“Sorry, Jared, there is nothing I can do.”
— Rupert Murdoch on the phone to Jared Kushner, quoted by the New York Times on Election Night 2020.
“Sorry, Jared, there is nothing I can do.”
— Rupert Murdoch on the phone to Jared Kushner, quoted by the New York Times on Election Night 2020.
“The husband of a Colorado woman who has been missing for more than two years pleaded guilty on Thursday to casting her mail-in ballot for Donald Trump during the 2020 election,” the New York Times reports.
Barry Morphew told FBI agents: “I figured all these other guys are cheating.”
Wisconsin Speaker Robin Vos (R) told WISN that Donald Trump called him “within the last week” still seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
Said Vos: “I explained that it’s not allowed under the constitution. He has a different opinion.”
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“Herschel Walker, Georgia’s Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, gave a 10-minute stump speech on Tuesday in which he told no new whoppers, made no obvious mistakes and allowed reporters to witness the whole thing,” the New York Times reports.
“That seeming nonstory was actually news, given how Mr. Walker’s candidacy has been going recently, and it appeared to reflect the labors of a team of Republican operatives who have swooped in to turn around his campaign, after a string of unforced errors called into question his readiness for political prime time.”
Detroit News poll: “Republican primary voters surveyed in last week’s poll were told Republican leaders in the state Senate conducted an investigation into claims of fraud in the 2020 election and found there was no evidence of widespread fraud.”
“Those surveyed then were asked who they believed: Republican leaders in the state Senate or Trump’s insistence there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election.”
“Respondents chose Trump’s claims over the state Senate’s by a margin of 59% to 26%.”
FiveThirtyEight finds that out of 340 Republican nominees for Senate, House, governor, attorney general and secretary of state so far, 120 are full-blown election deniers (35 percent).
An additional 48 nominees (14 percent) have expressed doubts about the election despite the multitude of evidence that it was legitimate.
In total, almost half of the GOP’s nominees for these offices have at least dabbled in false election claims.
“The Atlanta-area district attorney leading a wide-ranging criminal investigation into election interference by Donald Trump is weighing whether to call the former president before a special grand jury,” USA Today reports.
Just Security debunks the nonsensical idea that Donald Trump “really believed” he had won the election.
“Georgia investigators are scrutinizing Rudy Giuliani’s appearance before state lawmakers in 2020, where he peddled baseless claims of voter fraud and encouraged legislators to appoint a new slate of presidential electors,” CNN reports.
“The special purpose grand jury — which has been investigating whether former President Donald Trump or his allies violated the law in their efforts to flip the 2020 election results in Georgia — has heard testimony from at least four witnesses regarding Giuliani’s activities.”
“A series of photos taken on election night 2020 inside the Trump White House captures the tension as Trump’s family and his top aides track election returns and see Trump’s early lead fade away,” ABC News reports.
“The photos, taken by a White House photographer and published exclusively in the book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, are a visual representation of the testimony of senior Trump advisers who told the House Jan. 6 committee that they did not believe Donald Trump should declare victory on election night.”
Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pressed 29 Republican state lawmakers in Arizona — 27 more than previously known — to set aside Joe Biden’s popular vote victory and “choose” presidential electors, the Washington Post reports.
“The revelation that Ginni Thomas was directly involved in pressing them to override the popular vote — an act that would have been without precedent in the modern era — intensified questions about whether her husband should recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 presidential election and attempts to subvert it.”
“The Justice Department has stepped up its criminal investigation into the creation of alternate slates of pro-Trump electors seeking to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, with a particular focus on a team of lawyers that worked on behalf of President Donald Trump,” the New York Times reports.
Georgia U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker (R) claimed that he’s “never heard” Donald Trump say that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
“At least 357 sitting Republican legislators in closely contested battleground states have used the power of their office to discredit or try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election,“ the New York Times reports.
“The tally accounts for 44 percent of the Republican legislators in the nine states where the presidential race was most narrowly decided. In each of those states, the election was conducted without any evidence of widespread fraud, leaving election officials from both parties in agreement on the victory of Joseph R. Biden Jr.”
“Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder of Oracle and the biggest backer of Elon Musk’s attempted Twitter takeover, participated in a call shortly after the 2020 election that focused on strategies for contesting the legitimacy of the vote,” the Washington Post reports.
Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pressed Arizona lawmakers after the 2020 election to set aside Joe Biden’s popular-vote victory and choose “a clean slate of Electors,” according to emails obtained by the Washington Post.
Her emails argued that legislators needed to intervene because the vote had been marred by fraud.
“The Republicans running against Herschel Walker for U.S. Senate are crisscrossing the state this week, looking for every vote they can get and making a similar argument: Walker can’t win in a November general election against Democrat Raphael Warnock,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
A new Fox News poll in Pennsylvania finds Mehmet Oz (R) leading the GOP Senate race with 22%, followed by David McCormick (R) at 20% and Kathy Barnette (R) at 19%.
The race remains wide open as the top three candidates are within the survey’s margin of sampling error, and 18% are undecided on who they will back in the May 17 primary.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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