Of course they knew they were lying at the time. The pathetic thing is, their supporters who they continue to dupe, still believe the lies even today! But just in case anyone needs actual proof of Team Trump’s attempt to use a Big Lie to try and steal the 2020 election, new evidence discussed on today’s BradCast has been unearthed via the discovery process in one of the many defamation cases now filed against the Trump Campaign and their lawyers, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. [Audio to full show is posted at the end of this summary.]
According to a report from the New York Times today, a memo written by the Campaign in November, included in a recent motion filed by former Dominion Voting Systems employee Eric Coomer, reveals that even while Trump’s attorneys were lying to the public about Dominion having stolen the election (so they could try and steal it themselves) via an insane, evidence-free conspiracy theory involving hacked voting machines, George Soros, China, Cuba, Venezuela and its dead President Hugo Chavez (among others), the Campaign knew it was all nonsense.
None of it stopped their attorney from continuing to try and steal the 2020 election anyway, nor from defaming Dominion (which is suing a bunch of them, along with Fox “News” and other far-right outlets) nor Coomer, its former director of product strategy and security, who they falsely claimed to have been key to Dominion’s non-existent strategy to hack the election for Joe Biden. Oh, and the Trumpers also falsely claim that Coomer revealed the whole plot while on a recorded conference call with “antifa”, with whom he was supposedly a “member,” according to the ridiculous MAGA mob claims….even though there is no such actual organization (and, apparently, no such actual recording. Go figure!)
The Dominion/Venezuela/Hugo Chavez part of the story – which also involves another company named Sequoia, which is suing for defamation as well, and has even LESS to do with any theft of 2020 — is somewhat our fault. The Powell/Giuliani lies about Venezuela and Chavez and Dominion and Smartmatic were spun from a twisted and bastardized version of my exclusive, investigative reporting from 2008 to 2010. (Reporting that was well-sourced, accurate, independently verifiable, and which happily still stand by.) Thus, we spend some time unpacking the latest revelations in this story for you today, as twisted as it all is.
That story, in turn, helps us kick off a host of fresh accountability-related stories today that are unlikely to end well for any of the Trumpers. Among them…
- Republican Senators (and Trump lackeys) Lindsey Graham and Mike Lee also didn’t buy the bogus fraud narrative that the Trump White House and Campaign were selling, according to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s new book, Peril. Not that that prevented Graham from tossing in with the criminal conspiracy in Georgia with Trump, Giuliani and others, to try and steal the election in the state. That criminal conspiracy is currently being investigated by Atlanta’s Fulton County District Attorney.
- During a routine scheduling hearing in New York state court, the lawyer for Allen Weisselberg, the Chief Financial Officer at the Trump Organization, who has been indicted along with the company on several felony charges related to an alleged, long-running, tax fraud scheme, described as “sweeping and audacious” by state prosecutors, revealed that new indictments may be coming in the case. Little more was offered as far as who might be indicted and on what basis the attorney made his claims, but there ya go. In the meantime, the judge has pushed the next hearing to July of next year to allow Weisselberg time to review some 6 million pages of documents submitted as evidence in the case, pushing any trial to August or September of 2022 at the earliest. That, of course, presumes Weisselberg, who has worked at the Trump Organization for five decades, doesn’t decide to flip on his boss before then to avoid huge fines and years in prison.
- As to fines (and legal fees) that Trump and/or his businesses may have to cough up, given all of the ongoing legal battles they are defending against, that could become a very big problem for the disgraced former President as well. According to new reporting, occupancy rates are plummeting at Trump’s properties, including his headquarters Trump Tower in New York and his tower in Chicago. A $100 million loan for the Fifth Avenue building in NYC has now been placed onto a “debt watch list” by the loan’s master servicer, Wells Fargo, due to the quickly falling occupancy rate in the building since the end of last year. And that comes as Trump is reportedly personally on the hook for loans up to $400 million coming due in the next couple of years.
- And, if you think it’s time for us to move on from Trump accountability coverage since he’s no longer in officer, well, we’ve got some bad news for you. We haven’t even given up yet on George W. Bush accountability news! Happily, he faced a bit of accountability this weekend for his years of unprosecuted war crimes, courtesy of a U.S. Iraq war vet this past weekend in Los Angeles. We’ve got the play-by-play.
- Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with good news and bad (mostly bad) as the U.N. General Assembly meets this week in New York and much more. Also, remember when the Trump Administration moved the Bureau of Land Management headquarters from D.C. to Grand Junction, Colorado in 2019 to try and pretty much kill the federal agency? Well, that largely worked, with nearly 300 experts, scientists and other employees who chose to resign or retire rather than move their lives across the country for no legitimate reason. Now the Biden Administration’s Interior Department is moving the BLM back to D.C.
(Snail mail support to “Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028” always welcome too!)
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