Lawmakers worry 2020 will be a blueprint for stealing a future election

Both the federal judge and the top Republican on the House committee investigating the January 6 riots have now come to a clear conclusion: There is evidence of an attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Donald Trump can be a crime.

Representative Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said late last week that her panel had compiled enough facts to refer Trump to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, while U.S. District Judge David Carter wrote last month that Trump and others had staged “a coup in search of a legal theory. “

Neither has the power to impeach the former president. It is up to Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose focus has so far been largely on those who stormed the Capitol in a violent attempt to keep Trump in power.

Trump denies any wrongdoing and his allies argue that Cheney has discredited as a fair broker. Pointing to Cheney’s nagging criticisms of Trump, Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem told NBC News: “I can’t see the point in that other than she’s angry and bitter.”

But amid reports of splits on the House panel on January 6 over whether to make the case directly to Garland that he needs to take aim at Trump, members seemed to be in complete agreement. when it comes to another point: There could be another attempted coup in 2024, and January 6 provided the blueprint to get rid of it.

That fear is helping them form plans for the hearings, which are expected to begin next month.

“Our focus is on showing the country how close we are to losing our democracy and why we’re not getting out of the woods,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the committee House committee, told NBC News.

Members who plan to hold public hearings will present the evidence they have gathered and describe a multi-pronged effort to disenfranchise voters by handing over the failed presidential candidate second period.

The main audience of the committee will be the public; the other is Garland. But to the extent that viewers from home worry about what they’re learning, the hope is that it can ignite Congressional interest and give new impetus to rewriting 19th-century legislation controlling the process. used to compile the presidential election table. After seeing 2020 unfold, some elected officials and election experts fear the Voter Count Act could be exploited in a way that could give Trump or someone else a win next year. 2024, whether they win enough votes or not. No law even needs to be broken.

“A lot of what we see in 2020 and the aftermath of the election is examining the seas to see if there are weaknesses in the legal system that governs us,” Arizona Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs told reporters. NBC News. Without “accountability and tightening of these laws, we run the risk of these things happening again,” added Hobbs, who is currently running for governor.

Fake Elector

One focus of the January 6 panel was the replacement, or what critics call the “fake” electorate that emerged in the last presidential election. Dozens of people from five states believe that President Joe Biden won the signed documents for the purpose of becoming “validly and properly elected” electors and declared that Trump was the winner. (In two other states, New Mexico and Pennsylvania, the documents include warnings that their legitimacy depends on whether Trump is ultimately found to be the winner.)

The vehicles were sent to Washington, where Trump loyalists prepared to use them to his advantage. A memo written by John Eastman, an attorney who was advising Trump at the time, outlined several scenarios in which Vice President Mike Pence, presiding over the vote count, would recognize opponents. of the pro-Trump electors, set off a chain of events. ended with Trump’s victory. To Trump’s chagrin, Pence disagreed. He certified Biden’s victory.

“The idea is to try to negate and nullify the Electoral College votes by asking the vice president to announce these new powers and then exercise those powers by asserting that there is controversy. and uncertainty at the state level and the electoral college situation is in dispute,” Representative Jamie Raskin, D.-Md., a member of the Jan. 6 committee, told NBC News. “Not available.”

Even staunch Trump supporters in Congress are so easy to rely on alternative electors that their candidate – Trump – didn’t actually win.

In a series of messages published Friday by CNN, Senator Mike Lee, R., Utah, wrote to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows three days before the uprising: “I want to be proven wrong about it. his concern. But I really think all of this could backfire heavily unless we have substantive legislatures. [T]rump slates (based on a conclusion, this is the appropriate outcome under state law). The committee did not comment on the text messages. Lee Lonsberry, a spokesman for Lee, said: “The text messages tell the same story that Senator Lee told from the Senate floor on the day he did. she votes to confirm the election results of each state in the country.”

Both the January 6 committee and the Justice Department are examining how these Trump electors came to be. On Thursday, the committee heard eight hours of testimony from Stephen Miller, a top Trump White House adviser who spoke publicly about the alternative electors in December on the day they assembled.

Miller’s appearance before the committee perhaps gave members the opportunity to probe how well Trump’s force believes Biden’s victory can be undone.

Committee aides also flew to Arizona and spoke with Hobbs about other efforts to “change the outcome” in her state, she said. One of two groups of Trump-supporting alternative electors purporting to represent Arizona used the state’s official seal in documents shipped to Washington, giving them a mark of legitimacy.

“It’s important to understand how they are basically recruited to do this,” Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., who served on the Jan. 6 panel, said of the electors. replacement tri. “Have they been recruited? Are they under pressure? … Where is the direction coming from – go out of the states, find these people, and ask them to sign? ”

State officials are also trying to find answers. Hector Balderas, the attorney general in New Mexico, said he is part of a task force that is investigating alternative electors along with his counterparts in other states. Dana Nessel, Michigan attorney general, told NBC News: “If we don’t hold people accountable, there’s really nothing that can stop them from doing this again, because there will be no consequences. out”.

(Republican officials, Trump allies and attorneys for several electors have said they are seeking to ensure that Trump’s votes will be counted in the eventuality that he is deemed a winner. wins in those states).

One danger is that in the future many groups will come forward and misrepresent themselves as electors when in fact their candidate has lost. There is no guarantee that a bogus group of electors will be eliminated in future elections. Some legislators and former officials say all of this shows the urgent need for an overhaul of the Voter Count Act.

‘Darkness of threat’

Greg Jacob, former legal counsel to Pence, was with him at the Capitol on January 6 when rioters stormed the building and called for the vice president to be hanged. He was unhappy with the strategy Eastman laid out in his memo and exchanged heated messages with him when the Capitol was destroyed, according to emails released by the committee in a court filing. last month.

“Until the Voter Count Act is implemented fully in line with the Framers design, every presidential election will take place in the shadow of the threat of possible attempts on… January 6. [congressional] joint session to reverse the outcome of the election,” Jacob told NBC News.

Congress is trying to strengthen the law, although it has little to show for its work. For much of the past year, Democratic lawmakers controlled both chambers instead of focusing on broader electoral reform aimed at expanding voting rights. That initiative collapsed. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has at times described the parallel effort to amend the Voter Count Act as an unwanted distraction.

“There are a number of parties and nefarious people in 2020 that have tried to weaponize the Voter Count Act in ways that cause a lot of problems,” said Rep. Joe Neguse, D., Colo., who served as a House prosecutor in Trump’s second impeachment trial, told NBC News. “It seems like part of that is the notion of fake electors being sent in from the states, so I think that’s an area where we have to reform and we have very little time. to do that.”

What looks like it will pass, if at all, are a few fixes once there is broad consensus. Congress could make it clear that the vice president only plays a ceremonial role when it comes time to count the electoral votes and cannot, as Trump argues, unilaterally overrule the results in certain states. Lawmakers could also raise the threshold for more than one House and Senate member to oppose state electoral votes and thereby delay the official certification of the incoming president’s victory.

One solution that election experts have suggested is a final court ruling if there is any dispute over which group of electors should be counted. That way, in an age of extreme partisanship, members of Congress and governors are not the ones to settle disputes over who should become president.

“The most important question is how do we make sure that no political actor in Congress or state governments can elevate those fake electors to something that can actually be counted, ” Matthew Seligman, a Yale Law School fellow who has advised Congress. How best to amend the Voter Count Act, according to a Senate aide. “And, unfortunately, that’s exactly what the law allows.”

Whether the law will be changed in time for the next presidential election is uncertain. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, DN.H., is part of a bipartisan group of senators working to amend the Voter Count Act. “It’s unclear what kind of bill the negotiations will lead to,” she told NBC News. “First of all, the team that worked had to come to some agreement. And then we have to get the consensus of the leaders of the two sides.”

“I see that as a problem,” Shaheen said of the alternative electors. “Whether we can reach an agreement on how to resolve this remains to be seen.”

at Blogtuan.info – Source: nbcnews.com – Read the original article here