So you know that Texas is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to require Georgia to flush nearly 5 million ballots cast in the presidential contest down the toilet. Three other states are also targeted – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The point of the suit is to block members of the electoral college – in Georgia, they number 16 and will be led by Democrats Stacey Abrams and party chair Nikema Williams – from casting votes for President-elect Joe Biden next Monday.
Early Wednesday, President Donald Trump joined the Texas suit. Last night, at a Hanukah party at the White House, Trump told guests that he could stay in office “if certain people have wisdom and courage.”
U.S. Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler have endorsed the idea that Texas should have veto power over Georgia voters. The attorneys general for 17 Republican-led states have filed a friend-of-court brief in support. Attorney General Chris Carr of Georgia is not one of them:
President Donald Trump warned Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr not to rally other Republican officials against a long-shot Texas lawsuit seeking to toss out the state's election results, according to several people with direct knowledge of the conversation.
The roughly 15-minute phone call late Tuesday came shortly before U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue issued a joint statement saying they “fully support" the improbable lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reject election results in Georgia and three other battleground states that Trump lost.
Earlier in the day, Carr's office called the lawsuit by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton “constitutionally, legally and factually wrong."
Trump also called Gov. Brian Kemp last Saturday, urging him to toss out Georgia’s presidential election and hand the matter of choosing electors to the state Legislature. Kemp politely told the president that this would be illegal.
The high court has required Georgia and the three other states to file their responses to the lawsuit, styled Texas v. Pennsylvania, by 3 p.m. today. How quickly the Supreme Court responds is another matter – before Monday, presumably. Most legal scholars are anticipating an immediate dismissal, judging by the Supreme Court’s refusal to intervene in a challenge of Pennsylvania’s vote. Trump is setting as low a bar as possible for himself, according to SCOTUS Blog:
Trump, whose lawyers have unsuccessfully filed dozens of lawsuits in the lower courts alleging fraud and irregularities, told the justices that he does not need to show that fraud has occurred to prevail. All that he has to demonstrate, he contended, is that elections in the four states at issue “materially deviated from the ‘manner' of choosing electors established by their respective state Legislatures."
Texas filed its case against the four states directly in the Supreme Court on Monday. Texas' attempt to go directly to the Supreme Court, rather than suing in a lower court, is a highly unusual use of the court's so-called original jurisdiction, which is normally used to resolve interstate disputes over borders or water rights.
The Texas lawsuit has also led many to question the motives of its author, state attorney general Ken Paxton, a Republican who has been accused of bribery and remains under FBI investigation. From the Washington Post:
Paxton has spent most of his six years in office under felony indictment alleging he defrauded investors in a high-tech startup before becoming Texas' top law enforcement officer in 2015. The criminal charges — which carry a potential sentence of 5 to 99 years in prison — threatened to sink Paxton's political career just as it was taking off, but the case has stalled in court, partly because of legal challenges by his conservative allies.
The latest accusations — leveled by his own senior staff — could spell more legal trouble.
Seven of his former top aides signed a letter in October saying they reported their boss to law enforcement over potential crimes including abuse of office and bribery. The allegations center around his relationship with a donor who gave him $25,000 in 2018 and wanted Paxton to investigate claims that the FBI and a federal judge broke the law over a search of his home.
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This morning, President Donald Trump essentially endorsed U.S. Doug Collins for a 2022 primary challenge against Gov. Brian Kemp. Via Twitter:
“How does Governor @BrianKempGA allow certification of votes without verifying signatures and despite the recently released tape of ballots being stuffed? His poll numbers have dropped like a rock. He is finished as governor! @RepDougCollins"
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Vice President Mike Pence will be campaigning for U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in Augusta today. President-elect Joe Biden has scheduled an appearance in Atlanta for Tuesday, in support of Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, the Democrats in the race.
We have few details, but the Biden visit would come one day after presidential electors in Georgia and other states formally cast their votes to make him the next president.
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Here’s something you might not have known about retired Gen. Lloyd Austin, President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for secretary of defense. From Austin’s prepared remarks on Wednesday:
“Back in 1877, a young man from the small town of Thomasville, Georgia, Henry Ossian Flipper, became the first African American to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point.
“After his commissioning, he was assigned to one of the Army's all-black regiments, and he became the first non-white officer to lead the Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry. Fast forward to today, nearly 150 years later, and another native son of Thomasville, Georgia stands before you as the Secretary of Defense-designate."
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Over at WGAU (1340AM) in Athens, host Tim Bryant had a conversation with U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Monroe this morning. Hice has been front-and-center among those calling into question the legitimacy of the Nov. 3 presidential election. The back-and-forth began with this question:
Bryant: “Here's the thing I can't get past, though. Assume for the sake of the discussion that you're right. That the Democrats are such evil geniuses, they cracked the code and they know how to steal the election for Joe Biden. Why didn't they steal the Senate? Why do we have a Senate runoff? Why is David Perdue in a runoff? Why couldn't they just steal that Senate seat for Jon Ossof?"
The answer, apparently, was that Democrats suffered from a lack of imagination:
Hice: “It's a great question, and a legitimate question. And I've had that before, and we talked about it. Obviously, however, the last four years has been an attack on President Trump. He has been the main issue here in Washington D.C., from false collusion claims to a fake impeachment scenario, all of it. The Democratic party has been focused on getting rid of Donald Trump. That was what they were going after."
Bryant also asked Hice if he was ready to refer to Biden as the president-elect. It took a while, but eventually the congressman said no.
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Members of the state House this morning are listening to conspiracy theorists and Trump supporters during a hearing this morning on voting problems.
Many of these witnesses are the same people who have backed lawsuits seeking to invalidate the presidential election in Georgia, using faulty statistical models or claims that piles of unidentified ballots were fraudulent.
The witness list is missing any actual election officials, such as representatives from the secretary of state’s office or county elections directors. Via Twitter, Gabriel Sterling said this on behalf of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger:
We were advised by our attorneys not attend because of pending litigation. They invited the Giuliani team which is pushing continuing disinformation. That disinformation is endangering lives.
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Celebrities aren’t just helping Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. They are staging entire shows on their behalf.
On Sunday, the cast of the Broadway smash Hamilton is holding a “History is Happening in Georgia” online holiday show for the two Democrats. You could call it the “Zoom where it happened.”
The same day, donors who give to the Democratic Party of Georgia can watch a reunion of the cast of the Christmas movie “Elf” featuring Will Ferrell, Zooey Deschanel, Andy Richter and other stars doing a live table read.
Then there’s Stacey Abrams’ favorite event: A “Star Trek: The Next Election” discussion on Saturday featuring the Georgia Democrat -- a self-confessed Trekkie -- and veterans of the show.
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The Super PAC tied to Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is spending another $6.5 million on TV and digital ads slamming the stock transactions of U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in the run up to the pandemic.
The Senate Majority PAC’s groups began airing the ads today accusing the Republicans of “insider trading while Georgians suffered.”
The incumbents say they did nothing wrong and were cleared by an ethics panel, though Perdue also faced scrutiny from federal prosecutors after he ordered the sale of at least $1 million worth of stocks in Atlanta-based Cardlytics when he received what appeared to be an inadvertent email from the chief executive of the company. Prosecutors ultimately declined to seek criminal charges.
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Google has lifted its post-election ban on political ads, a change that will come as music to the ears of campaign managers for Georgia’s Senate candidates. The Democrats, in particular, have complained that the moratorium impeded outreach by eliminating a relatively cheap medium where ads can be narrowly targeted.
Facebook still has its ban in place and has not said whether that will change before the Jan. 5 runoffs. Social media companies halted political ads after the general election over concerns their platforms were being used to spread misinformation.
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U.S. Sen. David Perdue’s financial portfolio continues to be scrutinized, and the latest nugget from ProPublica deals with a real estate transaction last year. Perdue sold a Washington town house to an executive at a brokerage firm whose company is regulated by a Senate committee that Perdue serves on. From ProPublica:
The deal was made off market, without the home being listed for sale publicly.
Though an appraisal provided to ProPublica by the buyer found that Perdue sold for slightly under market value, four local real estate experts disagreed, telling ProPublica that the almost $1.8 million sale price Perdue garnered seemed high. Their estimates of the premium ranged from a few thousand dollars to as much as about $140,000. A fifth expert said the price was squarely fair market value.
Ultimately, congressional ethics experts said, their concern was that Perdue sold privately and to someone whose organization that he oversaw as a senator.
A spokesman for Perdue told ProPublica that the transaction was handled by a Realtor and that the townhouse was appraised and sold at a competitive price. The transaction had nothing to do with the senator’s official duties and Perdue did not know the purchaser, his team said.
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The Marietta Daily Journal reports that Cobb County Sheriff-elect Craig Owens and others attending a sheriff’s school in Pine Mountain have tested positive for the coronavirus:
Owens and Fulton County Sheriff-elect Patrick Labat announced their test results in a joint statement Wednesday evening. Gwinnett County Sheriff-elect Keybo Taylor announced his own positive test Tuesday…
“In the future, we request that the (Georgia Sheriff's Association) require individuals to have tested negative for the virus before attending GSA events," Owens, Labat and Maddox said in their joint statement.
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A holiday season showdown over federal spending is being pushed a week. On Wednesday night, the House voted 343-67 to delay the shutdown deadline from Dec. 11 to Dec. 18. The vote was bipartisan, with every Democrat and most Republicans in favor.
The Senate is expected to follow suit, buying lawmakers more time to come up with a spending deal that at least funds the government through the first quarter of 2021 and possibly includes a fresh round of coronavirus funding.
U.S. Reps. Rick Allen, R-Evans, and Jody Hice, R-Monroe, joined other conservative lawmakers in voting against the bill. Retiring U.S. Rep. Doug Collins continues to miss votes, including this one. U.S. Rep. Austin Scott, R-Tifton, who is recovering from the coronavirus, and U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Cassville, also did not cast votes.
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Speaking of COVID-19 stimulus, two of your Insiders have a fresh look at how the four candidates in the U.S. Senate runoffs have approached the pandemic and the relief efforts they champion.
