The long shadow of January 6th stretches far beyond the Capitol complex: As we’ve known for some time, right before the riot, conservative lawyer John Eastman tried to harness the vague 135-year-old Electoral Count Act (ECA) to help Trump steal the election.
You know what really would make the next fake electors scheme go away? Prosecuting the 84* perps who signed their name to the 2020 fraud and mailed it via registered mail to the president of the senate. They also mailed it via registered mail to the national archives, their state’s secretary of state, and to the chief judge of the federal district court containing their capitol, so they pretty fucking clearly were familiar with the Electoral Count Act (got yer mens rea right here, bro).
*two of the states, NM, PA included weaselword contingency language that may let the signees off the hook, so the count might 59 electors, not 84. But prosecute those 25 weaselworders anyways and make them sweat.
Thank you so much.
“Trump lawyer Eastman authored a memo…which has since been debunked to hell…”
Noice. Kudos to Ms. Philo for not pulling any punches.
Mail fraud, I like that! Great idea.
I agree – Kudos to Kaila – she is doing a great job!
And, Eastman? Go to Jail, Directly to Jail, Do not pass GO, Go directly to Jail… Save us all some trouble.
Well, I think it’s ConFraudUS, but yeah, if mail fraud works as an enhancement, go for it.
I cannot imagine the frustration of those who have labored at protecting this Democracy only to be threatened by invaders made up of fellow citizens led by an Orange Menace.
I like this bill better than the Senate version. Particularly, this part:
‘‘(6) SANCTIONS.—If, on the court’s own initiative or the motion of a party, the court finds that the candidate filing an action under this subsection did not have a good-faith basis for the factual or legal contentions asserted in the action, the candidate’s attorneys of record and their law firms shall be jointly and severally liable for an amount equal to 3 times the full attorney’s fees and other expenses incurred by each other party to the action.
The amazing thing is how the members of the GOP delegation are continuously offered the chance to vote country over party. They fail. Then that failure ages poorly, and you think: next time they might choose differently. But no. It is like an “Itchy and Scratchy” gif.
“Both bills provide for judicial review in federal court, so the aggrieved candidate can challenge the governor’s certification,” Seligman explained.
Judicial review in a federal court used to mean something. Now, not so much.
Jesus fucking christ, took them long enough.
I take a perverse territorial pleasure that the NM wackos were sane enough to include “weaselword contingency language”.
Translation: “Congratulations for doing exactly what I’ve been predicting you wouldn’t do since the election…”
I fully expect the bill to die in the Senate because Boris Manchin and Natasha Sinema will not budge from their absolute support of the filibuster.
It still has to go through reconciliation and get passed by both the house and the senate and signed in the next few months. One dickhead purist can shit all over it. So don’t start crowing about the size of your dick until you show what ya got…
I have reason to believe that the DoJ is right there with you on that point. (And that guy Herschmann claims to have pronounced their doom, (that is all the folks who were involved in the “fake electors” thing), on or about the 7th of January, 2021.) There’s a fsck-ton of folks who are going to be going to be catching indictments. (Probably in November, just after the election.)
I feel compelled to point out that some Republican Senators are likely to notice that the current Vice President is 1) female; and, 2) not an old white guy; not even a white woman. Convincing them to limit, explicitly, her power to “steal” an election should not be all that heavy a lift. But, I am not a Republican Senator, so maybe I’ve got that wrong; perhaps they have complete faith in her good will.
[Eastman] … asserted that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the power to choose which electors to certify
It was ridiculous that Eastman asserted that the Vice-President, a candidate for re-election, had any power to choose which ballots of electors to count. In any case, there were no “competing” ballots, just the ballots accompanied by appropriate state certifications, and some crude forgeries that nobody ever considered legitimate.
I don’t have my head all the way around this, but it sounds like it would work.
Any ideas of its chance(s) of passage?