Mark Meadows deeply involved in behind-the-scenes efforts to overturn Trump election loss: sourcesFormer White House chief of staff Mark Meadows worked behind the scenes to connect national security officials with Donald Trump allies who were working to overturn the November 2020 election, according to a new report.
Multiple sources, including former Trump officials and others with direct knowledge of the efforts, told CNN that Meadows tried to get top government officials to investigate baseless conspiracy theories promoted by Mike Flynn, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and passed along YouTube videos and other conspiratorial materials that he didn't quite believe himself.
"These, and other actions Meadows took on behalf of Trump, sources say, were not necessarily driven by his strong belief in the validity of these claims," CNN reported, "but instead by his desire to please a president who was hyper-focused on injecting baseless conspiracy theories of election fraud into official government channels."
Meadows, who has indicated he would cooperate with the House select committee investigation of the Jan. 6 riot, tried to enlist Justice Department officials in the effort to undo Trump's election loss, and he also contacted officials at several national security agencies to share baseless claims that China hacked the presidential election using thermostats to change results in voting machines, according to two sources.
"According to one of those sources, Meadows reached out to officials at the FBI, Pentagon, National Security Council and Office of the Director of National Intelligence to tell them about election fraud claims, including the China thermostat allegation, which Flynn and Powell had been pushing," CNN reported. "Meadows also pressured acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to have Justice Department officials investigate baseless claims that votes were changed by people in Italy using satellites. He acted as a go-between for Giuliani's team which was pushing the same debunked theory."
Meadows tried to set up a meeting between Flynn and intelligence officials to discuss the China thermostat theory, according to one source, although he pushed back on efforts by Powell to get herself named special counsel to investigate alleged voter fraud during one Dec. 18 meeting at the White House.
He also sided with White House officials and lawyers against Powell and Flynn's idea of declaring a state of emergency so the federal government could seize voting equipment in certain states.
Other Trump allies undertook similar efforts to enlist top government officials, but Meadows stands out among those due to his leading role in the White House.
"Meadows was perpetually enabling this insane stuff and was too scared to stand up to Trump," said one source who attended multiple meetings with Meadows at the White House and other agencies. "He was scared to say 'no' to anyone."
https://www.rawstory.com/mark-meadows-jan-6-2655911650/Georgia election workers sue pro-Trump website over false claims that led to racist threatsTwo election workers in Georgia have sued a right-wing conspiracy website that falsely accused them of manipulating ballots to ensure Donald Trump's loss in the state.
Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss sued the Gateway Pundit website, which is run by twin brothers Jim and Joseph Hoft, after they were targeted with death threats, unwanted pizza delivery orders and racist harassment after the website pushed debunked claims that the two women “pulled out suitcases full of ballots and began counting those ballots without election monitors in the room," reported the New York Times.
“I want the defendants to know that my daughter and I are real people who deserve justice, and I never want them to do this to anyone else,” Freeman said in a statement.
Trump and his allies promoted claims, based on a misleadingly spliced segment of surveillance video that Moss, who still works for the Fulton County elections board, and her mother, a temporary employee during the 2020 election, had helped pull 18,000 fraudulent ballots from a suitcase and illegally fed them into the voting machines.
The false claims led to a flood of threats, which drove the elections workers into hiding.
An investigation by the Georgia secretary of state's office found the women did nothing wrong and were legally counting ballots.
https://www.rawstory.com/jim-hoft-gateway-pundit/Trump 'Kraken' lawyers ordered to pay $175K in sanctions for 'profound abuse of judicial process'A federal judge in Michigan on Thursday ordered former president Donald Trump's "Kraken" lawyers — including Sidney Powell and L. Lin Wood — to pay more than $175,000 in sanctions for filing a conspiracy theory-laden lawsuit seeking to overturn the state's 2020 election results.
"This lawsuit represents a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process," U.S. District Judge Linda V. Parker wrote when she initially approved the sanctions in August.
Parker ordered Trump's attorneys to pay legal costs incurred by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, and the city of Detroit in defending against their lawsuit, which alleged that an international cabal worked to steal the election away from the former president. Parker gave the defendants 14 days to submit their time and expense records, but Trump's attorneys later challenged the city's requested amount of $182,192.
In her decision Thursday, Parker lowered the city's amount by roughly $29,000, to $153,285.62. Trump's lawyers did not challenge the amount of $21,964.75 submitted by Whitmer and Benson, meaning they'll have to pay a total of $175,250.37 in sanctions.
In her decision, Parker noted that many of Trump's lawyers "seek donations from the public to fund lawsuits like this one," adding that they "have the ability to pay this sanction."
In addition to Powell and Wood, the other Trump lawyers involved in the lawsuit were Howard Kleinhendler, Gregory Rohl, Stefanie Lynn Junttila, Emily Newman, Julia Z. Haller, Brandon Johnson, and Scott Hagerstrom.
The attorneys are "jointly and severally" liable for the sanctions, meaning that while each is on the hook for the full amount, the total to be paid is $175,250.37, regardless of who forks over the money.
Read Parker's full decision here.
https://www.rawstory.com/sidney-powell-sanctions/
