Some very demented people are carrying Trump's election fraud water, and they are not using it to put out the fires he starts

 

This past Thanksgiving, three white people from Texas, two men and one woman, decided that they couldn’t take it anymore, and traveled to Nevada and Arizona to take out their frustrations by going on a shooting spree, in which one man was killed and several wounded. One of the suspects claimed that he shot at one man because he was black, and prosecutors are mulling over adding hate crime to the charges against the trio. There is at the moment no known motive for the shooting, but I’ll engage in a little mind-teasing here. The shooters were from Texas, a state that went to Donald Trump this election. They decided to travel to two nearby states won by Joe Biden, and where Trump continues to attempt to overturn the verdict by making the usual baseless claims of election fraud. Perhaps they were looking for "Biden voters."

Why should we fear to speculate? Chris Kreb’s 60 Minutes interview did not go down well with you-know-who, since the head of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency—or he was before he was fired by an enraged Trump for “disloyalty” to the cause of election insanity—reiterated his belief that the election was one of the most secure in the country’s history.  One of Rudy Giuliani’s henchmen, Joe DiGenova, said that Krebs should be "taken out at dawn and shot." After that, a Republican election official in Georgia, Gabriel Sterling, accused Trump of   “inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence” and that "Someone's going to get hurt, someone's going to get shot, someone's going to get killed, and it's not right…Death threats, physical threats, intimidation — it’s too much, it’s not right.”

Trump only continued to make his evidence-free claims that he really won the election “by a lot” if not for the “massive fraud.” However, it appears that Kayleigh McEnany decided she needed to “respond” to these accusations in the usual Trumpworld way: “denounce” violence, but Democrats are “guilty” of “doxing” people—which isn’t exactly the same thing as threatening to kill people. We have seen this time and time again these past four years; Trump inciting rage among his supporters, sometimes using terms that can be characterized as invitations to violence, and we did see several incidents of violence at his 2016 campaign rallies, in which supporters beat on  lone anti-Trump protestors. Violence was “discouraged,” but the perpetrators were not; besides, the “other side” was just as “bad.”

December 14, when the Electoral College is supposed to meet, still feels like an eternity away. In the meantime, the insanity continues. Phill Kline (or is it “Phil”?) the director of the Amistad Project of the Thomas Moore Society (or is it “More”?) has joined Sidney Powell in filing bizarre election fraud lawsuits in Wisconsin, Georgia and Pennsylvania--the usual stuff, legal votes for Trump not counted, illegal votes for Biden counted. In Pennsylvania there was a “new” twist, however: according to one affidavit, a subcontractor employed by USPS to haul mail, allegedly trucked 280,000 completed ballots from New York to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he left them on a dock on Oct. 21; he then claims that they just “disappeared.” The lawsuit charges that “over 300,000 ballots are at issue in Arizona, 548,000 in Michigan, 204,000 in Georgia, and over 121,000 in Pennsylvania.” Note the discrepancy between the alleged “lost” ballots and the actual number of ballots at issue in Pennsylvania.

It is perhaps noteworthy that outside of far-right “news” outlets and Donald Trump sharing Kline’s “press conference” alleging election “fraud,” almost no one is actually paying much attention to this. The UK’s Daily Mail actually reported it, but then again it is the British equivalent of the New York Post and deals mainly in tabloid and yellow journalism fare; the Mail’s researchers didn’t exactly do their homework, because they mistakenly referred to the Amistad Project as a “human rights” organization—or at least this Amistad Project.  There is an Armistad Project website and Facebook page, which identifies itself as a Philadelphia-based organization, whose members felt the need to inform us of the following:

Just to be clear, Amistad Law Project is a Black-led organization fighting to end mass incarceration, defund the police and invest in programs that keep communities safe.

It appears that many people have been confused about why this organization would appear to be attempting to disenfranchise minority and liberal voters so that Trump can cheat and steal his way to victory—something which he has had a great deal of practice in as a “businessman.” The organization’s statement goes on to set the record straight:

We are NOT affiliated with the disbarred lawyer Phill Kline’s ‘Amistad Project’ and voter disenfranchisement efforts, which steal our name.

Alright, so we’ve already encountered Powell, whose “Kraken” lawsuit cites as its “expert” witness someone named Navid Keshavarz-Nia, who claims to be a “cybersecurity expert,” and who has “received training from several government agencies.” Red flags about his viability as an “expert” were immediately raised when he referenced an “Edison County” in Michigan as “proof” of something fraudulent going on. It was quickly pointed out that not only is there no Edison County in Michigan, but there isn’t one in the entire country. Keshavarz-Nia also confessed he didn’t really know anything about voting machines, or had personally inspected any that were used in the election. Even if Keshavarz-Nia wasn’t some “plant” to make Powell look like a fool, he served the same purpose.

So who is the Phill Kline of the “fake” Amistad Project who is filing all these new bizarre election lawsuits? According to his Wiki page, he is a former Kansas Republican state legislator and Attorney General. His “record” is spotty to say the least, especially on gay rights, the death penalty and abortion. As his time as state attorney general was winding down, Kline apparently decided to go out with a last hurrah and make a “pro-life” statement.  He found a suitable target, an abortion provider named Dr. George Tiller. But the charges he brought against Tiller were thrown out by a judge at the request of a prosecutor, but Kline’s successor refiled the charges.

During the subsequent trial Tiller was acquitted, but he was then charged with performing late-term abortions by the Kansas Board of Healing Arts, an actual state government agency that was staffed by far-right anti-abortion fanatics. In May of 2009 while attending a church service, Tiller—who had already been shot by an anti-abortion fanatic named Shelley Shannon in 1993—was shot in the head by a member of the anti-abortion Operation Rescue West (which Kline was also associated with). The shooter, Scott Roeder, was eventually convicted of the murder.

Kline also threatened to prosecute another abortion clinic provider, Kristin Neuhaus, coercing her into providing him with a list of names of women who had recently had abortions at her clinic—even sharing those names with Bill O’Reilly on his Fox News show. The Kansas state Board of Discipline of Attorneys filed a petition to have Kline disbarred,   and the Kansas Supreme Court agreed, ruling in 2013 that

Ultimately, we unanimously conclude the weight of the aggravating factors—i.e., Kline's inability or refusal to acknowledge the line between overzealous advocacy and operating within the bounds of the law and his professional obligations; his selfish motives; and his lengthy and substantial pattern of misconduct—weigh more heavily than the mitigating factors and merit his indefinite suspension.

Courts have repeatedly declined appeals by Kline to have his license reinstated, meaning he has no real credibility to bring forward his ridiculous lawsuits. These are the kind of people who are carrying Trump’s water and moving his election fraud fantasies forward to the last breath, and these are the people who are providing him with the sustenance to keep his demented efforts to overturn the election alive. In doing so, he is riling-up some very disturbed people who are so impossibly entwined in the cult of Trump that they will do almost anything to serve their master; threats of violence and actual violence are only a means to an end, especially in the minds of people who actually believe that “right” is on their side.