Donald Trump "responds" to the January 6th Committee.

This is actually pretty sad.
––

The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson Chairperson

The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol
Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Chairman Thompson,

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLEN!

The same group of Radical Left Democrats who utilized their Majority position in Congress to create the fiction of Russia, Russia, Russia, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, the $48 Million Mueller Report (which ended in No Collusion!), Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, the atrocious and illegal Spying on my Campaign, and so much more, are the people who created this Committee of highly partisan political Hacks and Thugs whose sole function is to destroy the lives of many hard-working American Patriots, whose records in life have been unblemished until this point of attempted ruination. The double standard of the Unselects between what has taken place on the “RIGHT,” and what has taken place with Radical Left, lawless groups such as Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and others, is startling and will never be acceptable, even to those who will be writing the history of what you have done to America.

This memo is being written to express our anger, disappointment, and complaint that with all of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on what many consider to be a Charade and Witch Hunt, and despite strong and powerful requests, you have not spent even a short moment on examining the massive Election Fraud that took place during the 2020 Presidential Election, and have targeted only those who were, as concerned American Citizens, protesting the Fraud itself. Those who committed the Fraud, thereby having created the Crime of the Century, go unblemished and untouched, but those who fought the Crime have suffered a fate that was unthinkable just a short time ago. We have a two-tier system of Justice in the United States that cannot be allowed to continue. A Majority of people in our Country say that the Presidential Election of 2020 was determinatively dishonest, including the fact that many Legislatures were overridden by local and State politicians and judges on vital regulations and requirements, which is totally illegal and UNCONSTITUTIONAL. In February 2021, Time Magazine broke the story of the shadow campaign that was launched to rig the 2020 Presidential Election. The authors write:

“‘To the President, something felt amiss. ‘It was all very, very strange,’ Trump said on Dec. 2. ‘Within days after the election, we witnessed an orchestrated effort to anoint the winner, even while many key states were still being counted.’ In a way, Trump was right. There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes...”

You did not ask one question about any of this. Since 1888, no incumbent President has gained votes and lost reelection. I received many millions more votes in 2020 than I did in 2016, unheard of in our political History. When you win Ohio, Florida, and Iowa, which I did in a landslide, no President has lost the General Election since 1960. We swept all four bellwether States (Iowa, Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina) that have correctly predicted Election winners since 1896. I won 18 of the 19 bellwether counties, my coattails secured the Victories of 27 out of 27 “toss up” House races, and the Democrats did not flip a single State Legislature. Yet somehow Biden beat Obama with the Black population in select Swing State cities, but nowhere else. It is all not possible, or very likely, but should have been a major subject of your Committee’s work because it was the Election result that brought this record-breaking crowd to Washington, D.C. on January 6th.

A large percentage of American Citizens, including almost the entire Republican Party, feel that the Election was Rigged and Stolen (because they have seen the determinative evidence, some of which is attached to this letter).

No work was done by the Committee on Election Fraud. We, and a huge portion of the American people, simply asked that it be a part of your Committee’s work. It wasn’t. In addition, the Unselect Committee has willfully ignored the fact that days before January 6, 2021, I recommended and authorized thousands of troops to be deployed to ensure that there was peace, safety, and security at the Capitol and throughout Washington, D.C. on January 6th because I knew, just based on instinct and what I was hearing, that the crowd coming to listen to my speech, and various others, would be a very big one, far bigger than anyone thought possible. As it turns out, it was indeed one of the largest crowds I have ever spoken before, a very wide swath stretching all the way back to the Washington Monument. The massive size of this crowd, and its meaning, has never been a subject of your Committee, nor has it been discussed by the Fake News Media that absolutely refuses to acknowledge, in any way, shape or form, the magnitude of what was taking place. In fact, for such a historic event, there are very few pictures that accurately show the event, or how many people were really there. Incredibly, it seems that pictures showing the size of the event were perhaps cancelled, scrubbed, deleted or, in any event, not available, but we still have some—as attached.

The Department of Defense timeline shows that National Guard troops could have easily been present at the Capitol before January 6th and that I fully authorized this recommendation and request. Following my authorization, the Department of Defense was surprised to receive a wholesale refusal, in writing, from D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Capitol Police, who do not report to me, but report to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. The law requires their authorization before any troop deployment could be utilized in Washington, D.C.

Why the failure to act or use this ready force? Had even a small percentage of National Guard or fencing been there, there would have been no problem, January 6th would have been just another date. I did my job long ahead of schedule. Some people call it good instinct, but the troops were ready to go. Nancy Pelosi and Muriel Bowser didn’t do their job, they didn’t like the look of soldiers, and sadly your Committee refuses to say anything about it, because if they did, it would be clear that I did everything correctly, and that is not what the Committee wants to see. You stated openly that Nancy Pelosi is off limits, there will be no discussions on this subject, yet she and the Mayor were responsible for this very bad decision not to bring in the troops. The troops were ready to go, and you refuse to even discuss this subject. Why?

Despite very poor television ratings, the Unselect Committee has perpetuated a Show Trial the likes of which this Country has never seen before. There is no Due Process, no Cross-Examination, no “real” Republican members, and no legitimacy since you do not talk about Election Fraud or not calling up the troops. It is a Witch Hunt of the highest level, a continuation of what has been going on for years. You have not gone after the people that created the Fraud, but rather great American Patriots who questioned it, as is their Constitutional right. These people have had their lives ruined as your Committee sits back and basks in the glow.

The people of this Country will not stand for unequal justice under the law, or Liberty and Justice for some. Election Day is coming. We demand answers on the Crime of the Century.

CC:
Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren
Congressman Adam Schiff
Congressman Pete Aguilar
Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy
Congressman Jamie Raskin
Congresswoman Elaine Luria
Congresswoman Liz Cheney
Congressman Adam Kinzinger

APPENDIX

Arizona

• Maricopa County accepted at least 20,000 mail-in ballots after Election Day 2020, including 18,000 on November 4, 2020, picked up from the U.S. Postal Service—more than the entire Election margin of 10,457 ballots.
• A study of early ballot envelope signatures identified 229,430 mismatched signatures in Maricopa County. Officials only reported 25,000 mismatches, or 1.3%.
• The Arizona Forensic Audit of Maricopa County identified numerous anomalies, fraud, and Election law violations that are determinative, including 17,322 duplicate absentee ballot envelopes, which surged after the Election. Between November 4th and November 9th, scores of mail-in ballot duplicates emerged. 96% of the ballots that came in on two of these days were duplicates.
• Auditors discovered evidence that millions of files of General Election data and security logs were deleted, with purges taking place on critical days, including the day before the audit began on February 2, 2021.
• The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors admitted they purged the system and moved Election data after they received a subpoena.
• Another analysis by Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai in Pima County found significant anomalies with mail-in ballots. In precincts with anomalous high turnout (over 92%), mail-in ballots started flipping from 6% Republican for Biden to 40% of Republicans voting for Biden, which is highly suspect.
• Two precincts in Pima had over 100 percent turnout for mail-in ballots— which is impossible—and 40 precincts had over 97% returned.
• The audit discovered numerous State Election laws were broken in the 2020 Presidential Election, including A.R.S. 16-547, A.R.S. 16-548, A.R.S. 16-550, A.R.S. 16-551, A.R.S. 16-552, A.R.S. 16-621, A.R.S. 16 Articles 1, 1.1, and 2.
• 2,500 duplicated ballots created from a damaged ballot had no serial numbers, a violation of A.R.S. 16-62
• 1,919 mail-in ballot envelopes were missing signatures, a violation of A.R.S. 16-547.
• Maricopa County reported 1,455 “no signatures” on mail-in ballot envelopes.
• To this day, Maricopa County has never provided chain of custody documents for all Election equipment and ballots, in violation of A.R.S. 16-621
• At least 740,000 ballots violated chain of custody requirements in Maricopa County.

Georgia

• 43,907 ballots from Facebook-funded drop boxes were counted in DeKalb County that violated the chain of custody rules. Remember, Georgia was decided by 11,779 votes.
• Poll workers were caught scanning ballots multiple times on camera in Fulton County. Ballot images confirmed at least 3,390 duplicate votes were counted for Joe Biden.
• At least 10,300 illegally cast votes in Georgia (and up to 35,000) are from individuals who voted in the wrong county, more than necessary to “tip the 2020 results.”
• Brad Raffensperger’s own investigator in Fulton County reported ballots were “unaccounted for.” He witnessed at least 2,800 ballots that “came in mail carts instead of black ballot bins,” violating chain of custody, and reported 1,200 ballots that were “cured” and “wheeled in through the back door” days after Election Day, when President Trump’s massive lead “shrunk as more votes continue to be tallied in Fulton County.”
• The investigator also found “identical vote tallies repeated multiple times” that “likely resulted in about 1,000 extra votes being tallied” for Joe Biden.
• A week after this private memo was sent to him, Brad Raffensperger falsely claimed publicly the Election results were “trustworthy” and “sound,” when he knew they were not.
• Raffensperger was told of numerous irregularities on a video conference call with Republicans after the 2020 Election, that put “the outcome of the Election into doubt.” including an admission from an Elections Board Member in Gwinnett County that, “We have way more ballots than we have envelopes. I don’t think it was done right.”
• Hundreds of voters were taken away from “Trump” after Election workers altered ballots that were rejected by voting machines. “Trump” votes were thrown out, while spoiled ballots were unlawfully counted for Joe Biden.
• During the hand recount, tally sheets were falsified showing unanimous vote counts for Joe Biden, including 100-0 and 200-0 fraudulent counts.

Michigan

• Officials in Detroit illegally blocked Republican poll challengers’ access, covered the windows, called the police, and denied lawful challenges in order to count ballots in secret.
• Affidavits and video evidence show thousands of ballots being delivered through a back door of the then-named TCF Center at 3:30 a.m. on Election night. The RINOs in the State Senate confirmed this also in their report analyzing the 2020 Election, and said a “large volume” of ballots were delivered to the TCF Center with no chain of custody. Those ballots came from drop boxes.
• Matt DePerno found voting machines were subverted and accessed remotely. In Antrim County, 7,048 votes were changed in favor of Joe Biden.

Pennsylvania

• In Pennsylvania, as of February 2021, there were 121,240 more votes than voters. By law, Pennsylvania cannot certify an Election with this type of discrepancy.
• A lawsuit filed in Delaware County revealed video evidence of Election officials discussing destroying Election evidence from November 2020. “It’s a felony,” one official says after talking about the need to “get rid” of voting “pads and second scanners.” Videos and sources involved in the litigation say the Delaware County officials “violated numerous Election laws and needed to hide evidence,” and that the destruction of records was “done to ensure records eventually provided actually matched the Election results that were reported in Nov. 2020.”
• Attorney General Bill Barr ordered U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain to stand down and not investigate Election irregularities, even after McSwain reported that his office “received various allegations of voter fraud and election irregularities.”

Wisconsin

• In Wisconsin, nearly 200,000 voters identified as “indefinitely confined,” even though that was often not the case. They were simply using COVID as a means to skirt Voter ID laws for mail-in ballots. These ballots should have been thrown out. After the 2020 Presidential Election, a judge ruled the Democrat Governor did not have legal authority “to exempt all voters to get an absentee ballot without an ID.”
• 44,272 people, according to the Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau, voted in November 2020, without ever showing Voter ID, which is more than twice the vote margin in the State.
• The Wisconsin Election Commission ordered nursing homes to violate Election laws, leading to widespread voter fraud and 95 to 100% turnout in nursing homes—an impossibility!
• In a powerful ruling by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, drop boxes that were used in the 2020 Election were found to be illegal. In a concurring opinion, justices stated, “If elections are conducted outside of the law, the people have not conferred their consent on the government. Such elections are unlawful and their results are illegitimate.”

We have only covered five Swing States, this does not pertain to the rest of the Country. For example, what is being done about the “cash for votes” scheme in Nevada, where 15 out of 17 counties had more votes than voters?

Is the Committee going to report on the million dollars the FBI wanted to pay Christopher Steele as an incentive to prove the dossier allegations and “Get Trump,” or is it going to get to the bottom of the fact that my Campaign was blatantly spied on by the Democrats, even while I was in the Oval Office, in what for anyone else would be one of the biggest scandals in political history?

It was also recently reported that the FBI interfered in the 2020 Presidential Election by telling Facebook and the Media not to reveal anything about Hunter Biden’s laptop. The FBI said it was “Russian disinformation,” but knew that it wasn’t. It was a well-guarded secret that only one newspaper had the courage to report. Eight in 10 Americans believe this unprecedented collusion impacted the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election.

In addition, True the Vote, the Nation’s leading voters’ rights organization, collected over 4 million minutes of ballot drop box video, showing ballot stuffing at a level not seen before. This is also supported by highly accurate cell phone data that tracked the same individuals going to as many as 28 different locations in one day to do this. All in all, millions of ballots were stuffed. Based on their research, True the Vote estimates as many as 7% of all mail-in ballots cast could have been ineligible—approximately 4.8 million votes, an Election-changing number many times over.

Also, why haven’t you spoken with the USPS Inspector General, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, about the 1.1 million mail-in ballots that they admit were deemed undeliverable, 560,814 rejected, and 14.7 million still “unable to be tracked” (as the Public Interest Legal Foundation uncovered)? Where are they?

To this day, new evidence is emerging as Patriots around the Country are uncovering systemic problems within their voter rolls. Furthermore, Republican counties across the nation, from Texas to Michigan, Arizona to Wisconsin and more, have voted to decertify and reject the 2020 Election. The most recent Rasmussen Poll on the issue found a staggering 55% think cheating likely affected the outcome, including 53% of Independents and 35% of Democrats, revealing this issue is not going away.

There are many other facts and discrepancies that we are not presenting at this time due to time constraints, but that are also Election determinative. At your request, I will present these additional numbers to you, but everything already presented would change the final Election result many times over.

OKEEE-DOKEEE, THEN...

 

Lose a little on every evidence-free assertion,

make it up in volume.

 

BTW: Marcy Wheeler on the Trump travails.

__________

 

Watt's up?

 

I look out now across a wide space of nothing but water and birds ending in a line of green slopes with clumps of trees. Right over the edge of the boat the water contains seemingly just under the surface a ceaselessly moving network of reflected sunlight through which a school of very tiny fish passes delightfully uncaught. Yet only a few yards from where we are moored, tackle shops sell the salmon and crabs with which this particular area abounds.

This is the paradox of the ocean. Sand, flying spray, pebbles and shells, driftwood, sparkling water, space incredibly luminous with cloud banks along horizons underlying skies into which one's imagination can reach without end. But under the surface of both sky and water there is the grim business of preying. Men and birds against fish, fish against fish. The tortuous process of life continuing by the painful transformation of one form or body into another. To creatures who do not anticipate and reflect imaginatively on this holocaust of eating and being eaten, this is perhaps not so terrible. But poor man! Skillful beyond all other animals, by being able to think in time, and abstractly knowing the future, he dies before he is dead. He shrinks from the shark's teeth before they bite him, and he dreads the alien germ long, long before its banquet begins.

 

At this moment I see a gull that has picked a crab from a tidepool. Sprawled now upon the sand, the crab shrinks from the walls of its shell which is resounding to the tap, tap, tap of the gull's beak. Who's that knocking at my door?

I suppose the shell of a crab, a clam, or a mussel is the boundary of its universe. To put ourselves into their position, we would have to imagine a knocking sound louder and louder, a sound which doesn't come from anywhere in particular, from some door, the walls, the ceiling, the floor. No, instead think of a knocking which comes from everywhere, beating against all the boundaries of space and consciousness, intruding like some utterly unknown dimension into our known and familiar world.

"Let me in! Let me in! I love you so much I could eat you. I love you to the very core, especially the soft, juicy parts, the vitals most tender and alive. Surrender to this agony, and you will be transformed into Me. Dying to yourself you will become alive as Me. We shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, on the morning when the last trumpet sounds. For behold! I am He who stands at the door and knocks."

There is simply no way of getting around all this. The gull can't really be said to be rapacious or greedy. It's just that his being alive at all is the same thing as eating crabs. Sea birds are transformations of fish; men are transformations of wheat, steers, and chickens. A love for the food is the very agony of the food. To object to this inseparability of pleasure and pain, life and death, is to object to existence. But, of course, we cannot help objecting when our time comes. Objecting to pain is pain. So far as we know, the gull and the fish don't philosophize. They appear instead to enjoy life when they are eating, and hate it when being eaten. But they don't reflect upon the process as a whole and say, "How rough to have to work so hard for a living," or, "It's just hell having to watch out all the time for those damn gulls." I'm sure that in their world this is all something that just goes along with life like having eyes or feet or wings.

But man, with his astonishing ability to stand aside from himself and think about himself-in short, to comment on life, man has done something which confuses his own existence down to its roots. For the more sensitive he is, the more he finds the very act of living in conflict with his moral conscience. Upon reflection a universe so arranged that there is no way of living except by destroying other lives seems to be a hideous mistake, not a divine but a devilish creation. Of course, there is the myth that once upon a time things were quite otherwise, that there was no death, that the lion Jay down with the Jamb. But that since then there has been a fall, a vast error which has corrupted the whole of nature. But all that must have been eons ago, perhaps in some other galaxy where the conditions of life were quite different. Or perhaps the ghastly mistake was just that step in man's evolution which made it possible for him to reflect, to comment upon life as a whole. For in being able to stand aside from life and think about it, he also put himself outside it and found it alien. Perhaps thinking about the world and objecting to its whole principle are simply two aspects of but one activity. The very words suggest, do they not, that we must object to everything that becomes an object? But aren't there also times when we speak of something that we know as a subject—the subject of this book, the subject I am now studying. I wonder, then, would it be possible to subject to life instead of objecting to it? Is this merely playing with words, or does it possibly mean something?

Now, if the gulls and the fish do not philosophize, they have no consciousness of life being good as a whole or bad as a whole. So when we philosophize and pity the poor fish, that really turns out to be just our own problem. From its own standpoint, the world of plants and animals and insects and birds does not find itself problematic at all. There isn't the slightest evidence to suggest such dis-ease. On the contrary, I incline to feel that all these creatures really "swing" or "groove." They go on living right up to the very moment when the game is no longer worth the candle. I'm quite sure that they don't lecture each other about their duties or worry about where they are going after they die.

Isn't it, then, an enormous relief for us men to see that the plant and animal world is not a problem to itself, and that we are wasting intellectual energy in making moral judgments about it? But, of course, we can't return to the unreflective consciousness of the animal world without becoming monstrous in a way that animals are not. To be human is precisely to have that extra circuit of consciousness which enables us to know that we know, and thus to take an attitude towards all that we experience. The mistake which we have made—and this, if anything, is the fall of man—is to suppose that that extra circuit, that ability to take an attitude toward the rest of life as a whole, is the same as actually standing aside and being separate from what we see. We seem to feel that the thing which knows that it knows is one's essential self, that-in other words-our personal identity is entirely on the side of the commentator. We forget, because we learn to ignore so subtly, the larger organismic fact that self-consciousness is simply a subordinate part and an instrument of our whole being, a sort of mental counterpart of the finger-thumb opposition in the human hand. Now which is really you, the finger or the thumb?

Observe the stages of this differentiation, the levels of abstraction: First, the organism from its environment, and with this knowledge of the environment. Second, the distinction of knowing knowledge from knowledge itself. But in concrete fact all this, like the finger-thumb opposition, is a difference which does not divide. The thumb is not floating in the air alongside the rest of the hand. At their roots both fingers and thumb are joined. And at our roots we are joined to the whole subject of nature. Of course, you might say that nature or the whole universe is nothing but a big abstraction. But tell me, is an orange nothing but an abstraction from its component molecules, skins, segments, fibers and fluids?

I think that our difficulty is we have learned to feel our consciousness much too superficially, as if all our sensation were in the tips of the fingers and none in the palm. Our comments on life are insufficiently balanced by the clear sensation that what we are talking about is ourselves, and ourselves in a sense far more basic and real than that extra circuit which knows knowing. Are we misled by the fact that we move freely on the earth and are not rooted to it in the same way as trees to the ground or fingers to the hand? Were we as spatially distant from the earth as one atom of an orange from another, I suppose we might be somewhere out by the moon or Mars. Now we know that the atom, the molecule, the cell, or subordinate organ of any particular organism is what it is by virtue of its place and its membership in the pattern of the whole. But blood in a test tube rapidly ceases to be the same thing as blood in veins. In the same way, man must be beware (be + aware) lest in cutting himself off psychically from the world which he sees, and so isolating the subject from the object, lest in doing this he rapidly ceases to be man.

So I think this is why I love the ocean. It is the most difficult part of nature to mess up with emblems and symptoms of man's dissociated consciousness, though by no means impossible to nationalistic, industrial man. But the ocean is an environment in which the awareness of our roots can awaken, in which space so real because of the light and color can be seen as joining things instead of separating them… [Alan Watts, "The Water," April 1970, Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown.]

 

Posted in reflection of this fine book.

__________

 

Kim Wehle, Esq on SCOTUS and federal regulation

Background Briefing with Ian Masters · The Supreme Court's Power Grab Puts the Authority of All Government Depts and Agencies in Jeopardy

__________

CRUZIN'... a domestic terrorism timeline

Okeee Dokeee, then.

My Las Vegas era music podcasts

Santa Fe and The Fat City Horns, and their extended tribe.

 

 

We lived in Las Vegas from 1992 through 2013. Loved it there.

 

Moved there from Knoxville TN when Cheryl was promoted and transferred to take up the post of QA Manager for the DOE contractor Nevada Test Site nuclear waste cleanup program. I was long out of music. But, in the fall of 2005 I was exhorted by a local bass player I'd met to "go check out Santa Fe, man. Every cat in town would kill to be in that band."

 

The night I first saw them at their Monday night late lounge gig at Palace Station, I was thunderstruck in the first 10 seconds. 15 top tier Vegas show musicians who did this over-the-top off-night gig for fun. Tasered.

Speechless. I could not sleep that night after what I'd just experienced. Floated into my health care analyst day gig bleary-eyed Tuesday morning—as late as I could finesse it.

I became a rabid regular. We soon became friends. Baddest cats in town, but not an once of ego within a hundred miles of them. Friendliest, nicest people I ever met. They're still going strong, better than ever.

I became their photographer, blogger, and podcaster. Eventually, I became the goto "20-feet-from-stardom" freelance photojournalist in Vegas. My stash of live performance shots is somewhere around 40,000. I never charged anyone a dime. Having been a hardscrabble road musician, and now a comfortable white collar tech guy, I just felt the need to help others promote their art. Vegas is about a dozen performers deep on every instrument and vocal type at the top, people who can just walk in and read the charts cold, but their struggles to survive is something I knew all too well, and felt compelled to support.

How blessed have I been? 

 

These podcasts have been offline for a number of years now (expired hosting URL). But I'm putting them back up. They need to be back up.

My Santa Fe and Friends podcast series. Turn it way up and enjoy.

  Santa Fe Podcast #1, Rochon Westmoreland on bass 

 

  Santa Fe Podcast #2, bandleader Jerry Lopez on guitar 

 

  Santa Fe Podcast #3, Here come the Fat City Horns 

 

  Santa Fe Podcast #4, Friends of Santa Fe, Volume 1 

 

  Santa Fe Podcast #5, Santa Fe band members solo projects 

 

  Santa Fe Podcast #6, Friends of Santa Fe, Volume 2 

 

  Santa Fe Podcast #7, Friends of Santa Fe, Volume 3 

 

  Santa Fe Podcast #8, Friends of Santa Fe, Volume 4 

 

  Santa Fe Podcast #9, Friends of Santa Fe, Volume 5 

 

  Santa Fe Podcast #10, Jerry's pal Jay Graydon, “Scene 29” licks 

 

  Santa Fe Podcast #11, Friends of Santa Fe, “The Edge Effect”

 

PODCAST CENTRAL IN VEGAS

 

Still miss that pad.

 

 

THE HISTORY

 

__________

"Follow the TRUTH?" Uhhh...

Maybe you might want to Follow the DISCLAIMER.

 

APRIL 2022 UPDATE

 

It's not going well at all. This may turn out to be Trump's fastest business failure ever. Nonetheless he'll still likely come away with s ton of investors' money via this Smash & Grab.

__________

 

At the outset last fall, Trump's TMTG people put out a colorful, dutifully artsy 22-slide Pitch Deck for the incipient SPAC merger and IPO with the dubious $DAWC.

 

Yeah, blah, blah, blah...

 

 

Above: The short-term competition incumbency as Trump sees it (slide 7). Their combined market cap is north of $1.5 trillion. Trump's piddley-assed startup value will be a rounding error by comparison. Loose change pocket lint.

 

Slide 22 is the only one you need to examine carefully.

Disclaimer

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Personnel Disclosure
All personnel listed in the deck may change from time to time, subject to no notice. Please do not rely on any personnel listed in the deck. Some personnel may or may not be in a consulting phase subject to a contractual employment agreement, there is no guarantee whatsoever that such employment agreement will be finalized. Companies are cautioned not to rely on listed personnel, nor does TMTG give any assurances regarding listed personnel.

Channeling my inner John MacEnroe: "You Cannot Be Serious!"

 

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!

 

Down in the TRUTH End-User ToS (Terms of Service) is "non-disparagement" language reserving TMTG's unfettered "at will" right to terminate subscribers for any reason—or "no reason."

14: TERM AND TERMINATION
These Terms of Service shall remain in full force and effect while you use the Site. WITHOUT LIMITING ANY OTHER PROVISION OF THESE TERMS OF SERVICE, WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO, IN OUR SOLE DISCRETION AND WITHOUT NOTICE OR LIABILITY, DENY ACCESS TO AND USE OF THE SITE (INCLUDING BLOCKING CERTAIN EMAIL AND/OR IP ADDRESSES), TO ANY PERSON FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION FOR BREACH OF ANY REPRESENTATION, WARRANTY, OR COVENANT CONTAINED IN THESE TERMS OF SERVICE OR OF ANY APPLICABLE LAW OR REGULATION. WE MAY TERMINATE YOUR USE OR PARTICIPATION IN THE SITE OR DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT AND ANY CONTENT OR INFORMATION THAT YOU POSTED AT ANY TIME, WITHOUT WARNING, IN OUR SOLE DISCRETION.

If we terminate or suspend your account for any reason, you are prohibited from registering and creating a new account under your name, a fake or borrowed name, your email address or the name of any third party, even if you may be acting on behalf of the third party.

In addition to terminating or suspending your account, we reserve the right to take appropriate legal action, including without limitation pursuing civil, criminal, and injunctive redress.

LOL. There are currently 27 fine print Sections in the ToS.

Their "privacy" and "data collection / usage" policies are equally dense and self-servingly one-sided. Anyone who signs up for this stuff deserves all of the adversity they are setting themselves up for.

This appears to be yet another classic Trump grift.

 

ACCORDING TO FORBES

A representative of the special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, merging with Trump’s business declined to comment on anything related to the business: “Unfortunately, at this time, we are not accepting press questions for interviews.”

There have been some hints at Trump’s role. A company press release describes him as the “chairman.” The merger agreement calls him the “company principal.” A different document refers to a “majority stockholder,” without saying who it is. A slide deck released last week really only features one person, Donald Trump, but it comes with a strange “personnel disclosure” on the final page. “Please do not rely on any personnel listed in the deck,” the fine print says. “Some personnel may or may not be in a consulting phase subject to a contractual employment agreement; there is no guarantee whatsoever that such employment agreement will be finalized. Companies are cautioned not to rely on listed personnel, nor does [the Trump Media and Technology Group] give any assurances regarding listed personnel.”

Helming a public company could be challenging for the former president, given all the rules that come with it. Trump previously led such a business, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts. Shareholders sued after he used the publicly traded company to buy a casino he personally owned at a suspiciously high valuation. Trump fought the allegations for a half decade, then settled around 2002 without admitting wrongdoing. As part of the settlement, he agreed to a new set of rules on corporate governance, including one that required a special committee to approve deals involving Trump’s other businesses.

“If Trump is really an officer or director of this company, as opposed to a licensor of his name or something like that, I expect he will be on the wrong end of a securities-fraud suit before long,” says Michael Klausner, a business and law professor at Stanford. “I can’t imagine him being any more truthful about his business than he is about anything else. Especially when it comes to size—the company, his following on the platform, crowds or other size-related facts—he just makes it up.”

ACCORING TO MARKETPLACE

 

No insight into a business plan and no mention of a single dollar figure

The meme-stock and SPAC phenomenon has gone to the extreme as Digital World Acquisition Corp., a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, announced plans to merge with Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG).

Digital World Acquisition Corp. DWAC, -6.44% and TMTG have no revenue, no cash flows, no profits or even a clear business plan, and DWAC’s stock is up nearly 10-fold in less than a week.

Investors need to remain cautious and not get caught up in the trading fervor.

DWAC is a vehicle for TMTG to raise capital and has become a meme-stock target for speculators looking to prop up and cash in on Donald Trump’s social media power. TMTG will have close to $300 million in capital once the SPAC merger closes and no realistic plans on how it will operate a business. Given the stock price’s meteoric rise and lack of fundamentals and clear plans behind the business, putting capital into DWAC now is closer to gambling than investing…

"Gambling?" Can you say "multiple casino bankruptcies?" Ring any bells?
 

Grifter gonna grift. Ya dance wit' da one what brung ya.

 

to wit:

 

Trump Baja Ocean Resort. Trump merely licensed his name/brand for a fee and served as the pitchman. He was not the developer, not "the builder," and had no investment stake in the (ultimately bankrupt) project. That's not how he and daughter Ivanka portrayed themselves.

[Donald Trump on camera @ 1:54] “I‘m very, very proud of the fact that, when I build, I have investors that [sic] follow me all over. They invest in me, they invest in what I build. And that’s why I’m so excited about Trump Ocean Resort. It’s going to be very, very special."

 

CODA

 

 

"The Apprentice" and "Miss Universe." Yeah, a real Mega-Mogul. Send your checks today.

 

UPDATE

Trump Media & Technology Group was always bound to be controversial, but it's inviting extra scrutiny by keeping basic details secret and making wild promises.

Among the notable departures from industry norms:

TMTG until Monday hadn't disclosed any members of the executive management team, outside of chairman Trump, before naming outgoing California Congressman Devin Nunes as CEO. No word still on a CFO.

A pitch deck filed with the SEC does identify 30 employees, but only with first name and last initials (a LinkedIn search doesn't turn up anyone who says they work for TMTG or its "Truth Social" brand).


TMTG isn't disclosing any of the investors who it says committed $1 billion in PIPE financing, to help it go public via a SPAC called Digital World Acquisition Corp.


There also has been relatively little information on what TMTG is building, beyond some early screenshots that look like a reskinned version of Twitter, although Axios is told by a source that there is a team actively developing new products.


Among the big promises:

The pitch deck projects $3.6 billion in revenue by 2026, which would put it on par with Twitter's current business.

It projects 40 million streaming subscribers by 2026, which is roughly the same size as ViacomCBS' streaming subscriber totals today...

It's a multi-billion dollar grift attempt.

FROM POLITICO, Dec 10th

The ridicule that’s gushing down on Trump’s company from the tech and financial press is wholly warranted. Putting money into the company is “is closer to gambling than investing,” says Marketwatch. TMTG has already blown through its promise to produce a beta version of its Truth software by November and the Securities and Exchange Commission has commenced an investigation of whether Trump’s media company had broken securities laws in its formation. All this flakiness gives us a safe harbor the size of the San Francisco Bay to speculate that Trump hasn’t set out to create a viable media business as much as he has dreamed up a new fusion of politics, media and finance designed with one primary objective: To give people who like Trump an easy and legal way to give Trump money.

UPDATE

 

From a New Yorker article about incendiary right-wing radio host Dan Bongino. 

Trump announced in October that the Trump Media & Technology Group was developing an alternative to Twitter, called Truth Social. To finance its growth, the firm would merge with a publicly traded blank-check company (the fashionable Wall Street innovation known as a “special-purpose acquisition company,” or spac), giving the former President access to hundreds of millions of dollars. To Trump’s critics, the deal sounded like a grift to end all grifts. Within weeks, it was under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. But, if Trump can hold it together, it may provide his largest step yet toward regaining a political voice in the lead-up to the 2024 election.

Several weeks after Trump’s announcement, Rumble declared that it, too, planned to merge with a spac. Then the companies announced a partnership: Bongino’s favored platform would stream the video for Trump’s app. If conservatives wanted to get out of the wilderness, Bongino told listeners, they needed to build their own “parallel information economy.” Act now. “We decide who comes in,” he said. “It’s the only way to win.”…

A fanatically loyal audience can be very profitable—and, at times, very dangerous. During a public event in Idaho in October, the pro-Trump commentator Charlie Kirk was asked by a fan, “When do we get to use the guns?” The crowd tittered, and the fan continued, “I mean, literally, where’s the line? How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?” Kirk, who seemed to sense how poorly the moment was going to play on YouTube, interrupted him. “I’m going to denounce that,” he said. “We have to be the ones that do not play into the violent aims and ambitions of the other side.” Instead, he said, Idaho should ban vaccine mandates, eject some federal agencies, and “pick and choose” what federal laws it considers constitutional. When the man asked again when violence was required, Kirk urged him to be wary of abetting his opponents’ conspiracy: “They’re trying to get you to do something that then justifies what they actually want to do.”

The moment captured the perils of living in a nation beset by information warfare: if January 6th made anything clear, it was that some number of Americans will eventually abandon a distinction between rhetorical battle and the real thing. Bongino’s business thrives in that borderland, the realm of thinking where the best way to stay safe is to buy the shotguns and holsters that he advertises on his show…

…“The only good news about the rapid descent is we’re going to hit a bottom soon. And I promise you. . . . ” He [Bongino] squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fists. “I promise you! I know it—the Lord will not let this country go down like that.” He stared into the camera again. “There will be an ascent just as fast, where freedom and liberty will reëmerge, and these people on the other side of it, the Big Tech tyrant totalitarian fascists, their liberal buddies, the Biden Administration, they will all—all—have to answer for this.”…

Yeah. Right.

Good article. Bongino is a real piece of work.

FEBRUARY UPDATE

_________

 

Follow the Truth

 

Right. But, I don't think the "Founder" of the foregoing, Donald Trump, got the Memo.

We learn that we are separate beings in the world, distinct from what is other than ourselves, by coming up against obstacles to the fulfillment of our intentions—that is, by running into opposition to the implementation of our will. When certain aspects of our experience fail to submit to our wishes, when they are on the contrary unyielding and even hostile to our interests, it then becomes clear to us that they are not parts of ourselves. We recognize that they are not under our direct and immediate control; instead, it becomes apparent that they are independent of us. That is the origin of our concept of reality, which is essentially a concept of what limits us, of what we cannot alter or control by the mere movement of our will. 

To the extent that we learn in greater detail how we are limited, and what the limits of our limitation are, we come thereby to delineate our own boundaries and thus to discern our own shape. We learn what we can and cannot do, and the sorts of effort we must make in order to accomplish what is actually possible for us. We learn our powers and our vulnerabilities. This not only provides us with an even more emphatic sense of our separateness. It defines for us the specific sort of being that we are. 

Thus, our recognition and understanding of our own identity arises out of, and depends integrally on, our appreciation of a reality that is definitively independent of ourselves. In other words, it arises out of and depends on our recognition that there are facts and truths over which we cannot hope to exercise direct or immediate control. If there were no such facts or truths, if the world invariably and unresistingly became whatever we might like or wish it to be, we would be unable to distinguish ourselves from what is other than ourselves and we would have no sense of what in particular we ourselves are. It is only through our recognition of a world of stubbornly independent reality, fact, and truth that we come both to recognize ourselves as beings distinct from others and to articulate the specific nature of our own identities. 

How, then, can we fail to take the importance of factuality and of reality seriously? How can we fail to care about truth? 

We cannot.

Frankfurt, Harry G.. On Truth (pp. 98-101). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Yeah.

Consider a Fourth of July orator, who goes on bombastically about “our great and blessed country, whose Founding Fathers under divine guidance created a new beginning for mankind.” This is surely humbug. As Black’s account suggests, the orator is not lying. He would be lying only if it were his intention to bring about in his audience beliefs that he himself regards as false, concerning such matters as whether our country is great, whether it is blessed, whether the Founders had divine guidance, and whether what they did was in fact to create a new beginning for mankind. But the orator does not really care what his audience thinks about the Founding Fathers, or about the role of the deity in our country’s history, or the like. At least, it is not an interest in what anyone thinks about these matters that motivates his speech. 

It is clear that what makes Fourth of July oration humbug is not fundamentally that the speaker regards his statements as false. Rather, just as Black’s account suggests, the orator intends these statements to convey a certain impression of himself. He is not trying to deceive anyone concerning American history. What he cares about is what people think of him. He wants them to think of him as a patriot, as someone who has deep thoughts and feelings about the origins and the mission of our country, who appreciates the importance of religion, who is sensitive to the greatness of our history, whose pride in that history is combined with humility before God, and so on.

Frankfurt, Harry G.. On Bullshit (pp. 16-18). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

 

The jokes just write themselves. Hpw many Scaramuccis will this last?

 _________

 

Keepin' it classy, as always

 

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!

 

__________

U.S. Presidential Elections and the "Independent State Legislatures Doctrine"

Article II, Section 1

1. The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:
   
   
2. Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
   
   The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.
   
   
3. The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.
   
   
4. No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
   
   
5. In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.
   
   
6. The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.
   
   
7. Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
   

____

Subsection/Clause 2 is the focus of the "Independent State Legislatures Doctrine." Sixteen "shall" directives and one (curious) "may." Notably absent is any constitutional language authorizing a state to set (or rescind) an election's procedures post hoc—once an election result is known and Electors' tallies have been submitted to Congress. Are we to believe the Framers intended to provide state legislatures carte blanche? "Original Intent / Textualism" is no help here.

This once-obscure theory — known as the Independent State Legislatures doctrine — had been a stealth effort in right-wing legal circles. But recent election-related litigation in state supreme courts and the federal courts, much of it related to the "Big Lie," has accelerated its prominence and highlighted its dangers. 

Here's what the Independent State Legislature doctrine argues: The U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures the sole authority to set all election rules — including the assigning of Electoral College votes — independently, and immune from judicial review. Taken to its natural extreme, it holds that election laws set by state legislatures supersede any rights guaranteed in state constitutions or even initiatives passed by voters. It effectively concludes that there can be no possible checks and balances on state legislatures' authority when it comes to election law.

Yesh, but "immune from judicial review" implies that even SCOTUS has no standing in this regard.** OK: ARTICLE III, Section 2: In all cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction.

 

The 2020 election is lawfully concluded. All 50 states had certified prior to January 6th, in the wake of dozens of fruitless challenges in "battleground" states.

 

States' legislative authority with respect to future election processes (in advance of them) is a separate issue. But, you don't get a Mulligan once your state has Certified but you are miffed at the outcome. You Snooze, You Lose.

** The right of citizens "to vote" (exact words) is explicitly set forth in the 14th, 16th 19th, 24th, and 26th Amendments. I'm not buyin' that SCOTUS could not act to strike down any states' legislative enactments that abrogated it. Seriously? Uhhh... ARTICLE III, Section 2, anyone?

“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors…”

 

"In such Manner" that otherwise comports with the "supreme Law of the Land."

ARTICLE VI:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. 

'eh?

 

NONETHELESS

 

SCOTUS now has a 6-3 "conservative" majority, four of whom—Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Thomas—have already expressed affinity for the "Independent Legislatures" concept. So, we could perhaps see an eventual 5-4 vote in its favor should they opt to take it up. 

 

"The Rule of Five."

 

UPDATE: THE "EASTMAN MEMO"

 

After the November 3rd election, "White House lawyer" John Eastman circulated a 6-pg "confidential memo" (pdf) articulating his proposed process for overturning the apparent Biden win and re-installing Donald Trump for a second term summarily. It begins and ends thus:

PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL
January 6 scenario

Article II, § 1, cl. 2 of the U.S. Constitution assigns to the legislatures of the states the plenary power to determine the manner for choosing presidential electors. Modernly, that is done via statutes that establish the procedures pursuant to which an election must be conducted.

…The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power [to decide a presidential election] to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter. We should take all of our actions with that in mind. [And, never mind the otherwise “plenary power“ of the states.]

[-snip-]

… I have outlined the likely results of each of the above scenarios, but I should also point out that we are facing a constitutional crisis much bigger than the winner of this particular election. If the illegality and fraud that demonstrably occurred here is allowed to stand—and the Supreme Court has signaled unmistakably that it will not do anything about it—then the sovereign people no longer control the direction of their government, and we will have ceased to be a self-governing people. The stakes could not be higher.

It's worth yet again noting that “illegality and fraud,“ while asserted ad nauseum to have been "demonstrable," were never confirmed, notwithstanding protracted, withering scrutiny—inclusive of more than 60 failed court challenges.

"The Supreme Court has signaled unmistakably that it will not do anything about it." But, but, but... oh, never mind—"ultimate arbiter," anyone? Was not the VP's action "arbitration?" C'mon. Pence was the "ultimate arbiter" until he was not?

 

SUMMARY RECAP

 

 

This is what passes for constitutional analytic sophistication at the Claremont Institute these days.

 

GAME, SET, AND MATCH,

JEREMY B. ROSEN, ESQ (FEDERALIST SOCIETY):

[John Eastman] “prepared a six-page memo for Pence, arguing that Pence had broad powers to stop the Electoral College–vote counting in the Senate. Eastman asserted that the vice president had the authority under the Twelfth Amendment to determine on his own which Electoral College votes were valid and to count only those, thus giving the election to Trump. This theory does not hold up to basic scrutiny. Applying originalism to interpret the Twelfth Amendment, Derek Muller, a professor at the University of Iowa and a prominent conservative election lawyer, explains that the vice president lacks any authority other than to announce the votes that have already been counted by Congress. Indeed, in 2000, Eastman himself argued that Vice President Al Gore did not have power over the counting, because only both houses of Congress possess such authority. If Gore lacked the power to challenge the counting of Electoral College votes he disputed to deprive then-Governor Bush of the presidency, so too did Pence with regard to Trump.”

UPDATE:JOHN EASTMAN HEADS TO THE WAFFLE HOUSE

"John Eastman now rejects ‘coup memo’ he wrote for Trump: ‘Anybody who thinks that that’s a viable strategy is crazy’."

Poignant. Where do they find these people? "Anybody who thinks that's a viable strategy is crazy."

Like, uhhh..., say, these dim bulbs?

I call the Eastman 'coup memo' "accessory to incitement of insurrection."

OCT 13TH ERRATA

 

Nope.

"Why isn't the January 6th Unselect Committee of partisan hacks studying the massive Presidential Election Fraud, which took place on November 3rd and was the reason that hundreds of thousands of people went to Washington to protest on January 6th?" Trump asked, even though his claims of fraud were long ago debunked.

"Look at the numbers now being reported on the fraud, which we now call the 'Really Big Lie.' You cannot study January 6th without studying the reason it happened, November 3rd," Trump argued, attempting to claim that those debunking his lies are the ones actually lying.

"But the Democrats don't want to do that because they know what took place on Election Day in the Swing States, and beyond. If we had an honest media this Election would have been overturned many months ago, but our media is almost as corrupt as our political system!" Trump argued, though even Fox News has accurately reported Trump lost the election.

FOLLOW-UP

 

 

OCT 27TH UPDATE

 

Oopsie. 

WAPO, OCT 30TH

As Vice President Mike Pence hid from a marauding mob during the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol, an attorney for President Donald Trump emailed a top Pence aide to say that Pence had caused the violence by refusing to block certification of Trump’s election loss.

The attorney, John C. Eastman, also continued to press for Pence to act even after Trump’s supporters had trampled through the Capitol — an attack the Pence aide, Greg Jacob, had described as a “siege” in their email exchange.

“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 that the American people can see for themselves what happened,” Eastman wrote to Jacob, referring to Trump’s claims of voter fraud…

See also The Guardian.

‘A roadmap for a coup’: inside Trump’s plot to steal the presidency

UPDATE

 

Wikipedia to John Eastman: "We are out of fucks to give."

In a world of inequality, we are well accustomed to rich, powerful, connected people getting preferential treatment, whether a good table at a restaurant, admission to a selective college for their offspring or a torn-up speeding ticket. Despite its countercultural tendencies, the digital world has wound up in a quite similar place. On large platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, the most important, newsworthy users are given VIP treatment. Their voices are amplified; their misdeeds are excused; they are, up to a point (see: Trump), freed from the automated policing that the rest of us have to endure. The notable exception is Wikipedia. There, VIPs have been shouting “Do you have any idea who you are dealing with?!” for years, only to be told either, not really, or, don’t care, and then instructed, as Eastman was, to take their objections to a Talk page where the community can weigh in…

UPDATE

 

35 pdf pages of Eastman Ass-Whup.

 

SUBSIDIARY PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION PROCESS CONSIDERATIONS

AMENDMENT XII

The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;-The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;-The person having the greatest Number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President-The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.

See also the Electoral Count Act of 1887, 3.USC.15. Neither of which—notwithstanding the protracted, acrimonious pushback—get you to constitutional justification for nullifying the 2020 vote count certification on January 6th.

See also "The Electoral Count Mess: The Electoral Count Act of 1887 is Unconstitutional" (pdf).

Abstract: In this essay, and in light of the controversy that arose in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, we explain the constitutional process for counting electoral votes. In short, every four years, the Twelfth Amendment requires the President of the Senate (usually the Vice President of the United States) to open certificates provided by state presidential electors and count the votes contained therein. The Constitution allows no role for Congress in this process, and thus, the provisions of the Electoral Count Act purporting to grant Congress the power, by concurrent resolution, to reject a state’s electoral votes, is unconstitutional. Further, the objections raised to two states’ electoral votes on January 6, 2021, were not proper within the terms of the Act, and therefore, even if Congress has the power specified in the Act, congressional action rejecting states’ electoral votes would have been contrary to law. While state executive or state judicially-ordered departures from the requirements of state election laws in presidential elections might violate the federal Constitution’s requirement that electors be chosen as specified by state legislatures, determining whether this has taken place is much more complicated than simply examining the language of state election statutes. We suggest that making this determination requires a careful examination of state interpretation traditions that we decline to undertake in this brief essay on the constitutional process for counting electoral votes.

Again, you don't get a Mulligan when you don't like the presidential election outcome but can't prove outcome-changing fraud (particularly in light of the myriad administrative, legislative, and judicial reviews comprising the 2020 election challenges).

________

 

IMPORTANT UPDATE, DEC 2021

 

Read all of it carefully.

 

JANUARY 2022 UPDATE

 

From the conservative Bulwark.

Trump's Electoral Forgery/Fraud: The smoking guns are all around us

 

Connecting the myriad incriminating dots.

__________