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Thread: Trump demands that Georgia Secretary of State change votes so he wins.

  1. #101
    Senior Member dneal's Avatar
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    Default Re: Trump demands that Georgia Secretary of State change votes so he wins.

    Not sure who this Steve Deace guy is, but based on the Blaze logo I assume it's conservative.


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    Default Re: Trump demands that Georgia Secretary of State change votes so he wins.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...555_story.html

    Speaker Nancy Pelosi told her House colleagues Friday that she had spoken to the Pentagon’s top general about keeping an “unstable president” from accessing the nuclear codes, as Democrats openly considered impeaching the commander in chief for the second time in just over a year.

    The discussion with Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, came after President Trump directed thousands of angry supporters to the Capitol on Wednesday as he refused to concede his election defeat. The crowds broke into the building in an insurrection now linked to the deaths of five people, including a Capitol police officer.

    “The situation of this unhinged President could not be more dangerous, and we must do everything that we can to protect the American people from his unbalanced assault on our country and our democracy,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) wrote in a letter, in which she renewed the threat of impeaching Trump if Vice President Pence did not initiate proceedings for the Cabinet to remove the president under the 25th Amendment.

    Army Col. Dave Butler, a spokesman for Milley, confirmed that a conversation with Pelosi did take place but offered little elaboration.

    “Speaker Pelosi initiated a call with the Chairman,” he said in a statement. “He answered her questions regarding the process of nuclear command authority.”

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    Default Re: Trump demands that Georgia Secretary of State change votes so he wins.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/u...gtype=Homepage

    America in 2021: Racial Progress in the South, a White Mob in the Capitol
    A jarring juxtaposition is forcing a 244-year-old nation to contend with its original conundrum: Whose democracy is it?


    540

    One of the rioters carried a Confederate battle flag near the Senate chamber in the Capitol on Wednesday.
    One of the rioters carried a Confederate battle flag near the Senate chamber in the Capitol on Wednesday.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
    Astead W. Herndon
    By Astead W. Herndon
    Jan. 8, 2021
    Updated 6:43 p.m. ET

    ATLANTA — The day after Georgia elected a Black descendant of sharecroppers and a young Jewish filmmaker to be U.S. senators, underscoring the rising political power of racial and religious minorities, the forces of white grievance politics struck back.

    At the “People’s House” in Washington, a predominantly white mob in support of President Trump’s attempts to overturn the election overtook the Capitol building by brute force. Confederate flags flew at the seat of American democracy. A gallows was erected, with a noose hanging in the air. It was as stark a contrast as any, one day that illustrated the nation’s original paradox: a commitment to democracy in a country with a legacy of racial exclusion.

    The seeds that led to the insurrection were hidden in plain sight. At Mr. Trump’s rallies, where his supporters set up open-air markets of hate and conspiracy, selling Confederate flags and T-shirts that mock his opponents and the media. In conservative news outlets, where the language of revolution and civil war is commonplace. On Mr. Trump’s Twitter feed, which has amplified white supremacists, anti-Semites and anti-Muslim extremists.

    On Thursday night, he took to that Twitter feed again to post a video message condemning the mob while taking no responsibility for inviting it to Washington or inspiring its actions. “You do not represent our country,” he said to the rioters, before moments later nodding to “all of our wonderful supporters.” On Friday night, Twitter permanently suspended Mr. Trump’s account “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

    Whether the mob represents a fringe of the American political spectrum or a growing movement increasingly opposed to democratic norms is an essential question at the end of the Trump era, when it is clear that progress to some is seen as an affront to others.

    “It’s not surprising to see insurrectionists swarm the Capitol when the federal government is run by people who have made it the project of the Republican Party to dismantle the federal government,” said Representative Mondaire Jones, a newly sworn-in Democrat from New York. He added that these leaders “articulated this false narrative of a federal government that seeks to oppress the rights of the American people.”

    Like other lawmakers on Thursday, Mr. Jones acknowledged that it was easier to diagnose the causes of the chaos than to craft solutions. The forces that helped Democrats send Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Kamala Harris to the White House are real. So is a widening gap between liberal and conservative movements, and the fact that as the United States has increasingly incorporated Black Americans, people of color, immigrants and Native Americans into the democratic fabric, it has come at a cost.

    Mr. Biden addressed the fallout as he introduced his designees for the Justice Department on Thursday afternoon.

    He framed it as a wake-up call to a country that has at times feigned ignorance of this reality: The most ardent portions of Mr. Trump’s white base are engulfed by a toxic mix of conspiracy theories and racism

    “No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesters yesterday that they wouldn’t have been treated very differently than the mob that stormed the Capitol,” Mr. Biden said.

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    Default Re: Trump demands that Georgia Secretary of State change votes so he wins.

    Quote Originally Posted by dneal View Post
    "Too many see the protests as the problem. No, the problem is what forced your fellow citizens to take the streets. Persistent and poisonous inequities and injustice."

    Hmmm.

    "Please, show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful. Because I can show you that outraged citizens are what made the country what she is and led to any major milestone. To be honest, this is not a tranquil time."

    I wonder who said this, and who (if anyone) called them out on it.

    Fuggin' liberal hypocrisy.
    >>>Back on the topic of the thread: Trump has dropped his pressure on Georgia and (sort of) conceded. It's Perdue's turn to concede. Georgia has been through a lot, and his loss margin is something like 41,000 votes at this point. He's done.

  5. #105
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    Default Re: Trump demands that Georgia Secretary of State change votes so he wins.

    I thought he dropped all his cases.

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    Default Re: Trump demands that Georgia Secretary of State change votes so he wins.

    oops, I missed it

    He conceded a few hours ago

    <check>

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    Default Re: Trump demands that Georgia Secretary of State change votes so he wins.

    Now, if Trump and his cadre had only behaved with the dignity and respect for the will of the people ("people" as in the collective constituency) that Loeffler and Perdue did, both of whom were incumbents who lost in a bitter races. Yet both of them respectfully bowed out when their state counted the votes and the margin was clear.

    Yeah, well, Trump lacks exactly that level of character, and his latest statement was clearly not written by him, does not mention losing or Biden winning, still does not accept the validity of the state results, and basically insinuates that he'll be back. Fuck you, petty tyrant.

  8. #108
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    Default Re: Trump demands that Georgia Secretary of State change votes so he wins.

    Yet another bit where Trump tries to force Georgia officials to "recalculate" votes from the winning presidential candidate, Joe Biden. Yet more deplorable conduct better fitted to a Nazi gauleiter than a President of the United States.

    ‘Find the fraud’: Trump pressured a Georgia elections investigator in a separate call legal experts say could amount to obstruction

    By
    Amy Gardner
    Jan. 9, 2021 at 12:20 p.m. EST

    President Trump urged Georgia’s lead elections investigator to “find the fraud” in a lengthy December phone call, saying the official would be a “national hero,” according to an individual familiar with the call who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the conversation.

    Trump placed the call to the investigations chief for the Georgia secretary of state’s office shortly before Christmas — while the individual was leading an inquiry into allegations of ballot fraud in Cobb County, in the suburbs of Atlanta, according to people familiar with the episode.

    The president’s attempts to intervene in an ongoing investigation could amount to obstruction of justice or other criminal violations, legal experts said, though they cautioned a case could be difficult to prove.

    Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had launched the inquiry following allegations that Cobb election officials had improperly accepted mail ballots with signatures that did not match those on file — claims that state officials ultimately concluded had no merit.

    In an interview with The Washington Post on Friday, Raffensperger confirmed that Trump had placed the Dec. 23 call. He said he was not familiar with the specifics of what the president said in the conversation with his chief investigator, but said it was inappropriate for Trump to have tried to intervene in the case.

    “That was an ongoing investigation,” Raffensperger said. “I don’t believe that an elected official should be involved in that process.”

    The Post is withholding the name of the investigator, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment, because of the risk of threats and harassment directed at election officials.

    The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

    Since Election Day, Trump has made at least three calls to government officials in Georgia in an attempt to subvert President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, beginning with a conversation with Gov. Brian Kemp (R) in early December to berate him for certifying the state’s election results.

    The president is furious with both Raffensperger and Kemp, who have refused to echo his claims that the election was rigged. He has complained that they betrayed him after he endorsed both of their 2018 elections. At a rally Wednesday in Washington, shortly before his supporters ransacked the Capitol, he attacked them personally onstage, calling the two men “corrupt.”

    Trump’s call to the chief investigator occurred more than a week before he spent an hour on the phone with Raffensperger, pushing him to overturn the vote. In that Jan. 2 conversation, the president alternately berated the secretary of state, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the fellow Republican refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that he was taking “a big risk.”

    ‘I just want to find 11,780 votes’: In extraordinary hour-long call, Trump pressures Georgia secretary of state to recalculate the vote in his favor

    Legal experts said Trump’s call to the secretary of state may have broken state or federal laws that bar the solicitation of election fraud or prohibit participating in a conspiracy against people exercising their civil rights.

    Trump’s earlier call to the chief investigator could also carry serious criminal implications, according to several former prosecutors, who said that the president may have violated laws against bribery or interfering with an ongoing probe.

    “Oh my god, of course that’s obstruction — any way you cut it,” said Nick Akerman, a former federal prosecutor in New York and a onetime member of the Watergate prosecution team, responding to a description of Trump’s conversation with the investigator.

    Akerman said he would be “shocked” if Trump didn’t commit a crime of obstruction under the Georgia statutes. He said the fact that the president took the time to identify the investigator, obtain a phone number and then call “shows that he’s trying to influence the outcome of what’s going on.”

    However, such cases can be difficult to prove, and legal experts said the decision to prosecute Trump — even after he leaves office — would be a politically fraught one.

    Robert James, a former prosecutor in DeKalb County, Ga., said that proving obstruction would hinge on what Trump said and the tone he used, as well as whether the president’s intentions were clear.

    Without the audio of the call, it would be more difficult to prove wrongdoing, he said. The later call with Raffensperger is more damning, he said, because of the power of the audio that was made public.

    “He says, ‘Go find me some votes.’ That can clearly be interpreted as asking someone to break the law,” James said.

    In the wake of the Capitol siege by Trump supporters, Democratic House leaders said Friday they were preparing articles of impeachment that they planned to vote on as soon as early next week. While they were focused primarily on Trump’s role in inciting a violent mob to storm the Capitol, an early draft circulated Friday also mentioned Trump’s call to Raffensperger as an example of “prior efforts to subvert and obstruct” the certification of the 2020 election.

    Raffensperger briefly mentioned Trump’s December call to the chief investigator in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” earlier this week. But the details of the conversation had not been previously reported.

    On the call, Trump sounded much like he did while talking to Raffensperger, according to the person familiar with the discussion — meandering from flattery to frustration and back again.

    It was one in a series of personal interventions by Trump and his allies in Georgia since the November election. The president has obsessed about his defeat in the state and expressed disbelief to aides that he could have lost while other Republicans won.

    It is unclear how the president tracked down the chief elections investigator. Before his Jan. 2 call to Raffensperger, Trump had tried to reach the secretary of state at least 18 times, but the calls were patched to interns in the press office who thought it was a prank and did not realize the president was on the line, as The Post previously reported. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows ultimately arranged the conference call between Trump, Raffensperger and their aides.

    That conversation followed previous inquiries to state officials by Trump allies.

    In mid-November, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) reached out to Raffensperger to inquire about whether entire counties’ mail ballots could be tossed if an audit found high rates of mismatched signatures in those jurisdictions.

    Raffensperger told The Post at the time that Graham appeared to be suggesting that he find a way to toss legally cast ballots. Graham denied that, calling that characterization “ridiculous.”

    Then in late December, Meadows traveled to Cobb County to see for himself how the ballot-signature audit was proceeding.

    Meadows said he was not trying to interfere with the investigation but just wanted to “talk outside of the tweets,” Jordan Fuchs, the deputy secretary of state, said at the time.

    Meadows was not allowed in the room where the audit was occurring, Fuchs said, but he was able to peer through the window of the door.

    Trump called the chief investigator the following day.

    Raffensperger announced the audit on Dec. 14 after allegations surfaced that ballots were accepted in Cobb County without proper verification of voter signatures on the envelopes.

    No evidence has emerged of widespread signature-matching anomalies in Cobb or elsewhere in Georgia. Raffensperger ordered the audit, he said, because his office pursues all allegations of election irregularities.

    “Conducting this audit does not in any way suggest that Cobb County was not properly following election procedures or properly conducting signature matching,” Chris Harvey, Raffensperger’s director of elections, said at the time. “We chose Cobb County for this audit because they are well known to have one of the best election offices in the state, and starting in Cobb will help us as we embark on a statewide signature audit.”

    If large numbers of mismatched envelope signatures had been discovered, it would have been impossible to pair those envelopes with the ballots they contained, which are separated to protect voter privacy as required in the Georgia Constitution.

    In the end, Raffensperger’s investigations team, working alongside the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, found just two nonmatching signatures among more than 15,000 examined during the audit in Cobb County. The audit concluded on Dec. 29, six days after the president called the chief investigator.

    Trump was steaming about the outcome of the inquiry when he spoke to Raffensperger on Jan. 2.

    “Why can’t we have professionals do it instead of rank amateurs who will never find anything and don’t want to find anything?” the president said, according to audio obtained by The Post. “They don’t want to find, you know they don’t want to find anything. Someday you’ll tell me the reason why, because I don’t understand your reasoning, but someday you’ll tell me the reason why.”

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    Default Re: Trump demands that Georgia Secretary of State change votes so he wins.

    Classic Trump modus operandi.

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    Default Re: Trump demands that Georgia Secretary of State change votes so he wins.

    I have read that some of those thugs breaking into the capital actually believed the vice president could overturn the will of the American voter. Apparently Mitt Romney and Linsay Graham were called traitors at the airports. It would be easy to learn, if you didn't already know, that the certification is largely symbolic.

    That Trump was caught on tape asking Georgia to find votes and find fraud is readily available.

    So, how do we become radicalized in a nation where there is a free press. I understand that you can decide the press is corrupt, but researching is no longer a trip to the library or accumulating daily newspapers. It is definatley something we should guard ourselves from conspiracies.

    THat said, I am reminded of something my favorite pundit wrote last year. Coastal elites have looked down upon the masses for years. President Obama famously spoke of bitter Americans clinging to their bibles and guns.

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    Default Re: Trump demands that Georgia Secretary of State change votes so he wins.

    Quote Originally Posted by Chuck Naill View Post
    I have read that some of those thugs breaking into the capital actually believed the vice president could overturn the will of the American voter. Apparently Mitt Romney and Linsay Graham were called traitors at the airports. It would be easy to learn, if you didn't already know, that the certification is largely symbolic.

    That Trump was caught on tape asking Georgia to find votes and find fraud is readily available.

    So, how do we become radicalized in a nation where there is a free press. I understand that you can decide the press is corrupt, but researching is no longer a trip to the library or accumulating daily newspapers. It is definatley something we should guard ourselves from conspiracies.

    THat said, I am reminded of something my favorite pundit wrote last year. Coastal elites have looked down upon the masses for years. President Obama famously spoke of bitter Americans clinging to their bibles and guns.
    I doubt that "coastal elites" myth. It argues that some people can call themselves "middle America" and then claim to speak for this "middle America".

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    Default Re: Trump demands that Georgia Secretary of State change votes so he wins.

    I recognize the frustration and anger of the great swaths of people whom the cultural and economic shifts are leaving behind. That is very difficult. But there is no stopping these shifts, and having voted Trump in as a remedy for that was an enormous mistake, one that was clear and vocalized by many persons on the right and the left. That is part of the giant con that Trump pulled. He has never "loved" those people (contrary to what he said the other day). What he has "loved" is the fact that they followed him, and to some degree worshipped him. He loved their love. And as soon as their behavior threatened possible jail time for him, he threw them under the bus. And Mick Mulvaney said, "I never thought that they would take him [Trump] literally." How stupid could Mulvaney be (or he is a liar).
    Last edited by TSherbs; January 11th, 2021 at 09:41 AM.

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    Default Re: Trump demands that Georgia Secretary of State change votes so he wins.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/u...gtype=Homepage

    Atlanta Prosecutor Appears to Move Closer to Trump Inquiry

    The Fulton County district attorney is weighing an inquiry into possible election interference and is said to be considering hiring an outside counsel.

    By Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim

    Jan. 15, 2021

    ATLANTA — Prosecutors in Georgia appear increasingly likely to open a criminal investigation of President Trump over his attempts to overturn the results of the state’s 2020 election, an inquiry into offenses that would be beyond his federal pardon power.

    The new Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, is already weighing whether to proceed, and among the options she is considering is the hiring of a special assistant from outside to oversee the investigation, according to people familiar with her office’s deliberations.

    At the same time, David Worley, the lone Democrat on Georgia’s five-member election board, said this week that he would ask the board to make a referral to the Fulton County district attorney by next month. Among the matters he will ask prosecutors to investigate is a phone call Mr. Trump made in which he pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to overturn the state’s election results.

    Jeff DiSantis, a district attorney spokesman, said the office had not taken any action to hire outside counsel and declined to comment further on the case.

    Some veteran Georgia prosecutors said they believed Mr. Trump had clearly violated state law.

    “If you took the fact out that he is the president of the United States and look at the conduct of the call, it tracks the communication you might see in any drug case or organized crime case,” said Michael J. Moore, the former United States attorney for the Middle District of Georgia. “It’s full of threatening undertone and strong-arm tactics.”

    He said he believed there had been “a clear attempt to influence the conduct of the secretary of state, and to commit election fraud, or to solicit the commission of election fraud.”

    The White House declined to comment.

    Mr. Worley said in an interview that if no investigation had been announced by Feb. 10, the day of the election board’s next scheduled meeting he would make a motion for the board to refer the matter of Mr. Trump’s phone calls to Ms. Willis’s office. Mr. Worley, a lawyer, believes that such a referral should, under Georgia law, automatically prompt an investigation.

    If the board declines to make a referral, Mr. Worley said he would ask Ms. Willis’s office himself to start an inquiry.

    Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, is one of the members of the board and has said that he might have a conflict of interest in the matter, as Mr. Trump called him to exert pressure. That could lead him to recuse himself from any decisions on a referral by the board.

    Mr. Worley said he would introduce the motion based on an outside complaint filed with the state election board by John F. Banzhaf III, a George Washington University law professor.

    Mr. Banzhaf and other legal experts say Mr. Trump’s calls may run afoul of at least three state criminal laws. One is criminal solicitation to commit election fraud, which can be either a felony or a misdemeanor.

    There is also a related conspiracy charge, which can be prosecuted either as a misdemeanor or a felony. A third law, a misdemeanor offense, bars “intentional interference” with another person’s “performance of election duties.”

    “My feeling based on listening to the phone call is that they probably will see if they can get it past a grand jury,” said Joshua Morrison, a former senior assistant district attorney in Fulton County who once worked closely with Ms. Willis. “It seems clearly there was a crime committed.”

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    Default Re: Trump demands that Georgia Secretary of State change votes so he wins.

    Quote Originally Posted by TSherbs View Post
    I recognize the frustration and anger of the great swaths of people whom the cultural and economic shifts are leaving behind. That is very difficult. But there is no stopping these shifts, and having voted Trump in as a remedy for that was an enormous mistake, one that was clear and vocalized by many persons on the right and the left. That is part of the giant con that Trump pulled. He has never "loved" those people (contrary to what he said the other day). What he has "loved" is the fact that they followed him, and to some degree worshipped him. He loved their love. And as soon as their behavior threatened possible jail time for him, he threw them under the bus. And Mick Mulvaney said, "I never thought that they would take him [Trump] literally." How stupid could Mulvaney be (or he is a liar).
    He figured out what they wanted and pretended to give it to them.

    BTW, he was not with them when they stormed the capital as he said he would.

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    Default Re: Trump demands that Georgia Secretary of State change votes so he wins.

    A bit more of Trump's effort to change votes in Georgia:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...HG6MP7W262D6RE

    The Justice Department inspector general has begun examining the abrupt departure this month of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta after then-President Donald Trump complained officials in Georgia were not doing enough to find election fraud, according to people familiar with the matter.

    The investigation into the sudden resignation of Byung J. “BJay” Pak by Inspector General Michael Horowitz appears to be in its early stages. Investigators have not yet talked to Pak, and it is unclear how broad their inquiry will be, the people familiar with the matter said. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing probe.

    Pak unexpectedly announced Jan. 4 that he was stepping down that day as the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, surprising many in his office. Trump then bypassed Pak’s top deputy in selecting a temporary replacement, raising questions among legal observers about the possibility of political interference in law enforcement work.

    Pak’s resignation came a day after The Washington Post reported on an extraordinary call in which Trump urged Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his election defeat in that state. Legal scholars said the request from Trump was an obvious abuse of power that might warrant criminal investigation. In the same conversation, Trump cited a “never-Trumper U.S. attorney” in Georgia — seemingly a reference to Pak — and hinted vaguely and baselessly that Raffensperger’s refusal to act on his unfounded fraud claims constituted a “criminal offense.”
    The circumstances of Pak’s departure remain something of a mystery. Two people familiar with the matter said Pak received a call from a senior Justice Department official in Washington that led him to believe he should resign. Trump had been upset with what he perceived as the agency’s lack of action on his unfounded claims in Georgia and across the country, people familiar with the matter said at the time.
    If Christine intended to make some move to support Trump’s claims of voter fraud, though, that effort appears to have petered out. According to an audio recording obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he declared on a call with his staff before Trump left office that “there’s just nothing to” the few claims of fraud the office was examining.

    U.S. attorney in Georgia: ‘There’s just nothing to’ claims of election fraud

    “Quite frankly, just watching television, you would assume that you got election cases stacked from the floor to the ceiling,” Christine said, according to the Atlanta newspaper. “I am so happy to find out that’s not the case, but I didn’t know coming in.”

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    Default Re: Trump demands that Georgia Secretary of State change votes so he wins.

    Quote Originally Posted by welch View Post
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/u...gtype=Homepage

    Atlanta Prosecutor Appears to Move Closer to Trump Inquiry

    The Fulton County district attorney is weighing an inquiry into possible election interference and is said to be considering hiring an outside counsel.

    By Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim

    Jan. 15, 2021

    ATLANTA — Prosecutors in Georgia appear increasingly likely to open a criminal investigation of President Trump over his attempts to overturn the results of the state’s 2020 election, an inquiry into offenses that would be beyond his federal pardon power.

    The new Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, is already weighing whether to proceed, and among the options she is considering is the hiring of a special assistant from outside to oversee the investigation, according to people familiar with her office’s deliberations.

    At the same time, David Worley, the lone Democrat on Georgia’s five-member election board, said this week that he would ask the board to make a referral to the Fulton County district attorney by next month. Among the matters he will ask prosecutors to investigate is a phone call Mr. Trump made in which he pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to overturn the state’s election results.

    Jeff DiSantis, a district attorney spokesman, said the office had not taken any action to hire outside counsel and declined to comment further on the case.

    Some veteran Georgia prosecutors said they believed Mr. Trump had clearly violated state law.

    “If you took the fact out that he is the president of the United States and look at the conduct of the call, it tracks the communication you might see in any drug case or organized crime case,” said Michael J. Moore, the former United States attorney for the Middle District of Georgia. “It’s full of threatening undertone and strong-arm tactics.”

    He said he believed there had been “a clear attempt to influence the conduct of the secretary of state, and to commit election fraud, or to solicit the commission of election fraud.”

    The White House declined to comment.

    Mr. Worley said in an interview that if no investigation had been announced by Feb. 10, the day of the election board’s next scheduled meeting he would make a motion for the board to refer the matter of Mr. Trump’s phone calls to Ms. Willis’s office. Mr. Worley, a lawyer, believes that such a referral should, under Georgia law, automatically prompt an investigation.

    If the board declines to make a referral, Mr. Worley said he would ask Ms. Willis’s office himself to start an inquiry.

    Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, is one of the members of the board and has said that he might have a conflict of interest in the matter, as Mr. Trump called him to exert pressure. That could lead him to recuse himself from any decisions on a referral by the board.

    Mr. Worley said he would introduce the motion based on an outside complaint filed with the state election board by John F. Banzhaf III, a George Washington University law professor.

    Mr. Banzhaf and other legal experts say Mr. Trump’s calls may run afoul of at least three state criminal laws. One is criminal solicitation to commit election fraud, which can be either a felony or a misdemeanor.

    There is also a related conspiracy charge, which can be prosecuted either as a misdemeanor or a felony. A third law, a misdemeanor offense, bars “intentional interference” with another person’s “performance of election duties.”

    “My feeling based on listening to the phone call is that they probably will see if they can get it past a grand jury,” said Joshua Morrison, a former senior assistant district attorney in Fulton County who once worked closely with Ms. Willis. “It seems clearly there was a crime committed.”
    Nothing to see here, just move along...
    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/o...tory-all-wrong

  21. #117
    Senior Member dneal's Avatar
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    Default Re: Trump demands that Georgia Secretary of State change votes so he wins.

    Quote Originally Posted by kazoolaw View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by welch View Post
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/u...gtype=Homepage

    Atlanta Prosecutor Appears to Move Closer to Trump Inquiry

    The Fulton County district attorney is weighing an inquiry into possible election interference and is said to be considering hiring an outside counsel.

    By Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim

    Jan. 15, 2021

    ATLANTA — Prosecutors in Georgia appear increasingly likely to open a criminal investigation of President Trump over his attempts to overturn the results of the state’s 2020 election, an inquiry into offenses that would be beyond his federal pardon power.

    The new Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, is already weighing whether to proceed, and among the options she is considering is the hiring of a special assistant from outside to oversee the investigation, according to people familiar with her office’s deliberations.

    At the same time, David Worley, the lone Democrat on Georgia’s five-member election board, said this week that he would ask the board to make a referral to the Fulton County district attorney by next month. Among the matters he will ask prosecutors to investigate is a phone call Mr. Trump made in which he pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to overturn the state’s election results.

    Jeff DiSantis, a district attorney spokesman, said the office had not taken any action to hire outside counsel and declined to comment further on the case.

    Some veteran Georgia prosecutors said they believed Mr. Trump had clearly violated state law.

    “If you took the fact out that he is the president of the United States and look at the conduct of the call, it tracks the communication you might see in any drug case or organized crime case,” said Michael J. Moore, the former United States attorney for the Middle District of Georgia. “It’s full of threatening undertone and strong-arm tactics.”

    He said he believed there had been “a clear attempt to influence the conduct of the secretary of state, and to commit election fraud, or to solicit the commission of election fraud.”

    The White House declined to comment.

    Mr. Worley said in an interview that if no investigation had been announced by Feb. 10, the day of the election board’s next scheduled meeting he would make a motion for the board to refer the matter of Mr. Trump’s phone calls to Ms. Willis’s office. Mr. Worley, a lawyer, believes that such a referral should, under Georgia law, automatically prompt an investigation.

    If the board declines to make a referral, Mr. Worley said he would ask Ms. Willis’s office himself to start an inquiry.

    Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, is one of the members of the board and has said that he might have a conflict of interest in the matter, as Mr. Trump called him to exert pressure. That could lead him to recuse himself from any decisions on a referral by the board.

    Mr. Worley said he would introduce the motion based on an outside complaint filed with the state election board by John F. Banzhaf III, a George Washington University law professor.

    Mr. Banzhaf and other legal experts say Mr. Trump’s calls may run afoul of at least three state criminal laws. One is criminal solicitation to commit election fraud, which can be either a felony or a misdemeanor.

    There is also a related conspiracy charge, which can be prosecuted either as a misdemeanor or a felony. A third law, a misdemeanor offense, bars “intentional interference” with another person’s “performance of election duties.”

    “My feeling based on listening to the phone call is that they probably will see if they can get it past a grand jury,” said Joshua Morrison, a former senior assistant district attorney in Fulton County who once worked closely with Ms. Willis. “It seems clearly there was a crime committed.”
    Nothing to see here, just move along...
    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/o...tory-all-wrong
    It’s almost like there’s a pattern. Weird.
    "A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."

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