Tag Archives: 2020 election

legal news, State news

How does this guy get elected?

Ken Paxton always evokes a response from me whenever I see his name in the news.

It goes like this: How in the world does this guy manage to get elected and re-elected as Texas attorney general despite (a) being under indictment for securities fraud, (b) subjected to criticism from whistleblowers who allege he is corrupt as hell and (c) fights to fend off a Texas Bar Association lawsuit that seeks to disbar him from the practice of law? 

Paxton, a Republican, is fighting a State Bar lawsuit alleging that the legal profession’s governing body is biased against him. Hey, the clown sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election with a lawsuit that got tossed immediately into the crapper by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The justices ruled that Paxton had no legal standing to sue to have another state toss out legally cast ballots for president.

That’s the basis for the State Bar’s lawsuit. It seems to this layman we have an issue with basic legal competence.

As for the indictment, that came down from a Collin County grand jury in 2015, right after Paxton took office. He has been stalling and fighting the start of his trial ever since. They still don’t have a trial date set.

Oh, and seven of his top legal assistants quit in 2020, citing complaints against Paxton that he had an inappropriate relationship with one of his big campaign donors. The legal eagles have accused Paxton of bribery. The FBI is conducting an investigation.

Good grief! This clown has been sullied and soiled ever since he took office. The State Bar of Texas is just the latest example of the kind of legal trouble our state’s top lawyer has been facing.

So, I circle back to my question: How in the world does this moron manage to get elected? He is running this year for his third term as AG. I hate thinking that Texas voters really are so stupid to keep electing a crook for attorney general.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Graham shows his duplicity … again!

Can there be a more duplicitous hypocrite serving in the U.S. Senate than Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina?

Oh, there likely are a lot of ’em serving alongside Graham, but he’s outdone himself this week.

Graham declared that he won’t comply with a subpoena issued by Fulton County (Ga.) District Attorney Fani Willis, who wants to talk to Graham about why he sought to intervene in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election returns.

You know the story. Georgia voted for Joe Biden over Donald Trump. The ex-president sought to pressure election officials to “find” enough votes to turn the state into a Trump victory. Graham took part in that coercion. Fani Willis wants to talk to him about that.

Hence, the subpoena.

Graham, though, won’t comply with it. He calls it “all politics.”

Here’s an idea. If Graham insists he did nothing wrong and if he also insists that the exercise is a political stunt, why doesn’t he go and “set the record straight”?

I think I know why he won’t comply. It’s because DA Willis has an ironclad case of bullying and coercion on Trump’s part and on Graham.

Let’s remember that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger recorded Trump demanding that Raffensberger “find” enough votes needed to flip Georgia. The ex-POTUS committed an act of tampering with a state electoral process.

For my money, Fani Willis has potentially the most airtight case of all of them proceeding against the former POTUS.

As for Graham, who has been a major Trump suck-up ever since he dropped out of the 2016 GOP presidential primary, he is defying what should be obvious, that no one is above the law. When a duly elected prosecutor summons you to testify before a grand jury, you do what you’re told. Indeed, Graham has served as an Air Force lawyer and no doubt has issued that warning to witnesses summoned during courts martial.

I am heartened only by my belief that the walls are closing in on Donald J. Trump.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

These Trumpsters told the truth

It is going to take me a long while to process fully what I heard this week in the televised testimony before the House select 1/6 committee.

We all heard several dedicated Donald Trump supporters set aside their personal support of the former POTUS and argue on behalf of concepts totally foreign to The Donald: the rule of law and the sanctity of their oaths of office.

Gabe Sterling and Brad Raffensberger of Georgia spoke the truth to power. So did Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers. They confronted Trump’s assertion that they could flip votes, overturn election results, “find” enough ballots to swing their states from Biden’s column to Trump’s.

They all voted for Trump. They were loyal to the man … to the extent of casting their ballots.

However, they refused to cross the line into lawlessness, which is what Trump wanted them to do. None of them would shirk their oaths of office. Speaker Bowers’s testimony was particularly riveting, as he said any notion of his forsaking his sacred oath was totally beyond his capacity as an elected public official.

Bowers, indeed, appeared to grow quite emotional as he testified before the House committee. It was, at some level, tough to watch. Then again, I was filled with pride that he continues to stand firm in his belief that he took the oath to protect the Constitution and to honor the laws of the land. He remained true to his oath.

As did Raffensberger, the Georgia secretary of state, and Sterling, one of his deputies.

They all demonstrated the incalculable value of public service.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Republicans turn on Trump

These congressional hearings are getting juicier and seem to be tightening the noose around Donald J. Trump’s proverbial neck.

We heard from two Georgia election officials about how Trump sought to bully them into “finding” enough votes to steal the election from Joe Biden. We also heard from a Georgia secretary of state who also wondered out loud how The Donald could brazenly seek to break the law.

These all are Republicans, who were ostensibly Trump supporters until the former POTUS decided to seek to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Jan. 6 hearing: Ga. election worker and her mother say Trump’s ‘lies’ led to death threats (msn.com)

The most gut-wrenching testimony, though, came from two Georgia election workers who had their reputations dragged through the mud. Trump and his lawyer, Rudolf Giuliani, singled out two women by name as seeking to dump illegal ballots.

The women told of the threats against their lives. According to Yahoo News: In a hearing before the House select panel investigating the events that led to the Capitol riot, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, an election worker in Fulton County, testified that false claims made by the former president, his personal lawyer and their allies about her and her mother, “Lady” Ruby Freeman, a temporary election worker, “turned my world upside down.”

It’s important to understand something about these two women: They are not public officials. They are volunteer poll workers who dedicate their time to public service. Yet they became targets of The Donald and his thoroughly disgraced — and disgraceful — lawyer. They spoke blatant lies about these women who today told their side of the tragic story.

I am awaiting word now from Trump and how he’s going to spin the things he said about Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman. He only will illustrate even more graphically his despicable nature.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

It was an ‘insurrection’

I do not intend to pussyfoot around politically correct terminology when I refer to the events of 1/6.

Thus, when I talk about the attack on Capitol Hill that occurred that day, I will use the term I have used regularly since it occurred. It was an insurrection against the United States government.

I have needed little persuasion to come to that conclusion, but the televised hearings we have watched over the course of three days have sealed the deal for me.

Some media outlets are careful to avoid using that term. Some right-wing media organizations have issued bans on the use of the term. The pundits who work for those organizations point out — correctly, I acknowledge — that no formal charges of “insurrection” have been filed against multiple suspects already under indictment.

While that is technically true, I should add that some individuals have been accused of “seditious conspiracy,” which by my reckoning is virtually the same thing as insurrection.

Just as I have declared that the attack on our system of government was not a spontaneous “riot” that erupted because some “protesters” got carried away with their anger, I will insist on calling the assault that day an act of insurrection.

Think briefly for a moment. What kind of spontaneity would result in individuals carrying zip ties, firearms and assorted clubs and other weapons to Capitol Hill that day? They went there to overturn the Electoral College tabulation that resulted in Joe Biden being elected president of the United States.

We now are hearing mounting evidence that Donald Trump conspired with his senior aides to block Biden from becoming POTUS. I want the Justice Department to hold anyone accountable for what they did on that day … and by “anyone,” that includes the man who masqueraded as president for four years before being shown the door.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Barr: too late with the truth

I wanted to believe the best in William Barr, even going to back to when Donald Trump appointed him to be U.S. attorney general. Barr had served as AG during the George H.W. Bush administration and I long thought of him as a man of principle.

Silly me. He turned out to be a Trump toadie during his second stint as attorney general.

Now we hear from Barr during those taped depositions he gave to the House 1/6 committee that he believed Trump’s claim of vote fraud in the 2020 presidential election were “bullsh**.” Oh my goodness! He’s telling the truth! Finally!

I wanted to give him kudos for telling the House panel what it needed to hear. Then I thought: Not so fast; this guy shoulda said as much long ago, when Trump first threw out the vote fraud canard.

Instead, Barr remained quiet. He even seemed on at least two occasions to endorse the notion that the 2020 presidential election had been infected by fraudulent ballot-casting.

Yes, there is probative value in what Barr has declared. I’ll give him that much. However, I will not hold this man up as a paragon of judicial virtue for telling the House panel what he should have revealed to the public long ago.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves

I am beginning to wish that members of the House 1/6 select committee would stop speculating out loud about the “evidence” they say all but guarantees that Donald Trump will be indicted for seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

You see, these folks are getting my hopes fired up.

Reps. Liz Cheney, a Republican, and Adam Schiff, a Democrat, are saying the same thing: the panel has enough evidence to recommend that the Justice Department indict Trump for inciting the insurrection on 1/6.

Then we hear from a former White House lawyer suggesting that Fulton County (Ga.) prosecutors are close to getting an indictment against Trump charging him with coercing Georgia election officials into “finding” enough votes to swing the state’s electoral result from Joe Biden to Trump.

Again … my heart gets to fluttering when I hear such things.

Oh, how I do not want to be let down.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news, national news

Now it’s Trump vs. Pence

A weird political back story is being pushed to the forefront on the eve of the Georgia Republican Party primary election.

Donald J. Trump endorsed former U.S. Sen. David Perdue’s effort to win the party’s gubernatorial nomination. Former Vice President Mike Pence endorsed Gov. Brian Kemp’s bid for re-election.

The smart money at this moment says that Kemp is going to roll to an easy victory over Perdue. Which means that Pence is going to trample Trump in the fight for whose candidate gets Republican voters’ nod.

Trump vs. Pence, therefore, is going to end in a technical knockout — for the former VP … and possible rival to Trump for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

This is really rich, man.

Trump got angry with Kemp because the governor wouldn’t buckle under Trump’s pressure to “find” enough votes to turn the state’s electoral result from Joe Biden’s column to Trump’s. So now the ex-POTUS is backing Perdue … sort of. You see, he now has washed his hands of Perdue’s bid because the ex-senator is trailing so badly that Trump doesn’t want to be associated with the losing candidate.

All Gov. Kemp did in the wake of the 2020 election was follow the law. He refused to pressure the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensberger, to do Trump’s bidding. Trump doesn’t believe in the rule of law; he believes instead in the “rule of keeping himself in power.”

If my voice mattered in Georgia — which, of course, it doesn’t — I would be pulling for Mike Pence’s guy over the dipsh** Donald Trump has endorsed.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Cruz goes from hero to zero

Ted Cruz once was considered a hot-shot legal eagle, a former Texas solicitor general who has argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, which for a lawyer is a big deal.

Well, the junior U.S. senator from Texas — a Republican (naturally) — now finds himself the target of an ethics complaint filed by Texas lawyers alleging he went too far in seeking to block the certification of President Biden’s election in November 2020.

The Texas Tribune reports: Lawyers with the 65 Project, an organization aiming to hold attorneys accountable for trying to keep former President Donald Trump in power despite his reelection loss, filed an ethics complaint with the association Wednesday. It cites Cruz’s role in a lawsuit seeking to void absentee ballots, numerous claims he made about voter fraud, plus an attempt to stop four states from using 2020 election results to appoint electors — all of which failed.

“Mr. Cruz knew that the allegations he was echoing had already been reviewed and rejected by courts. And he knew that claims of voter fraud or the election being stolen were false,” the complaint says.

Sheesh! The hits just never stop coming as they regard the Cruz Missile.

The guy who once called Donald Trump a “sniveling coward” has become his most ardent Senate sycophant. He has shrouded his effort to block Biden’s election victory as a search for answers into allegations of widespread voter fraud, that they deserve a complete airing.

Read my lips … Ted: The allegations have been proven time and again to be false. 

Ted Cruz target of bar complaint for role in undermining 2020 results | The Texas Tribune

As the Tribune reported: “The 65 Project is a far-left dark money smear machine run by a who’s who of shameless Democrat hacks,” a Cruz spokesperson said in an email. “They’re not a credible organization and their complaint won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on.”

We’ll just have to see about that. I am one Texan who wants some answers into whether this former legal hotshot has shot himself in both feet.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Step aside, Texas GOP

Texas Republicans have taken their share of hits from critics over the quality of the candidates they nominate for public office.

I am going to pronounce at this moment that the Texas GOP has been eclipsed in the loony bin category of political nut jobs by their colleagues in Pennsylvania, where a true-blue 2020 election denier has been nominated to run for governor of that great state.

Doug Mastriano is now the GOP nominee Pennsylvania governor. He served in the state senate. His foe this fall will be Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democrat who ran unopposed in his state’s primary.

Far-right election denier Mastriano wins GOP race for governor in Pennsylvania (msn.com)

Mastriano, to be brutally candid, is a seriously dangerous man to run one of the nation’s most populous and important states.

He believes President Biden and Democrats stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump. He would get to appoint the next secretary of state in Pennsylvania and would be likely to find a fellow denier to lead that state’s election in 2024.

He tried to get fake Trump electors seated for the certification of the 2020 results in Pennsylvania; Biden won the state’s electoral votes, but Mastriano sought to overturn those results.

Oh … my.

I now will declare my own preference for Pennsylvania governor. Josh Shapiro must win to preserve the rule of law and to save the democratic process in one of the states where it all began in the United States of America.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com