Trump's various attempts to challenge election results

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John R. Lott of the US Department of Justice...

At least 140 Republicans in Congress are expected to support President Trump’s bid to overturn the results of the Electoral College next week.

The Jan. 6 vote is likely to fail and divide Republicans as President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take office Jan. 20.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said Wednesday he would join with a group of House Republicans objecting to the results, ensuring there is a vote on whether to accept the Electoral College outcome.

At least 140 House Republicans will back the effort, two lawmakers told CNN. There will be 211 House Republicans and at least 50 Senate Republicans in office when the vote occurs. There are two Georgia Senate runoffs on Jan. 5.

A member of both the House and Senate must object to trigger actual floor votes on whether to accept the outcome.

But once the objections are made, the House and Senate hold separate votes. Both chambers must accept an objection. Because Democrats will control the House, it’s unlikely that the effort will prevail in the lower courts.

Behind the scenes: McConnell said on the call that the Jan. 6 vote is "a vote of conscience," these sources said.

A source paraphrased McConnell as saying, "I'm finishing 36 years in the Senate and I've cast a lot of big votes." including over war and impeachment.

"And in my view, just my view," McConnell said, "this is will be the most consequential I have ever cast."
"The context was McConnell saying we're being asked to overturn the results after a guy didn't get as many electoral votes and lost by 7 million popular votes," the source said.

Many Republican senators are furious at Hawley for forcing them to take what Trump is setting up as the ultimate loyalty test on January 6th.

Hawley has no plans to back down from his decision to object to the certification of the electoral votes — a ploy destined to fail on Jan. 6.

Hawley has been fundraising off of his planned objection to the election results, and this afternoon he emailed his Senate colleagues explaining his reasoning and copy-pasting a public press release he issued the day before to announce his decision.

In his email to his colleagues, Hawley made clear he was responding to pressures from his constituents.

A city accustomed to mass protests is gearing up for especially intense ones over what should be the most mundane of political events: the counting of Electoral College votes during a special joint session of Congress.

At the urging of President Donald Trump, however, die-hard supporters are planning to descend on the nation's capital Jan. 6, to pressure Republican lawmakers into aligning themselves with the doomed effort to overturn Joe Biden's electoral victory.

Knife fights, shouting matches, and verbal harassment of Trump opponents accompanied previous demonstrations following Biden's election win in November. Now federal and local law enforcement are bracing for what may be the most intense Trump protest yet as Congress is poised to formally declare Biden president-elect.

Various Trump groups are promoting the demonstrations online. One called "#StopTheSteal" operates the website "WildProtest.com," which proclaims that "PRESIDENT TRUMP WANTS YOU IN DC JANUARY 6."

On Friday, New Year's Day, Trump tweeted that the "the BIG Protest Rally" in Washington will be at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 6. "Locational details to follow," Trump said.

The National Park Service has received three different permit applications for protests to be scheduled around the electoral vote count.

The United States Park Police confirmed that the permits had all been approved but not yet issued.

On the social media app Parler and far-right message boards, members of the group "Proud Boys" have discussed organizing in Washington D.C. and a leader of the group, Enrique Tarrio, suggested they will be incognito.

The Proud Boys will turn out in record numbers on Jan 6th but this time with a twist," Tarrio said on Parler.

"We will not be wearing our traditional Black and Yellow. We will be incognito and we will spread across downtown DC in smaller teams," he wrote.

Tarrio also posited that the group may dress in all-black gear at night, a style similar to the black bloc clothing tactic used by Antifa groups who often combat the Proud Boys.

Many restaurants and office buildings in downtown Washington, D.C., are already boarded up, just as they were for demonstrations in the summer regarding racial justice and, more recently, the presidential election.

Trump, who Thursday cut short his end-of-the-year trip to South Florida and returned to the White House, has promoted the Jan. 6 protests by his backers.

JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!" Trump tweeted on Wednesday, a theme he echoed throughout the holidays.

Trump has not said whether he plans to attend any of the rallies scheduled for Jan. 6.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page, which has often supported the Trump administration, said Republicans need to think about what would happen if Congress somehow denied Biden sufficient electoral votes and instead declared Trump the winner.

"Riots in the streets would be the least of it," the editorial said.

Nearly a dozen Republican senators and senators-elect announced Saturday they will vote against counting electoral votes next week when Congress is expected to certify President-elect Joe Biden's victory -- despite no credible evidence suggesting widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.

The 11 Republican lawmakers said they intend to support an objection to the Electoral College votes, if one is brought, and propose an election commission to conduct an "emergency 10-day audit" of the election returns in the "disputed states." The group includes Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Steve Daines of Montana, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, and Mike Braun of Indiana, and Sens.-elect Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.

"A fair and credible audit—conducted expeditiously and completed well before January 20—would dramatically improve Americans' faith in our electoral process and would significantly enhance the legitimacy of whoever becomes our next President. We owe that to the People," they said in a statement, adding that Congress' vote on January 6 is the "lone constitutional power remaining to consider and force resolution of the multiple allegations of serious voter fraud."

In their statement, the 11 GOP senators and senators-elect did not specify the states they intend to reject, but Hawley has signaled that he plans to object to at least one state's certification, Pennsylvania.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell -- who has said the vote would mark one of the most significant, perhaps the most significant, he'd ever cast -- has told the Senate GOP conference to vote their conscience but has also privately urged members not to join the efforts.

A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit from Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas and several Arizona Republicans seeking to force Vice President Mike Pence to help throw the election to President Donald Trump next week when Congress meets to count the Electoral College votes.

Judge Jeremy Kernodle of the Eastern District of Texas said on Friday that Gohmert and the others lacked standing to sue. In a filing late Friday, Gohmert and other plaintiffs filed a notice of appeal to the Fifth Circuit of the US Court of Appeals.

Pence on Thursday asked Kernodle to reject the case, arguing that the legal issues from Gohmert should be directed to the House and Senate, rather than the vice president. Pence's filing did not say if he would entertain the possibility of interfering in the Electoral College count, but there is no public indication that he will.
"(A) suit to establish that the Vice President has discretion over the count, filed against the Vice President, is a walking legal contradiction," Pence said.

"Ironically, Representative Gohmert's position, if adopted by the Court, would actually deprive him of his opportunity as a Member of the House under the Electoral Count Act to raise objections to the counting of electoral votes, and then to debate and vote on them," Pence's filing added.

President Donald Trump begged Georgia's secretary of state to overturn the election results in an astounding hourlong phone call obtained Sunday by NBC News in which the president offered a smorgasbord of false claims about voter fraud and repeatedly berated state officials.

"So look," Trump told Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. "All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state."

Excerpts of the call, which took place Saturday, were first published Sunday by The Washington Post.

Trump even suggested that Raffensperger, who is a Republican, may face criminal consequences should he refuse to intervene in accordance with Trump's wishes.

Raffensperger and his office's general counsel, Ryan Germany, pushed back against Trump's claims and said President-elect Joe Biden's victory of more than 12,700 votes was accurate.

"The people of Georgia are angry. The people in the country are angry," Trump said in the call. "And there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you've recalculated."

Raffensperger responded, "Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong."

“We now have irrefutable proof of a president pressuring and threatening an official of his own party to get him to rescind a state's lawful, certified vote count and fabricate another in its place," Biden senior adviser Bob Bauer said in a statement. "It captures the whole, disgraceful story about Donald Trump's assault on American democracy.

At an event in Savannah, Georgia, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris referred to the call as "a bald, bald face, bold abuse of power by the president of the United States."

Other Trump allies were present on the phone call, including White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and attorney Cleta Mitchell.

"There's no way I lost Georgia," Trump said. "There's no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes."

Meadows at one point suggested that the secretary of state's office and Trump's team find a path forward to resolve the dispute that did not involve the courts. Raffensperger said he did not believe there was one.

At one point in the call, Trump alleged that votes were scanned three times.

"You know, they put 'em in three times," Trump said, a claim that Raffensperger said was untrue.

“Do you think it's possible that they shredded ballots in Fulton County?" Trump said. "Because that is what the rumor is. And also that Dominion took out machines. That Dominion is really moving fast to get rid of their, uh, machinery. Do you know anything about that? Because that's illegal." Germany said none of those things happened.

Another point of contention was over "a large number" of voters who Trump claimed did not live in Georgia. Germany explained that some were residents who moved back to Georgia years ago after having left.

Raffensperger said Trump was being misled by claims on social media. Trump repeatedly mentioned Ruby Freeman, a Georgia election worker who has been the target of false conspiracy theories online.

"Mr. President, the problem you have with social media is that people can say anything," he said.

"Nah, this isn't social media," Trump responded. "This is Trump media."

Democrats in and out of Georgia were swift to respond to the tape.

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., called for a criminal investigation.

The President is unhinged and dangerous," he added. "Those who encourage and support his conduct, including my Senate colleagues, are putting the orderly and peaceful transition of power in our nation at risk."

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said the phone call amounted to an impeachable act.

Sedition charges x140

So how much immunity from prosecution does Dictator Trump get?

A recorded one-hour discussion between President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger will now be heading to the courts, according to Georgia's Republican Party chairman.

Hours after the Washington Post broke the story of a call where Trump is heard pressuring the state election head to "recalculate" the votes, Republican Party chair David Shafer said the president plans to sue.

"President @realDonaldTrump has filed two lawsuits - federal and state - against @GaSecofState," Shafer tweeted. "The telephone conference call @GaSecofState secretly recorded was a 'confidential settlement discussion' of that litigation, which is still pending."

Shafer, earlier in the afternoon, called the recording "mind boggling" and suggested that it was done by Raffensperger and his lawyers.



However, at this point, no agency has officially released where the audio officially came from - or who recorded it.

He said he has made open records requests regarding the recording which "have never been acknowledged or answered."

And while Shafer was perhaps the first major name to weigh in on the release, at least one other name currently at the center of Georgia politics has done so as well - and has a very different opinion.

"At this moment, when the President of the United States calls on Georgia's election officials and tries to intimidate them to change the result of the election to disenfranchise Georgia voters, to disenfranchise Black voters in Georgia who delivered this state for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, that is a direct attack on our democracy," Jon Ossoff said.

It’s the phone call now capturing attention nationwide.

“It’s unprecedented,” said Mike Hassinger, a GOP political strategist.

Andra Gillespie from Emory University, however, thinks many voters have already made up their minds by this point.

“People’s preferences were already pretty hardwired and people who supported the Republican candidates are probably going to continue to do so regardless of what President Trump did,” she said.

"That's what I mean by GOP voters needing help. Blindly voting for a party that props up a criminal indicates a lack of critical thought.