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THE MAGA PARTY!,,, the GOP is dead, republicans are going down with the dems,, get ready for THE MAGA PARTY lefty's
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2021-06-16 at 1:54 PM UTC
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2021-06-16 at 1:59 PM UTCi wanna be a spiceroy and suck psychoactive roys out of the oval office carpet dust
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2021-06-16 at 2:05 PM UTCThe Washington Post
We’re learning more about how Trump leveraged his power to bolster his election fantasies
Philip Bump
On Dec. 14, 2020, about 2,500 people died of covid-19, the disease for which a vaccine was just beginning to be deployed. On that day, more than 200,000 people contracted the coronavirus, a number equal to 13 out of every 20,000 Americans. But in the White House, President Donald Trump’s focus was largely elsewhere: on his desperate effort to overturn the results of the presidential election that had been settled more than a month before.
At 5:39 p.m., Trump announced that his attorney general, William P. Barr, would be leaving his administration. The timing was odd, given that Trump had only a month left in office. But Trump, we learned on Tuesday, wasted no time in getting Barr’s replacement up to speed on the president’s primary concern.
About 40 minutes before Trump’s announcement about Barr, the president “sent an email via his assistant to Jeffrey A. Rosen, the incoming acting attorney general, that contained documents purporting to show evidence of election fraud in northern Michigan — the same claims that a federal judge had thrown out a week earlier in a lawsuit filed by one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers,” the New York Times’s Katie Benner reported.
Trump had been publicly focused on the results in Antrim County, Mich., a few hours earlier.
“WOW,” he tweeted at about 3 p.m. “This report shows massive fraud. Election changing result!”
The report to which he was referring — and which was forwarded to Rosen — was compiled by an activist named Russell Ramsland, who was central to the false claims about the election that were floating around, The Washington Post reported in May. There was a misreporting of results in the county, a function of an error that occurred when some ballots were updated to include new candidates. The error was caught and explained within 48 hours of the election — but Antrim became a focal point of conspiracy theories about voting machines and fraud anyway. (An audit completed a few days after Trump’s tweet validated the corrected results.)
There was, in other words, no reason to think that anything weird happened in Antrim County, no reason to elevate Ramsland’s report and no reason to bring it to the attention of the incoming head of the Justice Department. Yet on that day, at a moment when the election was obviously over but the pandemic obviously wasn’t, that’s what Trump did.
The Times report and one from CNN that focused on the same cache of emails show two alarming factors at play in the post-election Trump White House. The first is the demonstrated credulousness of the president of the United States in embracing disproved or obviously ridiculous conspiracy theories about the election in an effort to retain power and/or assuage his pride. The second is an immediate staff perfectly willing to do the work of putting Trump’s cockamamie ideas in front of senior government officials as though they were worthy of time or effort.
When then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows emailed Rosen on Jan. 1 to raise questions about ballots in Georgia and insist that a Justice Department official “engage on this issue immediately to determine if there is any truth to this allegation,” Rosen forwarded it to a colleague with the message: “Can you believe this?”
The colleague, acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue, saw a silver lining, according to CNN.
“At least it’s better than the last one, but that doesn’t say much,” he replied.
When Meadows sent Rosen a YouTube video theorizing that people in Italy used satellites to affect the vote results, Rosen again sent it to his deputy, who, with no apparent hyperbole, deemed it “pure insanity.”
We’ve known for some time that Trump and his team were working to overturn the election results. Those efforts ranged from Trump’s public attempts to undermine the election results to his repeated calls to state officials — including a Jan. 2 call with Georgia’s secretary of state in which he asked him to “find 11,780 votes” — to his aborted move to replace Rosen in early January with Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official amenable to Trump’s fraud claims.
What’s noteworthy about the new reporting is that it reveals the extent to which Trump was willing to divert federal resources to chase down obviously untrue theories. Tasking the head of the Justice Department with investigating the legitimacy of satellite-based vote manipulation, of crackpot analyses and of doctored video extends well past inappropriate.
It precisely echoes the incident that led to Trump’s first impeachment. Then, he pressured the president of Ukraine to announce investigations into untrue and debunked allegations about Ukrainian involvement in hacking the Democratic Party in 2016 and about Joe Biden’s son. Trump was impeached on charges of using the power of the federal government — including foreign aid — to try to get Ukraine to deliver something of personal political benefit to himself.
After he lost the election that he had hoped Ukraine would help him win, Trump turned toward pressuring his own government to deliver politically useful results. And no one on his team thought better of his doing so.
This incident raises a question that has lingered around Trump since before he took office: To what extent does he believe the untrue things he says? Does Trump actually believe that Ukraine hacked the DNC in 2016 or that Italian space enthusiasts changed votes? Does he simply believe that it’s useful for those things to be treated seriously as claims? Is the truth somewhere in the middle, with Trump hoping that maybe, just maybe, these will turn out to be accurate and reshape the world to his liking?
It’s always been the case that Trump has given undue credibility to what he wants to hear. Politicians both foreign and domestic quickly learned the value of flattery in dealing with him. That’s why the question above is so important. If dishonest or deluded actors could present obviously false information — obviously, indisputably, ridiculously, provably false information — and have Trump treat it as serious because he wanted to believe it, what other decisions might have been similarly influenced?
On Dec. 29, a Trump aide named Molly Michael sent Rosen a document on the president’s behalf that served as a draft complaint to be filed on behalf of the federal government at the Supreme Court. It broadly mirrored a lawsuit filed by Texas against several states aiming to have their pro-Biden results invalidated. The Supreme Court had refused to hear the case two weeks earlier.
The draft mirrored the Texas lawsuit so closely that it included one particularly noteworthy claim.
“The probability of former Vice President Biden winning the popular vote in the four Defendant States — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — independently given President Trump’s early lead in those States as of 3 a.m. on November 4, 2020, is less than one in a quadrillion, or 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,” it reads. “For former Vice President Biden to win these four States collectively, the odds of that event happening decrease to less than one in a quadrillion to the fourth power.”
On Dec. 4, I looked at this jaw-dropping claim. It’s not complicated: The analysis assumes that votes counted before 3 a.m. and after 3 a.m. would not be different. But they were different: The later votes at issue came from large cities that took longer to tally their results — and that were far more heavily Democratic.
In other words, even setting aside the utter lack of evidence of fraud having occurred (that is, the lack of evidence of people actually changing any votes), this statistical analysis was flawed to the point of ludicrousness a week before the Supreme Court rejected the Texas claim. Yet two weeks after the court tossed that case, it appeared in near-whole-cloth in the inbox of the acting attorney general in hopes that it would be treated seriously.
What mattered to Trump wasn’t that the claims be accurate. It was that they be treated as at least potentially accurate and — who knows? — maybe he’d get to stay in the White House. Trump had heard something he wanted to hear, and he wanted the federal government to agree with that, not with reality. His aides did their best to make it happen, despite the various ways in which their time could obviously have been better spent at the moment.
Not for the first time, Trump was stymied by individuals unwilling to accede to his fantasies.
AND I THANK GOD FOR THEM -
2021-06-16 at 2:07 PM UTC
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2021-06-16 at 2:09 PM UTCThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-06-16 at 2:16 PM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 The Washington Post
We’re learning more about how Trump leveraged his power to bolster his election fantasies
Philip Bump
On Dec. 14, 2020, about 2,500 people died of covid-19, the disease for which a vaccine was just beginning to be deployed. On that day, more than 200,000 people contracted the coronavirus, a number equal to 13 out of every 20,000 Americans. But in the White House, President Donald Trump’s focus was largely elsewhere: on his desperate effort to overturn the results of the presidential election that had been settled more than a month before.
At 5:39 p.m., Trump announced that his attorney general, William P. Barr, would be leaving his administration. The timing was odd, given that Trump had only a month left in office. But Trump, we learned on Tuesday, wasted no time in getting Barr’s replacement up to speed on the president’s primary concern.
About 40 minutes before Trump’s announcement about Barr, the president “sent an email via his assistant to Jeffrey A. Rosen, the incoming acting attorney general, that contained documents purporting to show evidence of election fraud in northern Michigan — the same claims that a federal judge had thrown out a week earlier in a lawsuit filed by one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers,” the New York Times’s Katie Benner reported.
Trump had been publicly focused on the results in Antrim County, Mich., a few hours earlier.
“WOW,” he tweeted at about 3 p.m. “This report shows massive fraud. Election changing result!”
The report to which he was referring — and which was forwarded to Rosen — was compiled by an activist named Russell Ramsland, who was central to the false claims about the election that were floating around, The Washington Post reported in May. There was a misreporting of results in the county, a function of an error that occurred when some ballots were updated to include new candidates. The error was caught and explained within 48 hours of the election — but Antrim became a focal point of conspiracy theories about voting machines and fraud anyway. (An audit completed a few days after Trump’s tweet validated the corrected results.)
There was, in other words, no reason to think that anything weird happened in Antrim County, no reason to elevate Ramsland’s report and no reason to bring it to the attention of the incoming head of the Justice Department. Yet on that day, at a moment when the election was obviously over but the pandemic obviously wasn’t, that’s what Trump did.
The Times report and one from CNN that focused on the same cache of emails show two alarming factors at play in the post-election Trump White House. The first is the demonstrated credulousness of the president of the United States in embracing disproved or obviously ridiculous conspiracy theories about the election in an effort to retain power and/or assuage his pride. The second is an immediate staff perfectly willing to do the work of putting Trump’s cockamamie ideas in front of senior government officials as though they were worthy of time or effort.
When then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows emailed Rosen on Jan. 1 to raise questions about ballots in Georgia and insist that a Justice Department official “engage on this issue immediately to determine if there is any truth to this allegation,” Rosen forwarded it to a colleague with the message: “Can you believe this?”
The colleague, acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue, saw a silver lining, according to CNN.
“At least it’s better than the last one, but that doesn’t say much,” he replied.
When Meadows sent Rosen a YouTube video theorizing that people in Italy used satellites to affect the vote results, Rosen again sent it to his deputy, who, with no apparent hyperbole, deemed it “pure insanity.”
We’ve known for some time that Trump and his team were working to overturn the election results. Those efforts ranged from Trump’s public attempts to undermine the election results to his repeated calls to state officials — including a Jan. 2 call with Georgia’s secretary of state in which he asked him to “find 11,780 votes” — to his aborted move to replace Rosen in early January with Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official amenable to Trump’s fraud claims.
What’s noteworthy about the new reporting is that it reveals the extent to which Trump was willing to divert federal resources to chase down obviously untrue theories. Tasking the head of the Justice Department with investigating the legitimacy of satellite-based vote manipulation, of crackpot analyses and of doctored video extends well past inappropriate.
It precisely echoes the incident that led to Trump’s first impeachment. Then, he pressured the president of Ukraine to announce investigations into untrue and debunked allegations about Ukrainian involvement in hacking the Democratic Party in 2016 and about Joe Biden’s son. Trump was impeached on charges of using the power of the federal government — including foreign aid — to try to get Ukraine to deliver something of personal political benefit to himself.
After he lost the election that he had hoped Ukraine would help him win, Trump turned toward pressuring his own government to deliver politically useful results. And no one on his team thought better of his doing so.
This incident raises a question that has lingered around Trump since before he took office: To what extent does he believe the untrue things he says? Does Trump actually believe that Ukraine hacked the DNC in 2016 or that Italian space enthusiasts changed votes? Does he simply believe that it’s useful for those things to be treated seriously as claims? Is the truth somewhere in the middle, with Trump hoping that maybe, just maybe, these will turn out to be accurate and reshape the world to his liking?
It’s always been the case that Trump has given undue credibility to what he wants to hear. Politicians both foreign and domestic quickly learned the value of flattery in dealing with him. That’s why the question above is so important. If dishonest or deluded actors could present obviously false information — obviously, indisputably, ridiculously, provably false information — and have Trump treat it as serious because he wanted to believe it, what other decisions might have been similarly influenced?
On Dec. 29, a Trump aide named Molly Michael sent Rosen a document on the president’s behalf that served as a draft complaint to be filed on behalf of the federal government at the Supreme Court. It broadly mirrored a lawsuit filed by Texas against several states aiming to have their pro-Biden results invalidated. The Supreme Court had refused to hear the case two weeks earlier.
The draft mirrored the Texas lawsuit so closely that it included one particularly noteworthy claim.
“The probability of former Vice President Biden winning the popular vote in the four Defendant States — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — independently given President Trump’s early lead in those States as of 3 a.m. on November 4, 2020, is less than one in a quadrillion, or 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,” it reads. “For former Vice President Biden to win these four States collectively, the odds of that event happening decrease to less than one in a quadrillion to the fourth power.”
On Dec. 4, I looked at this jaw-dropping claim. It’s not complicated: The analysis assumes that votes counted before 3 a.m. and after 3 a.m. would not be different. But they were different: The later votes at issue came from large cities that took longer to tally their results — and that were far more heavily Democratic.
In other words, even setting aside the utter lack of evidence of fraud having occurred (that is, the lack of evidence of people actually changing any votes), this statistical analysis was flawed to the point of ludicrousness a week before the Supreme Court rejected the Texas claim. Yet two weeks after the court tossed that case, it appeared in near-whole-cloth in the inbox of the acting attorney general in hopes that it would be treated seriously.
What mattered to Trump wasn’t that the claims be accurate. It was that they be treated as at least potentially accurate and — who knows? — maybe he’d get to stay in the White House. Trump had heard something he wanted to hear, and he wanted the federal government to agree with that, not with reality. His aides did their best to make it happen, despite the various ways in which their time could obviously have been better spent at the moment.
Not for the first time, Trump was stymied by individuals unwilling to accede to his fantasies.
AND I THANK GOD FOR THEM
Exactly what did you want me to do about the coof? What did Biden do differently? -
2021-06-16 at 2:24 PM UTCGee...maybe one of these stories from differing legitimate news sources might actually be true. Whodda thunk?
U.S. Politics
Emails Show Trump Pressured Justice Dept. Over 2020 Election
During the last weeks of his presidency, Donald Trump and his allies pressured the Justice Department to investigate unsubstantiated claims of widespread 2020 election fraud.
Associated Press
Published 15 June 2021
WASHINGTON (AP) — During the last weeks of his presidency, Donald Trump and his allies pressured the Justice Department to investigate unsubstantiated claims of widespread 2020 election fraud, despite his former attorney general declaring there was no evidence of it, newly released emails show.
The emails, released Tuesday by the House Oversight Committee, reveal in new detail how Trump, his White House chief of staff and other allies pressured members of the U.S. government to challenge the 2020 election over false claims, even though officials at Homeland Security and Justice, as well as Republican election leaders across the country, repeatedly said there had been no pervasive fraud. Former Attorney General William Barr, a longtime Trump loyalist, was among those who said there was no evidence of such fraud.
The emails also show the extent to which Trump worked to enlist then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen in his campaign’s failing legal efforts to challenge the election result, including suggesting filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court.
The ones sent to Rosen include debunked conspiracy theories and false information about voter fraud. Trump’s lies about the election helped spur on the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a failed effort to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. Several times, for example, allies wrote about Dominion Voting Systems’ potential voter fraud, a conspiracy theory now the subject of a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit by the voting company. Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, asked about investigating allegations of voter fraud caused by satellites from Italy.
Meadows tried to have Rosen investigate the conspiracy theories and pushed the acting attorney general to meet with an ally of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani who was pitching unfounded election conspiracies that Italy was using satellites and military technology to change votes.
After Rosen forwarded Meadows’ email, Rich Donoghue, the acting deputy attorney general, sent a note to Rosen that said, “pure insanity.” Rosen wrote back that he was asked to have the FBI meet with Giuliani’s associate and he said no, insisting the man could follow the FBI’s normal protocol for tips and just call the public tip line or take his information to an FBI field office. But Rosen said Giuliani was “insulted” by the answer.
“Asked if I would reconsider, I flatly refused, said I would not be giving any special treatment to Giuliani or any of his ‘witnesses,’ and re-affirmed yet again that I will not talk to Giuliani about any of this,” Rosen wrote.
On Dec. 14, the day that Electoral College votes were certified and that Barr said he would be resigning later that month, Trump’s White House assistant sent a note to Rosen with the subject “From POTUS,” an acronym for president of the United States. The email to Rosen, a deputy attorney general who became acting attorney general after Barr left, included talking points on alleged voter fraud in Antrim County, in a key battleground state, Michigan, such as claims like “a Cover-up is Happening regarding voting machines in Michigan” and “Michigan cannot certify for Biden.”
Just moments after Trump’s assistant sent the documents, Donoghue sent the same documents to the U.S. attorneys in the Eastern and Western districts of Michigan.
On Dec. 29, Trump’s White House assistant emailed Rosen, Donoghue and Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall and included a draft legal brief for the Supreme Court, with a phone number where they could contact the president directly. The proposed complaint asked the court to “declare that the Electoral College votes cast” in the six battleground states that Trump lost “cannot be counted.” It asked for the court to order a special election in those states.
One of Trump’s private attorneys then emailed senior Justice officials urging them to file the complaint. The emails show he repeatedly called Rosen’s senior advisers and others in the Justice Department demanding meetings, saying he was driving from Maryland to Justice Department headquarters in Washington to meet with Rosen because he couldn’t reach him.
“As I said on our call, the President of the United States has seen this complaint, and he directed me last night to brief AG Rosen in person today and discuss bringing this action,” he wrote in one email. “I have been instructed to report back to the President this afternoon after this meeting.”
The Associated Press reported late last year on the effort within the Trump administration to pressure government employees to adopt the false narrative of 2020 election fraud. Trump asked the Justice Department to investigate instances of voter fraud, and Justice leaders sent a memo to the states prioritizing the effort. The Republican president also asked that a special prosecutor be named to investigate the false voter fraud claims.
And the official serving as Trump’s eyes and ears at the Justice Department tried to pressure staffers to give up sensitive information about election fraud and other matters she could relay to the White House. She was banned from the building.
Trump considered replacing Rosen with a more loyal ally, Jeffrey Clark, and even looked into whether the White House could appoint a special counsel without the Justice Department’s approval. On Jan. 1, for example, Meadows asked Rosen to have Clark investigate “signature match anomalies in Fulton county, GA.”
It didn’t happen, and on Jan. 3 another Justice official wrote that the “cause of justice won.”
Three days later, hundreds of pro-Trump rioters broke into the Capitol, attacking police and causing dozens of injuries, causing $1.5 million in damage and sending lawmakers fleeing for their lives. Five people died, including a police officer who collapsed that day. At least 400 people have been arrested in connection with the riot, the largest Justice Department prosecution in history. -
2021-06-16 at 2:27 PM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 Gee…maybe one of these stories from differing legitimate news sources might actually be true. Whodda thunk?
U.S. Politics
Emails Show Trump Pressured Justice Dept. Over 2020 Election
During the last weeks of his presidency, Donald Trump and his allies pressured the Justice Department to investigate unsubstantiated claims of widespread 2020 election fraud.
Associated Press
Published 15 June 2021
WASHINGTON (AP) — During the last weeks of his presidency, Donald Trump and his allies pressured the Justice Department to investigate unsubstantiated claims of widespread 2020 election fraud, despite his former attorney general declaring there was no evidence of it, newly released emails show.
The emails, released Tuesday by the House Oversight Committee, reveal in new detail how Trump, his White House chief of staff and other allies pressured members of the U.S. government to challenge the 2020 election over false claims, even though officials at Homeland Security and Justice, as well as Republican election leaders across the country, repeatedly said there had been no pervasive fraud. Former Attorney General William Barr, a longtime Trump loyalist, was among those who said there was no evidence of such fraud.
The emails also show the extent to which Trump worked to enlist then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen in his campaign’s failing legal efforts to challenge the election result, including suggesting filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court.
The ones sent to Rosen include debunked conspiracy theories and false information about voter fraud. Trump’s lies about the election helped spur on the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a failed effort to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. Several times, for example, allies wrote about Dominion Voting Systems’ potential voter fraud, a conspiracy theory now the subject of a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit by the voting company. Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, asked about investigating allegations of voter fraud caused by satellites from Italy.
Meadows tried to have Rosen investigate the conspiracy theories and pushed the acting attorney general to meet with an ally of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani who was pitching unfounded election conspiracies that Italy was using satellites and military technology to change votes.
After Rosen forwarded Meadows’ email, Rich Donoghue, the acting deputy attorney general, sent a note to Rosen that said, “pure insanity.” Rosen wrote back that he was asked to have the FBI meet with Giuliani’s associate and he said no, insisting the man could follow the FBI’s normal protocol for tips and just call the public tip line or take his information to an FBI field office. But Rosen said Giuliani was “insulted” by the answer.
“Asked if I would reconsider, I flatly refused, said I would not be giving any special treatment to Giuliani or any of his ‘witnesses,’ and re-affirmed yet again that I will not talk to Giuliani about any of this,” Rosen wrote.
On Dec. 14, the day that Electoral College votes were certified and that Barr said he would be resigning later that month, Trump’s White House assistant sent a note to Rosen with the subject “From POTUS,” an acronym for president of the United States. The email to Rosen, a deputy attorney general who became acting attorney general after Barr left, included talking points on alleged voter fraud in Antrim County, in a key battleground state, Michigan, such as claims like “a Cover-up is Happening regarding voting machines in Michigan” and “Michigan cannot certify for Biden.”
Just moments after Trump’s assistant sent the documents, Donoghue sent the same documents to the U.S. attorneys in the Eastern and Western districts of Michigan.
On Dec. 29, Trump’s White House assistant emailed Rosen, Donoghue and Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall and included a draft legal brief for the Supreme Court, with a phone number where they could contact the president directly. The proposed complaint asked the court to “declare that the Electoral College votes cast” in the six battleground states that Trump lost “cannot be counted.” It asked for the court to order a special election in those states.
One of Trump’s private attorneys then emailed senior Justice officials urging them to file the complaint. The emails show he repeatedly called Rosen’s senior advisers and others in the Justice Department demanding meetings, saying he was driving from Maryland to Justice Department headquarters in Washington to meet with Rosen because he couldn’t reach him.
“As I said on our call, the President of the United States has seen this complaint, and he directed me last night to brief AG Rosen in person today and discuss bringing this action,” he wrote in one email. “I have been instructed to report back to the President this afternoon after this meeting.”
The Associated Press reported late last year on the effort within the Trump administration to pressure government employees to adopt the false narrative of 2020 election fraud. Trump asked the Justice Department to investigate instances of voter fraud, and Justice leaders sent a memo to the states prioritizing the effort. The Republican president also asked that a special prosecutor be named to investigate the false voter fraud claims.
And the official serving as Trump’s eyes and ears at the Justice Department tried to pressure staffers to give up sensitive information about election fraud and other matters she could relay to the White House. She was banned from the building.
Trump considered replacing Rosen with a more loyal ally, Jeffrey Clark, and even looked into whether the White House could appoint a special counsel without the Justice Department’s approval. On Jan. 1, for example, Meadows asked Rosen to have Clark investigate “signature match anomalies in Fulton county, GA.”
It didn’t happen, and on Jan. 3 another Justice official wrote that the “cause of justice won.”
Three days later, hundreds of pro-Trump rioters broke into the Capitol, attacking police and causing dozens of injuries, causing $1.5 million in damage and sending lawmakers fleeing for their lives. Five people died, including a police officer who collapsed that day. At least 400 people have been arrested in connection with the riot, the largest Justice Department prosecution in history.
Legitimate? -
2021-06-16 at 3:10 PM UTCjoe "you know the ... thing" biden is now having one of the most important meeting in his senile life and all you can think of is trump.
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2021-06-16 at 3:13 PM UTC
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2021-06-16 at 3:25 PM UTC
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2021-06-16 at 4:14 PM UTCmake america gay again
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2021-06-16 at 7:19 PM UTC
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2021-06-16 at 7:57 PM UTCOrange supremacist?
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2021-06-16 at 10:43 PM UTCYouTube is ground zero for fraudulent election audit advocacy
WRITTEN BY OLIVIA LITTLE
RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM KELLIE LEVINE
PUBLISHED 06/14/21 3:10 PM EDT
SHARE
COMMENT
YouTube has become the epicenter of fraudulent election audit advocacy, even though this content seems to violate the platform’s election misinformation guidelines. Fifteen right-wing YouTube channels are spreading videos that promote the Arizona audit — and sometimes advocate for more such audits in other states — in a push to justify the illegitimate process.
By housing this extremist election misinformation (which is reliant on the debunked claim that the 2020 election was stolen, an idea that led to the January 6 Capitol insurrection), YouTube has become complicit in its rapid spread. Some of these videos also run ads, meaning both the creator and YouTube are benefiting financially.
Arizona is conducting an audit of ballots in Maricopa County in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. The Arizona audit is rooted in baseless conspiracy theories about the outcome of the presidential election and has sparked interest in similar efforts in other states, including Michigan, Georgia, and New Hampshire.
There are at least 15 active YouTube channels that are sharing videos and livestreams with “updates” on the right-wing push for election audits, sometimes relying on right-wing media sources known for spreading misinformation. This content appears to violate YouTube’s election misinformation policy, which prohibits “content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of any past U.S. presidential election.” Despite this policy, the 15 channels had accumulated over 54 million combined views as of June 10.
In April and May, these channels repeatedly posted such videos, sometimes multiple times a day, with channel figures often cross-promoting one another via guest appearances. They thus built audiences around providing misleading “news” about state audits that will supposedly install former President Donald Trump back in office in the near future.
Beyond spreading misinformation about the ongoing Arizona audit, the people involved in this content — guests, creators, and other right-wing actors — are sharing tactics and building a unified false narrative of widespread 2020 election fraud. These efforts recently coalesced in a ticketed, in-person event on May 22 that further connected influential figures across various states. Election fraud and audit claims have even become central to multiple right-wing candidates’ campaigns, with some candidates appearing on livestreams on the topic.
Occasionally these channels post specific calls to action, such as when right-wing users were advocating (and fundraising) for fellow conspiracy theorist Jovan Pulitzer (who also appeared on one of these YouTube channels) to run an audit in Windham, New Hampshire.
The Arizona election audit is also serving as the blueprint for a larger election audit movement around the country, and the identified YouTube channels have served as a megaphone for election misinformation used to justify the audits. As recently as June 9, Matthew DePerno (the Michigan lawyer who filed the election fraud lawsuit in Antrim County) tweeted out one of the YouTubers’ videos. On June 11, two of these audit YouTubers were featured speakers at a New Hampshire rally “for a statewide forensic audit of the ballots.”
The initial harm is already done, but there is still time for YouTube to stop enabling the spread of this far-right election misinformation. -
2021-06-16 at 10:44 PM UTCouTube channels spreading lies about the 2020 election and pushing for election audits
Behizy (159,000 subscribers as of May 21)
Behizy has uploaded numerous videos and done livestreams covering right-wing media stories about election audits. The channel creator supposedly traveled to the tabulation center in Arizona while in town for a so-called “Election Integrity” event hosted by MyPillow CEO and Trump superfan Mike Lindell in March. The channel repeatedly featured guests in livestreams, such as Liz Harris, who are either directly involved in right-wing advocacy for a local audit or post original content that misleadingly covers election fraud and audits.
Channel statistics [Social Blade, 5/21/21]:
New subscribers, last 30 days: 53,000
Views, last 30 days: 6.3 million
Average daily views: 210,400
Out Of The Darkness (111,000 subscribers as of May 21)
Out Of The Darkness has posted numerous election audit videos.
Channel statistics [Social Blade, 5/21/21]:
New subscribers, last 30 days: 32,600
Views, last 30 days: 2.8 million
Average daily views: 93,600 -
2021-06-16 at 10:46 PM UTCJovan Hutton Pulitzer (subscriber count unavailable)
Pulitzer does not seem to post as frequently as the dedicated election audit YouTubers, but he is a recurring guest on livestreams about the topic. His videos spreading misleading information about election audits and calling for further audits regularly garner tens of thousands of views.
Channel statistics [Social Blade, 5/21/21]:
New subscribers, last 30 days: 262,645
Views, last 30 days: 262,600
Average daily views: 8,800
Doug TenNapel (60,700 subscribers as of May 21)
Although YouTube suspended Doug TenNapel’s previous channel (which had 449,000 subscribers, per Social Blade), he created his current channel in January and uses it to post about election audits. He is a frequent guest on multiple fellow audit YouTubers’ livestreams.
Channel statistics [Social Blade, 5/21/21]:
New subscribers, last 30 days: 32,100
Views, last 30 days: 2.4 million
Average daily views: 79,500
Julie Green Ministries (45,600 subscribers as of May 21)
Julie Green Ministries has repeatedly posted videos and livestream -
2021-06-16 at 10:47 PM UTCJulie Green Ministries (45,600 subscribers as of May 21)
Julie Green Ministries has repeatedly posted videos and livestreams covering audits across various states.
Channel statistics [Social Blade, 5/21/21]:
New subscribers, last 30 days: 12,400
Views, last 30 days: 2.2 million
Average daily views: 73,500
Nick Moseder (44,100 subscribers as of May 21)
Nick Moseder has repeatedly posted uploads and livestreams covering election audits over the past few months. He has also featured fellow audit YouTubers as guests on livestreams and has also routinely mentioned elections or audits in the title or thumbnail of his videos since April. He also livestreamed as he visited an audit facility in Windham, New Hampshire, on May 22 calling for further state audits.
Channel statistics [Social Blade, 5/21/21]:
New subscribers, last 30 days: 11,900
Views, last 30 days: 1.14 million
Average daily views: 38,100
Neil Johnson (24,800 subscribers as of May 21)
Neil Johnson has been regularly posting daily uploads and livestreams covering election audits over th -
2021-06-16 at 10:48 PM UTCNeil Johnson (24,800 subscribers as of May 21)
Neil Johnson has been regularly posting daily uploads and livestreams covering election audits over the past few months. He routinely features fellow audit YouTubers as guests and consistently gets several thousand views on his videos.
Channel statistics [Social Blade, 5/21/21]:
New subscribers, Last 30 Days: 22,900
Views, last 30 days: 1.23 million
Average daily views: 41,100
Cann Con (20,000 subscribers as of May 21)
Cann Con has repeatedly posted new videos and livestreams covering audits. Unlike other audit YouTubers, Cann Con has been attempting to migrate their audience to Rumble and, as a result, often removes the recorded versions of livestreams from the YouTube channel. Cann Con has also been featured as a guest on fellow audit YouTubers’ livestreams and also livestreamed former Gen. Michael Flynn speaking at an event on May 21.
Channel Statistics [Social Blade, 5/21/21]:
New subscribers, last 30 days: 11,800
Views, last 30 days: 116,500
Average daily views: 3,900
DaveCaresForYou (13,400 subscribers as of May 21)
DaveCaresForYou has repeatedly featured conspiratorial right-wing candidates in pro-audit livestreams. The channel also has a May 14 livestream titled “Dave Jose Bust Down the Deep State and Tell you about the War on Child Tra44icking,” which spreads rhetoric and talking points tied to the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Channel statistics [Social Blade, 5/21/21]:
New subscribers, last 30 days: 4,100
Views, last 30 days: 130,000
Average daily views: 4,300 -
2021-06-16 at 10:51 PM UTCthose guys are fighting for our freedoms and they are kicking ass,, that artical was written by a soros meadia co.
WE ARE WINNING!!!
