Donald Trump tried to steal the 2020 election. We really must stop describing his efforts and those by his supporters as "questioning the results" or "claiming fraud" or "trying to overturn the election." The fact is, Trump tried to steal it. He used every means at his disposal to try and do so. Thankfully, he is largely a failure at pretty much everything, so it didn't work, though we now know it came exceedingly close. So, let's start calling it for what it is: An unprecedented attempted by a President of the United States to try and steal a Presidential election. To that end, accountability is now happening. Slowly but quite assuredly, along with a number of other related accountability stories on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

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

• Some of the breaking news on today's terror attack at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan, which killed at least 13 U.S. service members and 60 Afghans and seriously injured many more. ISIS-K, an off-shoot of the Islamic State and an enemy of the Taliban, has claimed responsibility for the attack by two suicide bombers. If anything, Thursday's tragedy amidst the largest airlift in U.S. history --- following the swift takeover of the country by the Taliban --- simply serves to underscore even further why the U.S. pullout must continue, and why we certainly shouldn't have been there for 20 years (if at all);

• In much less horrific news, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) released its 2020 post-election survey [PDF] of various voting and election-related data from all 50 states last year. While The Guardian's Sam Levine characterizes the report as proving the election was "a remarkable success", we explain why that may be a bit of an overstatement. That said, the data does reveal yet again that, while there were far too many rejections of absentee and mail-in ballots (as is always the case, but especially amid pandemic voting last year), there is still no evidence at all to even suggest that the Presidential election was stolen in any way, shape or form by Joe Biden, the Democrats or anyone else. Not that Donald Trump didn't try (and fail) to do exactly that, of course;

• In much brighter related news, a federal judge in Michigan on Wednesday brought some serious accountability down on nine of the Trump attorneys, including Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, who both helped Trump try to steal the 2020 election by filing fraudulent lawsuits, in this case in Michigan, fraudulently claiming that the election was stolen, using fraudulent claims about fraud. All nine lawyers were excoriated by U.S. District Court Judge Linda V. Parker's scathing 110-page order [PDF], which should (hopefully) end each of the attorneys' careers as officers of the court. Parker mandated the Trump lawyers pay attorneys fees accrued by the city of Detroit and state of Michigan in defending against the "frivolous" so-called "Kraken" lawsuit; take 12 hours of legal classes each (including 6 on Election Law); and, most importantly, face investigations for possible suspension and/or disbarment by legal authorities in each of their home states;

• More accountability for Trump's attempt to steal the 2020 election, specifically for the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol that he incited as part of that effort. Seven Capitol Police officers on Thursday filed a lawsuit [PDF] against Trump, several far-right extremist groups charged with aiding the deadly plot, and even against Trump associates like Roger Stone. It is, as the New York Times describes it, "the most expansive civil effort to date seeking to hold Mr. Trump and his allies legally accountable." Trump is already facing two other similar lawsuits filed by the NAACP and by Rep. Eric Swalwell. But, no doubt, the disgraced former President and his supporters will see this new complaint differently, because it is filed by police officers and, as you know, Republicans always "back the blue", right?;

• That lawsuit follows just one day after the bi-partisan U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6th attack issued a massive series of records requests to at least 8 different federal agencies for documents related to Trump's movements, actions and meetings on January 6th, and in the weeks and months both before and after. The requests were sent to, among others, the FBI, Dept. of Homeland Security and National Archives, where Presidential White House records are stored. Trump is apparently livid about the effort, describing it as a "partisan exercise" being carried out by a "Leftist" House Committee. (That may come as a surprise to "Leftist" Committee members Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger);

• In still more accountability news today, tangentially related to Trump's attempt to steal last year's election in Michigan: The sentence for the first domestic terrorist, among some 13 charged in the plot to kidnap Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last year, was handed down on Wednesday. A 25-year old man who, according to Justice Department prosecutors, cooperated with the investigation after initially pleading not guilty, changed his plea and was sentenced to more than 6 years in prison on charges of providing material support for terrorist acts and felony firearms charges. The failed conspiracy, according to the FBI and Whitmer, sprang from Trump's attempt to vilify the Governor for her science-based handling of the COVID pandemic, in a year in which Trump was willing to say and do anything to win the important battleground state. (He lost it by 150,000 votes instead);

• In accountability news only spiritually related to Trump, a federal appeals court declined to overturn the sentence of the man who killed nine Black parishioners at the Emanuel Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015. The now-27-year old avowed white supremacist is the first person charged with a death sentence for committing a federal hate crime. While accountability is great, a life sentence would have been sufficient. Killing people is bad, as some of us learned even before Kindergarten. Apparently, the U.S. Government has yet to do so;

• Only politically related to Trump, the Republican state Attorney General in South Dakota, Jason Ravnsborg, who fatally struck a pedestrian last year and left him to die, decided to take a plea deal rather than begin his trial today. Nonetheless, as of airtime, despite the hit and run fatality, Ravnsborg was still in office as the state's top law enforcement official;

• And, in related corrupt Republican state Attorney General news, definitely politically related to Trump, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is also still in office. That, despite being charged with multiple felonies for securities fraud some time ago (and, so far, evading trial on those years-old, but still-pending indictments); facing potential disbarment by the State Bar of Texas for his attempt to help Trump steal the election with a bogus, fraudulent, rejected lawsuit filed with the U.S. Supreme Court to try and overturn results in four non-Texas states; and under investigation by the FBI after 7 top staffers in his office quit and filed a legal complaint detailing how AG Paxton was involved in a serious bribery and abuse of power scheme involving protection for one of his top donors and a scheme that involved having the man give a job to his mistress. Well, on that federal investigation, AG Paxton had some good news this week! In an unsigned 374-page report [PDF] published by AG Paxton's office on AG Paxton's letterhead, AG Paxton's own internal investigation found that "AG Paxton’s actions were lawful" and that "AG Paxton committed no crime". Phew! That was close! I'm sure the FBI is calling off their probe, even as we speak.

• Finally, as a late brewing potential major hurricane (Ida) spins toward the Gulf Coast for possible landfall over the weekend, Desi Doyen joins us today for our latest Green News Report, with a suspiciously inordinate amount of encouraging news. But don't worry, there are a few items of the usual catastrophic nature GNR is known for as well. We'd hate to leave anyone disappointed...

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We keep trying to move on from Trump on The BradCast. But his crimes, his criminal supporters, the growing terrorist menace they pose, not to mention the billion dollar lawsuits that keep coming in against the suckers who fell for and/or promoted his phony, sore loser "stolen election" conspiracy theories, are not making any of it easy. This is gonna take a while.

First up today, in advance of Trump's second Impeachment Trial next week, the Democratic House Impeachment Managers today invited the disgraced former President to give testimony under oath. The man who has never turned down the chance to be the center of the attention, turned down the offer. His lawyers call the invite "a political stunt". But, of course, since Trump can't help but lie, it's probably very wise that he has decided to not get himself into even more legal trouble than he is already facing.

At the same time on Thursday, Smartmatic, a small voting machine company that Team Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani falsely claimed to be interchangeable with their competitor Dominion Voting Systems, and somehow behind theft of the 2020 Presidential election, pushed back hard. The company which, in the U.S., does business in only one county (Los Angeles, where they received a contract to build it's new voting systems used for the first time last year), sued Fox "News", three of its hosts (Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro) for $2.7 billion. The suit also names Giuliani and Powell as defendants. They were each, separately, similarly sued for $1.3 billion each by Dominion recently.

Smartmatic's voting systems played no role in any of the battleground states where Team Trump has baselessly claimed the election was stolen from him. Their 285-page lawsuit [PDF] filed today, however, like those filed to date by Dominion (more are likely to be coming soon) against Giuliani and Powell, charge defamation and ensuing loss of business, after Fox, its hosts and Trump's attorneys all repeatedly made false claims based on their re-imagined reporting by The BRAD BLOG. My 2010 investigative exclusive regarding Dominion and a company they purchased which was once owned by Smartmatic, was accurate. Team Trump and the MAGA Mob Media's bastardization of that reporting was used to spin their own phony, evidence-free story of a massive, worldwide election theft conspiracy --- as we explain yet again today.

Next, in the wake of the January 6 MAGA Mob assault at the U.S. Capitol --- the incitement for which is the basis of Trump's second impeachment --- almost two hundreds perps have been rounded up so far and charged in the deadly attack. Members of a number of far-right extremist and/or racist organizations like The Oath Keepers and Proud Boys have been arrested and indicted on conspiracy charges, and Dept. of Justice officials are said to be mulling the use of RICO statues to cast an even wider net with conspiracy laws initially enacted to help bring mafia kingpins to justice.

The violent insurrection in January, however, was completely predictable. In early December on this program, we were joined by a longtime researcher of terrorism, insurgency and political violence who warned that Trump was setting the stage for coming insurgencies not unlike like the one we all witnessed at the Capitol on January 6. He warned at the time that Trump was "encouraging his supporters to engage in insurgency-like tactics and behaviors," that there are "real-world consequences to this," and that those listening to Trump and his media organs like Fox "News" and even farther rightwing media outlets were "living in an alternate universe", and "going to act on it."

We're joined once again today by that expert, COLIN P. CLARKE, a Senior Research Fellow at The Soufan Center and author of a number of books on international terrorism, to discuss his recent New York Times op-ed warning that, while "the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 by a rabid mob of Donald Trump supporters resulted in a failed insurrection...for far-right extremists, including anti-government militias, white supremacists and violent conspiracy theorists, nothing about the insurrection was a failure."

"Not only was it not a failure, at least viewed on the part of the insurrectionists," he tells me today, "but it was entirely predictable. Everything Trump was doing, including his violent rhetoric, was laying the groundwork for this type of political violence."

"It was obvious to any extremism researcher that knows what they're talking about that this was the logical conclusion of where things were headed. The President was stoking the flames. His enablers in the GOP were providing that passive support necessary. And he unleashed a mob, essentially, against his own government," Clarke explains.

But the even more unsettling part is that Clarke, who has studied insurgencies across the globe going back decades, believes that attack has now set the stage for the recruitment of even farther Right extremists and for still more violent events in the near future.

We discuss how both law enforcement officials and lawmakers need to grapple with the emerging threats posed by "a new era" of domestic terrorism; if our current laws are adequate to safeguard against further attacks; and the justifiable concerns that Americans should have regarding the possibility that new measures enacted to combat domestic terrorism, along with those enacted after 9/11 to guard against foreign terrorism, might inappropriately be used against perceived political adversaries of those in power.

"We need to be on guard over the mistakes that we've made in the past. We need to be transparent about what the strategy is going forward....At the same time, some of the lessons we've learned from  the last twenty years fighting jihadists just don't pertain," Clarke says. "For the better part of the past two decades, we've been focused on fighting groups and organizations overseas. Now we're concerned with individuals and movements on US soil. Quite a bit of difference there. Americans have different rights under the law --- including First and Second Amendment --- than we would be talking about if we were analyzing an ISIS network operating in Syria. So there's a lot of care to take as we figure out what to do next."

On an encouraging note, however, he explains that he has "been heartened [by] seeing that the Biden Administration understands the sense of urgency. It's tapped some of the most capable people in this country to lead the charge." He says he expects their work to be "empirically driven" based "on the data", which is "something we didn't see under the last administration, when we had President Trump talking about 'I'm going to designate Antifa as a terrorist group.'"

Finally, for some (believe it not) brighter news, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest 'Green News Report', as Dems take control of the U.S. Senate and vow to act on climate; as automakers drop their attempt to challenge California's vehicle emissions standards; and as coal is predicted to be entirely out of the U.S. power grid in just a few short years...

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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.

• Abrams optimistic remarks come in stark contrast, however, to the violence that erupted in D.C. over the weekend, as "Far Right Paramilitaries Allied With Outgoing President March Through City Vandalizing Black Churches". That would be the racist Proud Boys MAGA Mob which stole Black Lives Matter banners from historically black churches and burned them on Saturday, as dozens were arrested and several stabbed just hours after Trump's Marine One flyover of the latest Sore Loser Rally in the nation's capital. One upside to the racist, rightwing sore-loserism, as we share on today's program, the wingnut speaker who rallied the crowd to chants of "Destroy the GOP! Destroy the GOP!" before calling for the defeat of incumbent Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in their January runoffs against Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff for partisan control of the U.S. Senate.

• 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...

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