As their first official bills in each chamber of Congress --- H.R.1 in the House and S.1 in the Senate --- Democrats are proposing a remarkably ambitious election, campaign and ethics reform measure which would go a long way towards enhancing our system of democracy. At least one important rewrite is needed, however, in order to close a loophole in its mandate regarding hand-marked paper ballots.

H.R.1 or the For The People Act of 2021, was introduced by Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD) with hundreds of Democratic co-sponsors on January 4. It is supported by both Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

With the exception of partisan gerrymandering as applied to State legislative offices --- which is out of the hands of federal lawmakers --- the bill would, for all intents and purposes, outlaw a wide array of voter suppression, intimidation and deceptive practices that have, for decades, been used to undermine American democracy.

The massive bill, clocking in at nearly 800 pages, also includes Congressional ethics reforms and other important measures, but we focus here on the statute's provisions to help outlaw suppressive measures and improve election security, transparency and the verifiability of results.

As presently written, the measure appears to mandate the use of "voter verified permanent paper ballots" in all federal elections. That aspect, however, must be improved with minor, but very important revisions to mandate the availability of hand-marked paper ballots --- the only type that can be known to be "voter verifiable" --- for all voters at the polling place for both early and Election Day voting.

H.R.1 also includes provisions for either hand-counting of paper ballots or the use of optical scanning computers accompanied by Risk Limiting Audits. It includes mechanisms to fund those post-election activities.

The bill provides for minimum periods during which States must make early voting available in federal elections and promotes, streamlines and secures mail-in voting. It tightens ethical standards and also takes a stab at reducing the role of dark money in campaigns, while prohibiting the presence of foreign money and interference in our elections. This includes a mandate that TV, radio and online platforms "make reasonable efforts to ensure that [election-related] communications...are not purchased by a foreign national".

The real question isn't whether H.R.1, if appropriately amended, should become law. The question is whether a sufficient number of Senators are willing and able to do what is necessary to ensure it becomes law...

So far, so good. Neither Joe Biden nor Chuck Schumer nor Nancy Pelosi seem to be falling for the GOP's "conservative" budget concerns, newly rediscovered by the Party now that there's a Dem in the White House.  Also on today's BradCast, the stage gets set for next week's historic second Impeachment Trial of disgraced former President Donald Trump. [Audio link to full show follows summary below.]

A study last December from economists at the London School of Economics and King's College London looked at 18 developed countries over a 50 year period from 1965 to 2015 to find out if tax cuts actually "trickle down" to improve economic outcomes. You'll be "shocked" to hear the results. Tax cuts in the nations examined (including the U.S.), do not improve either GDP or unemployment rates.  They do, however, help the wealthy to become wealthier --- by a lot --- while increasing economic inequality.

That report may have come in useful as President Biden was considering a proposal from 10 Republican Senators at the White House on Monday night to slash his proposed $1.9 trillion COVID relief and stimulus bill down to about $600 billion, or one-third of what Biden and the Dems are proposing. The GOP proposal leaves out a lot of much-needed funding from Biden's proposal for no apparent reason, other than Republicans are pretending to be concerned about spending and deficits again --- a concern they decidedly did not remember to have when they gave away much more with their $2.3 trillion tax cuts mostly to the rich during Donald Trump's Administration.

The good news today is that the White House is moving ahead with their planned $1.9 trillion proposal, and both  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have queued up the measure to be quickly adopted under Budget Reconciliation procedures which require only a simple majority vote in the Senate. No need to overcome a filibuster with 60 votes.  Now we just have to see if conservative Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia decides to play along. He certainly should, given that his state's own Republican Governor is calling on Biden to "go big" in his COVID relief package.

With things moving encouragingly forward, at least for the moment, with the new President and Dem control of both houses of Congress, we turn back to the disastrous previous President, who helped get us into all of these messes.

To help set the stage, we share an extended excerpt from an hour-long live Instagram video by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on Monday night. She detailed for the first time, her harrowing experience on January 6th, describing how she was forced to hide in the dark behind the bathroom door in her personal office at the Capitol, as the murderous and attempted insurrection by Trump's MAGA Mob was underway. As she makes clear, she had very good reason to fear for her life and is still reeling from the trauma of that day.

Trump's second Impeachment Trial, for "Incitement of Insurrection" at the U.S. Capitol that day, is set to begin next week in the Senate. Both the Democratic House Impeachment Managers and Trump's brand new attorneys (all five of his previous ones left him over the weekend) submitted their pre-trial filings on Tuesday. The 80-page Dem memorandum [PDF] lays out the House's case against Trump, alleging he falsely worked his supporters into an outrage over many months --- even before Election Day, as early as last summer --- with baseless claims of a stolen election. He then "aimed them like a loaded cannon down Pennsylvania Avenue" toward the Capitol on January 6th with instructions to "fight like hell" as a Joint Session of Congress was underway to affirm the 2020 Presidential election results. They offer a graphic, detailed, painstakingly-documented argument for Trump's conviction and a thorough response to the false GOP claim that it is somehow unconstitutional to hold an Impeachment Trial after the impeached officer in question has left office.

"If the Senate does not try President Trump (and convict him) it risks declaring to all future Presidents that there will be no consequences, no accountability, indeed no Congressional response at all if they violate their Oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution’ in their final weeks," the House Managers write. "There is no ‘January Exception’ to impeachment or any other provision of the Constitution," they explain, "A president must answer comprehensively for his conduct in office from his first day in office through his last."

For his part, Trump's 14-page response [PDF] is brief and unsurprisingly limp. He cites First Amendment Free Speech rights to support his evidence-free claims that the election was stolen from him and repeatedly claims --- over and over --- that the Senate trial is unconstitutional, since he is no longer in office. There is one point, regarding his personal (if evidence-free) belief that the election was stolen, that should be worth noting when it comes to the difficulty of public oversight and the availability of evidence regarding U.S. election results. Not that he bothered to actually try to get at most of what is available. Beyond that, however, its clear he is hoping that his fellow Republicans in the Senate remain captured, in his thrall and afraid of the wrath of his brain-poisoned supporters.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with GM's landmark announcement that they intend to end production of internal combustion engine vehicles; as global temperatures are now at the highest since the dawn of human civilization; as Biden releases billions of dollars in disaster relief to Puerto Rico that Trump had held back for years; and as a federal court rolls back one of Trump's final rollbacks to Obama's environmental protections...

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And here I thought dealing with one President in a single hour on The BradCast was tough. Now we've got the previous one on trial after his second impeachment and a new one unveiling an ambitious new agenda to begin cleaning up the other guy's horrific mess, particularly on climate today...and not a moment too soon! [Audio link to full show is posted below summary.]

First up today, the Department of Homeland Security issues a new warning about ongoing threats of violence by domestic, home-grown terrorists in the U.S., many of whom have been radicalized by Donald Trump's many lies about the 2020 election having been stolen.

Then, It's been only three weeks since Trump encouraged his MAGA Mob to march down Pennsylvania Avenue and "fight like hell" to prevent the formal counting of Electoral College votes by the U.S. Congress. The attempted insurrectionists violently broke into the U.S. Capitol, called for the hanging of the Vice President, succeeded in shutting down the tally for several hours and sent lawmakers fleeing for their lives into secured locations. Five people were killed, including a Capitol Police officer, in the ensuing violence. One week later, then President Trump was impeached by the U.S. House for a second time, this time for "Incitement of Insurrection", though the Senate's then Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to convene a trial. One week after that, Joe Biden was successfully sworn in as President. And today, just three weeks to the day since the Trump-incited mob's murderous attack on the Capitol, with Democrats now officially in the Senate majority, Trump's second Impeachment Trial has officially begun.

While the arguments in the trial will not be presented in full for another two weeks, Republican Senator and pretend Constitutionalist Rand Paul forced a vote on Tuesday, just after Senators were sworn in as "impartial jurors", to try and dismiss the entire matter by falsely claiming that an Impeachment trial after a President is out of office is "unconstitutional". (Though he repeatedly argued that "private citizens" cannot be impeached and that "If the accused is no longer President - where is the constitutional power to impeach him?")

Joining us today to answer to the clearly false and almost-certainly disingenuous argument proffered by Paul --- and, incredibly, supported by 45 of the Senate's 50 Republicans who voted in favor of his resolution on Tuesday --  is Constitutional law expert RON FEIN of the non-partisan government accountability group Free Speech for People. Fein, with John Bonifaz and Ben Clements, authored the 2018 book, The Constitution Demands It: The Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump. 

"The obvious flaw," in Paul's argument, Fein explains, is that Trump WAS impeached while he was President, and then McConnell stalled the process of the Senate trial by refusing to allow it to be held until Trump was already out of office." But on the broader issue, as he tells us, impeachment trials may absolutely be held after an official is out of office. "Congress has done it before and explicitly considered that exact question."

"If their argument was allowed to go forth, then what it would say is that any President can do whatever they want in the last couple of weeks of their term, because by the time they would get impeached, and by the time the Senate could convene for a trial, they'd be out of office already," he persuasively argues. "Disqualification from future office is an important remedy and penalty for impeachment. It is important to have that hanging over the head of a President even in their last couple of weeks in office."

We also discuss whether the votes of 45 GOP Senators --- including McConnell, who just last week conceded that Trump "provoked" the riot at the Capitol --- to dismiss the trial, signals that it will be impossible to win over the 17 Republicans needed to win the two-thirds vote necessary for a conviction; whether a vote can be held to prevent Trump from holding future office even without conviction; whether a second failure to win a conviction in a second impeachment would redound to Trump's benefit; and whether a resolution to censure the disgraced former President would serve as any kind of deterrent for similar behavior in the future (by Trump or other future Presidents), in the event that he is not convicted once again.

Fein also rings in with his thoughts in response to the GOP's stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court which, on Monday, dismissed two cases regarding Trump's alleged violation of the Constitution's Emoluments Clause as "moot" since he is no longer in office and why it took so long for the cases to even reach the high court. We also discuss whether Fein believes that Trump actually did pardon himself, but is keeping that pardon a secret, somehow, until he's actually charged with a federal crime.

Finally, in far less maddening news, it was "Climate Day" in Joe Biden's new White House on Wednesday! And the new President unveiled an historically ambitious climate agenda that will, among many other things, if successful, result in carbon emissions-free power, nationally, by 2035. Declaring that "we can't wait any longer" to address our worsening climate crisis, Biden detailed his new Executive Orders and Directives to "supercharge" the United States' efforts to combat global warming by pausing new oil and gas leases on federal lands, ending fossil fuel industry subsidies, and creating millions of new jobs in the electric car market and renewable energy industry, and by capping and closing old, unused mines and wells across the nation. His new Climate Envoy, former Sec. of State John Kerry and new White House National Climate Advisor, former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, also responded to media questions (naturally framed by rightwing talking points) during a White House briefing. We share some of their remarks, and the entirety of Biden's historic announcement during today's very busy BradCast...

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On today's BradCast: The effort by Donald Trump and Republicans to steal the Presidential election with false allegations of "voter fraud" didn't work. But that tsunami of disinformation is now being used to advance new restrictions on voting in the states as the GOP obstruction gets underway in the new Democratically-controlled U.S. Senate.

First today, there is quite a bit of news out of both the White House and the Senate. Among those stories covered today...

• President Biden's flurry of executive orders continue, including one today that calls for an end to privately-run federal prison facilities.
• Biden's nominee for Sec. of State, Anthony Blinken, was confirmed in the Senate. His nominee for Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, the first woman in that role, was sworn in today by the nation's first female Vice President.
• Mitch McConnell caved in his demand that Chuck Schumer and the Democrats promise to not do away with the wildly undemocratic legislative filibuster before he would agree to a new power-sharing agreement in the nation's wildly undemocratic upper chamber of Congress
• The historic second impeachment of Donald Trump, on charges of "Incitement of Insurrection" for the deadly, January 6th U.S. Capitol riot, formally began with Senators sworn in on Tuesday as "impartial" jurors and a vote by 45 Senate Republicans to toss out the whole matter entirely.
• And, before this one slips completely down the memory hole...Charges filed by the Justice Department against several military veterans who took part in the attempted insurrection at the Capitol that killed five people, include allegations that dozens of the former military insurrectionists pre-planned their coordinated attack, had hoped to arrest lawmakers, and appear to have had disturbing help from at least one, still-unidentified Congressional insider who gave the seditionists real-time help during the attack to locate lawmakers who had been shuttled into secured locations below the Capitol.

Then, we're joined by DAVID DALEY Senior Fellow at FairVote and author of the books UNRIGGED: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy and RATF**KED: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy. The latter documents the GOP's ingeniously insidious --- and successful --- plan to capture electoral control of statehouses in the 2010 elections in order to gerrymander the hell out of them for the next 10 years (or more).

Daley writes this week at Boston Globe about the latest effort by GOP state legislators to exploit Trump's absurdly false claims about "voter fraud" in the 2020 election in order to implement new restrictions on voting at the state level and new ways to game the electoral college vote. Among the states we discuss where Republicans are right now citing false fraud claims in order to game the systems: Wisconsin, Michigan, New Hampshire, Georgia, Minnesota and Texas. These efforts are very real, and may well work, even in states which currently have Democratic Governors.

We also discuss the ridiculously undemocratic Senate, where Democratic Senators represent tens of millions of more voters than Republicans but, due to "the original gerrymander" as Daley describes it, are barely able to win 50 percent of the seats. "The US Senate is weighted so viciously towards small states in a way that the founders, if they saw it now, they would be truly horrified," he tells me.

"You've got a 50/50 body and yet, those 50 Democratic Senators are representing about 41.5 MILLION MORE PEOPLE.  When you add into that the small-state bias of the Electoral College, when you add into that the advantage that that bias has given Republicans in selecting Supreme Court Justices --- five of these nine Justices  on the Supreme Court selected by a President that lost the popular vote --- when you factor in the advantages that Republicans have with gerrymandering and geography --- all the way down from the US House to the state legislative level --- we are looking at an epidemic of Republican minority rule in this country."

And then there's the need to get rid of the undemocratic filibuster in the already wildly undemocratic Senate if Democrats hope, as they are now promising, to quickly accomplish "big, bold things" done. One of those "big, bold things," as we discuss, is HR-1, the "For the People Act." It's an enormously ambitious and much-needed bill that includes a ton of long-overdue reforms for voting and fair elections; ending dominance of big money and dark money in politics; and re-enforcing disclosure and ethics rules for members of Congress. But, as long as the filibuster remains in place, it will be next to impossible to see that, or any of the other much-needed reforms get through Congress. Constituents of Democratic Senators Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona and Joe Manchin in West Virginia may wish to mention that to them. Repeatedly.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with more news on major executive actions signed by the new President to roll back years of Trump damage to our environment, and to push Biden's "Buy American" initiative to, among other things, move the nation as quickly as possible to American made, all-electric cars as the days of the internal combustion engine must quickly come to an end...

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If you thought the news might slow down a bit with Donald Trump finally out of office, you may still have to wait a while.  On today's BradCast, we pick up where Friday's left. Moments after we got off air a ton of astonishing news broke, and it has continued right up through airtime today.  Most notably, the stunning story of just how close the nation's mercifully former President actually came to stealing the election from Joe Biden and the American people is only just now beginning to come together. [Audio link to full show follows below summary.]

We start today --- (which, by the way, marks our 17th Anniversary of muck-raking and trouble-making via The BRAD BLOG! Please feel free to help us continue our reader/listener supported work into our 18th year with a much-needed donation!) --- with another $1.3 billion defamation suit filed against yet another Team Trump legal liar and defamer.  Following a similar suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Trump's attorney Sidney Powell just weeks ago, his lead election-theft attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has now also been slapped with a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit by the Canadian-owned firm.

The 107-page complaint [PDF] filed on Monday, as we detail at some length today, charges that Giuliani repeatedly fueled Trump's "Big Lie" about the election and the repeatedly evidence-free claims that Dominion's systems were somehow used to steal it from Trump for Biden. These are the false claims that Giuliani made over and over again in public, on rightwing media and on his snake-oil peddling YouTube show, ironically named "Common Sense". They are also, as Dominion points out in the complaint, the same claims that Giuliani failed to make in a court of law, where he could actually be punished for his egregious and repeated "voter fraud" lies.

The company charges that the false information from Trump's attorney was also retweeted and shared millions of times on social media, leading to broad distrust and millions in potentially lost business by the private voting systems vendor. Giuliani's months long assault also resulted in a number of vile and violent death threats to company employees and contractors alike.

The central false claim by Giuliani --- which we have detailed on previous programs --- is based on a wildly bastardized and re-imagined version of a deep-dive investigative exclusive from The BRAD BLOG that I published more than 10 years ago. It relates to Dominion's 2010 purchase of another voting machine company that had once been owned by still another voting machine company that was once tied to Venezuela and its now deceased President, Hugo Chavez. My decade-old, completely accurate story was so bastardized by Rudy and Team Trump that, at one point, while he was giving false testimony about Dominion "fraud" to the GOP-majority Michigan state legislature in early December, Rudy claimed that Dominion's owners were brought "down to meet Chavez just two years ago."  (Chavez has been dead for seven years.)

As also explained today, we are no fans here of private voting companies having any place in our public elections. Nonetheless, Dominion is right to sue for the libelous and dangerous falsehoods repeatedly told by Team Trump, which also fueled the violent, attempted insurrection by the enraged and disinformed MAGA Mob at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Moreover, there may well be more such suits coming in the days ahead. The firm has indicated they may even file suit against Trump himself.

All of that served as the basis --- at least in Donald Trump's addled-brain, as we learned over the weekend --- for a gob-smacking, last minute attempt by the then President of the United States earlier this month to also stage a coup at the U.S. Justice Department! He reportedly attempted to replace his Acting Attorney General with yet another lackey who was willing to use the Dept. of Justice to file suit at Trump's stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the 2020 Presidential election results in one or more states, and to lie to Georgia's elected officials that the DoJ was investigating major voter fraud in the state. That, the hare-brained but wildly dangerous scheme argued, should have then led Georgia state legislators to void the results and award the state's electors to Trump. In reality, Biden won the Peach State narrowly last November. There has been no credible evidence to suggest otherwise and, in fact, there has been quite a bit of evidence to suggest the results in Georgia were accurately tabulated by the Dominion systems.

On Friday, the New York Times' Katie Benner published the shocking scoop on that attempted DoJ coup, that --- along with several other pieces of reporting in recent days and weeks --- gets us a bit closer to understanding just how close Trump was to pulling a trigger that might have resulted in the complete undermining of American democracy and the stolen election he was after. We detail the plot to remove Trump's Acting Attorney General (the one he installed when even Bill Barr was unwilling to go along with Trump's phony election fraud scheme), prevented only by a vow of top officials at DoJ to resign en masse if Trump went through with it. The details, however, are as stunning as the story itself, and help to spell out exactly what Trump was hoping for with the insurrection he (and Giuliani!) incited at the Capitol on January 6th and how close he came to actually pulling it all off!

All of which underscores how the two week delay now scheduled in the U.S. Senate before Trump's second impeachment trial begins is likely to make things far worse, rather than better, for the disgraced, now former President.

Buckle up for today's latest edition of The BradCast!...

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When Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe was interviewed by MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell last year, his remarks specifically related to Presidential self-pardons. His observations, however, reveal why the Department of Justice (DOJ) should also contest any effort by President Donald J. Trump to grant a pardon to anyone who could be considered a co-conspirator in carrying out an insurrection designed to allow the loser of the 2020 Presidential Election to remain in power...

In an amicus brief [PDF] filed late last year in the Michael Flynn case, the legal advocacy group, Free Speech for People (FSFP) observed that, while the U.S. Supreme Court, in Schick v Reed (1974), described the Presidential pardon power as "plenary", or absolute, the Court added that the limitations on the pardon power, "if any, must be found in the Constitution itself." Citing a recent Georgetown Law Review article [PDF] that reached a similar conclusion, FSFP argued that the U.S. Constitution's command that a President ensure that the laws be "Faithfully Executed" broadly prevents a President from granting a pardon for a corrupt purpose.

Although U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan issued a 43-page Memorandum Opinion explaining that he had dismissed the Flynn case as moot following Flynn's acceptance of a Presidential pardon, the court neither referenced nor rejected the corrupt purpose limitation set forth by the FSFP amicus brief. Even if that ruling implicitly entailed a rejection of the FSFP argument, as applied to the Flynn case, it would not foreclose a DOJ challenge to the limits of the pardon power with respect to the unprecedented events that occurred on Jan. 6th.

This is not an abstract question. An attorney representing insurrectionist Jacob Anthony Chancey announced he'd request a Presidential pardon, Democracy Now's Amy Goodman reported. Evidence suggests that Chancey, who was filmed "shirtless, wearing buffalo horns and holding a spear", may be one of the rioters who intended "to capture and assassinate elected officials," according to Goodman. As rioters yelled "Hang Mike Pence", the charging documents allege, Chancey aka the "QAnon Shamen", left a note on the VP's desk that ominously warned that "it's only a matter of time, justice is coming", according to Anna Lucia Murillo of the Daily Beast.

No President, before this one, has ever been implicated in a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2383 - Rebellion or insurrection or 18 U.S. Code § 2384 - Seditious conspiracy. It is virtually impossible to believe that the framers of the U.S. Constitution intended the availability of the pardon power to be utilized as an instrument designed to entice others to assist in the ultimate violation of the solemn oath to see that the laws of the United States are "Faithfully Executed". The framers of the U.S. Constitution regarded the duty to "Faithful Execute" our laws as so central to our constitutional scheme of governance that Art. II, §1, Cl. 8 of the U.S. Constitution mandates that every President "shall" take the oath before entering office.

The walls are closing in very quickly now --- even throughout our hour today --- on the man who President-elect Joe Biden correctly, if generously, described today as "not fit to serve" and "one of the most incompetent Presidents in the history of the United States of America." As we go to air, Donald Trump is still in office. We can't tell you for certain if that will still be the case by the time you hear today's BradCast. [Audio link is posted at bottom of article.]

On Thursday night, U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick succumbed to injuries sustained during the attempted coup at the Capitol on Wednesday, as incited by Trump. He was the fifth person to have died amid the mayhem wrought by our outgoing criminal President. Sicknick's death, which Trump didn't bother to mention today, may add yet another crime --- conspiracy to incite murder or manslaughter --- to Trump's quickly growing rap-sheet.

On Friday morning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued an ultimatum. Either Trump resigns now or new Articles of Impeachment will be filed on Monday. That, as the Administration rats continue to flee his sinking ship, with more resignations and the welcome news that sore loser Trump will not attend Biden's inauguration and plans to leave D.C. as of the day before. "Good riddance," we say, in echoing the two word statement issued by the American Federation of Teachers last night upon the news that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was also quitting (though only after four convicted murderers and war criminals who worked for her brother received Presidential Pardons.)

More on Trump's growing legal perils and calls for accountability with my guest today, but first a few words on the news that Dominion Voting Systems has filed a $1.3 billion lawsuit against Team Trump attorney  and his fellow perpetual liar and con-artist Sidney Powell. The private voting systems vendor charges Powell led a campaign to spread "wild" and "demonstrably false" claims about the company, including lies about their voting systems being developed with communist money in Venezuela by the late Hugo Chavez and, with the help of George Soros and China and Cuba, being used to steal the election for Biden.

(Her absurd Venezuela/Chavez claims are bastardized and re-imagined versions of my detailed, accurate, exclusive investigative reporting at The BRAD BLOG from approximately 2008 to 2010. And, while I've been wildly critical for many years of Dominion's unverifiable voting systems, as deployed by Georgia's Republican Sec. of State, there is nothing to support Powell's fantastical claims, including her evidence-free assertions that the state's SoS and Governor received kickbacks from the company to deploy their machines in the Peach State, for the first time, in 2020.)

Dominion, which previously warned they were likely to sue for slander and defamation if Powell did not retract her false claims (she refused and "doubled down" instead, according to the 124-page complaint [PDF]), also has sent similar warnings to other Team Trump liars such as Rudy Giuliani, Fox "News", Newsmax and One America News. They suggest they may even sue Trump himself. We'll hope they do, even if I'm called to testify by the private election vendor which should have no place in our public election system.

But, for now, according to our guest today, Constitutional expert and former federal prosecutor BEN CLEMENTS, Board Chair and Senior Legal Advisor of the non-partisan government accountability group, Free Speech for People (FSFP), it's accountability for the "seditious" President of the United States that is of the greatest immediate concern.

Clements, along with FSFP's  John Bonifaz and Ron Fein, filed an op-ed in the Boston Globe on Tuesday --- the day before the Trump-instigated insurrection at the Capitol on Wednesday --- calling for Trump to be immediately impeached for a second time.

"At the time we wrote the op-ed, we were only dealing with the first major set of felonies that the President committed this week, in the effort to falsify the Georgia election results in his favor," he tells me today, referring to last Saturday's phone call by the President to GA's Sec. of State, cajoling and threatening him to "find" enough votes to steal the election for him there. (Yes! That was just this past week as well!) "At this point, we obviously have a second set of felonies in connection with his incitement of a seditious mob on Congress, which creates an even greater urgency."

But the reason Clements is calling for a second impeachment this late in Trump's term is because, as he explains: "There is really, for the most part, only one sure way to ensure that Donald Trump is not permitted to again run for office in this country...And that way is through the impeachment power.   If the Senate convicts, an official can be removed, but they can also be disqualified from ever holding federal office again. Aside from removal, which is now needed more urgently than ever, there is the need to disqualify him, to prevent him from running in 2024, or from running for anything else at any time in the federal government."

With just 12 days left before Biden's Inauguration, is there even enough time for such a proceeding?  As Clements, who authored a book with Bonifaz and Fein called The Constitution Demands It: The Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump, details that impeachment and a Senate trial can happen even after an official is out of office. Indeed, as he (and his op-ed) recounts, there is even historical precedent for it.

We also discuss whether the Constitution allows for a Presidential self-pardon, whether Trump will try to execute one, whether lawful or not, and as FSFP called for yesterday, the need for Joe Biden's Attorney General-designate, Judge Merrick Garland, to immediately empanel an independent task force, once confirmed, to coordinate and investigate "any potential federal criminal or civil violations that may have been committed by President Trump, members of his administration, or his campaign, business, or other associates."  Clements argues that, without public pressure, Democratic Administrations have had a tendency in the past, when taking office "after a corrupt and sometimes lawless Republican administration" to make a "a quick call to 'turn the page.'"

"We are hearing those calls broadly already," he says. But "if we really want to move forward, if we really want to restore the integrity of the Department of Justice, there must be accountability for the crimes of this Administration and particularly of Donald Trump. And there must be accountability for the destruction that he created to our democracy and to the Department of Justice. The reason we're calling for this is there is a risk that there will be this temptation to say 'he's out of office and let's move on.' And I think that would be a GRAVE mistake that will invite more lawless activity, that will invite more of the kind of activity that we saw on Wednesday with the attack on the Capitol."

As we chatted, news came in that Alaska's Republican Senator, Lisa Murkowski, is now calling for Trump to resign, declaring "I want him out" and threatening to leave her party if they continue to align with him. And Twitter finally did the right thing (years belatedly) by permanently banning Trump, citing the risk of further incitement of violence.

It's going to be a very dark weekend for Trump. But, for us, we close a dark week today with a long overdue, brand new and hilarious parody tune for the seditious moment, from the great Randy Rainbow! Enjoy!...

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Today's BradCast picks up where yesterday's left off, amid the Trump-instigated attempted insurrection by his MAGA Mob at the nation's Capitol amid the formal affirmation of Joe Biden's Electoral College victory. We continue then with all of the mind-boggling fallout thereafter. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

Among the stories covered today on today's show...

• Morning Joe speaks for us, in his response to Wednesday's shameful attempted coup and pathetic response to it by the Capitol Police;

• So does Joe Biden, who, like Joe Scarborough, notes how differently a white rightwing MAGA Mob was dealt with, versus how things would have played out had those violent rioters who invaded the Capitol building been BLM protesters;

• Trump won't be escaping to Scotland after all. Guess he'll have to find another country willing to harbor a likely fugitive from justice;

• Once the Capitol building was cleared of Trump's lawless marauders on Wednesday night --- and four insurrectionists had died in the bargain --- the Electoral College affirmation by Congress that they'd attempted to prevent, picked up once again, with a (very slightly) chastened GOP. We share several outstanding speeches from the Senate floor in the middle of the night/early morning, as delivered by Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Mitt Romney (R-UT). That, before seven Republican U.S. Senators and 138 GOP House Members (68% of the caucus!) voted, unsuccessfully, to nullify millions of votes cast by the voters of Arizona and Pennsylvania;

• For the record, the seven Republican Senators who voted to nullify the voters in those two states --- even after the attempted coup at their own place of work --- are: Cruz (TX), Hawley (MO), Lummis (WY), Marshall (KS), Scott (FL), Tuberville (AL) and Hyde-Smith (MS). May their names live in eternal infamy and shame;

• Trump and his Republican Party's shameful, evidence-free attempt to use the Electoral Count Act of 1887 or 12th Amendment to the Constitution in order to steal the 2020 Presidential election has officially failed, as Biden's Electoral College "landslide" was affirmed by Congress at 3:45am on Thursday morning, January 7th. The MAGA Mob riots served no purpose other than to kill several Trump supporters and injure more than a dozen Capitol police. The results of the election were exactly as they were certified by all 50 states weeks ago;

• Amid the insurrection and while being locked out of his account at both Twitter and Facebook overnight (he has since been allowed to return to Twitter, though Facebook says he will be banned until at least after Inauguration Day), Trump's mood was said to have grown increasingly erratic. His rage reportedly resulted in Mike Pence's Chief of Staff (and Trump's own former Legislative Director) being banned from the White House, and staffers were reportedly instructed by the White House Counsel to stay away from him, lest they find themselves as an accessory to treason under the Sedition Act;

• About eight staffers have resigned following Wednesday's events, including Trump's former Press Secretary (Stephanie Grisham), his former Acting Chief of Staff (Mick Mulvaney) and his Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, the only cabinet member, so far, to jump off the sinking ship. Chao also happens to be married to the soon-to-be-former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who will presumably be the Republican Minority Leader following the apparent victories by Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock on Tuesday in Georgia's U.S. Senate runoffs. None of those who waited until now to resign should be hailed as heroes;

• By Thursday morning, both incoming presumptive Senate Majority Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had issued statements calling for the 25th Amendment to be invoked by Vice President Pence and Trump's remaining cabinet members to remove him from office immediately. Pelosi correctly describes Trump as having incited "an unpseakable assault on our nation and our people." Short of impeachment, both Democratic leaders say, another impeachment for "willfully inciting violence against the government of the United States"; "gravely endanger[ing] the security of the United States"; and "demonstrat[ing] that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office" remain a possibility, as detailed in Articles now being circulated for consideration by House Democrats;

• If you're not familiar with how the 25th Amendment would work, should it be invoked (there is also at least one Republican lawmaker calling for it today, describing Trump as "unfit" and "unwell"), here's a quick primer;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for some much brighter news, believe it or not, in our latest Green News Report, where the overlooked news about Democrats clawing back a legislative majority in the Senate may be very very good news indeed...as long as WV's coal-loving Democratic Senator, Joe Manchin, decides to help save the planet by playing along...

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After a not-nearly-long-enough break, The BradCast is back for the new year, when everything will be entirely better than the old year, right? Well, if the last several days of insanity that we now refer to as "news" is any indication, the answer is: "Not so much!"  It will be impossible to adequately cover all we discussed on today's program in today's summary. But, we'll give you the basics here and hope you tune in for the full story. [Audio link to full show is posted below summary.]

While we were off, both houses of Congress overrode Donald Trump's ridiculous veto of the "must-pass", $780 billion National Defense Authorization Act to fund the military for another year. But GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was nonetheless successful in preventing Americans from receiving $2,000 pandemic checks, despite best efforts of Democrats, a tiny, uninspiring handful of Republicans, and even Trump himself. That, as the nation clocked an unfathomable 350,000 COVID deaths, which is the equivalent of blowing up about 17 sold-out NBA arenas and killing every single person in every single one of them, or 115 9/11s over the past 10 months in the U.S.

With that, the new 117th Congress convened for the first time on Sunday, with a narrow majority for Republicans in the Senate (pending Tuesday's two U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia) and with a narrow majority for Democrats in the House, where they elected Nancy Pelosi as Speaker for another two years.

Despite all of that pretty big news, it all seemed to pale in comparison to Donald Trump's ongoing electoral death rattle. With concerns about how our unstable President may react as his days in office dwindle, every living former Defense Secretary (10 of them, Republican and Democratic, including the two fired by Trump and even Dick Cheney, who was apparently concerned enough that he reportedly led this effort), published a short, sharp group op-ed, making it crystal clear that any "efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory," and that "civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic."

Even as that was being published on Saturday, Trump was on the phone for an unhinged hour with the Republican Secretary of State of Georgia, haranguing, threatening and cajoling him to change the state's Presidential election results to award the state's electoral college votes to Trump. We play part of that call, which may have been in violation of both state and federal laws, on today's show. We do not do it justice. The Washington Post has published the full bonkers audio and transcript, including Trump's long-ago debunked fraud claims and repeated false assertions that he won the state by about a half million votes (he lost it by about 12,000) and that he just wants "to find 11,780" votes to "win" the state.

The news of that madness came on Sunday, as Georgia will have it's last day of voting in two U.S. Senate runoffs to determine partisan control of the Senate for the next two years on Tuesday, and as the new Congress meets in a joint session on Wednesday, January 6th, to affirm (or not) the results of Biden's Electoral College victory over Trump by a seemingly comfortable 306 to 232 margin.

Over the weekend, however, more than a dozen Republican U.S. Senators led by 2024 hopefuls Josh Hawley of MO and Ted Cruz of TX, announced they intend to challenge the Electoral College results on Wednesday during what is normally a pro forma procedural affair presided over by the President of the Senate (Vice President Mike Pence, in this case).

And this bring us to crux of where we are and what could happen on Wednesday, as Republicans continue to claim --- through failed lawsuits and other protests --- that the Electoral College Act (ECA) of 1887, which has determined the procedure to be used on Wednesday for about 150 years and 33 Presidential elections without question, is somehow a violation of the Constitution's 12th Amendment.

If Republicans can figure out how to make this argument on Wednesday --- with Pence potentially holding the reins to help them --- we could find ourselves in a Constitutional quagmire leading to....lord knows what.

We're joined today to help explain all of this madness by longtime election integrity advocate, election law scholar and democracy activist, PAUL LEHTO. He argues that, despite so many claims to the contrary (by many of the same folks who said that Trump could never become President back in 2016, by the way) there is, in fact, still a "path" for Trump and his Republicans to steal the election from Biden on Wednesday.

Tune in for the details, but it has to do with how the 12th Amendment says that questions about the validity of Electoral Votes should be dealt with (via a one vote per state vote in the U.S. House), versus how the ECA handles such challenges (with a regular, up or down majority vote in both houses needed to support such a challenge.)

Why is this even a question at this point? Lehto explains in detail.

He also cites the lesson that we should learn from all of this madness: "What we should learn is that what you and election integrity activists have talked about now for decades is coming home to roost," Lehto explains. "And that is that a big, big part of this is the inherent uncertainty when votes are purely processed through computers. Nobody really knows --- until there's a hand recount --- what the result is, and partisan people can attach to that uncertainty and that doubt any theory that they wish to in order to keep hope alive."

"So we need a voting system that leaves no doubt as to that result . And in order to have that you have to have transparency," he says, adding: "Basically, this is all the chickens coming home to roost, in terms of our non-transparent voting system."

There's more. But, again, you'll need to tune in for it. Happy New Year?...

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As recently reported by John Kruzel of The Hill, the attorneys taking part in Donald Trump's dishonest effort to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 Presidential election "face mounting ethics complaints" that could result in sanctions ranging from fines to censure, suspension or even disbarment.

Michigan's Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel recently explained why she is seeking to have Team Trump attorney Sidney Powell and others subjected to discipline, including disbarment, for professional misconduct in conjunction with continuing frivolous legal efforts to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 Presidential Election...

Nessel's observations are certainly consistent with Rules 3.1 and 3.3 of the Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct [PDF] which prevent the pursuit of frivolous claims and forbids attorneys from knowingly making false statements of fact or law to any tribunal. "An action is frivolous," Rule 3.1 explains, "if the lawyer is unable to make a good-faith argument on the merits of the action taken, or to support the action taken by a good-faith argument for an extension, modification, or reversal of existing law."

MI's rules are in line with the American Bar Association's Rules of Professional Conduct as well.

Nessel is by no means alone in her critique of the dubious legal tactics being taken by a number of attoneys allied with Trump. In Delaware, a state judge, on his own motion, issued an order "to Show Cause why the permission to practice" pro hac vice (in a specific case), previously extended to out-of-state Georgia Attorney L. Lin Wood, Jr., should be "revoked". The court believes Wood may have "engaged in conduct in other jurisdictions, which, had it occurred [in a Delaware case], would violate the Delaware Lawyers' Rules of Professional Conduct."

There's a growing body of evidence that multiple attorneys have knowingly pursued frivolous claims that in hopes of undergirding Trump's dangerous and baseless conspiracy theories that the election was somehow stolen from him. They've piled up 59 losses in state and federal courts, many entailing outright dismissals by judges who described the pleadings as "without merit". Yet, that didn't stop right-wing groups of attorneys from recently filing 11th hour federal complaints that are not merely meritless but beyond the pale. So much so, that the D.C. and state bar associations might consider imposing the ultimate tool of attorney discipline --- disbarment...

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!...

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"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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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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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...

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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...

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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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