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Anatomy of a Stolen Election
Donald J. Trump (the demented geriatric, known rapist, and convicted felon), is plotting to steel the 2024 election, with the help of Roger Stone.
You may find that that name, Roger Stone, sounds familiar. He was a political spy for Richard Nixon. He helped organize the Brooks Brothers Riot, an attempt to interfere with the 2000 Florida recount. In 2019, he was convicted of witness tampering, obstructing an official proceeding, and lying to Congress. However, he was pardoned before serving any time by Donald Trump (if you recall, that's the demented geriatric, known rapist, and also a convicted felon). (I'm referencing Wikipedia for toilet reading: Roger Stone)
So far so good?
Roger Stone was recently recorded during an event at Mar-a-Lago what sounds like a plot the overthrow of the 2024 election. All following quotes are from Roger Stone, however be aware that he is talking to what he thinks are MAGA supporters. He talks in a form of Newspeak which has to be interpreted.
For instance, he assumes that the 2020 election was stolen. (We know that as a matter of fact, there were a few hundred possible cases of voter fraud in 6 battleground states, affecting less than 0.2% of the count there (AP News, 2021-12-14). Often the fraud was committed by registered Republicans, like this keeper: Another voter fraud accusation blows up in Republicans’ faces CNN, 2021-11-21. I'm going to treat the fidelity of the 2020 election as settled, despite the lies of MAGA goons)
Donald Trump (the demented geriatric, known rapist, and convicted felon) has made suppositional assertions several times that the only way for Democrats to win is to cheat. (To date no evidence of widespread cheating has been given. Maybe the evidence fell out of Rudi's pocket on his way to the Georgia civil lawsuit (AP News, 2023-12-16). Maybe Fox News can find it before their next multibillion dollar lawsuit (ABC News, 2023-04-20) Roger Stone's statements need to be treated as though he's speaking to someone isn't aware that these lies are … lies.
Keeping up so far? Alright, here we go.
The following quotes, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the Rolling Stone article, ‘Lawyers, Judges, Technology’: Roger Stone Touts Plan for Trump Win in Secret Recording posted 2024-06-18
Here, when Stone says we'll "have a more honest election," he means they'll have an election that is rigged in favor of Trump. Remember that no widespread cheating has happened, only a lot of supposition. In the 2020 election, pro-Trump lawsuits were dropped left and right due to lack of evidence. However, this time they will have a Trump-appointed judge handy who will throw out the results in some voting precinct or district. Having a judge in your pocket would be worthless in a precinct that's overwhelmingly for Trump. So, for this to be of value it must be a judge that covers a battleground or Democrat precinct. Aileen Cannon would be an example, but there may be others. Whoever it is, they are must be bought off, or at least partial to MAGA in a way that is disgraceful for a judge.
For reference, "ballot harvesting" is the act of delivering completed absentee ballots on behalf of other people (What Is Ballot Harvesting?, 2024-04-22). Suppose you collect an absentee ballot from your elderly parent, or your spouse who's running late for work. You take it and deliver it to a polling station, you are a ballot harvester. It's not clear that anything is wrong with doing this. It's only illegal in Alabama, and many states have provisions on how to properly do it.
To be clear, Stone is saying that funds are diverted away from typical campaigning, by Lara Trump and other MAGAtwerps at the RNC, towards litigation. They are actually preparing to attack free and fair elections before they even occur. This premeditation makes the GOP no longer a political party; it's a litigious corporation more hostile to their enemies than Disney.
I'm glad that he mentioned changes in State laws. In 2021 there were 33 State laws that make voting harder (Voting Laws Roundup: October 2021, 2021-10-04), while in 2023 there were 17 (Voting Laws Roundup: October 2023 2023-10-19). Now, there were many more laws that made voting easier, and many of the restrictive laws involved ID requirements. (Some commentators complain that requiring photo IDs is a sort of poll tax and is unconstitutional. I think the impact to the election is going to be so tiny that it can be considered trivial for now.) I'll highlight some laws that should be conspicuously disturbing:
All well and good, except that Trump actually committed crimes. Anyone who follows the cases, not just through the Fox News/Newsmax filter, would understand that. Especially now that Trump was convicted.
So we are now talking about allegedly judges, plural, corrupted and on standby to interfere with free and fair elections.
I'm curious now, what technology might Stone be referring to? Nothing specific is discussed, and the options are limitless. Russian Troll farms? Deep fakes, cheap fakes, shallow fakes? AI bots? Social media outlets are already polluted with extremist materials; you can practically click on anything on Twitter/X and start getting right-wing extremist recommendations from the platform's algorithms. Republicans have directly gone on the attack against researchers who study the propagation of disinformation (New York Times, 2023-06-19).
Stone is likely referring to the Independent State Legislator doctrine (ISL). Now, this is the right time to don our tin foil hats, because we are going to get into some conspiracy theory territory. ISL is a radical theory that, based on the text of the Constitution, state legislators are not bound by the courts or the State constitutions to manage how elections are conducted. "If you give the legislature a blank check on the manner of appointing presidential electors, then a Republican majority could—in the most muscular version of ISL—simply disregard a Biden victory in the state’s popular vote and appoint Trump electors instead." (The Atlantic, 2022-07-29) This definitely is crazy at first glance, but don’t forget, MAGA already tried something like this before, by sending fake electors from contentious states, in an attempt to replace legitimate electors. They even sent a violent mob to lynch Mike Pence before he could certify the Election results (Snopes, 2021-01-29; see also ‘Everything we trained for’: How the far-right Oath Keepers militia planned for violence on Jan. 6, Politifact 2021-09-23). What they lacked was the political will of those State legislators, and a Supreme Court precedent. Regarding latter, the Supreme Court reaffirmed as recently as 2019 that ISL is bogus. However, 3 SCOTUS justices have hinted that were the issue to go before the Court again, they would side with ISL. That leaves the State Legislators, which merely need to be controlled by a Republican majority, and for them to be corrupted by MAGA. MAGA already controls the GOP nationwide, individual Republican candidates have been told to support Trump or get bent.
The way this would look, suppose the GOP retains a majority in the Michigan State Legislator, but Biden wins the election there fair and square. Republicans assert that there was widespread voter fraud and the results have to be tossed. There won't be evidence of widespread fraud, of course, they just need to assert the justification of what happens next. The election is tossed out in Michigan, the legislator sends Republican Electors instead. The Electors are kicked back federally. Michigan Republicans sue, and the case makes it all the way to the Supreme Court. The conservative majority in SCOTUS decree that ILS now applies, order the federal government to recognize the Republican Electors. Do this in enough battleground states, and even though Biden really won the Election*, the Presidency goes instead to Donald Trump (the demented geriatric, known rapist, and convicted felon). America ceases to be a democracy, we become a de facto dictatorship like Russia or Hungary.
*(For the purpose of this hypothetical situation)
Perhaps it won't go down that way. There are many roadblocks that may foil an Election steal plot, including We the People. However, Donald Trump (the demented geriatric, known rapist, and convicted felon) and his MAGA crony Roger Stone are attempting to undermine a free and fair Election, possibly to destroy Elections once for all. That should scare the living crap out of us.
You may find that that name, Roger Stone, sounds familiar. He was a political spy for Richard Nixon. He helped organize the Brooks Brothers Riot, an attempt to interfere with the 2000 Florida recount. In 2019, he was convicted of witness tampering, obstructing an official proceeding, and lying to Congress. However, he was pardoned before serving any time by Donald Trump (if you recall, that's the demented geriatric, known rapist, and also a convicted felon). (I'm referencing Wikipedia for toilet reading: Roger Stone)
So far so good?
Roger Stone was recently recorded during an event at Mar-a-Lago what sounds like a plot the overthrow of the 2024 election. All following quotes are from Roger Stone, however be aware that he is talking to what he thinks are MAGA supporters. He talks in a form of Newspeak which has to be interpreted.
For instance, he assumes that the 2020 election was stolen. (We know that as a matter of fact, there were a few hundred possible cases of voter fraud in 6 battleground states, affecting less than 0.2% of the count there (AP News, 2021-12-14). Often the fraud was committed by registered Republicans, like this keeper: Another voter fraud accusation blows up in Republicans’ faces CNN, 2021-11-21. I'm going to treat the fidelity of the 2020 election as settled, despite the lies of MAGA goons)
Donald Trump (the demented geriatric, known rapist, and convicted felon) has made suppositional assertions several times that the only way for Democrats to win is to cheat. (To date no evidence of widespread cheating has been given. Maybe the evidence fell out of Rudi's pocket on his way to the Georgia civil lawsuit (AP News, 2023-12-16). Maybe Fox News can find it before their next multibillion dollar lawsuit (ABC News, 2023-04-20) Roger Stone's statements need to be treated as though he's speaking to someone isn't aware that these lies are … lies.
Keeping up so far? Alright, here we go.
The following quotes, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the Rolling Stone article, ‘Lawyers, Judges, Technology’: Roger Stone Touts Plan for Trump Win in Secret Recording posted 2024-06-18
“At least this time when they do it, you have a lawyer and a judge — his home phone number standing by — so you can stop it,” Stone says at one point. “We made no preparations last time, none … There are technical, legal steps that we have to take to try and have a more honest election. We’re not there yet, but there’s things that can be done.”
When Sammarco asks Stone what would stop Trump’s opponents from committing “voter fraud” like “ballot harvesting,” Stone replies that “in some states, it’ll be easier to stop. In other places, it won’t.”
“We should be suing in half a dozen places,” Stone adds. “I mean we’re finally now on an offensive footing.” Stone goes on to tell Sammarco that — now that the Republican National Committee is under MAGA control — they can spend “lots more” money on election monitoring. He also points to “changes in state law, real-time voter list monitoring, going to court as we just did to challenge some of the vote laws,” and that “we went into court to sue in Michigan over the hand [written] ballots.”
I'm glad that he mentioned changes in State laws. In 2021 there were 33 State laws that make voting harder (Voting Laws Roundup: October 2021, 2021-10-04), while in 2023 there were 17 (Voting Laws Roundup: October 2023 2023-10-19). Now, there were many more laws that made voting easier, and many of the restrictive laws involved ID requirements. (Some commentators complain that requiring photo IDs is a sort of poll tax and is unconstitutional. I think the impact to the election is going to be so tiny that it can be considered trivial for now.) I'll highlight some laws that should be conspicuously disturbing:
- In Georgia, it's illegal to hand out water bottles to voters waiting in line. I hope there's no heat wave this November
- In Texas, there will be fewer polling stations, so voters in mostly urban (i.e. Democrat) districts will have longer wait times
- In North Carolina, it is more likely for election boards to be deadlocked, preventing individual county elections (or even the State election) from being certified. No doubt we'll see deadlocks in more Democrat counties than Republican ones.
In a separate conversation with Windsor […] Stone affirms his belief that the election “can be stolen again,” going on to describe the various criminal cases against Trump as a way to “suck up his money, suck up his time, and create the reason why their theft is plausible, believable.”
“We’re working on this,” Stone assures Windsor, telling her that he worries about “overconfidence” amongst Trump’s supporters depressing voter turnout. He adds that the former president’s allies are prepared with “lawyers, judges, [and] technology,” to challenge election results if needed.
I'm curious now, what technology might Stone be referring to? Nothing specific is discussed, and the options are limitless. Russian Troll farms? Deep fakes, cheap fakes, shallow fakes? AI bots? Social media outlets are already polluted with extremist materials; you can practically click on anything on Twitter/X and start getting right-wing extremist recommendations from the platform's algorithms. Republicans have directly gone on the attack against researchers who study the propagation of disinformation (New York Times, 2023-06-19).
Last year, a video obtained by MSNBC showed Stone explaining plans to undermine the Electoral College days before President Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election, as several states continued to count votes. “Any legislative body may decide on the basis of overwhelming evidence of fraud to send electors to the electoral college who accurately reflect the president’s legitimate victory in their state, which was illegally denied him through fraud,” Stone said.
The way this would look, suppose the GOP retains a majority in the Michigan State Legislator, but Biden wins the election there fair and square. Republicans assert that there was widespread voter fraud and the results have to be tossed. There won't be evidence of widespread fraud, of course, they just need to assert the justification of what happens next. The election is tossed out in Michigan, the legislator sends Republican Electors instead. The Electors are kicked back federally. Michigan Republicans sue, and the case makes it all the way to the Supreme Court. The conservative majority in SCOTUS decree that ILS now applies, order the federal government to recognize the Republican Electors. Do this in enough battleground states, and even though Biden really won the Election*, the Presidency goes instead to Donald Trump (the demented geriatric, known rapist, and convicted felon). America ceases to be a democracy, we become a de facto dictatorship like Russia or Hungary.
*(For the purpose of this hypothetical situation)
Perhaps it won't go down that way. There are many roadblocks that may foil an Election steal plot, including We the People. However, Donald Trump (the demented geriatric, known rapist, and convicted felon) and his MAGA crony Roger Stone are attempting to undermine a free and fair Election, possibly to destroy Elections once for all. That should scare the living crap out of us.
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