Trump Corruption

The Associated Press reports: In Wayne County, the two Republican canvassers at first balked at certifying the vote, winning praise from Trump, and then reversed course after widespread condemnation. A person familiar with the matter said Trump reached out to the canvassers, Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, on Tuesday evening after the revised vote to express gratitude for their support. …

Reuters reports: President Donald Trump’s election campaign late on Wednesday asked a judge to declare him the winner in Pennsylvania, saying the state’s Republican-controlled legislature should select the electors that will cast votes in the U.S. Electoral College system. In a court filing, the campaign asked U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann to considering issuing an order that “the results of …

The New Jersey Advance reports: New Jersey Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., one of Donald Trump’s fiercest critics on Capitol Hill, is demanding the president and his aides be investigated and prosecuted after they leave office. Pascrell, D-9th Dist., said late Tuesday that a failure to do so would embolden “criminality by our national leaders” and continue “America down the path …

The Washington Post reports: After three hours of tense deadlock on Tuesday, the two Republicans on an election board in Michigan’s most populous county reversed course and voted to certify the results of the Nov. 3 election, a key step toward finalizing President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state. Now, they both want to take back their votes. In affidavits …

Mediaite reports: Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman mocked Rudy Giuliani’s latest arguments in court by likening him to the infamous Simpsons lawyer Lionel Hutz. Fetterman appeared on the ABC News Powerhouse Politics podcast Wednesday, slamming the Trump team’s legal efforts and saying the two cases of voter fraud in his state he’s seen so far are Republicans voting for relatives. …

Politico reports: President Donald Trump on Tuesday evening fired Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, after he spent days actively debunking the president’s baseless voter fraud claims. And in a rare turn in the Trump era, Senate Republicans across the spectrum — from Trump allies to critics of the president — criticized the decision. Sen. Mitt …

Reuters reports: Before William Barr became President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the U.S. Department of Justice, he represented Caterpillar Inc, a Fortune 100 company, in a federal criminal investigation by the department. Much was at stake for Caterpillar: Since 2018, the Internal Revenue Service has been demanding $2.3 billion in payments from the company in connection with the tax …

The Detroit News reports: President Donald Trump lost Michigan by 146,000 votes on Nov. 3, but he maintained his false claims Wednesday that he won the battleground state, an attempt to cast doubt on the election’s unofficial results. Trump’s tweets came a day after the Wayne County Board of Canvassers voted 4-0 to certify the results in the state’s largest …

CNN reports: President Donald Trump’s campaign and Fox News host Tucker Carlson alleged last week that a vote cast by a Georgia woman named Deborah Jean Christiansen was fraudulent. The allegation was false — like two other voter fraud claims the Trump campaign and Carlson leveled against legal Georgia voters last week. The campaign and Carlson said this vote was …

Salon reports: The right-wing trolls behind the baseless “Stop the Steal” election fraud movement have launched a political action committee (PAC) to cash in on the false claim that the election was rigged against President Donald Trump, according to a filing posted this weekend on the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) website. The organization, called Stop the Steal PAC, shows signs …

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports: President Donald Trump will seek a recount of ballots in liberal Dane and Milwaukee counties, hoping to overturn the election results in his favor. Trump’s campaign paid the state $3 million as of Wednesday morning to start a partial recount, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The campaign said it would seek a recount in …

Politico reports: The Health and Human Services department has scrapped a planned ad campaign featuring celebrities discussing Covid-19, a senior HHS official told a congressional oversight panel in a letter shared with POLITICO. The abandoned $15 million contract with Atlas Research, part of a larger $300 million taxpayer-funded campaign aimed at “defeating despair” over the pandemic, was conceived by a …

USA Today reports: The Department of Homeland Security’s cyber chief, who presided over an elaborate election security effort guarding against foreign interference and fraud, was ousted by President Donald Trump on Tuesday as part of a continuing post-election purge of top national security officials. Trump announced the dismissal in a tweet Tuesday night. The dismissal of Christopher Krebs, director DHS’s …

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Republican monitors observing vote counting in Philadelphia were given sufficient access under state law to view the proceedings. In a 5-2 decision, the court overturned a lower court decision that ordered monitors with President Donald Trump’s campaign be allowed within six feet of tables where ballots were being tallied. …

Bridge Michigan reports: Democrat Joe Biden is the president-elect, and while Michigan’s Republican-led Legislature is investigating the election, it will not award the state’s 16 electors to GOP President Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey told Bridge on Tuesday. Hundreds of activists who protested at the Michigan Capitol on Saturday repeated the president’s unproven claims of widespread voter fraud, …

The Associated Press reports: President Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign was powered by a cellphone app that allowed staff to monitor the movements of his millions of supporters, and offered intimate access to their social networks. While the campaign may be winding down, the data strategy is very much alive, and the digital details the app collected can be put …

The New York Times reports: Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has helped oversee a string of failed court challenges to President Trump’s defeat in the election, asked the president’s campaign to pay him $20,000 a day for his legal work, multiple people briefed on the matter said. The request stirred opposition from some of Mr. Trump’s aides and advisers, who appear …

The Wall Street Journal reports: Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested he throw out certain legal ballots during the recount of the presidential race, an allegation that Mr. Graham denied. Mr. Raffensperger said in an interview Monday that Mr. Graham of South Carolina asked if absentee ballots could be disqualified from counties with …

ABC News reports: For many of the officials who helped guide the nation through a 2020 presidential election that saw record turnout in the midst of a deadly pandemic, the past two weeks of protests and cries of voter fraud have been both baffling and frustrating. “We’re rather offended because we know how hard we worked to conduct free and …

Law & Crime reports: Less than two weeks after holding a press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Northeast Philadelphia, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani submitted court documents on Tuesday to officially represent the Trump campaign in its lawsuit against Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar (D). The president’s personal attorney filed an application for pro hac …