“Nearly every component of Trump’s plan revolved around then-Vice President Mike Pence succumbing to pressure. In Trump’s view, Pence — who presided over the counting of state electors on Jan. 6, 2021 — could single-handedly reject Biden’s electors or postpone the count altogether and let GOP state legislatures approve pro-Trump electors instead.
Pence, relying on the advice of his counsel Greg Jacob, balked at Trump’s strategy. Jacob and other White House lawyers repeatedly told Trump the scheme was illegal.
Even that could’ve gone differently. Jacob has also made clear that there was one scenario in which Pence might have been obligated to flip the outcome: if any state legislatures had actually pulled the trigger and adopted Trump electors. In that scenario — where a state legislature and governor have certified competing slates, with one saying Biden won and the other declaring the state for Trump — Jacob said it would be reasonable to defer to the text of the Constitution, which gives state legislatures the ultimate power to choose electors.
“A reasonable argument might further be made that when resolving a dispute between competing electoral slates … the Constitution places a firm thumb on the scale on the side of the State legislature,” Jacob wrote.
That’s why John Eastman, an attorney who designed much of Trump’s plans to stay in power, spent the final hours before the riot on Jan. 6 pushing Pence to delay — contending that Pennsylvania’s legislature appeared on the verge of reconvening to appoint Trump electors. Had Pence or Jacob agreed to a delay — particularly as the Capitol recovered — Trump, Eastman and lawyer Rudy Giuliani intended to use the time to bring legislatures back into season.”
“Video recordings of Republican Party operatives meeting with grassroots activists provide an inside look at a multi-pronged strategy to target and potentially overturn votes in Democratic precincts: Install trained recruits as regular poll workers and put them in direct contact with party attorneys.
The plan, as outlined by a Republican National Committee staffer in Michigan, includes utilizing rules designed to provide political balance among poll workers to install party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling places, developing a website to connect those workers to local lawyers and establishing a network of party-friendly district attorneys who could intervene to block vote counts at certain precincts.”
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“election watchdog groups and legal experts say many of these recruits are answering the RNC’s call because they falsely believe fraud was committed in the 2020 election, so installing them as the supposedly unbiased officials who oversee voting at the precinct level could create chaos in such heavily Democratic precincts.
“This is completely unprecedented in the history of American elections that a political party would be working at this granular level to put a network together,” said Nick Penniman, founder and CEO of Issue One, an election watchdog group. “It looks like now the Trump forces are going directly after the legal system itself and that should concern everyone.”
Penniman also expressed concern about the quick-strike networks of lawyers and DAs being created, suggesting that politically motivated poll workers could simply initiate a legal conflict at the polling place that disrupts voting and then use it as a vehicle for rejecting vote counts from that precinct.”
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“On the tapes, some of the would-be poll workers lamented that fraud was committed in 2020 and that the election was “corrupt.” Installing party loyalists on the Board of Canvassers, which is responsible for certifying the election, also appears to be part of the GOP strategy. In Wayne County, which includes Detroit, Republicans nominated to their board a man who said he would not have certified the 2020 election.
Both Penniman and Rick Hasen, a law and political science professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, said they see a domino effect that could sow doubts about the election even when there was no original infraction: A politically motivated poll worker connecting with a zealous local lawyer to disrupt voting, followed by a challenge to the Board of Canvassers that may have nothing to do with the underlying dispute but merely the level of disruption at the polling place.
“You shouldn’t have poll workers who are reporting to political organizations what they see,” Hasen said. “It creates the potential for mucking things up at polling places and potentially leading to delays or disenfranchisement of voters,” especially “if [the poll workers] come in with the attitude that something is crooked with how elections are run.””
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“Penniman, the election watchdog, believes the strategy is designed to create enough disputes to justify intervention by GOP-controlled state legislatures, who declined to take such steps in 2020.”
“When Great Britain returned control of Hong Kong to China in 1997, a condition of the transfer was that Beijing would allow the territory to maintain its own government until 2047. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has never liked this agreement, and the COVID-19 pandemic provided the excuse to all but erase the “one country, two systems” distinction.
The CCP began its authoritarian assimilation of Hong Kong in 2019, when Beijing encouraged CCP loyalists in Hong Kong’s legislature to pass a law allowing extradition of residents to mainland China. That proposal sparked pro-democracy protests and a police crackdown in Hong Kong, which captured the world’s attention.
In June 2020, Beijing responded to the pro-democracy movement by requiring Hong Kong to implement a national security law that “introduc[ed] ambiguously defined crimes such as separatism and collusion that can be used to stifle protest,” as The New York Times put it. But the pandemic provided Beijing with an even bigger opportunity to suppress dissent.
Citing public health concerns, Hong Kong postponed its Legislative Council (LegCo) elections for a year. In the interim, Beijing changed LegCo election rules to reduce the number of directly elected seats and to require that candidates pledge their loyalty to mainland China.
With only Beijing-aligned “patriots” on the ballot, CCP loyalists swept the 2021 LegCo elections. Many leading opposition politicians went into exile, while others were jailed. Voter turnout was a paltry 30 percent—the lowest since the handover in 1997. By comparison, a record 71 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the 2019 district council elections. The high turnout was reportedly driven by opposition to the extradition treaty, and pro-democracy candidates won 85 percent of the available seats.
The pandemic also has facilitated suppression of pro-democracy protests. Every June since 1990, residents of Hong Kong had marched and held a vigil in memory of the Tiananmen Square dead. But in 2020, Hong Kong announced that it would extend social distancing restrictions until June 5, the day after the massacre’s anniversary.
Hong Kong’s COVID-19 rules banned public meetings of more than eight people, with a potential penalty of six months in jail. As a result, only a small vigil was held. Organizers nevertheless were arrested and sentenced to up to 14 months in jail. The sentencing judge remarked that they had “belittled a genuine public health crisis.””
“John Lee is the new chief executive of Hong Kong. The 64-year-old ran the only approved campaign to succeed Carrie Lam, the embattled head of the Chinese territory who oversaw a dramatic degradation to democratic institutions throughout 2019’s pro-democracy protests. Lee’s tenure will likely bring more of the same: a former deputy chief of Hong Kong’s police force, he was instrumental in the brutal crackdowns on pro-democracy activists.
As the sole Beijing-approved candidate to replace Lam, Lee’s victory was all but assured as soon as he announced his candidacy. While Hong Kong doesn’t have what Americans would recognize as a democratic electoral system, previous elections have seen multiple candidates vie for Hong Kong’s top job. But this year, Lee was the only person Beijing apparently deemed sufficiently loyal to China’s Communist Party under its new electoral policies for Hong Kong, unveiled last March. He won handily with 99 percent of the votes from the 1,500-member electoral commission.”
“Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán won reelection for the fourth time — emerging with control of over two-thirds of the country’s parliamentary seats in defiance of close pre-election polls. This fourth consecutive victory means he will remain the third-longest-serving current leader in Europe at nearly 16 years in power, behind only Belarus’s Aleksandr Lukashenko (28 years as president) and Russia’s Vladimir Putin (23 years as president or prime minister).
That Orbán’s peers in longevity are outright dictators is appropriate, as Sunday’s election was anything but free and fair. For the past 12 years, Orbán has systematically worked to turn Hungarian democracy into a sham: one where elections seem fair, but take place on uneven playing ground. Through tactics ranging from extreme gerrymandering to media control to unfair campaign finance rules, he has made it unthinkably difficult for the opposition to defeat his Fidesz party at the ballot box.”
“Donald Trump and one of his legal advisers, former Chapman University law professor John Eastman, probably committed federal felonies when they conspired to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election by pressuring then–Vice President Mike Pence to block or delay congressional ratification of Joe Biden’s victory. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter concluded it was “more likely than not” that the scheme violated 18 USC 1512, which prohibits obstruction of “any official proceeding,” and 18 USC 371, which criminalizes conspiracies to “defraud the United States.”
Carter made that determination while adjudicating a dispute over emails sought by the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters who accepted his stolen-election fantasy and were angry at Pence for refusing to go along with Eastman’s plan. While the practical impact of Carter’s conclusion is limited to just one disputed document, his analysis amounts to an indictment of conduct that was not just dishonest and reckless but arguably criminal.
“The illegality of the plan was obvious,” Carter writes. “Our nation was founded on the peaceful transition of power, epitomized by George Washington laying down his sword to make way for democratic elections. Ignoring this history, President Trump vigorously campaigned for the Vice President to single-handedly determine the results of the 2020 election. As Vice President Pence stated, ‘no Vice President in American history has ever asserted such authority.’ Every American—and certainly the President of the United States—knows that in a democracy, leaders are elected, not installed….President Trump knowingly tried to subvert this fundamental principle.”
Eastman argued that 111 of the documents sought by the January 6 committee’s subpoena were protected either by attorney-client privilege, which applies to confidential legal advice, or by the “work product” doctrine, which applies to material prepared in anticipation of litigation. The select committee argued that the disputed emails were not protected, invoking the “crime-fraud exception,” which applies to legal advice “in furtherance of” a crime.
Carter concluded that 13 documents qualified as work product and that the crime-fraud exception applied to just one: a memo prepared for Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani recommending that Pence “reject electors from contested states on January 6.” Carter says that memo “may have been the first time members of President Trump’s team transformed a legal interpretation of the Electoral Count Act into a day-by-day plan of action.”
As Carter notes, that plan of action was blatantly illegal. In conversations with Greg Jacob, Pence’s counsel, Eastman conceded that the plan violated the Electoral Count Act in several ways. And while Eastman questioned the constitutionality of that law, Carter says, the proper way to resolve those claims would have been to raise them in court rather than unilaterally choosing to ignore the statute.
Eastman likewise acknowledged that it was “100 percent consistent historical practice since the time of the Founding” that the vice president does not have the legal power to do what Eastman and Trump wanted him to do. Eastman also admitted that it was likely the Supreme Court would unanimously agree.
On January 3, 2021, Eastman nevertheless wrote a six-page memo calling for “BOLD” action by Pence to stop Biden from taking office. “The stakes could not be higher,” he wrote. “This Election was Stolen by a strategic Democrat plan to systematically flout existing election laws for partisan advantage; we’re no longer playing by Queensbury Rules.”
The next day, Eastman, at Trump’s behest, pushed his plan in a meeting with Pence, Jacob, and Marc Short, the vice president’s chief of staff. “During that meeting,” Carter notes, “Vice President Pence consistently held that he did not possess the authority to carry out Dr. Eastman’s proposal.” Eastman met again with Jacob and Short on January 5, saying, “I’m here asking you to reject the electors.” Most of that meeting was consumed by an argument in which Jacob disputed the legal merits of Eastman’s memo.
“Despite receiving pushback,” Carter says, “President Trump and Dr. Eastman continued to urge Vice President Pence to carry out the plan.” At 1 a.m. on January 6, Trump tweeted that “if Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency,” averring that “Mike can send it back!” Seven hours later, another Trump tweet insisted that “states want to correct their votes,” saying “all Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN.” He urged Pence to “do it,” because “this is a time for extreme courage!”
Trump delivered the same message in a phone call to Pence around 11:20 a.m. that day. According to Pence’s national security adviser, who was present during that conversation, Trump castigated the vice president as “not tough enough to make the call.” Trump and Eastman reprised the same theme during their speeches at the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Capitol riot. Trump closed his speech by urging his followers to march on the Capitol in the hope of inspiring “the kind of pride and boldness” that “weak” Republicans like Pence needed “to take back our country.”
Around noon, Pence publicly rejected Trump and Eastman’s appeals, saying, “It is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.” After the riot started, Trump condemned Pence on Twitter: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”
In an email to Eastman while Trump’s enraged supporters were storming the Capitol, Jacob noted that the rioters “believed with all their hearts the theory they were sold about the powers that could legitimately be exercised at the Capitol on this day,” and “thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.” Eastman, who was still trying to change Pence’s mind, took a different view: “The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so the American people can see for themselves what happened.”
A conviction for obstructing or attempting to obstruct an official proceeding requires proving that the defendant acted “corruptly.” According to 9th Circuit precedent, that element does not require “consciousness of wrongdoing.” But in this case, Carter says, Trump “likely knew that the plan to disrupt the electoral count was wrongful.””
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“Carter’s conclusions do not necessarily mean that Trump or Eastman could be successfully prosecuted for either of these crimes. The preponderance-of-the-evidence standard for applying the crime-fraud exception is much less demanding than the proof beyond a reasonable doubt required for a criminal conviction. So even if the January 6 committee ends up recommending criminal charges, the Justice Department might sensibly decline to pursue them. But Carter’s ruling, which calls Eastman’s plan “a coup in search of a legal theory,” reminds us of how outrageous and unprecedented Trump’s reaction to his electoral defeat was.”
“the Hungarian people voted in a landslide to give Prime Minister Viktor Orbán his fourth term since 2010. Current tabulations give parties allied with the incumbent leader a vote share above 53 percent, an outright majority.
Orbán is a self-proclaimed proponent of “illiberal democracy,” which distinguishes, in Amnesty International’s summation, “a fully democratic ‘Western’ system based on liberal values and accountability from what he calls an ‘Eastern’ approach based on a strong state, a weak opposition, and emaciated checks and balances.” Orbán has spent more than a decade engaging in aggressive gerrymandering, court packing, use of state power to drive out or co-opt dissenting media, and more. Corruption is rampant. The Constitution has been rewritten and ever more power concentrated at the top.”
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“The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which took the rare step of sending a full election-monitoring mission to Hungary, has raised questions about the vote. So arguably the country should not be thought of as particularly democratic or particularly liberal right now.”
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“Orbán’s sweeping victory suggests that many millions of Hungarians, well aware of his record, are on board with his vision for their country. This raises the specter of a true illiberal democracy—it shouldn’t be hard to imagine a country with genuinely fair and open elections but also majority support for authoritarian leaders and policies that deny equal rights to all.
The point of contemplating such a scenario is to recognize that “assaults on democracy” are not the only threat we face. A society in which 51 percent of a population votes to oppress the other 49 percent can claim the mantle of democracy. The problem is that it is illiberal, not undemocratic.
Democratic institutions, important as they are, only get us so far. We must insist on liberalism as well: free speech, private property protections, religious liberty, freedom of movement, constitutional constraints and separations of power and rule of law and all the rest. We can’t know which side of the 50 percent mark we’ll fall on; the less of our lives we allow to be put to a vote in the first place, the better off we’ll be.”
“We now know that Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, spent the weeks after the 2020 election cheerleading the Trump White House’s efforts to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in that election. One detail we do not yet know, however, is what Justice Thomas knew about his wife’s communications, and whether he tried to use his office to protect her.
In January, the Supreme Court permitted the US House committee investigating the January 6 attacks on the Capitol to obtain hundreds of pages of White House records that may shine a light on former President Donald Trump’s efforts to thwart the peaceful transfer of power to Biden. These records may or may not contain additional evidence linking Ginni Thomas to January 6.
If Clarence Thomas had his way, the House committee and the public would never know. Thomas was the only justice to publicly dissent from the Supreme Court’s decision to let the House committee obtain these records — though he offered no explanation for why he dissented.
But here’s the thing: Yes, Thomas’s vote in this case, Trump v. Thompson, may have been an underhanded effort to protect his own wife. But his vote in Trump was entirely consistent with his record in cases where his spouse does not have a personal interest.
In more than three decades on the Supreme Court, Thomas has consistently voted to make it harder for many Americans to have their vote count; to erode institutions, like a free press, that are essential to democracy; and to dismantle nearly a century’s worth of democratically enacted laws on spurious constitutional grounds. Thomas’s opposition to democracy is not rooted in nepotism. It appears to be quite principled.
Among other things, Thomas is the only sitting justice who voted to install a Republican president in Bush v. Gore (2000) — although three other current justices were part of Republican George W. Bush’s legal team in that case. Thomas would allow Republican administrations to deactivate the entire Voting Rights Act so long as they are in power. He would strip journalists of First Amendment rights that allow them to safely provide critical coverage of government officials. And he would invalidate a long list of laws including the federal bans on child labor and on whites-only lunch counters, based on a widely rejected reading of the constitutional provision that grants Congress most of its power over the private sector.
No matter how the scandal with his wife’s texts shakes out, it’s worth remembering how the Court’s longest-serving justice would shape the world. In Clarence Thomas’s America, elections would be skewed so heavily in the Republican Party’s favor that Democrats will struggle to ever gain power. And if Democrats somehow do manage to squeak into office, Thomas would ensure that they cannot govern.”
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“In 1960, civil rights activists aligned with Martin Luther King, Jr. ran an advertisement in the New York Times, which alleged that Alabama police used brutal tactics to suppress student protests. The ad, however, contained some minor factual errors. It misidentified the song that protesters sang at a particular demonstration, for example, and it also claimed that police had arrested King seven times, when he’d in fact only been arrested four times.
Pointing to these small errors, a Jim Crow police official won a $500,000 verdict against the Times in an Alabama court — close to $5 million in 2022 dollars. Had this verdict stood, it would have chilled journalism of all kinds, because it would have meant that any newspaper or other outlet that prints even very small factual mistakes could have been hit with a verdict large enough to bankrupt the outlet.
The New York Times decision, however, prevented this outcome by holding that the First Amendment imposes limits on defamation lawsuits. When someone speaks about a public figure and about a matter of public concern, the Court held, they cannot be held liable for making false statements unless that statement was made “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”
Thomas argued in McKee v. Cosby (2019) that New York Times should be overruled. Indeed, Thomas’s opinion suggests that states should be free to define their own defamation law free of constitutional constraints. “The States are perfectly capable of striking an acceptable balance between encouraging robust public discourse and providing a meaningful remedy for reputational harm,” Thomas wrote.
If this approach were to prevail, state officials could once again use malicious defamation lawsuits to target journalists. Suppose, for example, that I mistakenly report that “500 people attended a rally protesting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis,” when in fact the rally was attended by only 450 people. If states can set their own defamation laws, free of constitutional constraint, then DeSantis could sue me and Vox Media for millions, endangering our ability to continue reporting on DeSantis — and potentially bankrupting Vox in the process.”