The alternate reality world of Trumpistan, where “Dear Leader” in exile in Mar-a-Lago is still president in their delusional minds, is having a really bad week.
State Senate Republicans who investigated Michigan’s 2020 presidential election for months concluded there was no widespread or systemic fraud and urged the state attorney general to consider probing people who have made baseless allegations about the results in Antrim County to raise money or publicity “for their own ends.” Michigan Senate GOP probe: No systemic fraud in election.
Donald Trump’s new Roy Cohn, his consigliere and personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, is on a glide path to being disbarred from the practice of law by the state of New York for his “demonstrably false and misleading statements,” i.e., the Big Lie, while fighting the results of the 2020 election on behalf of Donald J. Trump. Court Suspends Giuliani’s Law License, Citing Trump Election Lies.
And now the Trump cult’s hope of replicating the shitshow of Arizona’s GQP sham “fraudit” in Georgia just had a judge drive a stake through its heart. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports, Judge throws out most of case alleging counterfeit ballots in Fulton:
A judge dismissed most of a lawsuit Thursday seeking a forensic audit ala Arizona of Fulton County absentee ballots from last year’s presidential election, a review pursued by Trump voters trying to find fraud.
Superior Court Judge Brian Amero’s ruling jeopardizes the prospects for the ballot inspection to continue, though a plaintiff in the lawsuit said he believes it will soon move forward.
He is wrong.
An attorney for the Fulton elections board said the ruling prevents the possibility for an in-person review of absentee ballots using high-powered microscopes [that grifter Jovan Pulitzer again] in the Georgia World Congress Center, as sought by those who believe fraud produced Democrat Joe Biden’s 12,000-vote win in Georgia over Republican Donald Trump.
“That litigation is finished,” said Don Samuel, a prominent Atlanta attorney hired by the Fulton elections board. “Is there going to be an audit? Not right now. … There’s no discovery permitted. There’s no lawsuit pending anymore.”
The case is an attempt to scrutinize 147,000 absentee ballots based on claims by Republicans who suspected there were counterfeit ballots during a manual recount of November’s election results. Election officials have said there’s no indication of fraud after multiple recounts and investigations.
Amero dismissed most claims against the county elections board, the county clerk and the county itself, deciding they couldn’t be sued under Georgia’s sovereign immunity laws, which limit when plaintiffs can turn to the courts for relief.
The judge left in place a previous order requiring the county to produce digital images of absentee ballots and other election records that are public documents under the Georgia Open Records Act.
The lead plaintiff in the case, Garland Favorito, said he viewed Amero’s order as a victory.
Favorito plans to submit a ballot inspection plan next week based on the judge’s order in May to unseal absentee ballots, allowing for high-resolution re-scans of ballots and an in-person review.
Dude, you just lost your case! Snap out of it!
Samuel said when the case is over, the prior order to unseal absentee ballot will become moot.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs didn’t return messages seeking comment.
Georgia election officials have repeatedly said there’s no evidence of significant fraud in the election after ballots were counted three times last year. The secretary of state’s office is investigating over 100 complaints about last year’s general election, and even if all of them exposed invalid votes, Biden still would have won.
The lawsuit wanted a judge to authorize a ballot inspection after Republican election observers and auditors alleged that there were “pristine” ballots with perfectly filled-in ovals, as well as batches of ballots cast entirely for Biden in the heavily Democratic county.
Investigators pulled those ballot batches and looked for irregularities but found no signs of counterfeits, according to the secretary of state’s office.
“This lawsuit is the result of meritless claims and the ‘big lie,’ ” Fulton Commission Chairman Robb Pitts said. “It’s been six months and no proof of wrongdoing has been produced. Enough is enough — this whole circus must end.”
Though Amero dismissed claims against the Fulton elections board, he allowed the plaintiffs to add its five members as defendants, keeping the case alive.
Samuel said he plans to file motions to dismiss claims against them as well because there are no allegations that election board members — including two Republicans and two Democrats — had any role in counting ballots. Doh!
Before Amero’s ruling, those who believe the election was fraudulent had hoped for a ballot inspection similar to an ongoing “fraudit” in Arizona.
“I have never doubted that competent, experienced and objective analysis would find what I have said from the beginning, that the election was fair and accurate,” Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Wednesday.
Without a court-ordered ballot review, Favorito and the other plaintiffs would be left with computerized absentee ballot images that they were already provided through a request under the Georgia Open Records Act. Favorito has said those images aren’t clear enough to detect irregularities.
Where is all this failure leading? One America News Network (OANN), i.e., Trump’s propaganda organ, which has exclusive broadcast rights to Arizona’s GQP sham “fraudit” and is raising money to pay for it, is now inciting the radicalized Party of Trump aka the Sedition Party, to further violence with eliminationist rhetoric. (Remember that they are speaking to a delusional audience, some of whom already engaged in a seditious insurrection against the U.S. government on January 6 after OANN promoted it).
The Daily Beast reports OAN Goes Full Fascist, Calls for Mass Executions Over ‘Election Fraud’:
One America News personality Pearson Sharp unleashed an openly fascistic fantasy this week, calling for the mass executions for thousands of Americans based on his belief in the outright false claim that widespread voter fraud amounted to a “coup” against former president Donald Trump.
Since last November’s election, in which Joe Biden handily defeated Trump, OAN has led the charge in peddling unhinged conspiracy theories in order to push the ex-president’s “Big Lie” that the election was stolen from him. In recent weeks, the fringe network has sponsored the so-called Arizona election “audit,” with OAN host Christina Bobb fundraising for the effort while also serving as a legal adviser to Trump.
The GOP-led recount in Arizona—a state Biden narrowly won—has led right-wing media figures to push for other audits in battleground states that Trump lost, resulting in the false belief that the ex-president will eventually be reinstated this summer. (Trump has, naturally, latched onto this insane theory.)
During an on-air essay that first aired Tuesday night, Sharp—who has repeatedly lied about the 2020 election and Jan. 6 insurrection—embraced these latest attempts to discredit Biden’s victory to call for harsh retribution against Democrats.
Citing long-debunked claims that there were “widespread problems with voting integrity” in 2020, Sharp claimed that “the radical Democrats left fingerprints all over the country, providing a trail of evidence that the 2020 election was not only tampered with, it was actually overthrown.” He then said this “raises questions” over the level of involvement in the nonexistent election fraud.
“How many people were involved in these efforts to undermine the election? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands?” Sharp dramatically asked. “How many people does it take to carry out a coup against the presidency?”
The OAN windbag continued: “When all the dust settles from the audit in Arizona and the potential audits in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Wisconsin, what happens to all these people who are responsible for overthrowing the election? What are the consequences for traitors who meddled with our sacred democratic process and tried to steal power by taking away the voices of the American people? What happens to them?”
In a hauntingly calm manner, Sharp answered his own question.
“Well, in the past, America had a very good solution for dealing with such traitors: Execution,” he bluntly declared.
“Treason is considered the highest of all crimes and is the only crime defined in the U.S. Constitution which states that anyone is guilty of treason if they support America’s enemies,” Sharp added.
OANN is the American equivalent to Russia’s Sputnik state propaganda network. You really want to talk about treason, Comrade Sharp?
A report by the U.S. intelligence community found Russia sought to help former President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Intelligence Report: Russia Tried To Help Trump In 2020 Election: “Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized “influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process and exacerbating socio-political divisions in the U.S,” says the report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.” Russian dezinformatsiya is OANN’s modus operandi.
“So far, there have been numerous indications that foreign governments, including China and Pakistan, meddled in our election to install Joe Biden as president,” [wrong!] he concluded. “Any Americans involved in these efforts—from those who ran the voting machines to the very highest government officials—is guilty of treason under U.S. Code 2381, which carries with it the penalty of death.”
Hello FBI, pick this guy up.
Sharp knows that he is in big trouble. He is trying to obfuscate what he clearly meant.
In a comment to Talking Points Memo, however, Sharp asserted that “neither I, nor OAN, are suggesting anyone should be executed. That is for the appropriate law enforcement agencies to determine.” He went on to add that “OAN is simply pointing out that if election fraud is proven, then it could very well constitute treason. And according to our laws, treason is punishable by death.”
After first sharing the clip of Sharp’s essay online, The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer noted that adherents of dangerous far-right conspiracy QAnon see this commentary “as proof that the mass executions are right around the corner.” Q followers have long waited for prominent Democrats, who they believe to be part of a Satanic child-sex cabal, to be executed en masse.
Meanwhile, as Sharp contends that other audits [not happening] will finally provide overwhelming proof of widespread voter fraud, a new report spearheaded by Michigan Republicans comprehensively debunks the array of false election claims made by Trump, his legal team, and other right-wing figures. The report even calls for the state’s attorney general to consider investigating those who peddled false information about vote counts in the state “to raise money or publicity for their own ends.”
This criminal referral should include OANN, which is not a legitimate news organization but a Trump propaganda organ, and is grifting money from MAGA/QAnon cultists for the Arizona GQP sham “fraudit.”
