48 Days Until the Biden/Harris Inauguration: Will We Make It?
The drama never stops with Donald Trump in the White House. They’re hosting maskless holiday parties, even as the coronavirus task force is quietly urging states to take drastic measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.
An ongoing Department of Justice investigation into a pay-for-pardons scheme involving the White House came to light yesterday as a highly redacted document was unsealed by district judge for the District of Columbia, Beryl A. Howell. (Side note: Howell was the judge overseeing the Mueller investigation.)
From the New York Times:
Given Mr. Trump’s undisciplined approach to pardons, the disclosure, coming amid a flurry of reports about how Mr. Trump has been discussing whether to pardon his children and close confidants in the final weeks of his presidency, raised fears that the pardon process may have been corrupted.
Mr. Trump pardoned his former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn on Wednesday, and had talks with his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani last week about a pre-emptive pardon for Mr. Giuliani before he leaves office. The president has also had discussions with advisers about how he fears that a Biden Justice Department could seek retribution against him by prosecuting his children.
As court case after court case (Team Trump is 1-39 as of this morning) alleging voter fraud goes into the dustbin, the tin foil hat set is taking over, keeping fact checkers busy bubunking conspiracies.
https://twitter.com/jrrosswrites/status/1333851756820836356?s=20
General Mike Flynn, freed from the consequences of lying to the FBI via presidential pardon, has endorsed a full page ad in the Washington Times calling for the president to impose martial law and force a redo of the general election.
https://twitter.com/jjmacnab/status/1334136609218949123?s=20
Now that Homeland Security and the Justice Department have bailed on the idea of massive electoral fraud, the White House has opted to go after the social media companies who are desperately trying to keep a lid on a flood of factually challenged information designed to incite Trumpanistas.
Officials who dare to challenge these misrepresentations are now getting death threats. Nobody officially associated with the administration is openly encouraging this; they don’t need to.
Joe diGenova, a lawyer for the Trump campaign, had said that Chris Krebs — a former federal cybersecurity official who vouched that the election was clean — should be shot. (He later said those remarks were “made in jest.”)
An election official in Georgia made an emotional plea for the president and his followers to disavow threats being made against voting system employees, leaders and even contract employees.
From the New York Times:
“It has to stop,” Gabriel Sterling, a Republican and Georgia’s voting system implementation manager, said at an afternoon news conference at the state Capitol, his voice shaking with emotion. “Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language.”
He added: “This is elections. This is the backbone of democracy, and all of you who have not said a damn word are complicit in this. It’s too much.”
The president has doubled down on a threat to veto the National Defense Authorization Act for 2021. In addition to demanding that Congress allow American military bases to continue to be named after Confederate traitors, he’s calling for the repeal of a federal law known as Section 230, a decades-old federal law that spares a wide array of sites and services from being held liable for the content posted by their users.
Trump is upset that his mean tweets about the election results and COVID-19 keep getting labeled as misleading, so he’s choosing to take over what should be a serious debate about the responsibilities of internet platforms by making a demand that even his congressional supporters (well, many of them) can’t stomach.
This time the President might have gone too far. From Bloomberg:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are moving to bring the defense authorization bill for a vote in both chambers, likely testing President Donald Trump’s threat to veto the bill, according to a congressional aide familiar with the discussions.
Neither chamber’s defense bill includes legislation about Section 230, the tech liability shield that Trump says must be abolished by Congress
Pelosi is ready to bring the bipartisan bill to the floor, says a senior Democratic aide who asked not to be named in order to discuss plans
Separately, McConnell is planning to name conferees to the defense authorization negotiations, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, says in an interview
Senate on Wednesday morning agreed to officially proceed to conference on the defense bill by unanimous consent
A fight over a veto on this bill would stall imperil negotiations underway to pass an interim spending bill, averting a shutdown of the federal government on December 12.
Still, Republicans on Wednesday showed some signs of exasperation with the president’s latest effort. As one GOP lawmaker put it: “Republicans are sick of this shit.”
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, put it more delicately. While he said he understood the president’s frustrations with Section 230, it was not worth imperiling the broader defense bill.
“The NDAA is so important to the men and women that wear the uniform that this should not be an item to veto the act over,” he said. “So I would hope he would reconsider his position on it.”
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https://twitter.com/KagroX/status/1334214843612745735?s=20
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