From legal and election wonkery to supply chain wonkery, there is no wonkery that is too wonky for today’s BradCast! But I suspect (or, at least, hope) you’ll find it a pretty good show nonetheless. And you’ll even find out why I actually agree (mostly, sort of) with not one, but two of Donald Trump’s dumb, manipulative, self-serving statements he released yesterday! [Audio link to full show is posted below at end of this summary.]
- First up, Steve Bannon is in trouble. He has no legitimate legal claim to not answer the subpoena of the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6th attack for both testimony and documents. Yet he’s taking his (bad) legal advice from the disgraced former President and may wind up in jail because of it. If — and it’s still a big if — Attorney General Merrick Garland is up to the job he was appointed to. We bring you up to date on all of the Committee’s subpoenas to date, and who, other than Bannon, may also soon be facing criminal contempt charges.
- Then, on Wednesday, Trump issued two dumb statements that we, shockingly. can (mostly, sort of) get behind. The first one was simply this: “If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 (which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented), Republicans will not be voting in ‘22 or ‘24. It is the single most important thing for Republicans to do.” — Of course, there has been zero evidence of election fraud of any note from 2020 documented thoroughly or otherwise. But we definitely agree his Republican supporters should absolutely stay home during next year’s mid-terms and 2024’s Presidential election. It’s just the right thing for Republicans to do. That said, I also explain why this statement may suggest that Trump, contrary to conventional wisdom of late, may not be planning to run for President again.
- Next, on Wednesday, a state Superior Court judge in Georgia (I misspoke on the show, describing this as a federal case) dismissed [PDF] the last major legal challenge still pending to the 2020 Presidential election in the state. It’s a civil complaint filed by lead petitioner Garland Favorito of VoterGA. He has been on this show several times over the years, and who I’ve known him as an election integrity advocate long before Trump decided to pretend to be one. As explained, while I’ve got some problems with Favorito’s lawsuit and, in fact, a number of claims he’s made regarding the 2020 election since being discovered by the MAGA Mob (who, like Trump, also had zero interest in actual election integrity until now — and still don’t, to be frank), his lawsuit should not have been dismissed. At least not on the grounds that the Judge Brian J. Amero did so.
The petition, seeking a physical inspection of absentee ballots in Fulton County (Atlanta), charges, among other things, that “pristine” counterfeit ballots — never folded and bubbled in perfectly, as if by a computer — were discovered during one of three statewide post-election “audits” last year. The evidence for the claim is largely based on allegations made by a woman who participated in the state-run hand-count “audit”, though the affiant reportedly never brought the matter to the attention of officials during the audit and her story has changed somewhat over time, as she received attention from the MAGA media.
Nonetheless, investigators from Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger’s office told the court this week that they examined the ballots in question, and reported to the judge that they could find no such “pristine” counterfeit ballots in the batches specified by the complaint. While the judge says he reviewed that report by the state investigators, he says his dismissal is for a different reason. He held that the petitioners had no legal standing to sue, since they could show no “particularized injury,” affecting them “in a personal and individual way”. In other words, while their complaint could be true, it affected all Fulton voters, not just Favorito and friends.
It’s not Judge Amero’s fault. The judicial theory is absurd, but it is based on a ruling by the state’s 11th Circuit Court earlier this year. It was used as the basis to dismiss a separate attempt to overturn Georgia’s 2020 elections results filed by L. Lin Wood, one of several Trumpy attorneys who, like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, have had laughable, evidence-free 2020 “fraud” cases tossed out of courts and have been sanctioned for filing them. But the notion that a petitioner can’t sue in Georgia, essentially because everyone has been affected by a certain alleged wrong, is a very bad precedent. And it’s likely to harm other important and actually legtiimate lawsuits in the Peach State.
More to the direct point here for now, as Favorito correctly noted in response to the ruling, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution: “All citizens of Georgia have a right to know whether or not counterfeit ballots were injected into the Fulton County election results. It is not adequate for any organization [in this case, the inspectors at the Sec. of State’s office] to secretly tell us there are no counterfeit ballots and refuse to let the public inspect them.”
He is right. And so was Trump — accidentally and disingenuously, of course — in his own dumb, self-serving response to the court’s ruling on Wednesday when he correctly asked “Why can’t the public see the ballots?” (Most of the rest of his statement was either wrong or ridiculous.) Favorito says he will appeal.
As explained on the show in more detail, public elections belong to the public. And only public oversight of public elections offer any chance of avoiding the situation we are now in where dishonest cretins, like Trump and his supporters, can falsely claim fraud. Secret vote counting by computers and ballots kept beyond the (controlled) reach of the public will guarantee that such claims — legitimate or otherwise — will continue to be made in future elections. That is a grave threat to democracy itself — just in case you haven’t noticed. It is the one we are now facing. And it can only have a chance of being cured by public oversight. Favorito and the public should be allowed to visually inspect the actual physical ballots — so long as he pays for the effort and the ballots stay in the custody of public officials (unlike what happened in the Cyber Ninjas’ clown show “audit” in Maricopa County, AZ). If it reveals counterfeit ballots, good. We should know that. If it doesn’t, even better. The claim can be, hopefully, put to bed.
Anyway, more detail and explanation on all of this on today’s program.
- Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, on the disrupted global supply chain amid the pandemic resulting in a huge spike in energy prices and some very good climate news for both California under Gov. Gavin Newsom and the United States under President Joe Biden…
(Snail mail support to “Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028” always welcome too!)
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I agree with your agreement regarding the “standing to sue” rationale for dismissal. Indeed, the execrable Texas anti-abortion law is designed to exploit this “standing to sue” legal principle. However, I do not think the Secretary of State’s office has done anything “secretly.” And I think you haven’t thought through the consequences of making all ballots available to the scrutiny of anyone in the public who wants to see them. First of all, these are, after all, actually secret ballots. That is the basis of our election system. So, are you planning on having the names of the individuals casting these ballots become a matter of public record as well? And, even assuming their anonymity, how will you maintain the security of these ballots if the actual ballots are put into the hands of anyone eager to find (or plant!) evidence of fraud? You can’t just hand them over like a library book and expect them back in a few weeks. You would have to have actual moment-to-moment oversight of any member of the general public who wants to spend time with these ballots (you would also need to make sure they brought in no writing instruments or other means to potentially revise the ballots). I also think you are incredibly naive to think that any amount of “transparency” in this context would make any difference to those so hungry for proof that Trump actually won, they made up and believed absurd stories about various ballots and election workers in the days after the election–many of which were conclusively and transparently refuted with absolutely ZERO effect on the faith of those who bought these lies in the first place. Finally, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. If, in fact, as everyone but Trump nuts have said, the election system, as supervised by county and state officials works, then I don’t think we should go trying to fix the unbroken system with “more public oversight.” What would that look like? Why would that be more secure? If the current system is essentially free of any significant fraud, why would we change it to another system that we don’t know would have the same enviable record, at least regarding fraud? There is a point when you tell children they have seen how the chocolate is made long enough because you know that their only real motivation for being there is not to better understand or have faith in the production process, but to try to steal the chocolate itself.
David @ 1:
Thanks for the comment. Some responses…
Actually, the SoS has done a LOT of stuff in secret, including reviewing the “counterfeit” ballots alleged in the suit. Why would they look at them outside of the public eye, further opening themselves up to claims that they subsequently replaced or somehow changed the disputed ballots in question? I only hope the GA SoS office was smart enough to at least video tape every step of their “inspection”, even though that too can be easily faked. (Eg., correct the ballots in question, seal them, and THEN start rolling the video tape for the “inspection”.) This stuff should never be done in secret for exactly these reasons.
Also, for the record, GA’s statewide hand-count audit was also done secretly, in that the public wasn’t allowed to follow along with any of the tabulation (batch counts, etc., as they went) as is customary in the legitimate post-election audits and recounts.
Of course not. That is why ballots are separated from the names of those who cast them (by law) and cannot, at least in theory, be matched up with who cast them. In most states, ballots are public records. For example, here in CA, any voter (“elector”) who wishes a “recount” may have one at any precinct or precincts they like, presuming they pay for the cost of the county staff needed to review those ballots with the elector.
Elections are public. Ballots are public. It is the core of our democracy. They should never be handled in secret. Ever.
Correct. They are always in the custody of election officials, as the public is allowed to view, if not touch them. It’s done all the time in states who don’t have terrible election administration, as Georgia does.
Also correct. That’s how it’s regularly done elsewhere. It is not difficult.
I assure you, after covering elections for nearly 20 years, I am not naive about any of this. But, beyond that, here I partially agree and partially disagree with you. You’re correct that there is likely no amount of transparency that would satisfy the most dishonest, partisan, brain-poisoned cretins. But transparency does take away the vast majority of their complaints, making it much harder for them to mount the fake cases they have made. If the world (not just the plaintiffs in this case) was allowed, for example, to see the actually opening of those ballot boxes they claimed had counterfeits, and saw that none of their claims were true, they’d have a very hard time making their case.
This is how real post-election audits are done. Here’s a recent example this year from Windham, NH.
That is not what “everyone” said. Not by a long shot. A lot of very credible election experts have pointed to many problems in the 2020 election. No more than in previous elections, and nothing that suggests any results would be changed. But because you are not aware of the many problems detailed by experts does not mean they do not exist.
With all due respect, you are unfamiliar with the details of election integrity issues. There is a very serious, long standing lawsuit in Georgia, for example (filed long before the 2020 election) regarding their new, unverifiable Dominion touchscreen voting systems. They were implemented in 2020 after the previous Diebold touchscreen systems they had used for 20 years were found by a federal judge to be unverifiable, unsecure and, thus, unconstitutional. The federal judge banned them for use in 2020. That same judge, in the same case, also expressed very serious concerns about “serious security vulnerabilities” in the new systems, suggesting they had many of the same probs as the old ones. But she allowed them for use anyway in 2020, given there was no time to change systems before the election.
That suit continues and includes evidence from an expert allowed to review GA’s systems that was so troubling, the Judge actually sealed the experts report and won’t even allow either the plaintiff or the defendant (the GA SoS) to see it. It has been sealed as “attorneys eyes only” right now. Even Dominion hasn’t seen the report, documents very serious vulnerabilities. (We know this, because the expert filed an affidavit [PDF] about his findings. That led to a whole bunch of the nation’s top voting systems experts begging the CA SoS to review those findings in advance of the CA Recall election.)
While the MAGA plaintiff’s may be children, public elections are not chocolate. And in 2024, when the MAGA election officials are in charge after the real ones have been removed by the wingnuts, and when they declare that Trump won and the Democrat lost, you may be wishing for the transparency you are laughing away right now, simply because your candidate (and mine) won and Trump lost.