Tag: Trump and GOP want to create a dictatorship

Ron Johnson gambles his political future on Trump

The Wisconsin Republican is holding a hearing on alleged election “irregularities” even after Biden secured an Electoral College victory.

Ron Johnson is embracing President Donald Trump as tightly as possible as he decides whether to run for reelection to a must-win Senate seat for Republicans.

Johnson, a steadfast Trump ally who has endeared himself to the president with his various investigative pursuits, is defending his approach, even as he faces a possible reelection campaign in a state that President-elect Joe Biden won in November. And Democrats are taking notice.

The Wisconsin Republican, who says he has not yet decided whether to seek a third term in 2022, has used his perch as the chairman of the Senate’s chief oversight body to investigate Trump’s political foes — from Hunter Biden to Hillary Clinton and the slew of Obama administration officials who launched the Russia probe — and is set to hold a hearing Wednesday on alleged “irregularities” in the election even as he recognizes Biden as the president-elect. Continue reading.

Trump Allies Eye Long-Shot Election Reversal in Congress, Testing Pence

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Some House Republicans plan to try to use Congress’s tallying of electoral results on Jan. 6 to tip the election to President Trump. The attempt will put Republicans in a pinch.

President Trump lost key swing states by clear margins. His barrage of lawsuits claiming widespread voting fraud has been almost universally dismissed, most recently by the Supreme Court. And on Monday, the Electoral College will formally cast a majority of its votes for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

But as the president continues to refuse to concede, a small group of his most loyal backers in Congress is plotting a final-stage challenge on the floor of the House of Representatives in early January to try to reverse Mr. Biden’s victory.

Constitutional scholars and even members of the president’s own party say the effort is all but certain to fail. But the looming battle on Jan. 6 is likely to culminate in a messy and deeply divisive spectacle that could thrust Vice President Mike Pence into the excruciating position of having to declare once and for all that Mr. Trump has indeed lost the election. Continue reading.

Texas GOP actually suggests secession after Trump’s Supreme Court election challenge fails

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After the Supreme Court decisively shut down a lawsuit attempting to overturn the 2020 election, Texas GOP Chair Allen West issued a disturbing statement floating the idea of possible secession over the result.

The case was brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, though it was widely panned by legal experts. Some believed that Paxton, currently under investigation by the FBI, was using the lawsuit as a vehicle to win President Donald Trump’s favor and obtain a presidential pardon. Despite the lack of merits, the president and his allies rallied behind the lawsuit, with Trump himself calling it “the big one” — apparently trying to distinguish it from the more than 50 additional failed election lawsuits filed on his behalf.

From the start, the lawsuit never had the chance. Paxton tried to exploit a feature of the constitutional system that allows states to sue each other before the Supreme Court. But Paxton’s arguments that four key swing states had violated the Constitution in conducting their elections were specious, and there was no reason to take them seriously. The court concluded, unsurprisingly, that Texas didn’t even have the standing to bring a challenge to other states on this ground and rejected the argument without it even being officially filed. Continue reading.

In Blistering Retort, 4 Battleground States Tell Texas to Butt Out of Election

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The attorneys general of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia asked the Supreme Court to reject a lawsuit from Texas seeking to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victories.

WASHINGTON — In blistering language denouncing Republican efforts to subvert the election, the attorneys general for Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to reject a lawsuit that seeks to overturn the victories in those states by President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., calling the audacious effort an affront to democracy and the rule of law.

The lawsuit, filed by the Republican attorney general of Texas and backed by his G.O.P. colleagues in 17 other states and 106 Republican members of Congress, represents the most coordinated, politicized attempt to overturn the will of the voters in recent American history. President Trump has asked to intervene in the lawsuit as well in hopes that the Supreme Court will hand him a second term he decisively lost.

The suit is the latest in a spectacularly unsuccessful legal effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn the results, with cases so lacking in evidence that judges at all levels have mocked or condemned them as without merit. Legal experts have derided this latest suit as well, which makes the audacious claim, at odds with ordinary principles of federalism, that the Supreme Court should investigate and override the election systems of four states at the behest of a fifth. Continue reading.

More than 100 House Republicans sign brief backing Texas lawsuit challenging election results

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More than 100 House Republicans on Thursday signed an amicus brief in support of the Texas lawsuit aimed at overturning the election results in four swing states — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that handed Democrat Joe Biden the White House.

“This brief presents [our] concern as Members of Congress, shared by untold millions of their constituents, that the unconstitutional irregularities involved in the 2020 presidential election cast doubt upon its outcome and the integrity of the American system of elections,” states the brief signed by 106 GOP lawmakers.

Outgoing Republican Study Committee Chairman Mike Johnson (La.) — one of President Trump’s closest allies in the House, having served on his impeachment defense team — helped lead the effort to garner support from his GOP colleagues for the brief. Johnson is joining the GOP leadership team in the new Congress. Continue reading.

Pennsylvania AG blasts Texas election suit as ‘seditious abuse’ of judicial process

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Pennsylvania’s attorney general on Thursday called Texas’s bid to invalidate the election results of Pennsylvania and three other battleground states a “seditious abuse of the judicial process.” 

The fiery Supreme Court brief from state Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D), which urged the justices to “send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated,” came as battle lines hardened in the unprecedented and long-shot legal dispute.

Texas on Monday filed a petition to the Supreme Court seeking to stop presidential electors in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin from finalizing President-elect Joe Biden‘s victory. Continue reading.

Actually, all Minnesota GOPers in Congress signed brief to overturn election result

A clerical error left Reps. Jim Hagedorn and Pete Stauber off the list.

Rep. Tom Emmer wasn’t the only congressional Republican from Minnesota to sign an amicus brief to overturn the election result in favor of President Donald Trump.

Despite Joe Biden beating Trump in the Nov. 3 election, parts of the Republican Party and the Trump campaign have made numerous attempts to overturn the result through the courts, with the potential impact of disenfranchising millions of voters.

The latest attempt has seen the Texas Attorney General file a brief claiming the changes to mail-in and absentee voting in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Michigan were unconstitutional as the changes weren’t made by state legislatures. Continue reading.