Today on The BradCast, we continue our focus on next Tuesday’s critical midterm elections by picking things up, somewhat, from our conversation on yesterday’s program. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]
We were joined yesterday by longtime election and voting system expert Eddie Perez to discuss, among other things, what he has been writing about as the “manufactured chaos” that Republicans are creating to wreak havoc in the 2022 elections.
Today, we dive into broader details of that organized, manufactured chaos program that is emerging as a national strategy by the GOP to create enough havoc around the country to allow them a patina of “evidence” with which to challenge results of election outcomes they don’t like.
A number of seemingly disparate efforts are actually now emerging as of a piece with a national strategy that you (and the Democrats and the media) need to know about before it all comes crashing down at once amid chaotic smoke and mirrors on Election Day and thereafter.
This is clearly an effort that echoes the less coordinated post-election chaos of 2020. Many of the same players are involved, including corrupt Trump attorneys John Eastman and Cleta Mitchell, as well as his convicted former aide Steve Bannon, the laughable billionaire pillow guy Mike Lindell, not to mention those in the far-right political media set to help execute the strategy as if it is legitimate, from Tucker Carlson on down.
The hope, as Josh Kovensky outlines at TPM today, is to sow the seeds of enough chaos to be able to create court cases and “thousands of sworn affidavits” (sound familiar?) to “credibly” point to (false) claims of “fraud” in virtually any election around the country next week, if and when they don’t win it. “The chaos is the point,” he writes.
We pull many of these threads together on today’s program. One example is the seemingly isolated case of the campaign manager for Maryland’s white nationalist Republican candidate for Attorney General who directed supporters at a rally last weekend to vote next Tuesday “as late in the day as possible,” explaining that, “If everyone could stand in long, long lines at 6 o’clock, that would actually help us.”
Then there are the door-to-door canvassers — organized in part by folks like Eastman, Bannon, Lindell, Mitchell and others — who, according to a Reuters report today, have been active in at least 23 states. They are dressing as if they are government officials — sometimes armed and with badges — intimidating voters with questions about who lives in their house, what their voting record is, etc. They appear to be collecting information to use to challenge voters on Election Day at the polls and/or in the post-election period, as required to create enough chaos to offer the appearance of fraud and/or uncertainty in the legitimacy of election results. And, yes, Fox “News” and the rest will be standing by to report all of these false accusations as if they are real.
Forewarned is forearmed, as they say. It’s important that you — not to mention the Democratic Party and everyone at legitimate media outlets — understand what is going on before the fog of chaotic election war overwhelms all of us beginning next Tuesday.
In a not unrelated story today, we noted yesterday that AP has found more than 100 election lawsuits have already been brought this year related to the 2022 elections. Most have been filed by Republicans in efforts to make voting more difficult. We detailed several of those cases yesterday (in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada). Today we discuss one filed in Illinois that seeks to invalidate lawful absentee ballots that are cast on or before Election Day but do not arrive until afterward, in the two week period allowed by state law. A Republican Congressman is suing to block the counting of those votes, even though they are lawfully cast ballots that could include tens of thousands cast by members of the U.S. military stationed overseas. The complaint was originally filed in May of this year. But the Trump-appointed federal judge overseeing the case has yet to rule on it, for some reason, with Election Day less than a week away. Chaos in waiting.
Also, since we quickly waved at these Trump accountability stories at the top of today’s show, some links for more deets for ya:
- A judge has appointed an independent monitor to oversee Trump Organization finances in the civil fraud suit filed by NY A.G. Letitia James against Trump, his company and his three oldest kids.
- The NY criminal tax fraud case against the Trump Organization is now under way.
- Top Trump aide Kash Patel has been granted immunity to testify against him before a federal grand jury probing the documents Trump stole upon leaving the White House.
- Trump settled the lawsuit against him for ordering his security goons to beat up protesters in front of Trump Tower in 2015, as jury selection was underway in the case.
Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with a whole bunch of climate related stories both good and bad as winter is coming…
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