was subpoenaed by Special Counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to testify as a "fact witness" concerning Trump's alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election.

[RoseMorninStar]

A friend recently posted this quote from Carl Sagan, and it's pitifully sad commentary on humans.

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. ~Carl Sagan

(Book: The Demon-Haunted World https://amzn.to/46Nh9lS)

I cannot help but be reminded that the bamboozle leaders are the grand masters who have to convince themselves and so drag everyone along on their con. I've said this before, but Trump literally attended the church of Norman Vincent Peale who famously authored the book, 'The Power of Positive Thinking'. Years ago I started to read that book. There is something to be said of positive thinking, but I didn't finish it because there is a difference between positive thinking and magical thinking, which takes one into bamboozle territory and acquiring personal power through manipulation.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Inspector General for the U.S. Department of the Interior, which manages national parks and monuments, including many spaces in the District of Columbia, yesterday issued a report on the events of January 6th. Not sure how much is new there; one observer points out that we already knew from the Jan. 6th Committee report that rally organizers were aware in advance that there would be a second event after the event at the Ellipse and that "POTUS is just going to call for it 'unexpectedly'" (quotation marks in original).

[N.E. Brigand]

Belatedly catching up to this August story:

"Jan. 6 rioter who Tucker Carlson guest said was a fed is arrested by the FBI. Rally Runner, an amateur mascot who runs around St. Louis Cardinals stadium, was charged in connection with the Capitol attack." Mr. Runner had a hearing today, apparently of no consequence, but it's what brought the story to my attention.

Back in 2021, Joseph McBride, a lawyer who was then representing several Jan. 6 defendants, said on Carlson's show that Runner was "clearly a law enforcement officer" and an "agent provocateur" who had only dressed up as a Trump fan as part of a scheme to make Trump fans look bad. In fact, Runner was a real Trump fan, as well as a St. Louis Cardinals fanatic who ran around the stadium during home games, thus his name change [from Daniel Donnelly Jr., his birth name].

Runner had been a huge fan of Carlson's show. "For years I believed Tucker was a responsible reporter focused on stopping 'Fake News' just to be hit with this story."

[Voronwë the Faithful]