Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Two major developments in the Fulton County, Georgia case against Trump for election interference, first, a federal judge in Atlanta has ruled that Sen. Lindsey Graham must testify under oath about his role in the possible GOP interference in the 2020 Georgia elections.

A federal judge in Atlanta has denied GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham's motion to quash a subpoena, ruling that he must testify before a Fulton County grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. 

In her written decision on Monday, US District Judge Leigh Martin May sent the case to the Superior Court of Fulton County to hear further proceedings on the US Constitution's "Speech or Debate" clause, the centerpiece that Graham's attorneys argued immunized the US senator from South Carolina from having to testify in this case. 

"Because the record must be more fully developed before the Court can address the applicability of the 'Speech or Debate' clause to specific questions or lines of inquiry, and because Senator Graham's only request in removing the subpoena to this Court was to quash the subpoena in its entirety, the Case is REMANDED to the Superior Court of Fulton County for further proceedings," May wrote in the ruling. 

The South Carolina Republican is scheduled to appear as a witness in Atlanta in front of the special grand jury on August 23. 

In her ruling, May wrote that there are "considerable areas of inquiry" that are not "legislative in nature" and said that the District Attorney's office has shown "extraordinary circumstances and a special need for Senator Graham's testimony on issues relating to alleged attempts to influence or disrupt the lawful administration of Georgia's 2020 elections." 

Five other attorneys who worked with Trump and spoke with Georgia election officials in the aftermath of the 2020 election have also received subpoenas to testify before the special purpose grand jury, and at least three of the lawyers are trying to fight their subpoenas in state courts this week. 

 

A federal judge absolutely believes ol' Huckleberry Graham here has testimony germane to a grand jury and this case is moving quickly. 

The second major development is that Rudy Giuliani and several other Trump/GOP officials are now direct targets of the Georgia investigation.

Former President Donald Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has been informed that he is considered a "target" of the Georgia criminal investigation probing the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election in that state, according to sources familiar with the matter.

An attorney for Giuliani received a call Monday informing them that he is a "target" of the investigation, the sources said.

The move comes just two days before Giuliani is set to testify before the Fulton Country special grand jury probing the case, as the investigation appears to be ramping up.

Giuliani is still expected to testify on Wednesday, the sources said.

Last week, an attorney for Giuliani said in court that Giuliani's legal team had been asked the district attorney "whether or not Mr. Giuliani is a target of this investigation," but had "not yet received a response."

The judge in the case, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, said he "would implore" the DA to "at least address that before [Giuliani] gets here."

Earlier, 16 so-called "alternate electors" in the state were informed that they are also considered "targets" of the probe.

 

So yes, we're liable to see Giuliani indicted and soon.

The Big Lie, Con't

At this point, all the actual election fraud in 2020 was apparently committed by Trump partisans looking for "election fraud".

A team of computer experts directed by lawyers allied with President Donald Trump copied sensitive data from election systems in Georgia as part of a secretive, multistate effort to access voting equipment that was broader, more organized and more successful than previously reported, according to emails and other records obtained by The Washington Post.

As they worked to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat, the lawyers asked a forensic data firm to access county election systems in at least three battleground states, according to the documents and interviews. The firm charged an upfront retainer fee for each job, which in one case was $26,000.

Attorney Sidney Powell sent the team to Michigan to copy a rural county’s election data and later helped arrange for them to do the same in the Detroit area, according to the records. A Trump campaign attorney engaged the team to travel to Nevada. And the day after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol the team was in southern Georgia, copying data from a Dominion voting system in rural Coffee County.

The emails and other records were collected through a subpoena issued to the forensics firm, Atlanta-based SullivanStrickler, by plaintiffs in a long-running lawsuit in federal court over the security of Georgia’s voting systems. The documents provide the first confirmation that data from Georgia’s election system was copied. Indications of a breach there were first raised by plaintiffs in the case in February, and state officials have said they are investigating.

“The breach is way beyond what we thought,” said David D. Cross, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, who include voting-security activists and Georgia voters. “The scope of it is mind-blowing.”

A drumbeat of revelations about alleged security breaches in local elections offices has grown louder during the nearly two years since the 2020 election. There is growing concern among experts that officials sympathetic to Trump’s claims of vote-rigging could undermine election security in the name of protecting it.

The federal government classifies voting systems as “critical infrastructure,” important to national security, and access to their software and other components is tightly regulated. In several instances since 2020, officials have taken machines out of service after their chains of custody were disrupted.

State authorities have opened criminal investigations into alleged improper breaches of equipment in Michigan, a case that involves several people who appear in the new records. In Mesa County, Colo., a local elections official, Republican Tina Peters, was indicted on felony charges including conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation and attempting to influence a public servant.

In two counties, SullivanStrickler’s examinations were permitted by courts, though many details surrounding those efforts have not been public. The records show how Powell’s group discussed, exchanged and paid for elections-system data. The plaintiffs intend to bring them to the attention of the judge in the case and provide them to the FBI as well as state and local elections authorities in Georgia, Cross told The Post.

 

This isn't "we hacked into the network in order to find vulnerabilities because we didn't believe the network admins", this is "We robbed the banks in order to prove the money was still there" kind of criminality, the completely self-serving kind.

 

Hopefully this means the disbarrment and arrest of multiple Trump lawyers and several state elections officials that enabled this massive data theft.

 

Oh, and if you believe 2022 and especially 2024 elections will actually be safe, fair and secure, understand that more than half of Republicans running for statewide office in 2022 are on-the-record Trump Big Lie election deniers. If elected, they will simply nullify any Democratic party wins.

 

Vote like your country depends on it, because it does.

 

Necessary Evil But Not Believeable

The White House response to the Mar-a-Lago search last week, led by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, is that of strict neutrality towards the Justice Department, and even I have a hard time believing it.

The White House continues to stress they had no private knowledge of last week's FBI raid on former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate or the status of the ongoing Department of Justice investigation, citing the "complete independence" of the DOJ from politicization.

"We do not interfere. We do not get briefed. We do not get involved," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told ABC "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl in an exclusive interview on Sunday.

Pressed repeatedly by Karl, Jean-Pierre repeatedly declined to comment on any aspect of the federal investigation into Trump, including whether President Joe Biden is concerned about national security implications of the highly classified materials that federal agents said they found in Trump's possession. (Through a spokesperson, Trump claimed the files were declassified.)

"I hear your question, but it would be inappropriate for me as the press secretary to comment on this. It would be inappropriate for any of us, including the president or anyone in the administration, to comment on this," Jean-Pierre said. "This is a law enforcement matter. And the Department of Justice is going to move forward as they see fit."

Responding to Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik's contention that "the FBI raid of President Trump is a complete abuse and overreach of its authority," Jean-Pierre said that is "not true."

"This is not about politicizing anything. ... I would remind our folks on the other side that the FBI director [Christopher Wray] was appointed by the president's predecessor. I would remind the folks on the other side that when Merrick Garland was indeed confirmed, it was a bipartisan fashion," she said.

She told Karl that Biden had not even "discussed" the raid with law enforcement and that the White House had been learning of updates in the investigation through media reports.

 

Observations:

 

One, after a rocky start to her tenure, Karine Jean-Pierre is shaping up to be on the Jen Psaki side of things. That's good. 

Two, KJP's answer here is 100% correct, if not technically perfect.

Three, I don't believe a word of it.

Look, I know in a vacuum of neutrality that the White House wasn't going to be informed because it's the DoJ's play here and not Biden's. But it strains credulity to believe that sending an FBI team to recover stolen nuclear TS/SCI documents from Trump's fucking pool closet doesn't warrant a highly unofficial White House heads up hours if not days ahead of time.

I truly do believe that Joe Biden had no part in the decision process for the Mar-a-Lago search. But I don't believe for a moment that the White House didn't know it was coming. This is arguably the most politically consequential search warrant issued in my lifetime, and yeah, Biden knew.

I understand why we're seeing this kabuki play. I don't agree with it. Even a simple "The White House was informed only after the warrant was being executed" would suffice. But "not even discussed" by the White House, given the stakes that Trump had stolen nuclear classified materials, when the FBI had been there before with a subpoena?

I call bullshit, and it pains me to do so.  We'll find out this truth in a couple weeks or so, but it's just a dumb, unforced error. The White House wasn't blind on this. Being honest, given the scope of Trump's little collection and the extant threat to national security it represented, was the way to proceed, I'm sorry.

This was a bad call. Disagree with me in the comments and make your case, but I think this was the wrong move even if it had to be done.