Last Call For The Big Lie, Con't

We know Trump had the Rosen Justice Department interfere with Arizona's election certification process, now we find out he did the same in Georgia through former acting Civil Rights division head Jeffrey Clark.

 

Top members of the Department of Justice last year rebuffed another DOJ official who asked them to urge officials in Georgia to investigate and perhaps overturn President Joe Biden's victory in the state -- long a bitter point of contention for former President Donald Trump and his team -- before the results were certified by Congress, emails reviewed by ABC News show.

The emails, dated Dec. 28, 2020, show the former acting head of DOJ's civil division, Jeffrey Clark, circulating a draft letter -- which he wanted then-acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue to sign off on -- urging Georgia's governor and other top officials to convene the state legislature into a special session so lawmakers could investigate claims of voter fraud.

"The Department of Justice is investigating various irregularities in the 2020 election for President of the United States," the draft letter said. "The Department will update you as we are able on investigatory progress, but at this time we have identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia."

The draft letter states: "While the Department of Justice believe[s] the Governor of Georgia should immediately call a special session to consider this important and urgent matter, if he declines to do so, we share with you our view that the Georgia General Assembly has implied authority under the Constitution of the United States to call itself into special session for [t]he limited purpose of considering issues pertaining to the appointment of Presidential Electors."

The vote count in Georgia became a flashpoint for Trump and his allies and Trump at one point falsely claimed that it was "not possible" for him to have lost the state.
MORE: Statewide audit results reaffirm Biden winner in Georgia

But to date, the Justice Department has uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that would tip the results of the presidential election. Attorney General William Barr also announced in December that the department had "not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome of the election." A statewide audit in Georgia last year also affirmed that Biden was the winner.

The emails were provided by the DOJ to the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating efforts to overturn the election results. And they come as the DOJ investigator general looks at whether any officials in the department sought to overturn the outcome of the election.

Donoghue's notes about Trump telling Republican members of Congress to "leave it to him" when it came to the January 6th coup attempt was bad enough, but now we see that the efforts to manufacture a coup came about because Trump couldn't get acting AG Jeffrey Rosen to bite on saying the elections were fraudulent.

And yes, Trump absolutely had acting DOJ employees who wanted to publicly trash the 2020 elections as fraud, as we can see here.

We came this close to a coup, folks.

Cuomo's #MeToo Moment, Con't

With the investigation into his misconduct now complete, NY Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo is almost certainly not going to last until the end of the year as the state's chief executive, he may not make it until the end of the month.

 

An investigation found that Gov. Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women inside and outside state government and worked to retaliate against one of his accusers, New York’s attorney general announced Tuesday in a finding that is certain to renew calls for the Democrat’s resignation or impeachment.

The nearly five-month investigation, conducted by two outside lawyers who spoke to 179 people, found that the Cuomo administration was a “hostile work environment” and that it was “rife with fear and intimidation.”

People interviewed included complainants, current and former members of the executive chamber, State troopers, additional state employees and others who interacted regularly with the governor.

“These interviews and pieces of evidence revealed a deeply disturbing yet clear picture: Gov. Cuomo sexually harassed current and former state employees in violation of federal and state laws,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said at a press conference on Tuesday.

James said her investigation has concluded. There were no referrals to criminal prosecutors, though that wouldn’t preclude local authorities from using the evidence and findings of the report to mount their own cases.

On at least one occasion, the investigation found, Cuomo and his senior staff worked to retaliate against a former employee who accused him of wrongdoing. Cuomo was also found to have harassed women outside of government, the investigation found.

The report also detailed, for the first time, allegations that Cuomo sexually harassed a female state trooper on his security detail. It said that the governor ran his hand or fingers across her stomach and her back, kissed her on the cheek, asked for her help in finding a girlfriend and asked why she didn’t wear a dress.

“These brave women stepped forward to speak truth to power and, in doing so, they expressed faith in the belief that although the governor may be powerful, the truth is even more so,” Joon Kim, one of the lawyers leading the investigation, said at the press conference.

Investigators said they found all 11 women were credible, noting that their allegations were corroborated to varying degrees, including by other witnesses and contemporaneous text messages.

 

Cuomo's last grip on the side of the cliff was "We need to wait until the investigation is completed, which will exonerate me."

 

The investigation damned him instead. The victims deserve justice.

 

A long fall for a man who deserves to not only be removed from office, but put in prison. 

Al Franken did the right thing and resigned for less.

At the absolute minimum, Cuomo has to step down and await the criminal investigation and charges, and face those in a court of law, and then there's the entire nursing home COVID disaster he has to answer for too.

No, Cuomo has to go.

Left-Handed Compliments

The big political story in the Tri-State today is the Democratic primary in OH-11, as Cuyahoga County Democratic Party chair Shontel Brown takes on former Bernie Sanders campaign aide Nina Turner for Rep. Marcia Fudge's seat, as Fudge is now Biden's HUD Secretary. Two Black women Democrats competing for a Democratic Black Congresswoman's seat should be a cause for celebration, but the fight between Turner and Brown has gotten deeply personal and even ugly as Turner has all but lost her commanding lead over the last six weeks.

Despite taking place during a politically off-cycle campaign year, a major intraparty battle heavy with national implications is brewing in Tuesday's Democratic primary special election for Ohio's 11th Congressional District.

The contest presents an early test case of whether progressives can gain traction ahead of a pivotal midterm election cycle by going up against establishment-backed candidates. A slew of high-profile figures even descended on the Cleveland area in the lead-up to election day -- including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and House Majority Whip Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C.

With Republicans simultaneously vying in another heated primary in the suburbs of Columbus in the state's 15th Congressional District, Tuesday's race in the 11th district takes place in one of Ohio's few reliably blue areas and features more than a dozen Democratic candidates. Whoever comes out on top is all but guaranteed to go on to fill the seat left vacant by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge when she joined the Biden administration.

Over the last several months, the field narrowed down to two candidates -- Nina Turner, former state senator and top Sanders campaign aide, and Shontel Brown, who currently serves as chairwoman of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party.

Regardless of who advances from the primary, either of the two candidates would continue the more than two-decade long tradition of Black women representing the 11th district in Congress. Although the pair of front-runners share the common cultural baseline in their goal of speaking on behalf of the majority-Black district in Washington, Turner and Brown approached the campaign trail from different ends of the Democratic political spectrum.

"I've talked to people, my team has talked to people, and although people ... believe that things can change, they also say that they want a fighter, somebody that's gonna push back," Turner told ABC News in an interview.

Turner has brought in some big guns: Bernie himself, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, but Brown has come to the fight with her own endorsements: Rep. Jim Clyburn, CBC chair Rep. Joyce Beatty, and Marcia Fudge's mother, Marion Saffold.

Turner had a big lead earlier this year in the polling, but that has evaporated as her own less-than-glowing comparison of Joe Biden's 2020 campaign as eating "half a bowl of shit" (compared to Trump's full fecal feast) came to light. Turner has also flubbed easy questions like "Did you vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016" which of course she won't answer.

But Brown has her own problems, with The Intercept accusing her of corruption in contract dealings as party chair (hello, Walker Bragman!) and stating she'll face an ethics probe. While anything Bragman does makes me immediately suspect that Brown is the better candidate by an astronomical unit or six, the attacks in the final week or so have been hurting Brown.

We'll see who prevails today. Most of you I suspect know how I feel about Nina Turner.

For what it matter, I want to see Shontel Brown win.