Monday, November 16, 2020

Trump Has No Clue His Campaign's Lawyers Have Abandoned Almost All Of Their "Fraud" Arguments (After Losing Or Dropping Nine Cases In One Day); On Fox, A Trump Lawyer Claims He Won By "Millions Of Votes"; When Asked By Fox For Proof: "I'm Not Gonna Tell On National TV", Which Makes Perfect Sense

Trump campaign jettisons major parts of its legal challenge against Pennsylvania's election results
Jon Swaine and Elise Viebeck, Wadshington Post, November 15, 2020

President Trump's campaign on Sunday scrapped a major part of its federal lawsuit challenging the election results in Pennsylvania.

Trump's attorneys filed a revised version of the lawsuit, removing allegations that election officials violated the Trump campaign's constitutional rights by limiting the ability of their observers to watch votes being counted. . . .

Trump's pared-down lawsuit now focuses on allegations that Republicans were illegally disadvantaged because some Democratic-leaning counties allowed voters to fix errors on their mail ballots. Counties have said this affected only a small number of votes.

Cliff Levine, an attorney representing the Democratic Party in the case, said on Sunday evening that Trump's move meant his lawsuit could not possibly change the result.

"Now you're only talking about a handful of ballots," Levine said. "They would have absolutely no impact on the total count or on Joe Biden's win over Donald Trump."

Giuliani's fantasy parade of false voter-fraud claims
Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, November 16, 2020

In interviews with sympathetic Fox News hosts, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani has made several wild claims alleging that election fraud and malfeasance was responsible for Joe Biden's victory in the presidential election. His claims have been echoed in weekend tweets by President Trump, accusing a software company of somehow manipulating the vote in favor of Biden. These presidential tweets have been flagged by Twitter as misleading.

Moreover, this nonsense has already been debunked by Trump's own government. In a statement issued Nov. 12, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, and partners such as the National Association of Secretaries of State declared: "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."

That sentence was posted in boldface, just to make it clear. The statement added: "While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too. When you have questions, turn to elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections."

Frankly, we were tempted to just end our fact check with that statement. (We asked Giuliani why he ignores an authoritative government statement but did not hear back.) After all, why elevate falsehoods designed to spread fear about election security?

But given that Giuliani has made these claims on television, we feel duty-bound to explain why they are bunk. . . .


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The Incredible Shrinking MAGA Moron March

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