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VA GOP VOTER REG FRAUDSTER OFF HOOK
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The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...


Smartmatic, which had nothing to do with swing-state elections, threatens RW media outlets with defamation suits; Also: Actual voter fraud criminal Trump not allowed to live at Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach neighbors warn...
By Brad Friedman on 12/16/2020 8:11pm PT  

So, yeah, I'm a bit grumpy on today's BradCast. When you listen, you'll get an idea why. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

For one, I'm actually forced to defend a voting machine company. That could be a first in my nearly two decades of investigative reporting on Election Integrity and the woeful private voting system vendors who have been allowed to take over our public elections with their crappy, over-priced, often-unverifiable, easily-manipulated hardware and software. In this case, however, the claims made against one such company --- based on a twisted, bastardized re-imagining of my otherwise accurate and independently verifiable deep-dive reporting from more than a decade ago --- by sore-loser Donald Trump's dishonest attorneys and media stooges, need to be pushed back against, lest they further Trump's goal of undermining the United States' Constitutional republican democracy entirely.

Lawsuits may be coming in this case, warns Smartmatic's CEO, after the firm has been falsely blamed for stealing the election for Joe Biden in states where they do not even do business. (Their only contract in the U.S. is here in Los Angeles County. But that hasn't stopped Team Trump and the MAGA Mob from conflating them with a completely separate company, a competitor named Dominion Voting Systems, which has also been falsely blamed for stealing the election in jurisdictions where they do no business either.)

The bullshit, evidence-free claims of fraud continue from the deranged President and his pathetic team of desperate sycophants nonetheless. The latest nonsense comes via a so-called "forensic audit" by a so-called "military intelligence" outfit named Allied Security Operations Groups (or ASOG) which clearly knows nothing about voting systems or even election law. At least if you believe actual independent voting system and cybersecurity experts who examined their absurd, evidence-free allegations of "ELECTION FRAUD!"

Republicans in Congress clearly do not believe such experts, as GOP Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin held a ridiculous hearing on phony 2020 election fraud conspiracy claims in the U.S. Senate Government Affairs Committee today, no matter the lack of evidence for any such fraud. That, as more than 300,000 Americans --- more than the number of those killed during combat in all of World War II --- have now died from COVID-19 over the past nine months. Johnson and the rest of his caucus continue to largely ignore the deadly scourge while Americans are out of work by the tens of millions and about to be tossed from their homes amid the worst pandemic in a century. Both myself --- and Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) --- have a word or two about all of that shamefulness as well today.

Meanwhile, actual voter fraud criminal Donald Trump, is coming under legal scrutiny again for the fact that he is unlawfully registered to vote in Florida at a non-legal voting domicile (Mar-a-Lago, a commercial club, as Trump agreed back in 1993 when the town of Palm Beach allowed him to convert the once-private residence into a business). He went on to unlawfully vote twice this past year --- one by mail and one in-person --- using that non-legal "residence" as his voting address. All three acts are felonies by the President of the United States under state law in Florida, though its corrupt Governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump sycophant himself, doesn't appear to give a damn. Laws --- including election laws --- apparently do not apply to Republicans, especially if they happen to be sore-loser Presidents offering bullshit claims about election fraud in hopes of bringing down American democracy. But, as the neighbors to Mar-a-Lago are now warning, Trump will not be welcome to take residence, lawfully or otherwise, after his Presidency mercifully ends in historic failure next month.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with the U.S. on the verge of breaking another record for billion-dollar climate-related disasters in a single year; insurance companies cancelling homeowner policies in California amid record wildfires; and as the U.N. warns yet again that the world must pick up the pace in order to slow the very worst effects of deadly global warming.

Other than that, everything is fantastic today!

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Guest: Slate legal reporter Mark Joseph Stern on recent cases, Bill Barr, Kris Kobach and accountability for TX' attempt to overturn the election; Also: GOP now eating its own with GA's U.S. Senate runoffs underway...
By Brad Friedman on 12/15/2020 7:54pm PT  

On today's BradCast: While the GOP's packed and stolen 6 to 3 U.S. Supreme Court did the right thing last Friday in unanimously rejecting [PDF] indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's attempt to steal the 2020 election (and receive a Presidential Pardon for his thanks), there remains the question of accountability for those who signed on to the frivolous and arguably "seditious" attempt to undermine democracy. Especially from the 19 wingnut state Attorneys General who should both have known better and, according to our guest today, have a legal obligation to do so. In the meantime, SCOTUS made a couple of other rulings this week that have received far less notice, but that are also surprisingly good, given the Court's radical, far-right majority. [Audio link to full show is posted below summary.]

But first up today, a few quick observations on the Republican Party that now seems to be eating itself alive in the wake of Trump's loss. On yesterday's BradCast we noted the weekend MAGA Mob rally in D.C., where angry brain-poisoned Trump supporters broke into chants of "Destroy the GOP!" before booing Georgia's incumbent Republican U.S. Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue who are facing tough runoffs against Democratic challengers Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff for contests that will determine control of the U.S. Senate on January 5.

Today, sore loser Donald Trump, who has been attacking Georgia's extremely Trumpy Republican Governor Brian Kemp and Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger for weeks in order to (absurdly) blame them, instead of himself, for losing the election in the state, upped the stakes considerably. He retweeted a message from a mentally unbalanced Georgia attorney and conspiracy theorist calling for Kemp and Raffensperger to be jailed. The post also includes Photoshopped graphics of Kemp and Raffensperger --- both of whom are Trump supporters that have faced death threats since Trump turned on them --- wearing masks with Chinese flags on them.

But, hey, at least Mitch McConnell finally recognized the election of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris today, after Monday's Electoral College vote confirmed their "landslide" victory. Also, one "courageous" and very rightwing House Republican, on Monday, decided he has finally had enough of his colleagues' attacks on democracy itself and has announced he is officially becoming an "independent"...now that he'll be leaving Congress at the end of the year anyway.

Then its on to a number of not horrible things done over the past several days by the U.S. Supreme Court, as we are delighted to be joined once again by one of our very favorite legal reporters, MARK JOSEPH STERN of Slate.

On Monday, SCOTUS rejected an appeal by the state of Indiana in a years-long case brought by a number of married lesbian couples regarding marriage rights. The couples all had children using artificial insemination, but Indiana law had forced the spouses of the women who gave birth to go through onerous, expensive adoption procedures in order to become a legal parent. There is no such requirement for men in opposite-sex marriages to do so in similar situations. Happily, the Court dismissed Indiana's challenge to lower courts which found the state's law unconstitutional, in what might have been the first chance to roll back marriage equality protections since Amy Coney Barrett was rammed onto the Court.

Also on Monday, SCOTUS put a merciful end, once and for all, to the voter suppression law written by disgraced former Kansas Sec. of State and GOP "voter fraud" fraudster Kris Kobach requiring proof of citizenship papers when registering to vote in the state. The 2013 law would have disenfranchised tens of thousands of legal Kansas voters and was found unconstitutional by court after court. The SCOTUS decision to not hear the case finally makes Kobach's unnecessary law a dead letter, though Stern says he believes it's likely to pop up again in similar forms from other states, given the radical, anti-voter, anti-immigrant, anti-democracy fever running rampant right now in the GOP.

In addition to a eulogy, of sorts, for the pathetic "clownish" legacy of Kansas' failed former Sec. of State, failed gubernatorial candidate and failed Senatorial candidate, Kobach --- who is also now mixed up with an anti-immigrant "Build the Wall" group facing fraud charges with Steve Bannon --- Stern unloads with another eulogy for the legacy of another similarly disgraced rightwinger today, U.S. Attorney General and Trump fixer Bill Barr. Trump tweeted on Monday that Barr would be leaving DoJ just weeks before the one-term President leaves office, after Barr had the temerity to admit that there is no known evidence of mass voter fraud that stole the election for Biden.

Barr, Stern argues, is "more offensive, terrifying and obnoxious" than Trump himself, because he is "
a creature of the Republican Establishment, a creature of the conservative legal movement. Bill Barr is at the heart of it." He believes "Barr did immense damage to the rule of law" and "may have permanently hobbled the Justice Department's integrity and legitimacy." That's just part of Stern's invective for Barr, who he describes as "just an awful person, and I wish him nothing but bad luck for the rest of his life."

Finally, we dig into the mess surrounding the shameless attempt to win a Presidential Pardon by TX Attorney General Paxton, who, as he filed his suit last week, was also subpoenaed by the FBI in a bribery and abuse of power investigation by the FBI. His lawsuit [PDF] filed with SCOTUS on behalf of Texas, sought to nullify all of the votes --- some 20 million of them --- in four different states (Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia) in a fruitless attempt to steal the election for Trump. We've got lots to discuss on this today. The radical legal concept at the center of Paxton's case (and several others which similarly failed over the past month) would nullify all election laws, rules and regulations not expressly enacted by state legislatures and ONLY state legislatures. In addition to turning centuries of American democracy and voting rights on its head, this literal, radical, ill-considered, "textualist " or "originalist" reading of the Constitution's Elections Clause --- arguing that Governors, Secretaries of State and even state courts may have no say at all over election rules --- would have broad ramifications for all sorts of other laws. For example, as we discuss, if Governors may no longer veto State Legislatures regarding election laws, does that mean a President may not veto Congress on tax laws, given they are granted the power of taxation in the Constitution by a similarly literal reading?

While SCOTUS rejected Paxton's case on jurisdictional grounds Friday night, many of the failed cases brought by Team Trump hoping to overturn the election results over the past month similarly relied on that radical theory. They were tossed before that question could be answered by the courts, however. So, will Republicans continue to push for a SCOTUS opinion on this matter from the high court in the months and years ahead? Stern believes that, before Amy Coney Barrett was added to the Court, there were at least four Justices who had signaled willingness to support the radical theory.

Should Texas' election results also be thrown out under Paxton's theory, given that its Governor Greg Abbott, without legislative approval, limited mail-in dropboxes to just one per county for November? How about Alabama's results, where its Republican Sec. of State John Merrill decreed curbside voting to be unlawful in a case which was met with approval by SCOTUS earlier this year?

Also, what of the 18 state Attorneys General who signed on to Paxton's cuckoo complaint, who are members of the bar and officers of the court with a duty to not bringing frivolous, much less arguably "seditious" (as Pennsylvania's defendant AG described it) lawsuits. Should they be punished in some way? Can they be sanctioned for their actions? And, as one caller asked during yesterday's show, should all of these repeated attempts filed by Republicans in hopes of overturning a legitimate Presidential election be regarded as "treasonous"? (My answer yesterday was "no", but does Stern agree?)

All of that and much more on today's very lively --- and, hopefully, informative --- BradCast!...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Also: BARR OUT AT DOJ; Trump legal fights mopped up, rejected in WI; MAGA Mob sparks weekend violence in D.C., shuts down MI capitol...
By Brad Friedman on 12/14/2020 7:50pm PT  

On today's BradCast, we won't be broken, even by more breaking news than we might have guessed. [Audio link to complete show is posted below.]

We knew we were starting with late breaking news today as California gave President-elect Joe Biden the requisite votes (270) needed to win the Electoral College just minutes before air time. But, because this is the Trump Era, that was quickly superseded by the breaking news just seconds before air time that Donald Trump's corrupt fixer and Attorney General Bill Barr is now out at the Dept. of Justice after recently conceding there was no massive fraud in the 2020 election that Trump decisively lost.

In other news covered on today's program on what developed into a surprisingly good news day by and large (at least by 2020 standards)...

  • We begin with a fireside story for your holidays called "The President's New Suit". Spoiler alert: only his closest courtiers and sycophants (126 House members and, even more shamefully, 19 wingnut state Attorneys General) can see it. Even his stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court saw nothing there on Friday and dismissed the last-ditch effort to disenfranchise millions of American voters in four swing-states that voted for Biden, as filed last week by the indicted Republican Texas Attorney General and Presidential Pardon Hustler Ken Paxton.
  • As the nation crosses its latest undescribably grim milestone today of more than 300,000 deaths from COVID-19, Trump continued to spend his time over the weekend lying about about "fraud" in the election that he lost, rather than the lives needlessly lost under his failed pandemic management as the surging crisis continues to smash new records each day. But, on Monday, the first doses of the first approved vaccine for the disease began to be distributed and administered to health workers and elderly Americans in assisted living facilities. It will likely be Spring before much of the general public will have access.
  • No matter his lies and failures, Team Trump's onerous attempts to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters in Wisconsin --- but only in its two most diverse, most Dem-leaning, most African-American counties --- continued over the weekend. Two different legal efforts in the Badger State, one in federal court and one in state court, fared no better than his 60 or so previous attempts to steal the election from Biden. Of the two latest cases, the last ones that we know of in WI, neither of which included evidence of fraud, one was dismissed by a Trump-appointed judge in federal court on Saturday, and the other was tossed by a 4 to 3 vote of the rightwing Wisconsin state Supreme Court on Monday. A conservative Justice, once again, voted with the court's three liberals, and excoriated the Campaign's attempt to toss more than 200,000 lawfully cast votes in a strategy that one Justice said "smacks of racism". The ruling came just moments before Wisconsin cast its 10 Electoral College votes for Biden.
  • Down in Georgia, where 16 Electoral College votes were cast for Biden today --- eventually giving him 306 votes, versus the 304 votes Trump ultimately received in 2016, when he called his victory over Hillary Clinton a "landslide" --- former Gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams cast her vote as a Democratic Elector and offered some comments on bringing the nation together under the new Democratic President-elect, which we share on today's show.
  • And though we ran out of time for details, here's the story of the Michigan state capitol which had to be shut down today for security reasons during the casting of that state's 16 Electoral College votes for Biden, as a state GOP lawmaker appeared to threaten violence in Lansing this morning.
  • Finally, in our remaining few minutes, we open up the phone lines to listeners, one of whom sees the continuing and futile Team Trump lawsuits as "treason", another who questions the safety of the COVID vaccine, and another who ends today's show with a rather appropriate song...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Guest: Voting system expert, federal plaintiff Marilyn Marks of Coalition for Good Governance...
By Brad Friedman on 12/10/2020 8:22pm PT  

On today's BradCast, some real facts on the real concerns about Dominion Voting Systems' unverifiable computerized voting machines in Georgia --- what we know (and don't) about what happened with them during the 2020 Presidential election in November; what concerns that voters of all parties should have about them before the two critical U.S. Senate runoffs in the Peach State in January which will determine partisan control of the U.S. Senate; and what all Americans can do about it. [Audio link to full show is posted beneath summary.]

But, first up today, a few quick --- and somewhat related --- news items today. On Wednesday, the U.S. tallied a heartbreaking record 3,124 COVID deaths, making it the fourth most deadly day in U.S. history after the Galveston Storm of 1900, and the Civil War battles of Antietam and Gettysburg. Wednesday saw more Americans die from COVID than those killed on September 11, 2001, which had previously been the nation's fourth most deadly day. The next most deadly single days in the U.S. thereafter are now, in order, last Thursday, last Wednesday, last Friday, last Tuesday and Pearl Harbor.

At the same time this week, Donald Trump has been throwing crowded, indoor, holiday parties at the White House, lying to guests, without a mask, that his election was stolen, and the Texas lawsuit filed this week would prove it to his stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court, somehow. It's as if the worst pandemic in more than a hundred years doesn't even exist because, after all, there's an election to be stolen and several centuries of American democracy to be undermined during the holidays.

As to that absurd Texas case filed by the criminally indicted Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, (which we explained in great detail on yesterday's BradCast), 18 GOP controlled states have now joined the Lone Star State in support of tossing out the election results in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia, despite any evidence of fraud in those states that could possible overturn Joe Biden's certified win in each of them. But, much less reported today, is the fact that more than 20 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have joined those four targeted states in opposing the corrupt Paxton's transparent effort to win a pardon from the corrupt Trump, before the FBI drops new federal charges for bribery and abuse of power on the Texas AG.

Yes, the Texas case is absurd and offers an unprecedented, radical interpretation of the U.S. Constitution in hopes of stealing the election for Trump. As Pennsylvania's Attorney General, Josh Shapiro, has correctly argued, "The Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process." But we also now have an unprecedented, radical bunch of Justices sitting on the bench at SCOTUS. Anyone who tells you they know how those Justices will rule on this case is simply making things up.

In the meantime, there remain very real concerns about Georgia's voting system, just not the phony ones that Team Trump and the MAGA Mob have decided to focus on (read: lie about.)

Today, for the first time since before the November 3rd election, we're joined by voting systems expert MARILYN MARKS, Executive Director of the nonpartisan, good government watchdog group, Coalition for Good Governance. As a plaintiff in the long-running federal lawsuit seeking to bar Dominion Voting Systems' new, unverifiable touchscreen systems from use in the state, Marks has been one of the longest and loudest critics of both the private Canadian-based voting system vendor and the state's Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger who contracted them. (Her same federal suit already resulted in a federal judge, last year, banning the use of the state's 20-year old, unverifiable Diebold touchscreen systems.) Raffensperger defied both election integrity and cybersecurity experts by purchasing Dominion's unverifiable $100+ million systems instead of a hand-marked paper ballot system as recommended by the experts. And now, Team Trump is exploiting Raffensperger's ill-considered decision to make all sorts of unfounded claims about them.

That said, because these systems are unverifiable, it's next to impossible to know that they accurately recorded the intent of any of the voters who are forced to use them at polling places across the state --- something that Marks (and us) warned about long before Republicans decided to pretend they were concerned about "election integrity" and invented a ridiculous worldwide conspiracy led by Dominion to steal the election from Trump.

In addition to cribbing from and bastardizing some of The BRAD BLOG's decade-old, independently verifiable investigative reporting about Dominion to create their ridiculous conspiracy regarding Venezuela's dead President Hugo Chavez helping to steal the election from Trump, the same MAGA Mob has been stealing from and lying about Marks' long-running federal law suit to try and make their case in court.

"We have seen, in Sidney Powell's lawsuits, fabrication after fabrication," Marks tells me. "I sit there and read these documents, cringing at the lack of facts. They even take things from our documents, like experts' reports, then add craziness to them, literally change facts that were attested to by our experts and make them completely false."

In light of all of that, among the question Marks speaks to today: Is there any evidence that Dominion Voting Systems touchscreens or tabulators were, in fact, used to flip votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden in Georgia? Her answer may surprise you! If you've listened to The BradCast while we've covered this issue with Marks and others for years, it may not surprise you.

We have covered Georgia on this program and at BradBlog.com so long and in so much detail for a reason. The state, she notes "has been the poster-child for all that is wrong with US elections. It's all concentrated here. And now it's the center of the universe."

Marks also speaks to whether Americans and residents of Georgia should have confidence in the reported results from the November election, and what if anything, can be done to ensure confidence in the results of the critical January 5th U.S. Senate runoffs in the state.

For those with actual concerns about those runoff elections --- which doesn't actually seem to include many of the Republican sore losers complaining about the November results and an evidence-free "Dominion Conspiracy" --- Marks asks listeners to urgently, and politely, email both the Speaker of the GA House, David Ralston, and GA's Sec. of State Raffensperger to urge them to allow HAND-MARKED paper ballots for all voters at the polls in the upcoming runoffs. She argues that there is still time for that to happen in every county, even as Early Voting begins on Monday. "They can make a quick switch to hand-marked paper ballots. All they need are a few thousand black ballpoint pens. They just need to hear from the nation that this time we want a non-controversial election."

We also ask Marks (a now former Republican herself), whether or not there are at least a few Republicans who might end up finding legitimate interest in joining the fight for real Election Integrity after their current partisan interests in Trump's election eventually fade away. While a private company like Dominion should never have the type of control they now have over our public elections, neither should the much larger ES&S firm or the smaller Hart-Intercivic, just to mention the three largest corporations who have arguably been allowed to usurp our public elections with unsecure, poorly designed, easily manipulated, non-transparent, computerized voting and tabulation systems.

"I hope that maybe one piece of good is that the Republicans are now suddenly concerned about software, and they are concerned about transparency of other processes," she observers. "They're suddenly interested in election administration that before, they seemed to have assumed was just going to work for them. So, hopefully we will get better transparency out of this. But we're going to have to go through the crazy period first, I'm afraid."

Finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen for our latest Green News Report, with mostly disturbing news, as usual, on the state of our climate and environment, but some really really encouraging news at the end, that we'll use to make ourselves feel much better on another insane day like today...

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Lone Star State's corrupt Ken Paxton hopes to nullify millions of American votes in 4 states, undermine democracy, win a Trump pardon as prize...
By Brad Friedman on 12/9/2020 7:47pm PT  

"We will never surrender," Donald Trump told his brain-poisoned MAGA Mob over the weekend in Valdosta, Georgia after the American people decisively voted for him to lose the 2020 Election. "We will only win. We're gonna win. We always win. Somehow we find a way to win," he declared. Of course, a "win" for Trump, as we detail on today's BradCast, would require the nullification of tens of millions of lawful votes to undermine democracy and the will of the American people in order to steal the election. Trump is all in for that, as he made clear yet again today. [Audio link to full show is posted beneath summary.]

In the meantime, the Trump Campaign lost yet again in court on Tuesday night, as the Nevada Supreme Court agreed with a lower state court that there was no evidence of fraud that could have possibly reversed his loss to Joe Biden in the state by more than 33,000 votes. Team Trump has now lost more than 50 such cases in both state and federal court since Election Day, in no small part because they've failed to present any of evidence of "massive fraud" in any court, despite the false claims made by Trump dozens of times a day since then.

But he continues to try and strong-arm whoever he can --- the GOP leaders of the Michigan legislature, the Republican Governor of Georgia, the Republican leaders of the Pennsylvania House --- in hopes they will abet his unconstitutional coup. His latest "victory" in that Loser's Battle was a letter sent by about 70 members of the Pennsylvania legislature to the state's Congressional delegation to ask them to please disenfranchise every voter in the Keystone State by voting against accepting the state's 20 electors on January 6th. (Mark that day on your calendar, by the way. It's going to be a very long one. I explain why on today's show.) The Republican leader of the state Senate said she feared her house would be "bombed" if she had chosen not to sign the letter. (She didn't, but only because she wasn't given the chance.) Death threats come to all of those Republicans who do not cow to the MAGA Mob, no matter how Trumpy they may otherwise be, no matter how long they have already gamed the system to try and please him.

In Texas, the wildly corrupt, long-ago-indicted Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, the state's top "law enforcement" official, is already facing state charges for securities fraud felonies and, more recently, eight of his top, very rightwing staffers left the office and informed federal officials that Paxton has been violating the law by using his agency to do favors for a political donor. The FBI is reportedly investigating the charges of bribery and abuse of office. Paxton could probably really use a preemptive pardon and quickly from this outgoing President. This week, he came up with just the ticket that is very likely to win one for him!

Paxton filed a lawsuit on behalf of Texas directly with the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to toss out the results of the elections in four states --- Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia --- claiming changes to their voting laws due to the COVID pandemic violated the U.S. Constitution. Coincidentally, there are just enough electors in those states that if they weren't allowed to vote, or if they voted for Trump instead, he could "win" the second term that he clearly lost.

We explain the ostensible basis for Paxton's suit today, which relies on a radical reading of the U.S. Constitution to nullify any and all votes cast by voters based on laws or rules or regulations set by state Governors or Secretaries of State or Boards of Elections or even state courts, rather than state legislatures only. Paxton also tosses in some long-ago debunked fraud claims that even the Trump Campaign hasn't tried to argue in their own failed lawsuits (no, there were no "suitcases full of ballots being pulled out from underneath tables" in Atlanta), and some bullshit "commonly accepted statistical tests," just for good measure, claiming, for instance, that the chances Joe Biden could win all four states against a titan of Great Americanism like Donald Trump "is less than one in a quadrillion" according to "expert analysis".

But, in the Trump Era, facts don't matter. Convincing, muscling, threatening, strong-arming Republican stooges into doing his bidding is all that matters, even if those stooges are on Trump's stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court. All nine Justices unanimously rejected another challenge that sought to toss out only 2.5 million votes in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. Hopefully they see through this similarly transparent attempt to steal the election and/or win Paxton a preemptive pardon for his federal crimes.

Of note, the Texas state Solicitor General, who would normally take the lead on big cases to be argued before SCOTUS, didn't sign Paxton's 154-page complaint [PDF]. Only he and his new chief deputy (the last one left due to concerns about bribes the AG has allegedly taken) and a private, outside attorney were willing to do so. That attorney is presumably being paid by the taxpayer dollars of Texans who already employ hundreds of capable attorneys in the AG's office who wanted nothing to do with this case, apparently.

Nonetheless, the terrified incumbent Republican U.S. Senators in Georgia --- both facing serious challenges from Democrats in two runoff elections on January 5 that will determine control of the U.S. Senate --- issued a statement of support for the Texas Attorney General's attempt to rob Georgia's own voters, even as their own state's Republican Attorney General described the TX complaint as "constitutionally, legally and factually wrong."

In other news today that doesn't concern pathetic simpering Republicans kowtowing to a desperate, wannabe strongman, the comptroller of New York State has announced plans to divest the state's enormous, $226 billion pension fund from the fossil fuel sector, sending shockwaves through Wall Street and a jolt of excitement through the climate movement. Desi Doyen joins us to explain why this is such a big deal.

Finally, we close with our latest Green News Report on the globe's hottest November since record keeping began; the Trump EPA's decision to help kill tens of thousands of more Americans each year on their way out the door; Denmark's decision to leave the rest of their fossil fuels in the ground, and much more...

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Guest: Former Asst. U.S. Attny Randall D. Eliason of GWU Law School...
By Brad Friedman on 12/8/2020 8:08pm PT  

The madness continues on today's BradCast. But, midway through the show, SCOTUS put the unanimous brakes on the MAGA Mob's latest greatest hope to overturn the 2020 election, while top Republicans increase their eliminationist rhetoric to foment violence and Trump prepares to hand out pardons like Christmas candy.

A new survey out this week from Gallup finds a huge drop in the self-identified mental health of Americans. Not surprising. Perhaps also not surprising is that, among demographic groups which saw double-digit drops from their previous self-ratings of "excellent" mental health, Republicans and independents were near the top, while Democrats were among those groups identified with the smallest change in their own mental health ratings from previous surveys.

Not sure what that may mean exactly, but somehow it seems relevant today as the Republican Party appears to be mentally crumbling before our eyes as it begins to sink in for them that they've been lied to about Trump having "won" the 2020 election. Or even that they would somehow be able to come up with evidence --- any evidence --- that proves in court that Joe Biden and the Democrats and dead Hugo Chavez somehow stole it from Trump.

Last week, Trump Campaign lawyer and former U.S. Attorney, Joe diGenova, called for a former top DHS official, Chris Krebs, to be "taken out at dawn and shot" because he dared believe the 2020 election was "the most secure in American history." DiGenova and the Trump Campaign and Newsmax TV, the wingnut outlet which aired the Team Trump call to execute a former government official, all now face a serious lawsuit from Krebs.

Over at the old school wingnut outlet, Fox "News", formerly sane business anchor turned racist wingnut drama queen Lou Dobbs broke into a frothy rage while interviewing top White House advisor Stephen Miller because Trump and his party, as Dobbs sees it, aren't fighting hard enough to overthrow the election while "the Republican Party...is watching its blood drain into the streets because they're gutless."

And out in Arizona, where the very Trumpy Republican Governor Doug Ducey has been forced to repel entreaties by the President of the United State to stage a coup and declare the loser President to be the "winner" of the state's electoral votes, the state GOP, chaired by a loon named Kelli Ward, is asking Twitter followers to give their lives (literally) for Donald Trump. The AZ GOP even went so far as to follow up that request with a second tweet that includes a clip of "Rambo" holding an arrow to someone's head, while uttering: "This is what we do, who we are. Live for nothing, or die for something." That, in a state where a gun massacre was carried out in 2011 at a Democratic event that killed six and almost fatally wounded then Rep. Gabby Giffords whose husband, Mark Kelly, just unseated the state's Republican U.S. Senator on November 3rd.

All of that madness came before the U.S. Supreme Court today unanimously rejected the only case to come before the Court to challenge the 2020 Presidential election results. (The Trump Campaign has promised to go to SCOTUS themselves, but hasn't.) The rejected case was filed by U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) and several Pennsylvania state lawmakers challenging the new absentee ballot law that they passed (and voted for) last year as a violation of the state Constitution. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court already strongly rejected the challenge, and this afternoon, mid-show, SCOTUS refused to hear the attempted federal appeal.

But, if some 50 (and counting) failed, evidence-free court cases from Team Trump haven't yet done the trick, and they are unable to spark the violent new civil war they are clearly hoping for, Donald Trump is still busy preparing to give away pardons "like Christmas gifts" to his aides, friends, family and even himself while he still has the chance. As of today, such a pardon appears to have helped the admitted felon and former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn off the hook after he twice pleaded to lying to the FBI (while also admitting that he was an undeclared paid agent of Turkey.) So, in lieu of a violent upheaval --- or maybe along with it --- why not issue Presidential Pardons to all of your corrupt friends, family and business associates on the way out the door? Even before they've been charged with any crime? That appears to be coming very soon at this point.

To discuss the awesome, virtually unchallengeable Constitutional power of the Presidential Pardon, we are joined today again by former Asst. U.S. Attorney RANDALL D. ELIASON of George Washington University Law School. Several weeks ago, Eliason wrote an excellent primer on the scope and recent history (and abuse) of the Pardon power and the PardonPalooza that both he (and I) expect to see in the coming days.

Eliason challenges some of the common wisdom concerning Presidential Pardons (for example, whether it's true that someone who is pardoned loses their 5th Amendment right to refuse to testify about the criminal matter to Congress and law enforcement officials and whether or not a Pardon is actually an acknowledgement of "guilt"); whether Pardons may be legally challenged as corrupt or unlawfully self-dealing and, if so, how exactly; whether a President is Constitutionally allowed to pardon himself; and whether this one is likely to do so (answer in short: of course he is!)

As the news that U.S. Circuit Court Judge Emmet Sullivan dismissed the Michael Flynn case as "moot" just before airtime today, and the news that SCOTUS unanimously declined to take up the challenge to Pennsylvania's electors came during our discussion, we also get Eliason's reaction to both of those breaking matters.

Yes, it's another chocked-full-o-information BradCast, appropriately seasoned, we hope, with just enough snark along the way to help keep you both informed and sane! Good luck!...

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Another weekend of sore-loserism, lost court battles, phony fraud claims, unlawful election interference by the President of the United States; Also: Trump Admin ignores own EPA scientists to assure more U.S. deaths...
By Brad Friedman on 12/7/2020 7:37pm PT  

If you think the monster is actually, truly dead now, it's only because you still need to watch more horror movies. You'll have to listen to today's show for most of the juiciest details, but among the stories covered today on today's very busy BradCast [Audio link to show is posted below summary.]

  • Not satisfied with helping to assure the deaths of nearly 300,000 Americans during the COVID crisis so far, the swamp-filled Trump Administration ignores their own EPA scientists to join the polluters of the fossil fuel and chemical industries to block a rule that would require a slight decrease in particulate soot that would save more than 10,000 American lives a year. Because of course they do;
  • Loyal Trump henchman and Attorney General Bill Barr reportedly considering quitting before he's fired by Trump for having the temerity to admit there is no known evidence that would turn the loser Trump into a winner in the 2020 election;
  • More than 1,500 lawyers --- some of them former former federal judges, prosecutors and law professors --- call for bar associations to investigate the "historic abuse of the legal system" by Team Trump attorneys, like the COVID-stricken Rudy Giuliani and the execrable Joe diGenova (who called for a former federal official to be "shot" because he believed the 2020 election was secure) to be held accountability for their behavior. The letter cites false claims of "massive fraud" by Trump's attorneys, even as those same attorneys concede in court case after court case --- they and their allies have lost about 50 cases at this point --- that they have no actual evidence of fraud;
  • After losing at least five different cases in five different swing-states on Friday alone, Trump continues his record as a loser on Monday, with an Obama-appointed federal judge in Michigan tossing one case, and a George W. Bush appointed-judge in Georgia tossing the other. Both rulings were brutal dismissals;
  • The President's false claims of a stolen election continue to have very serious consequences, as an armed MAGA Mob on Saturday night descended on the personal home of Michigan's Secretary of State to terrorize her and her children as they were preparing for Christmas;
  • Also down in Georgia today, the state's Trump-supporting Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger --- who, along with the state's Trump-supporting Gov. Brian Kemp, has been mercilessly attacked by Trump --- re-certified the state's Presidential election finding Biden won it by about 12,000 votes. The new certification comes after the election night machine count, a statewide hand count, and a third statewide count by machines as requested by the Trump Campaign. He lost every single time by about the same numbers in all three tallies;
  • On Saturday morning, the President of the United States violated the law in a call to the Republican Governor of Georgia to try and convince him to take action to toss out the election results and direct the state legislature to declare the loser Trump to be the winner. To Kemp's credit (a phrase I thought I'd never type), he refused to do what Trump demanded. To Trump's wrap-sheet, he has added yet another violation of law in trying to interference with an election. 45 days until legal accountability for Trump's many crimes should begin;
  • On Saturday night, Trump went down to Georgia --- where he's in a bind, cause he's way behind --- to hold a rally for the two incumbent Republican Senators facing a tough challenge in their U.S. Senate runoffs on January 5th, where controls of the U.S. Senate is at stake. Trump spent most of the nearly two-hour long rally whining about losing the election as he repeated phony, long-ago debunked claims to continue hoaxing the MAGA Mob into believing it was stolen from him and that they are all "victims". The two U.S. Senators spoke for about 30 seconds each;
  • Finally, despite Trump's unsullied record of embarrassingly losing case after case, trying to overturn the will of the voters in both state and federal courts around the country --- in cases overseen by Republican and Democratic judges alike, including several that he himself appointed --- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito took an action over the weekend that has a few Court watchers justifiably unsettled. As we reported on last Friday's BradCast, Alito agreed to consider an appeal to a case filed by U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), seeking to toss out Pennsylvania's results and award the state's electors to Trump. The matter was correctly dismissed by lower courts, but Alito has agreed to consider it and, late last week, scheduled this Wednesday, Dec. 9, as the deadline for defendants to file their rebuttal. That was key, because Wednesday is the day after the so-called "Safe Harbor" date under federal law, when all state Electoral College contests are supposed to be settled, at least at the state level, on Tuesday, Dec. 8. Last week, election law experts saw Alito's late date for defendants to reply as a message that he would not be taking any actions that might change the electoral count. But on Sunday morning, Alito changed that deadline to the morning of Tuesday, "Safe Harbor" day. What does that mean? And should we be worried that the monster isn't really, truly dead just yet? We discuss...

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Guest: Insurgency, terrorism expert Colin P. Clarke of The Soufan Center...
By Brad Friedman on 12/4/2020 8:16pm PT  

On today's BradCast: The monster isn't quite dead yet, but it's getting close. His zombie minions, however, pose an entirely different concern. [Audio link to full show is posted beneath summary below.]

Late on Thursday night, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito announced a schedule for the Court to examine a late challenge to Pennsylvania's election results, as filed by a top Trump ally in Congress and a number of state lawmakers. If successful, the challenge would result in the disqualification of hundreds of thousands of lawfully cast ballots in the Keystone State, handing its electors to the loser, Donald Trump. But Alito's delayed schedule to review the case --- until after the statutory so-called "safe harbor date" to conclude state Electoral College result challenges --- appears to all but preclude the possibility of SCOTUS overturning results in the state showing that Joe Biden defeated Trump by more than 80,000 votes.

That case, just like all of those filed (and rejected) by the Trump Campaign to date, does notinclude any evidence or allegation of fraud, widespread or otherwise.

So, is Trump's narrow path to overturning the will of the people now completely shut? Almost...though it's not quite foreclosed just yet, as we explain.

Then, following a week of death threats against Republican officials across the country by Republican supporters of Trump, as encouraged by the President of the United States himself, an expert in terrorism and insurgencies joins us to explain why he believes Trump is now actively laying the groundwork for a violent insurgency during Joe Biden's presidency.

COLIN P. CLARKE, is a senior research fellow at The Soufan Center, where he studies terrorism, insurgency and political violence. This week, in an Los Angeles Times op-ed, he argued that "President Trump's post-election antics are dangerous." Clarke, who has studied every political insurgency between WWII and 2009 writes: "I firmly believe that the president of the United States is laying the groundwork for violence and disruption to unfold regularly over the next four years. As a national security researcher, I never imagined I'd write that sentence."

Clarke, who also teaches Carnegie Mellon University's Institute for Politics and Strategy (IPS) and is author of a number of books on international terrorism, joins us today to explain his concerns, the evidence for them and why he believes it's important for Americans to understand the very real threat posed to U.S. national security by Donald J. Trump.

"Beyond just embarrassing himself, his administration and his band of sycophants, he's endangering the country," Clarke tells me. "As a counter-terrorism analyst, I find it my duty to be a sober assessor, to err on the side of caution, not to think that the sky is falling at all times. But I genuinely believe that what the President is doing right now is actively and deliberately attempting to undermine the legitimacy of the elections, of our democracy, and of the incoming Biden Administration."

Amid what Clarke describes as a political "tinderbox" created in the U.S. over the past four years, he charges that "Trump has always thrived on instability. He doesn't care if it happens to be in his own country. I don't consider him a patriot. I don't think he has the best interests of the United States in mind, and I don't think he ever has."

Following last week's assassination of Iran's top nuclear scientist (as discussed on a BradCast earlier this week with former National Security Council member William Tobey), Clarke also offers his assessment of whether it is the Islamic Republic or Trump himself who poses a greater threat to national security as Biden begins his Presidency next month.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report as the U.N. issues another dire warning on humanity "waging war against nature,"; the world's formerly most profitable corporation, Exxon Mobil, sees its value quickly disappearing as the world continues to move away from disastrously climate changing fossil fuels; and New Zealand's government declares a climate emergency and vows to reach net-zero carbon neutrality by 2025.

P.S. If you're wondering about that pretty hilarious clip we opened today's show with from the Lincoln Project, the full uncensored version is posted here.

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Also: U.S. COVID infection, hospitalization, death numbers surge to heartbreaking records, wasn't a 'hoax' after all...
By Brad Friedman on 12/3/2020 7:49pm PT  

On today's BradCast: The Donald Trump Crazy Train keeps chugging along. And its getting crazier, and seemingly farther off the tracks with each passing hour as the outgoing President's days in the White House continue to diminish and his likelihood of facing criminal accountability grows nearer and nearer. One of the biggest remaining questions is how many of his supporters are still to get run over by that train.

Among the many stories we cover today...

  • Before we dive deep into The Crazy, some very grim milestones in the COVID crisis which, turns out, wasn't a hoax at all, as both Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz "guaranteed" us before the election. On Wednesday, there were more than 200,000 new cases, more than 100,000 hospitalizations and more than 2,777 deaths confirmed from COVID. All of them single day records, as the pandemic will continue to get far worse in coming months before it begins to get better. All thanks, in no small part, to idiots like Trump, Cruz and whole bunch of other Republicans who sadistically sacrificed their constituents' lives in dashed hopes of seeing Trump re-elected;
  • Following Attorney General Bill Barr's comments to AP earlier this week that, "to date," the Dept. of Justice has "not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election," Trump, as expected, reportedly blew a gasket. It resulted in a two and half hour meeting for Barr at the White House and Trump said to be considering whether he will now fire his second AG, despite his years of covering up and lying for the President and his unprecedented directive to dozens of Asst. U.S. Attorneys to investigate bogus claims of "massive fraud" before and after the election;
  • On Thursday, the rightwing Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected the Trump Campaign's latest attempt to toss out hundreds of thousands of votes in a state that Trump lost. Of note, as has been the case in every suit they've filed (by way of contrast to what they say publicly to the chumps and suckers who believe in them), Team Trump offered zero evidence of fraud in their complaint. Rather, they complained about absentee ballot procedures that have been in place since before the 2016 election, when Trump is said to have won the state, as well as during this year's primaries. Apparently they forgot to claim that WI's absentee voting laws were illegal in those past elections. The suit was rejected today, however, because the court ruled it needs to be filed in a lower state court first before it can be heard by the state Supremes. The Campaign also filed another federal case in the state on Wednesday. It does not argue their was fraud in this year's election either;
  • It's become so embarrassing that even top Trump sycophant Sen. Lindsey Graham is taking to Fox "News" to tell the Trump legal team that they need to provide proof of their fraud claims in court. "Doing a video is not proof," he said, shortly after Trump released a 46-minute video on Wednesday, falsely claiming (without evidence, naturally) that he actually won virtually every state in the union this year;
  • Lack of evidence of fraud, however, has not stopped the Rudy Giuliani Traveling Dog 'n' Pony Show. After making presentations to GOP state legislators in "hearings" held in rented hotel banquet rooms in Pennsylvania and Arizona this week, the Republicans of the gerrymandered Michigan state legislature opened an actual hearing room in the state capital to the Rudy Show. It did not go well. We share the testimony from Melissa Carone, of one of the "witnesses" that Rudy hauled up to the stand. It's something to behold;
  • Meanwhile, down in Georgia on Wednesday, a huge "Stop the Steal" rally at the Peach State capital, headed up by self-disgracing attorneys and Trump Crazy Train Conductors Sidney Powell and Lin Wood (who may actually be mentally ill), likely drove the what's left of the actual GOP crazy. Wood attacked the very Trumpy Republican Governor Brian Kemp, resulting in "Lock him up!" chants from the QAnon brain-poisoned crowd, before instructing the misinformed throngs that they should absolutely not vote for incumbent Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler or David Perdue in the upcoming January 5th runoff elections that will determine partisan control of the U.S. Senate;
  • Finally, we close with some helpful words, believe it or not, from far-right, not insane Trump supporter Erick Erickson. In a Twitter thread this week, the former Editor-in-Chief of the rightwing RedState blog, finally seems to have had enough of the madness of GOP conspiracy theorists who now believe that Trump's own DOJ, FBI, CIA, Attorney General, and the Republican Governors of states like Georgia and Arizona, not to mention others, have all teamed up to steal the election for Joe Biden. "Maybe…and I know this might just blow your mind…but maybe what if you've been lied to the whole time. There is no conspiracy. There is no theft of the election," Erickson unloads, suggesting that "maybe, just maybe" the problem is Trump and supporters who can't understand that "ultimately it is really you who are the problem because you so willingly got played and even now want to be played because now you're emotionally invested in a cause and a candidate and to admit you were played and he lost and there was no deep state conspiracy or theft of the election would actually make you look bad. So it's better to double down on the lies and bullshit and blame everyone else."

Sounds about right. Thanks, Erick. You can stop blocking me on Twitter now.

Buckle up and/or pop a bucket of popcorn or two for today's BradCast...

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Guest: Former National Security Council member, William Tobey of Harvard's Belfer Center...
By Brad Friedman on 12/2/2020 7:58pm PT  

Everything and everybody seem to be on edge. It feels like we're near a breaking point. At home and abroad, as detailed throughout today's harrowing BradCast. [Audio link to full show is posted below summary.]

"It's all gone too far," Georgia's top voting systems chief made clear during powerful unscripted remarks at an emotional press conference on Tuesday night. "All of it!" Gabe Sterling's impassioned comments came after learning of new death threats against a young elections worker in his state. He is right to be infuriated. Things have now become damned dangerous thanks to our deranged President who seems to be turning more unhinged by the hour as his days in the White House wane.

We share an extended cut of the Republican Sterling's tirade today, as he called out both the Republican President and the state's two Republican Senators for failing to condemn the increasing hostility and threats against election officials in Georgia, as well those directed to its Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger. "Stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence," Sterling implored the President. "Someone's gonna get hurt. Someone's gonna get shot. Someone's gonna get killled...All of this is wrong!"

Both of Georgia's U.S. Senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, face tough election re-election runoffs against Rafeael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, respectively, on January 5. The contests will determine partisan control of the Senate. Both GOPers have decided to support Trump and his false claims about the state's election being stolen for Joe Biden with the aid, absurdly enough, of Kemp and Raffensperger. The President is currently scheduled to travel to the Peach State on Saturday to campaign with Loeffler and Perdue. We'll see if he makes it...and whether they both come to regret it.

It is, of course, insane that we find ourselves in support of Sterling, Raffensperger and Kemp, at least on these points. We have been vocally and justifiably critical of all three for a very long time on this program regarding the way they run elections in the state and undermine voter confidence in the bargain. But we'd never even consider the type of rhetoric that the President of the United States and his followers --- including Loeffler and Perdue --- are now using because Trump is too cowardly to concede that he lost and the two Senators are too cowardly to run without him.

None have any actual interest in cleaning up Georgia's elections. If they did, they'd have joined my weeks-old call to get the Dominion Voting Systems company out of the state entirely for the January elections by demanding hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots for all during the runoff. None of them, of course, have done so.

Rather than take Sterling's concerns to heart, Trump doubled down on Twitter thereafter to falsely declare a "Rigged Election" and "massive voter fraud in Georgia," charging the very Trumpy Governor Kemp is "afraid" of "what we'll find". And then, as released by the White House just before airtime, Trump delivered even more dangerously incendiary and deluded remarks in a fact-free 46-minute pre-taped video rant, asserting that "our election system is now under coordinated assault and siege."

But this is what is happening. And if all of it sounds insane, you'll be shocked to learn that top Trumpers, like his recently pardoned former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, are now literally calling for sedition by encouraging the President "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 national re-vote."

Several weeks ago, I was uncertain about covering Trump's baseless claims of "massive fraud" in the election at all, back when he first began lying about all of this. Given where we are now, I'm glad we did. We all need to be informed about what is actually going on right now in this nation, no matter how twisted, and depressing, and damned dangerous it is now becoming.

But, for some "lighter" news today...We then turn to the recent assassination of Iran's top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, and the latest fallout following both that, Trump's undermining and violation of the landmark Obama era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement with Iran which had successfully blocked the Islamic Republican from the ability to create a nuclear weapon for at least ten years, and Trump's drone assassination earlier this year of Iran's revered General Qassam Soleimani. (Yes, that also took place in 2020!)

We're joined today for a great deal of insight on all of this --- as well as the history of targeting nuclear scientists, both in Iran in recent years and elsewhere since the dawn of the nuclear age, and whether the strategy actually works --- by someone who knows a great deal about all of it. WILLIAM TOBEY served on the White House National Security Council staff under three presidents, and as Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration from 2006-2009, where he managed the U.S. government's largest program to prevent nuclear proliferation and terrorism. He is now a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and the Director of the U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism.

Among the many related topics discussed with Tobey today: How difficult it may be for the incoming Biden Administration to strike a new deal with Iran after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the JCPOA and the assassinations of both Soleimani and Fakhrizadeh, as Iran now vows both revenge and an increase in nuclear production; Whether the JCPOA, which Tobey was critical of, made us safer and why "we are in a more dangerous position today than we were in 2018"; And, why nations like North Korea and Iran justifiably see the development of nuclear weapons as an existential issue.

And with all of those pretty heavy topics, listeners who make it all the way to the end of today's BradCast may be richly rewarded with the concession speech that we all should have heard long ago...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Guest: Redistricting expert Dan Vicuña; Also: Why Krebs is almost right, but wrong, as Trump attorney says former CISA chief should be 'shot'...
By Brad Friedman on 12/1/2020 8:05pm PT  

Attorney General Bill Barr may now be in big trouble with Donald Trump at the DoJ. One of Trump's personal attorneys may be in big trouble with the D.C. Bar. And Trump's attempt to game the Census and Apportionment of Congressional seats for the next 10 years may be in big trouble at his stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court. All of that big trouble and more on today's BradCast! [Audio link to show is posted below summary.]

First up, Attorney General Barr has undoubtedly infuriated his boss today by admitting to The Associated Press that "to date," the Justice Dept. has "not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election."

Uh, oh. The last senior Administration official who said something similar --- Chris Krebs, Trump's Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the new DHS agency that oversees elections infrastructure --- was fired just days later after his federal agency and others (along with several voting machine vendors, so take it with a grain of salt) announced that the 2020 election was "the most secure in American history."

Speaking of Krebs, he was interviewed by CBS' 60 Minutes on Sunday, where he stood by that assessment and chalked the success of the 2020 election up to "paper ballots."

"Paper ballots give you the ability to audit," he told CBS' Scott Pelley, "to go back and check the tape and make sure you got the count right. That's really one of the keys to success for a secure 2020 election. That gives you the ability to prove that there was no malicious algorithm or hacked software that adjusted the tally of the vote."

Well, he was so close. "Paper ballots" don't protect elections, HAND-MARKED paper ballots protect elections. And there is a big difference. Krebs goes on to cite, for example, Georgia's terrible new Dominion Voting Systems touchscreen computers that voters are forced to vote on at the polls, and the subsequent statewide hand-count of ballots to make his case. But Georgia's systems, as we've long reported in great detail, print out computer-marked paper ballot summaries which can never be known after an election to reflect the intent of any voter. As we explain yet again today, studies show that the vast majority of voters do not check their computer-printed summary, and that 93%(!) of them do not notice if the computer has changed one of their votes. We offer much more detail --- yet again --- on today's show.

But Krebs, a lifelong Republican who has been bravely outspoken in attempting to debunk false claims about fraud both before and after the election, is certainly a hero for his efforts. The fact that Joe diGenova, one of Donald Trump's personal lawyers, took to the air on Monday to call for Krebs to be murdered --- literally --- is a chilling sign of our times and should result in disbarment for Trump's latest Fox "News" TV attorney for hire. "Anybody who thinks this election went well like that idiot Krebs," diGenova said on a wingnut radio program yesterday, "that guy is a class A moron. He should be drawn and quartered, taken out at dawn and shot."

Krebs suggested to NBC News today that he is likely to take legal action. But you know who else "thinks this election went well," apparently? Bill Barr! We'll see if diGenova calls for him to be executed now as well, or which of the two Trump lackeys will be fired by Trump first.

Next up, we're joined by DAN VICUÑA, National Redistricting Manager at Common Cause, one of the good-government immigration advocacy groups that sued the Trump Administration after a Presidential Memorandum from Trump last year directed U.S. Census apportionment data to leave out "illegal aliens" despite the Constitution's mandate to include the "whole number of persons in each State" for purposes of determining how many U.S. Congressmembers each state shall have for ten years following each decennial Census.

Four different lower courts largely agreed with the plaintiffs challenging Trump's decree --- which would increase political power for rural, white, Republican-leaning districts and take it away from more urban, Democratic-leaning, minority heavy jurisdictions --- finding it to be illegal and/or unconstitutional. On Monday, Trump's stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in the matter, and Vicuña reports today on how things went. In short, it appears to have not gone well for the Administration, even with three Trump-appointed Justices now packed onto the bench.

Vicuña, notes that "citizenship status has never been used as a determining factor in whether a person will be counted." He also explains the dangers of Trump's unprecedented decree and how his attempt to bastardize the "plain language" of the U.S. Constitution and "two centuries of precedent" to instead use only "voter-eligible" citizens in counts to determine apportionment in the U.S. House, endangers not only the immigrant population, but everyone else in America, even in so-called "red" states.

"The Administration's lawyers are dancing a strange dance," he tells me while describing Monday's hearing. "The President's memo very clearly states what the President wants, which is to exclude every undocumented person living in the United States --- undocumented people who contribute billions to the economy, who pay taxes on things that they may never see [like] Social Security. The President's attorneys are going into court and saying, 'Well, we're only going to do this within the strictures of what's allowable by law, so for that reason, you shouldn't even rule on this case now. There's no need to address the plaintiffs' challenge, because we don't exactly know how we're going to implement the President's goals' --- even though the President states them clearly --- 'so you should punt.'"

Whether the Court will go along with the Administration on this, and how the incoming Biden Administration may make all of this moot anyway, is all discussed on today's program.

Finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen with our latest Green News Report, in which the Trump Administration actually does something that is not only NOT horrible, but very very good for folks in Alaska who have been challenging the creation of the controversial Pebble Mine for more than a decade. Other than that, however, the final days of Trump's environmental smash and grab continue apace...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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L.A. County faces down new COVID spike; AZ, WI certify Biden victory; Team Trump cases shredded by federal and state courts in PA; Callers ring in on Trump's SCOTUS 'Trump Card'...
By Brad Friedman on 11/30/2020 7:36pm PT  

On today's BradCast we try to catch you up with at least five days of important news from over the long holiday weekend. That's damned near impossible in the Trump Era, unfortunately. But we did get about half way there, with the most important parts of Trump's continuing attempt to steal the 2020 election (yes, that's still ongoing!) before turning to some excellent listener calls...

Among the stories we did catch up on, and were able to offer some important context for...

  • If someone could wrap Joe Biden in bubble wrap and place him in an hermetically sealed room for the next 50 days, it would be greatly appreciated.
  • Los Angeles County has now implemented among the most severe COVID-19 restrictions in the nation amid a recent spike in cases and hospitalizations that threatens to soon overwhelm our health care system here. That said, California and L.A. have among the lowest per capita rates of infections, hospitalizations and death in the nation, but the rates have doubled in recent weeks. So, if we need to take these emergency measures, we only hope that places where it's really bad --- for example, in the Midwest and Texas --- take action now to save lives. Election Day is past and so its no longer necessary for GOP leaders in those states to pretend everything about the coronavirus is a hoax in order to try and re-elect Donald Trump;
  • Arizona certifies its election results, confirming that Biden officially defeated Trump by more than 10,000 votes, in a state that hasn't gone "blue" in decades. The certification also clears the way for Democratic Senator-elect Mark Kelly to be seated in the U.S. Senate this week, following his defeat of Republican incumbent Sen. Martha McSally in what was a Special Election for the Senate on November 3rd. McSally has now lost two Senate seats to Democrats in a row. And the loony state GOP Chairwoman and failed Congressional candidate Kelli Ward is continuing to challenge the 2020 results --- even as the state's very Trumpy Republican Governor and Attorney General stand by them;
  • Wisconsin certifies its elections results, confirming that Biden officially defeated Trump by just over 20,000 votes in a state that Trump is said to have defeated Hillary Clinton by a similar margin in 2016. The certification follows a partial "recount" in the state, paid for by the Trump Campaign at a cost of $3 million. The second count in Milwaukee and Dane Counties, where Trump sought to the re-tally, ended up netting an additional 87 votes overall for Biden. (Another artful deal by the world's greatest businessman);
  • Over the weekend Trump lost resoundingly in two different cases, one in federal court and one in state court, in Pennsylvania. One loss came from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where three Republican-appointed federal judges upbraided the Trump Campaign's case, with the Trump-appointed Judge writing the scathing opinion to include: "Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here. ... Voters, not lawyers, choose the President. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections." The state case did not go any better for Team Trump, with a unanimous verdict by the state Supreme Court finding that the GOP legislators' attempt to toss out the election based on claims that the state's new absentee ballot law violates Pennsylvania's Constitution was filed much too late. The same law was in effect during the state primary earlier this year, and the legislators had no complaint about it. NEITHER OF THE TWO CASES, NOR ANY OF THE OTHER FAILED CASES FROM TEAM TRUMP ALLEGED FRAUD. Claims about "massive fraud" are only made by Trump and Giuliani and friends on Twitter and Fox "News". Courts require actual evidence and apparently, Trump has none to offer;
  • We then open phones to callers with some questions about all of this stuff, including the one Trump Card that the President still hopes to play at the GOP's stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court. There, Trump hopes for an opinion that only state legislatures may make any laws or rules or regulations concerning the "times, places and manner of holding elections", as referenced in the U.S. Constitution. With such an opinion from a majority of Justices, if they can get it, Team Trump believes they can toss out election results this year, and have GOP state legislatures award electors to Trump instead of Biden, the popular winner. It's a radical, extremist (and arguably ridiculous) "originalist" interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, but Kavanaugh and Gorsuch have already indicated they buy it, Alito and Thomas are likely to go along with it, and the matter would potentially be left to Trump's most recent appoint, Amy Coney Barrett, to decide.

Many are turning away to other matters now that they believe the monster has been vanquished once and for all. We've seen enough monster movies to know that it's a terrible idea to walk away after you think the monster is dead, even while they are lying there with an axe in their apparently lifeless hand...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Guest: Const'l attorney John Bonifaz of Free Speech for People on Trump's failed election coup and the need for accountablity from the new Administration; Also: Biden victories certified in PA, NV; A few overdue corrections; And several things we're thankful for before the holiday...
By Brad Friedman on 11/24/2020 7:47pm PT  

On today's BradCast, we see some light at the end of America's dark tunnel. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

On Tuesday, the swing-states of both Pennsylvania and Nevada certified Joe Biden's victory over Donald Trump, joining Michigan from Monday. In Arizona, which certifies next week, its very Trumpy Republican Governor Doug Ducey conceded that "Joe Biden did win". And, despite Trump's repeated lie that the stock market would crash if Biden was elected, it continued to soar today, with the Dow closing above 30,000 for the first time. Trump stayed largely inside his White House bunker while continuing to falsely tweet that he won the election, though he did come out long enough to "pardon" a couple of turkeys. He's probably warming up for what is to come during the last desperate days of his failed Presidency.

We're joined today to discuss all of that and much more by Constitutional attorney and election law expert JOHN BONIFAZ, co-founder and President of the nonpartisan, non-profit good government group Free Speech for People (FSFP). His organization won several important victories in key voting rights cases prior to the election. One of them helped extend Arizona's registration deadline during the pandemic, allowing for 35,000 new registrations in the state that Democrats now appear to have won, for the first time in decades, by about 10,000 votes.

Our conversation today focuses largely on accountability, and the need for the President-elect to assure the criminal Administration of the previous four years does not escape it, as the Obama Administration allowed the George W. Bush Administration to do in their ill-considered effort to "look forward not back". Biden has reportedly been uttering similar thoughts of late. Bonifaz argues that would be a fatal mistake. "You can draw a straight line from the decision that President Obama made to only look forward, not to look back at the war crimes, the torture that had taken place during the Bush Administration --- you can draw a straight line from that decision, that strategic error, to the rise of Donald Trump. And I do think that we cannot make that mistake again," he tells me.

Among the areas of accountability that await the outgoing President, as Bonifaz sees it and hopes to ensure with FSFP: Crimes that were not included in Trump's impeachment for attempted extortion of the Ukrainian President (Bonifaz co-wrote a book on those crimes); obstruction of justice and other crimes touched on by Special Counsel Robert Mueller that remain unpunished; horrors carried out by the current administration at our nation's borders, including the "kidnapping" of children; the ongoing attempted coup to overthrow the results of the 2020 election; and even crimes against humanity for Trump's unforgivable failure to help avoid the unnecessary deaths of more than a quarter of a million Americans (to date) thanks to his criminal lies about the COVID pandemic --- just to name a few.

"What we've been left with now, since the election is perhaps the worst abuse of power of them all," explains Bonifaz, who is also founder of the National Voting Rights Institute. "His effort to subvert the Constitution, to disenfranchise millions of voters based on this falsehood that mail-in voting has been fraudulent, and to effectively overturn the Presidential election results, and engage in an attempted coup. All of that is not only an abuse of power, but it's a broad criminal conspiracy for which this President should be held accountable once he is out of office."

We also discuss whether Trump has the Constitutional power to pardon himself for any of those crimes before leaving office, and whether the Republican claims at having newfound concerns about election integrity (based in no small part on years of my own investigative reports, though bastardized by the cretinous lawyers currently representing Trump in his attempt to reverse his reelection loss by both hook and crook), might result in a new reason for hope for the real, decades-old Election Integrity movement. Longtime advocates like Bonifaz and myself have fought for years in that movement against the privatization of our elections by corporate voting system vendors and their proprietary computer voting and tabulation systems. Perhaps after the partisan opportunists have peeled off from the GOP's current false claims about "Dominion!" and "Smartmatic!" and "Hugo Chavez!", we'll find new legitimate allies from the Right.

"We have to reach for the gold standard of election integrity, which are hand-marked paper ballots for all of our jurisdictions across the country, with assistive devices for those who need it," Bonifaz tells me. "But we cannot have the private voting systems industry be in charge of counting our votes, because it leads to this distrust. It leads to this lack of verifiability. The reality here is that because so many people voted by mail this year, we actually had an ability to verify the election even more so than previous cycle. Hand-marked paper ballots are the gold standard."

Also today: A few overdue corrections before the holiday and several things that I am exceedingly grateful for, even in these dark days. And Desi Doyen joins us for our last Green News Report before Thanksgiving, which includes several items to be thankful for as well...for a happy change...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

P.S. Guest-host Nicole Sandler is in for us tomorrow! We'll see you next week after the holiday! Please stay safe and HEALTHY!

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MI certifies Biden win; Conservative judge tosses Team Trump's PA suit; GSA begins transition, Trump's vows to 'prevail'; 'Dominion/Venezuela' conspiracy lawyer tossed under bus after attacking GA Repubs...
By Brad Friedman on 11/23/2020 7:41pm PT  

It's been a weekend and more of The Crazy since we last spoke. On today's BradCast we get you all up to date on the last several days of The Crazy as Donald Trump's attempted coup to steal back the Presidency continues to fall apart with each passing hour, and as the Republican Party decides to distance themselves from Trump's loony conspiracy attorney Sidney Powell while she turns the MAGA crowd against her own party before the critical January U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia to determine control of the upper chamber of Congress. [Audio link to full show follows summary.]

The biggest news today broke mid-show, as Trump finally relented in allowing the General Services Administration to officially begin the transition to a Joe Biden Administration, even as he vowed he would "prevail" in his fight to overturn the will of the American voters and says his "case STRONGLY continues."

Well, about that case. It may be continuing, but it has never been anywhere close to strong. Among the related stories covered on today's show that prove it, before we turn to the phone for listener calls on all of this...

  • First, a follow-up to Friday's show in which we debunked the insane case that Powell, Giuliani and now all of MAGA are making regarding an international conspiracy --- somehow led by the Dominion Voting System company, along with the late Hugo Chavez in Venezuela --- to steal the election for Biden. The conspiracy originates with the bastardization of an exclusive investigative report I published at The BRAD BLOG in 2010. Powell et al aren't even close in their twisted version of the story that now includes all sorts of false charges about voting machine companies and more. The bottom line, as we noted on Friday, but which warrants underscoring again today, because I've been trying to make the case for so long and now we're seeing what I warned about finally come to pass...
  1. Simply because a computerized voting and tabulation system is vulnerable to fraud and manipulation does not mean that any particular election run on it has been defrauded or manipulated, and;
  2. Even if an election is 100% secure and accurate, if it can't be known by the public to have been 100% secure and accurate, it is every bit as much of a threat to confidence in our democratic system as it would be if the election had actually been stolen on such a system.
  • Other than that...Catching us all up from Friday....Trump loses another lawsuit in Nevada as a state judge rejects an attempt to block certification of Biden's victory, by more than 33,000 votes, in the state.
  • Trump loses in Arizona as a state judge rejects a move for yet another audit of votes in Maricopa County (Phoenix), and the County's Board of Supervisors (4 Rs, 1 D) unanimously voted on Friday to certify Biden's victory in the state's largest county. Also, the final "SharpieGate" lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice in the state where Biden appears to have won by more than 10,000 votes.
  • In Wisconsin, Team Trump is said to be obstructing the ongoing recounts requested by Trump in the two counties with the largest minority vote, Milwaukee and Dane, after apparently losing the state to Biden by more than 20,000 votes.
  • Trump lost bigly in Michigan on Monday, where the state Board of Canvassers voted unanimously (with one abstention) to certify Biden's victory by nearly 160,000 votes. That, after Trump's attempt to twist the arms of the GOP leadership of the state's gerrymandered House and Senate on Friday appears to have gone nowhere. (But we'll soon find out for sure.)
  • In Pennsylvania, Trump lost his attempt to toss out nearly seven million ballots and was excoriated by a conservative federal judge on Saturday for attempting to do so in the nation's sixth largest state where Biden appears to have prevailed by more than 80,000 votes. The brutal court loss led Republican U.S. Senator Pat Toomey to become just the second GOP Senator to concede (where Trump won't) by declaring [PDF] that "Trump has exhausted all plausible legal options to challenge the result of the presidential race" in the state. Trump's team of pathetic lawyers have since filed an emergency appeal to the 3rd Circuit, but failed to deliver their motion before the Court's deadline for doing so. This is the (likely doomed) case Trump hopes may reach SCOTUS where he believes he can win after packing the stolen GOP majority on the Court in his favor. He'd have to win a verdict there that somehow allowed legislatures in at least three states to reverse the will of their voters to appoint Trump electors instead of Biden's by December 8th.
  • Down in Georgia, where Trump lost by about 13,000 votes following a statewide hand "audit" of all ballots last week, the Trumpy Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger and even Trumpier Republican Governor Brian Kemp both certified Biden's victory on Friday. Over the weekend, MAGA "Stop the Steal" rallies in the state included verbal attacks on both Kemp and Raffensperger, along with vows to destroy the GOP and promises to boycott the critical January U.S. Senate runoffs in the state. We wish them nothing but luck in their endeavor! That came as Powell was taking to far-far right wingnut Newsmax TV over the weekend to allege that Raffensperger and Kemp were paid off by Dominion to steal the election for the Democrats' Presidential candidate. She offered no evidence for her claims. After years of critically reporting on both Kemp and Raffensperger --- including his ill-advised decision to spend $100+ million on Dominion's 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems this year --- we are unaware of any such evidence to support her claims. But we wish her nothing but luck in her endeavor to prove it! For now, the thanks she received was being tossed under the bus by Trump late on Sunday night.
  • There was a whole lot more along the way today, but you'll have tune it for it all, along with some great calls we responded to near the end of the show today, as The Crazy continues to continue...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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What they get right (hardly anything) and wrong (almost all of it)
Also: GW Univ. Law Prof. Randall D. Eliason on pressure brought against high profile legal firms representing Trump's phony 'voter fraud' claims...
By Brad Friedman on 11/20/2020 7:46pm PT  

Join us on today's BradCast for a deep dive down into the twisted rabbit hole of Team Trump's recently manufactured claims that Canadian election vendor Dominion Voting Systems and its Venezuelan-tied competitor Smartmatic secretly joined forces as part of an enormous international conspiracy (also involving the late Hugo Chavez) to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump on behalf of Joe Biden and the Democrats. We happen to know a bit about these claims, as they are directly based on one (or more) of my own exclusive investigate reports from a decade ago. [Audio link to show is posted below summary.]

As it turns out, The BRAD BLOG is actually responsible for the original kernel of truth that has become the pretend conspiracy now being used as the basis for Trump's attempt to reverse the results of the 2020 election. These are the claims now being shared by Trump's attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, not to mention by Trump himself.

The initial story is based on a deeply reported, well-evidenced and independently verifiable 2010 investigative exclusive of mine (also republished by HuffPo) that Republicans, over the past week or so, have been citing as the basis for their so-far evidence-free claims that Democrats teamed up with Dominion, Smartmatic --- and also China and Cuba somehow --- to commit "nationwide voter fraud" via computers (computers don't commit voter fraud, voters do) to flip the results of the election. They claim this proves that Donald Trump actually won the election in a landslide --- though, as even Tucker Carlson of Fox "News" found out, they have no actual evidence to back any of it up.

We share their actual claims, the original basis for them (which they have absurdly bastardized to the point that it is barely recognizable) and how others in the party, like Arizona State GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward, have run with the ball to misrepresent facts and manufacture claims in her scary scary new video titled "DOMINION EXPOSED! This Video Should Terrify Every Single American".

We explain what all of these folks got right (almost nothing) and wrong (pretty much all of it...though Chavez is tied in to the story --- or was before he died seven years ago), and what the top two real takeaways should be for both parties and all American voters now that the GOP has finally decided to become concerned --- or, at least, pretend to be --- about the dangers of electronic voting and tabulation systems:

  1. Simply because a computerized voting and tabulation system is vulnerable to fraud and manipulation does not mean that any particular election run on it has been defrauded or manipulated, and;
  2. Even if an election is 100% secure and accurate, if it can't be known by the public to have been 100% secure and accurate, it is every bit as much of a threat to confidence in our democratic system as it would be if the election had actually been stolen on such a system.

The past few days should give you plenty of evidence for that, at least!

There are too many details beyond that to include in a summary, so I hope you'll just buckle up and tune in for the full rollicking story today on this one!

But, one other point worth noting here. While we've been reporting on all of these facts --- with independently verifiable evidence --- for nearly two decades now, it is for the above reasons that we have been inviting Republicans of late to put their money where there mouths are. If they are actually concerned about easily manipulated elections by Dominion (or any other computer vote system vendor), then join us in demanding the use of only hand-marked paper ballots for Georgia's upcoming critical U.S. Senate runoffs in January (which will determine partisan control of the U.S. Senate). Those ballots should then be publicly hand-counted on Election Night. It's just two races with two candidates each, so it's very easy to count publicly in a single night, and it would result in Dominion being tossed out of elections entirely in the state of Georgia! How about it Repubs? You in? I'll even drive out to Phoenix to make a new video about it with Kelli Ward if she joins the call. Why wouldn't she?

Then, we're joined today by George Washington University Law School professor and Washington Post contributor RANDALL D. ELIASON, for his explanation as to why he believes it is appropriate to bring public pressure against high-profile law firms representing Trump in his evidence-free "voter fraud" cases, but not against attorneys and firms who choose to represent other despicable individuals like terrorists, child molesters and the KKK. That, after top national law firms recently withdrew from Trump's fraudulent "fraud" cases following public opprobrium encouraged by the anti-Trump Republicans of the Lincoln Project. (Also, here's that recent piece I mentioned from Eliason on Trump's upcoming PardonPalooza!)

Also today: The latest news from Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan in Trump's attempted coup; the one Republican Senator who is finally calling it out; and the news that Florida's Republican Senator Rick Scott and Donald Trump Jr., have now both tested positive for the coronavirus...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Brad is an independent investigative
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