The GOP Clown Car Coup: Martial Law and ‘Release The Kraken’ Lawsuits

Donald Trump and his MAGA cult members’ attempts to overturn an election that he lost has now crossed over from promoting wild conspiracy theories into inciting insurrection and a military coup d’etat. This insanity has to STOP.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn promoted martial law ordered by President Donald Trump on Tuesday evening when he tweeted a press release from an Ohio-based conservative political organization.

#WeThePeople @SidneyPowell1 @LLinWood @DanScavino @LouDobbs @MariaBartiromo @marklevinshow
@lofly727

Freedom never kneels except for God 🙏🇺🇸https://t.co/Vrn3UeyDoF

— General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) December 1, 2020

Calls for martial law and US military oversight of new presidential election draws criticism:

Calling former Vice President Joe Biden’s Nov. 3 victory over Trump “fraudulent,” the Ohio-based “We The People Convention” took out a full-page ad in the Washington Times on Tuesday urging Trump to “immediately declare a limited form of Martial Law, and temporarily suspend the Constitution and civilian control of these federal elections, for the sole purpose of having the military oversee a re-vote.”

The organization called for the revote to include only registered voters with photo IDs, to be limited to only paper ballots, to be hand counted and with members of both Democrat and Republican parties observing.

“Unfortunately, we are at the point where we can only trust our military to do this because our corrupt political class and courts have proven their inability to act fairly and within the law,” the group argued.

This truly insane press release concludes with this paragraph:

Many will object to these actions, as they did in Lincoln’s day, but we assure you that We the People understand that no less action will suffice to prevent the loss of our Constitutional right to vote and preserve our Republic. It is time to honor your oath, Mr. President. It is time for you to boldly act to save our nation as Lincoln did. We the People will support a national re-vote. We will also have no other choice but to take matters into our own hands, and defend our rights on our own, if you do not act within your powers to defend us.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment about the call for martial law. But during a press briefing Wednesday afternoon, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany referred to Flynn as “a valiant hero who served his country both on the battlefield and then in government” but did not reference his calls for military action in response to the election results.

“The president has said that he believes all legal votes to be counted and all illegal votes should not be counted, and the campaign is pursuing that litigation,” she said.

Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators about his interaction with Russian contacts during Trump’s 2016 transition to the White House, was recently pardoned by Trump.

The concept of the military being involved in such a revote, and that Flynn and other once-respected military officials, including retired Air Force three-star Thomas McInerney, would advocate martial law, raises alarms for constitutional scholars and military-civilian experts.

The Trumpists want a coup and martial law. https://t.co/W6FBeE6jCd

— Eric Owens (@ericowensdc) December 2, 2020

The idea is “preposterous,” said Bill Banks, a Syracuse University professor with expertise in constitutional and national security law.

“Apart from the fact that state and now federal investigators have found no evidence of election fraud that would change the election outcome, martial law has no place in the United States absent a complete breakdown of civil governing mechanisms,” he told Military Times.

Martial law, he added, “simply has the military in charge, subject only to military orders, not civilian law.”

It has not been invoked in the U.S. “since the attack on Pearl Harbor, and there is no likelihood or justification for martial law now,” said Banks. “Our civilian institutions have, in fact, revealed themselves to be resilient in responding to unprecedented partisan attacks on election administration and vote counting in state and local systems across the United States.”

That retired military leaders would push such measures would violate their oath to the Constitution, said Risa Brooks, civil-military relations expert and Allis Chalmers Associate Professor of political science at Marquette University.

“As general officers, these men spent long careers committed to defending the Constitution,” she told Military Times. “Calling for martial law and a suspension of the Constitution is a direct violation of their oath to uphold it.”

Flynn and McInerney “discredit their uniform,” said Jim Golby, a former Trump White House official and retired Army strategist who is now a senior fellow at the University of Texas at Austin’s Clements Center for National Security.

The retired general officers “undermine our democracy, and create a real security threat,” Golby added.

Statements like these by such high-ranking former military officers have a dangerous effect on civilian-military relations, said Golby, who worked in the White House when Flynn was serving as NSA.

“Even though the overwhelming majority of retired general officers don’t spread nonsense like this, those who do spread these lies or support these undemocratic conspiracies draw attention to them and give some of the military’s credibility to theses dangerous causes,” he said.

“By speaking out on fringe media or retweeting this information, they are likely to influence some Americans and ensure that harmful messages like these get oxygen.”

You should note the first two names tagged in Michael Flynn’s tweet above,  Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, both attorneys who were recently associated with Rudy Giuliani’s “elite strike force team” of lawyers bringing frivolous lawsuits to overturn the election, until the Trump campaigndistanced itself from their independent so-called “Kracken” lawsuits.

These two disreputable attorneys were in Atlanta Georgia Wednesday night for a “Stop The Steal” Rally that went completely off the rails. Lin Wood referenced Michael Flynn during a rant at the rally. Sidney Powell: Former Trump lawyer leads Georgia rally, calls on Republicans to boycott runoff elections:

Sidney Powell, the conspiracy theory pushing lawyer who formerly represented Donald Trump’s legal challenge to the 2020 election results before being fired by the campaign, led a rally-like press conference in Georgia today to protest the state’s election results.

Supporters of Ms. Powell gathered in Atlanta for a “stop the steal” rally. Lin Wood, an Atlanta based attorney and supporter of Mr Trump, joined her and led the crowd in a “lock him up” chant directed at the state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp.

At least one supporter at the rally was seen carrying a literal pitchfork.

Both Ms. Powell and Mr. Wood said that conservative votes would not be secured in the upcoming runoff election between Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue against Democrat challengers Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, respectively.

Just now in an alternate reality, the crowd went wild as disgraced conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell gets introduced as “The Kraken.” pic.twitter.com/Ukj305T9pr

— The Recount (@therecount) December 2, 2020

Georgia State Rep. Vernon Jones who was also attending the rally contradicted their claims and called on voters to turn out and vote in the election.

The results of the election will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.

Mr. Wood then retook the stage and undermined Mr. Jones. He told voters to boycott the election unless the state agrees to completely overhaul its electoral system.

“Why would you go back and vote in another rigged election,” Mr. Wood said.

Ms. Powell added “There should not be a runoff, certainly not on Dominion machines,” she told the crowd. “I would encourage all Georgians to make it known that you will not vote at all until your vote is secure. I mean that regardless of party. We can’t live in a free republic unless we know our votes are legal and secure.”QAnon

Ms. Powell has pushed numerous conspiracy theories without evidence that massive voter fraud occurred and that Mr. Trump is the winner of the 2020 election.

The lawyer has filed numerous error-filled lawsuits and has referenced individuals like Ron Watkins – who is believed to be a major driver of the QAnon conspiracy movement – in her filings.

Ms. Powell filed her lawsuit – which she dubbed “releasing the Kraken” – in Georgia on Friday. But the filing contained several typos and its metadata suggested another individual with ties to the White House, Juli Haller, actually authored the filing.

Ms. Haller works at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and was named in a lawsuit alleging she had mistreated an Iranian-American at the agency.

The challenge to Georgia’s elections comes a day after a Republican election official in the state called on Mr. Trump and other top Republicans to stop their attacks on the democratic process.

“Someone’s going to get hurt, someone’s going to get shot, someone’s going to get killed,” Mr. Sterling said during a press conference. “It’s not right.”

The state’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has received death threats to himself and his family from angry Trump supporters who believe without evidence that he is complicit in election fraud in the state.

Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue have called on Mr. Raffensperger to step down, and Mr. Trump called him an “enemy of the people” during a press conference in which he claimed without evidence that the Secretary of State cut a deal with Democratic lawyer Stacey Abrams to throw the election.

“It has to stop,” Mr. Sterling said. “Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language. Senators, you have not condemned this language or these actions. This has to stop. We need you to step up. And if you take a position of leadership, show some.”

Not to be outdone by his insane lawyers, Donald Trump ranted for 46 minutes about voter fraud in a prerecorded speech he posted on Facebook on Wednesday, making unsubstantiated claims about the election being stolen from him and without evidence claiming that he triumphed in key battleground states he lost.

Seriously Facebook? WTF is wrong with you Zuckerberg. Twitter at least posted a warning to the president’s account that “This claim about election frud is disputed.” Jack Dorsey should have suspended this Twitter account a long time ago.

Statement by Donald J. Trump, The President of the United States

Full Video: https://t.co/EHqzsLbbJG pic.twitter.com/Eu4IsLNsKD

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2020

The disreputable conspiracy theory lawyer Sidney Powell has now brought her “release the Kraken” lawsuit, apparently actually drafted by Juli Haller at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, to Arizona appearing pro haec vice through the Arizona law firm of Kolodin Law Group PLLC, with Alexander Kolodin and Christopher Viskovic of the law firm signing off on her “Kraken” lawsuit. It looks like several more bar complaints are in order.

Howard Fischer reports, Trump supporters file federal suit seeking to overturn Arizona’s election results:

Supporters of President Trump filed a complaint (.pdf) in federal court Wednesday in their latest bid to throw out the certified popular vote results that awarded Arizona’s 11 electors to Joe Biden.

The Plaintiffs are the Republican presidential electors for Donald Trump, including two Arizona legislators, Anthony Kern and the recently elected Jake Hoffman, and the Arizona Republican Party chair Kelli Ward, and her husband.

The lawsuit alleges “widespread ballot fraud,” due in part to Dominion Voting Systems machines used in Maricopa County, which they assert were designed purposely to take votes away from Trump.

Attorney Sidney Powell specifically blames that on Eric Coomer, an executive with the company, and “his visceral and public rage against the current U.S. president.” She said it is part of a criminal conspiracy.

Dominion officials have repeatedly said the company’s software and hardware are secure.

Copy and paste pleadings apparently.

https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1334253262904635392

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward, among others, also claims poll watchers were unable to adequately monitor that the signatures on envelopes of mail-in ballots were verified. It refers to “biased and partisan Maricopa County poll referees.”

It also says not enough people were allowed to observe the process.

Overall, the lawsuit claims, there were at least 412,494 illegal ballots counted in Arizona, far more than Biden’s 10,547-vote margin over Trump.

It cites a phone survey that called people who were listed as having requested early ballots.
The lawsuit says there were 518,560 unreturned early ballots. Using estimates based on the sample survey, it says that between 208,333 to 229,337 of these went to people who had not requested them.

“All of these absentee ballots were sent to someone besides the registered voter named in the request, and thus could have been filled out by anyone and then submitted in the name of another voter,” it says.

And it says up to another 94,975 people — based on the sample — had returned ballots but did not have them recorded as voting.

“These absentee ballots were either lost or destroyed (consistent with allegations of Trump ballot destruction) and/or were replaced with blank ballots filled out by election workers, Dominion or other third parties,” the lawsuit said.

Another claim is that 5,085 Arizona voters in the 2020 general election moved out of state prior to voting and were therefore ineligible.

“The fraud was executed by many means, but the most fundamentally troubling, insidious, and egregious ploy was the systematic adaption of old-fashioned ‘ballot stuffing’,” Powell wrote. “It has not been amplified and rendered virtually invisible by computer software created and run by domestic and foreign actors for that very purpose.”

Powell and her clients want the court to block the certification of the election results. That, in turn, would give power to the Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature to decide who gets the electoral votes. [No, it would not].

Prior lawsuits challenging the election —including some by Powell’s Arizona co-counsel Alexander Kolodin — have been dismissed.

This copy and paste lawsuit is going to run into the same problems it has in other states. Wisconsin Federal Judge Picks Apart Sidney Powell and Lin Wood’s Lawsuit in ‘Brutal’ Order:

The federal judge presiding over Sidney Powell and L. Lin Wood’s lawsuit challenging Wisconsin’s election results issued a ruling on Wednesday that reads like a laundry list of embarrassing procedural failures and omissions, highlighting what could well represent the nadir of post-election legal ineptitude.

Filed Tuesday in Wisconsin’s Eastern District, the complaint—which asked the court to direct the state to declare President Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 election—proved immediately problematic, as one of the named plaintiffs stated that the attorneys used his name without permission.

I learned through social media today that my name was included in a lawsuit without my permission. To be clear, I am not involved in the lawsuit seeking to overturn the election in Wisconsin.

— Derrick Van Orden (@derrickvanorden) December 1, 2020

Things only got worse from there, with Powell and Wood demanding the immediate production of 48 hours of security camera footage from the TCF Center, which is a convention center used as a voting station on Election Day. It is located in downtown Detroit, Michigan.

On Wednesday, Chief U.S. District Judge Pamela Pepper, an appointee of Barack Obama, took the attorneys to task, bluntly laying out the litany of basic mistakes made in the complaint.

* * *

The newly-added proposed order didn’t ask for a hearing on the matter, however, and didn’t indicate whether the Defendants had been notified about any of the filings.

Thus, under the court’s rules, the defendants have up to 21 days to respond to the complaint, meaning a response isn’t required until a week after the Electoral College votes President-elect Joe Biden into office.

As attorney Mike Dunford put it: “it would appear that Sidney Powell, Lin Wood, and the rest of their lunatics managed to get more things wrong while initiating a case than anyone should be able to possibly manage without making a conscious effort.”

This dangerous insanity has to STOP. And these lawyers should be disbarred.