If you thought the news might slow down a bit with Donald Trump finally out of office, you may still have to wait a while. On today’s BradCast, we pick up where Friday’s left. Moments after we got off air a ton of astonishing news broke, and it has continued right up through airtime today. Most notably, the stunning story of just how close the nation’s mercifully former President actually came to stealing the election from Joe Biden and the American people is only just now beginning to come together. [Audio link to full show follows below summary.]
We start today — (which, by the way, marks our 17th Anniversary of muck-raking and trouble-making via The BRAD BLOG! Please feel free to help us continue our reader/listener supported work into our 18th year with a much-needed donation!) — with another $1.3 billion defamation suit filed against yet another Team Trump legal liar and defamer. Following a similar suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Trump’s attorney Sidney Powell just weeks ago, his lead election-theft attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has now also been slapped with a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit by the Canadian-owned firm.
The 107-page complaint [PDF] filed on Monday, as we detail at some length today, charges that Giuliani repeatedly fueled Trump’s “Big Lie” about the election and the repeatedly evidence-free claims that Dominion’s systems were somehow used to steal it from Trump for Biden. These are the false claims that Giuliani made over and over again in public, on rightwing media and on his snake-oil peddling YouTube show, ironically named “Common Sense”. They are also, as Dominion points out in the complaint, the same claims that Giuliani failed to make in a court of law, where he could actually be punished for his egregious and repeated “voter fraud” lies.
The company charges that the false information from Trump’s attorney was also retweeted and shared millions of times on social media, leading to broad distrust and millions in potentially lost business by the private voting systems vendor. Giuliani’s months long assault also resulted in a number of vile and violent death threats to company employees and contractors alike.
The central false claim by Giuliani — which we have detailed on previous programs — is based on a wildly bastardized and re-imagined version of a deep-dive investigative exclusive from The BRAD BLOG that I published more than 10 years ago. It relates to Dominion’s 2010 purchase of another voting machine company that had once been owned by still another voting machine company that was once tied to Venezuela and its now deceased President, Hugo Chavez. My decade-old, completely accurate story was so bastardized by Rudy and Team Trump that, at one point, while he was giving false testimony about Dominion “fraud” to the GOP-majority Michigan state legislature in early December, Rudy claimed that Dominion’s owners were brought “down to meet Chavez just two years ago.” (Chavez has been dead for seven years.)
As also explained today, we are no fans here of private voting companies having any place in our public elections. Nonetheless, Dominion is right to sue for the libelous and dangerous falsehoods repeatedly told by Team Trump, which also fueled the violent, attempted insurrection by the enraged and disinformed MAGA Mob at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Moreover, there may well be more such suits coming in the days ahead. The firm has indicated they may even file suit against Trump himself.
All of that served as the basis — at least in Donald Trump’s addled-brain, as we learned over the weekend — for a gob-smacking, last minute attempt by the then President of the United States earlier this month to also stage a coup at the U.S. Justice Department! He reportedly attempted to replace his Acting Attorney General with yet another lackey who was willing to use the Dept. of Justice to file suit at Trump’s stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the 2020 Presidential election results in one or more states, and to lie to Georgia’s elected officials that the DoJ was investigating major voter fraud in the state. That, the hare-brained but wildly dangerous scheme argued, should have then led Georgia state legislators to void the results and award the state’s electors to Trump. In reality, Biden won the Peach State narrowly last November. There has been no credible evidence to suggest otherwise and, in fact, there has been quite a bit of evidence to suggest the results in Georgia were accurately tabulated by the Dominion systems.
On Friday, the New York Times‘ Katie Benner published the shocking scoop on that attempted DoJ coup, that — along with several other pieces of reporting in recent days and weeks — gets us a bit closer to understanding just how close Trump was to pulling a trigger that might have resulted in the complete undermining of American democracy and the stolen election he was after. We detail the plot to remove Trump’s Acting Attorney General (the one he installed when even Bill Barr was unwilling to go along with Trump’s phony election fraud scheme), prevented only by a vow of top officials at DoJ to resign en masse if Trump went through with it. The details, however, are as stunning as the story itself, and help to spell out exactly what Trump was hoping for with the insurrection he (and Giuliani!) incited at the Capitol on January 6th and how close he came to actually pulling it all off!
All of which underscores how the two week delay now scheduled in the U.S. Senate before Trump’s second impeachment trial begins is likely to make things far worse, rather than better, for the disgraced, now former President.
Buckle up for today’s latest edition of The BradCast!…
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[audio:http://BradBlog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman-DominionGiulianiLawsuit-TrumpAttemptedDOJCoup_012521.mp3]
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Hey look, it’s another liar pretending there aren’t like a couple hundred witnesses who’ve sworn out affidavits to witnessing fraud.
Gos –
Not entirely sure why you feel the need to be an asshole when making a comment about something you disagree on. But, I guess that’s just what you do and who you are.
Since I’m not an asshole, however, let’s entertain your claim. Please cite/link the most compelling “sworn out affidavit” out of the “like a couple hundred witnesses” that demonstrates the election was stolen from Donald Trump. Let’s look at the very best one and we can talk about it. Okay?
Try not to be an asshole along the way, since I feel I’m being quite generous in even entertaining this discussion with you given the pathetic, baseless charges you’ve made here in comments about me lately. Okay? You’re welcome.
Gos,
Hey, that is still a tRumpie name Banner, so I counsel you to ask Rudy Poot or Pootie Poot for a better name change result (The Shape Shifters of Bullshitistan – 24).
BTW Banner (“Gos” hehe), I am beginning to wonder if there is anything you can do that doesn’t stink (Once Upon A Time In The West – 2).
Gos,
One thing we all have to give Trump credit for is the inescapable fact that THERE WERE NO GODZILLA ATTACKS ON AMERICA WHILE TRUMP WAS PRESIDENT.
Not one. Nada. Zilch.
Trump kept us safe from Godzilla, and that
is a fact.
You must be proud.
Celebrate!!