{"id":15013,"date":"2024-04-23T19:13:43","date_gmt":"2024-04-24T02:13:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=15013"},"modified":"2026-04-07T22:02:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T05:02:50","slug":"election-fraud-pure-and-simple-bradcast-4232024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=15013","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Election Fraud, Pure and Simple&#8217;: &#8216;BradCast&#8217; 4\/23\/2024"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/BradCast_Trump-Lake-Hovde-AustinSmith_042324.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\">During opening statements in the disgraced former President&#8217;s ongoing criminal trial, prosecutors argued the scheme surrounding his hush-money payments to a porn star just before the 2016 election amounted to &#8220;election fraud, pure and simple.&#8221; Similar fraud since then, by Trump and now much of his Republican party, pervades many of our stories on today&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/BradCast\"><i>BradCast<\/i><\/a>. [<em>Audio link to full show follows below this summary.<\/em>]<\/p>\n<p>Among our stories today&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It&#8217;s Primary Day in <b>Pennsylvania<\/b>. We&#8217;ll have noteworthy results and\/or problem reports on tomorrow&#8217;s program. (Recent elections in PA have revealed <i>serious<\/i> problems with the touchscreen voting systems still shamefully used in a number of jurisdictions.) But the election in the Keystone State today &#8212; as some voters are reportedly struggling with newly implemented Photo ID requirements &#8212; also provides a reminder as to why it&#8217;s a good idea to vote in primaries, even when races at the top of the ticket may already be foregone conclusions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Donald Trump<\/b>&#8216;s election-fraud-via-hush-money criminal trial in <b>New York<\/b> continued on Tuesday. We offer a a few quick updates. One point we missed Monday&#8217;s opening statements, included the fact that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/politics\/live-news\/trump-hush-money-trial-04-22-24\/h_43e560a7fcd4c3691719a86c445b7ac3\">prosecutors say<\/a> they have hand-written documentation from longtime <b>Trump Organization<\/b> CFO <b>Allen Weisselberg<\/b> as to why <b>Michael Cohen<\/b> was paid $420k as reimbursement for his $130k payment to porn star <b>Stormy Daniels<\/b>. Today, the day began with a contempt hearing over at least ten instances in which prosecutors allege that Trump has violated the court&#8217;s gag order on attacking jurors and witnesses. The judge has yet to issue his ruling, but the hearing culminated with Trump&#8217;s attorney <b>Todd Blanche<\/b> being <a href=\"\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/judge-bench-slaps-lawyer-for-donald-trump-over-gag-violations-2024-4\">upbraided<\/a> by a frustrated <b>Justice Juan Merchan<\/b>, who told him,  &#8220;You are losing all credibility with the court.&#8221; For that, it appears, Trump&#8217;s campaign and associated groups have been paying about $145,000 in donor money for legal fees <i>each day<\/i> since early 2023, according to newly released numbers. After the jury arrived, the trial&#8217;s first witness <a href=\"https:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/news\/prosecutors-build-towards-the-stormy-daniels-hush-money-scheme\">continued his testimony<\/a>. That would be former <i>National Enquirer<\/i> publisher, longtime Trump pal, and alleged &#8220;catch and kill&#8221;\/hush-money co-conspirator <b>David Pecker<\/b>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Arizona<\/b>&#8216;s 2022 Republican election losers, <b>Kari Lake<\/b> and <b>Mark Finchem<\/b>, both falsely claim their elections, for Governor and Sec. of State respectively, were stolen from them somehow, by the Republican officials who run elections in the state&#8217;s largest County. They sued in 2022 and have lost in court after court ever since. On Monday, the corrupted rightwing <b>U.S. Supreme Court<\/b> also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azcentral.com\/story\/news\/politics\/arizona\/2024\/04\/22\/kari-lake-mark-finchem-machine-voting-lawsuit-scotus-rejects-appeal\/73347376007\/\">rejected their case<\/a>. They are both running again in 2024, for U.S. Senate and state Senate respectively. What could possibly go wrong?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Speaking of 2024 Republican U.S. Senate candidates in battleground states, <b>Wisconsin<\/b>&#8216;s <b>Eric Hovde<\/b> really, <i>really<\/i> wants you to know that <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/wisconsin-senate-hovde-baldwin-elderly-nursing-c41705c674a2e714645206c93f227a4a?utm_source=RecoReel&#038;utm_medium=articlePage&#038;utm_id=Taboola\">he totally thinks<\/a> &#8220;elderly should absolutely vote&#8221;. Even after his previous comments about elderly voters in nursing homes that really kinda makes it seem otherwise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The <b>Trump Campaign<\/b> and the <b>RNC<\/b> (now effectively one and the same) have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2024\/04\/19\/trump-campaign-election-monitoring-00153217\">announced<\/a> their plans for an &#8220;Historic, 100,000 person strong Election Integrity operation&#8221;! We&#8217;ve got a few thoughts about what that <i>really<\/i> means. Though it probably doesn&#8217;t help that a statement from Trump himself included in the announcement <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/clearing_fog\/status\/1781489580694479134?s=46&#038;t=WpvzoJwlg9zPDuog4jiOGw\">echoes<\/a> almost precisely a statement long attributed to <b>Josef Stalin<\/b> that &#8220;it&#8217;s not who votes that matters, but who counts the votes&#8221;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>As to actual election fraud, as usual, the call is coming from inside the Republican house. This time, it&#8217;s a guy named <b>Austin Smith<\/b>, an <b>Arizona<\/b>&#8216;s Republican state Rep. and top leader of <b>Turning Point Action<\/b> &#8212; a group which has long echoed Trump&#8217;s false 2020 election fraud claims. Smith has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2024\/04\/18\/austin-smith-turning-point-action-election-fraud\/\">apparently been caught<\/a> submitting dozens of signatures, in his own hand-writing, for his own reelection campaign. While denying the charges, now being investigated by the AZ Attorney General, Rep. Smith has since resigned from Turning Point and <a href=\"https:\/\/azmirror.com\/2024\/04\/18\/austin-smith-drops-reelection-campaign-amid-accusations-of-petition-signature-fraud\/\">called off<\/a> his reelection campaign. But really, he insists, he didn&#8217;t do it!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Finally, Desi Doyen is here for <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=15012\">our latest <i>Green News Report<\/i><\/a>, including today: news on <b>Europe<\/b>&#8216;s stunning rate of warming; new details on the <b>plastic manufacturing<\/b> industries contribution to man-made climate change; and another series of sweeping actions from the <b>Biden Administration<\/b> on <b>Solar for All<\/b>, the <b>American Climate Corps<\/b> and a whole bunch of brand new <b>conservation initiatives<\/b> that I can almost bet you haven&#8217;t heard about until now&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\".\/Images\/Speaker_Icon_24.png\" style=\"width: 24px; float: none; vertical-align: middle;\"><span style=\"font-size: 18px; line-height: 18px;\"> <b><i><a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/audio\/BradCast_BradFriedman-TrumpNYTrialUpdate-LakeSCOTUS-HovdeElderlyWI-TrumpRNCElecIntegrity-PetitionFraudAZRep_042324.mp3\">CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!&#8230;<\/a><\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><center><b>* * *<\/b><\/center><i>While we post <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/BradCast\"><\/i>The BradCast<i><\/a> here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they&#8217;re available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-bradcast-w-brad-friedman\/id803467610\">iTunes<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pandora.com\/podcast\/the-bradcast-w-brad-friedman\/PC:1000025838\">Pandora<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/tunein.com\/radio\/The-BradCast-with-Brad-Friedman-p477565\/\">TuneIn<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.google.com\/feed\/aHR0cHM6Ly9icmFkYmxvZy5jb20vcG9kY2FzdGdlbi9icmFkY2FzdC9mZWVkLnhtbA\">Google<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/The-BradCast-w-Brad-Friedman\/dp\/B08JJRN86R\/ref=sr_1_1\">Amazon<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/podcastgen\/bradcast\/feed.xml\">our native RSS feed<\/a>!<\/i><\/p>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-START--><\/p>\n<div style=\"background:#f5f0e0; border:2px solid #6b5a2e; border-radius:6px; padding:10px 14px; text-align:center; font-family:Georgia,serif;\"><span style=\"display:block; margin:0 0 8px 0; color:#3a2e0e; font-size:0.95em; line-height:1.5;\"><strong>The BRAD BLOG<\/strong>, <em>The BradCast<\/em> and <em>Green News Report<\/em> are all 100% independent and 100% listener and reader supported!<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/Donate\" style=\"display:inline-block; background:#6b5a2e; color:#ffffff; padding:6px 18px; border-radius:4px; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:0.9em;\">Please CLICK HERE to help support our work today!<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-END--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During opening statements in the disgraced former President&#8217;s ongoing criminal trial, prosecutors argued the scheme surrounding his hush-money payments to a porn star just before the 2016 election amounted to &#8220;election fraud, pure and simple.&#8221; Similar fraud since then, by Trump and now much of his Republican party, pervades many of our stories on today&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1646,70,89,675,543,1220,479,594,1630,1611,106,1969,841,548,320,1791,477,1731,1114,111,48,172,1365,300,1097,2088,1523,1224,313,280,143],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-15013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accountability","category-allen-weisselberg","category-arizona","category-media-appearance","category-bradcast","category-climate-change","category-david-pecker","category-donald-trump","category-election-2016","category-election-2022","category-election-2024","category-election-fraud","category-eric-hovde","category-eu","category-extreme-weather","category-joe-biden","category-kari-lake","category-kpfk","category-mark-finchem","category-michael-cohen","category-new-york","category-pennsylvania","category-photo-id-laws","category-pollution","category-republicans","category-stormy-danielsstephanie-clifford","category-todd-blanche","category-trump-campaign","category-trump-organization","category-us-supreme-court","category-vote-caging","category-wisconsin","bb-type-bradcast"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15013"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=15013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}