If you have a chance, head over to The NY Times and read this article.
Here's how it starts:
In the aftermath of Donald J. Trump’s defeat in 2020, one of his election lawyers set out to keep the lies about his loss alive.
The lawyer, a well-connected conservative named Cleta Mitchell, knit together grass-roots activists, Republican lawyers, party officials and deep-pocketed advocacy groups into a vast national network. The aim was nothing less than remaking American elections.
Over the past four years, Ms. Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network has done more than any other group to take Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about corruption in the democratic system and turn them into action.
As is usually the case in stories like these, I read them to see if they mention any of the usual suspects I track at this blog - or if there any sorts of connections to those usuals.
Found one - that well-connected conservative lawyer, Cleta Mitchell.
Page 4-5 of the Senate Judiciary's Staff report, Subverting Justice:
FINDING 4: Trump allies with links to the “Stop the Steal” movement and the January 6 insurrection participated in the pressure campaign against DOJ. In addition to Trump White House officials, including the President himself, outside Trump allies with ties to the “Stop the Steal” movement and the January 6 insurrection also pressured DOJ to help overturn the election results. They included:
- U.S. Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District, who led the objection to counting Pennsylvania’s electoral votes on the House floor in the hours immediately following the January 6 insurrection. Perry has acknowledged introducing Clark to Trump, and documents and testimony confirm that he directly communicated with Donoghue about his false Pennsylvania election fraud claims.
- Doug Mastriano, a Republican State Senator from Pennsylvania who participated in Rudy Giuliani’s so-called election fraud “hearings,” spent thousands of dollars from his campaign account to bus people to the January 6 “Save America Rally,” and was present on the Capitol grounds as the insurrection unfolded. Documents show that, like Perry, Mastriano directly communicated with Donoghue about his false election fraud claims.
- Cleta Mitchell, a Trump campaign legal adviser, early proponent of Trump’s false stolen election claims, and participant the January 2, 2021 call where Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes.” Mitchell emailed Meadows a copy of Trump’s lawsuit against Raffensperger and offered to send DOJ 1,800 pages of supporting exhibits; Meadows sent the materials to Rosen, asking DOJ to investigate.
The Times piece spends some time on Trump's "fake electors" scheme:
Ms. Mitchell and others who played pivotal roles in Mr. Trump’s attempt to subvert the 2020 election, including the former law professor John Eastman, the architect of the fake electors scheme, advised the ranks of activists as they sought to remove thousands of voters from the rolls and pushed to reimagine how elections are certified.
And later:
Ms. Mitchell had been a prominent Republican election lawyer for decades, a veteran of the long-running debates over tightening voter ID requirements and cleaning up voter rolls.
But in 2020, working as a lawyer for Mr. Trump, she took her work in a different direction. She supported the plan to send Trump electors to Congress from states where he lost the vote. She was on the call with Mr. Trump as he badgered Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” the votes he needed to win.
Since we already know that:
As they organized the fake elector scheme, lawyers appointed a “point person” in seven states to help organize those electors who were willing to sign their names to false documents. In Pennsylvania, that point person was Douglas V. Mastriano, a proponent of Mr. Trump’s lies of a stolen election...
So I gotta ask, was Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano (or anyone on his staff, or attached to his campaigns or anyone else connected to him) in on any of these meetings of the Cleta Mitchell's so-called Election Integrity Network?
An attempted coup happened. It's kinda important to get to the bottom of it and hold all those responsible accountable. No one should get a pass.
