Tag Archives: election

US

McCarthy warns Democrat-backed HR 1 is Pelosi power grab meant to erode election confidence

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House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Sunday that the Democrat-backed H.B. 1 will destroy election confidence and serves as a power grab for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, effectively destroying America if the sweeping election reform bill passes next month.

“No, I don’t have the most to lose: The American public have the most to lose because we would lose our freedom,” McCarthy, R-Calif., said on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” “When you put a bill into Congress, the majority party reserves the first numbers. This is H.R. 1, so this is most important for Nancy Pelosi to hold on to her power.”

EVERY HOUSE DEMOCRAT SIGNS ON SWEEPING HR 1, GOP ARGUES IT WOULD ‘UNDERMINE’ ELECTION INTEGRITY 

Every House Democrat last week signed onto the sweeping election reform bill H.R. 1 – also known as the For the People Act – saying it will expand voting rights and “clean up corruption” in politics. But Republicans have ripped it as a “federal government takeover” and accuse Democrats of trying to change election rules to benefit themselves.

The bill is expected to be considered on the House floor during the first week of March.

“What we have to do is, people lose their confidence in elections, you’ll break society down and we will lose America as we know it,” McCarthy said, addressing host Maria Bartiromo. “We know that there’s a real question, one of the confidence in the last election.

“Going forward, what you have to do is exactly this: You have to clean up the rolls. …  You have to sue to make sure you clean up the rolls. We’ve got to make sure there’s integrity.”

BIDEN’S $1.9T CORONAVIRUS STIMULUS PACKAGE INCLUDES $1B FOR RACIAL JUSTICE PROVISIONS FOR FARMERS 

McCarthy then took a jab at California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s facing a strengthening recall campaign likely to make the ballot this fall. He said the governor would be more likely to verify the identifies of those who sign the recall petitions than those who vote in his state. 

“There’s a recall going on in California. I will guarantee you that Gavin Newsom makes sure that they’re checking the IDs of who signs that recall more than they’re checking the IDs of who’s voting in California,” McCarthy said. “You can’t have a mass ballot mailing to people who don’t even request it when these rolls are so bad.

“I think showing an ID. to get on an airplane. Yeah, I could do that. I can also show an ID to vote because in California, it’s just like what they’re doing in the COVID bill. They now want to give vaccines to immigrants, illegal immigrants who are coming in, before giving them to Americans in San Francisco,” he continued. “If you’re illegal, you can vote in a school board race. They want people to be able to vote who are not Americans. We need to have integrity and accountability and elections that people will trust at the end of the day. And that’s why we have to have reforms and that’s why H.R. 1 should be voted down.”

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McCarthy also claimed that out of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID stimulus package, 91% goes toward non-COVID related agenda items, arguing “socialists are taking back the swamp.”

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World

China Must Reform Hong Kong Election Rules, Carrie Lam Says

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Hong Kong’s leader said it is “crystal clear” that Beijing needs to reform the financial hub’s electoral system, just a day after China’s top official for the city signaled major changes were coming.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam said political unrest in the former British colony, including massive protests in 2019, had forced Beijing to ensure the city is governed by patriotic officials.

“It is crystal clear we have reached a stage where the central authorities will have to take action to address the situation, including electoral reform,” Lam said at a press conference Tuesday morning. “I can understand that the central authorities are very concerned. They don’t want the situation to deteriorate further.”

Beijing’s top official for the city said on Monday that China faces the “critical and urgent” task of overhauling the way Hong Kong handles its elections. Beijing needed to implement reforms “to ensure that Hong Kong’s governance is firmly controlled by patriots,” Xia Baolong, director of China’s cabinet-level Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, said.

Speaking to the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies, Xia said that to improve Hong Kong’s electoral system, “relevant legal loopholes within the framework of the Constitution and the Basic Law” need to be closed — and that it was up to the central government to communicate those changes to the local administration.

Photographer: Prashanth Vishwanathan/Bloomberg

Hong Kong’s Courts Are the Last Check on Beijing’s Growing Power

His remarks followed a number of articles and comments in Chinese state media, and are the latest sign that China is contemplating further curbs to Hong Kong’s already-limited democracy, where a committee of business and political elites selects the city’s leader and Beijing retains veto power.

Election Committee

Beijing intends to limit the influence of opposition groups on the 1,200-member body that picks the chief executive, taking seats from pro-democracy politicians and assigning them to pro-China loyalists, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, citing people familiar with the proposal. The changes would pass during an annual session of China’s legislature in March, the report said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin declined to comment on “speculative reports” during a press briefing in Beijing on Tuesday. Individuals in Hong Kong’s government should be patriots, he added.

Beijing is considering eliminating the 117 Election Committee seats held by district councilors, many of them members of the pro-democracy camp, local media outlets reported. Those officials are elected to run some of the lowest levels of Hong Kong’s government, typically dealing with issues such as traffic or garbage collection.

Pro-democracy politicians made some inroads on the committee with a landslide victory in district council elections in late 2019, increasing their share of seats. That influence was eroded when the government delayed a Legislative Council election in September last year that could have seen democracy advocates score another win. Their sway was further diminished when opposition lawmakers were disqualified and then resigned en masse late last year.

China’s Selective Reading of Deng Xiaoping: Matthew Brooker

China has taken various steps to stamp out dissent in the former British colony since the sometimes-violent protests, most notably by imposing a sweeping national security law last year. Beijing also allowed the local government to disqualify lawmakers who were insufficiently patriotic. In comments to Lam in late January, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Hong Kong should be governed by “patriots” in order to ensure the city’s stability following unprecedented unrest in 2019.

Hong Kong plans to change a law so that district councilors must pledge their allegiance to China, Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Erick Tsang said at a briefing on Tuesday. Those who do not will be barred from running for office for five years, he said.

Last month Hong Kong asked all civil servants appointed before July 1, 2020, to sign a declaration that they will uphold the city’s laws. Lam told lawmakers earlier this month that district councilors should have to take an oath.

In the past, China “didn’t want to directly intervene at the district level,” said Dongshu Liu, an assistant professor of Chinese politics at City University of Hong Kong. “This current move indicates they are trying to push their control deeper into Hong Kong society.”

Riot police fire tear gas during a protest in May 2020.

Photographer: May James/Bloomberg

Lam added Tuesday that a potential law banning insulting public officials was not at an advanced stage, but many people in her government wanted the legislation. “Many public officers on the front lines in recent years have been intimidated, threatened and insulted in carrying out their duties,” she said.

Local media outlets have reported that the city’s government was considering such a law, which would mark the biggest move to limit freedom of speech in Hong Kong after China imposed a broad national security law last year in the wake of mass demonstrations in 2019.

China’s Xi Signals More Hong Kong Curbs With Call for ‘Patriots’

Lam said in in a news conference on Monday that reforms would not be designed to limit the influence of pro-democracy politicians but that no one in government should engage in unpatriotic activities, such as colluding with foreign powers to subvert China’s central government.

“This need to change the electoral system and arrangements in Hong Kong is for one single purpose, that is to make sure that whoever is governing Hong Kong is patriotic,” she said. “It applies to various aspects of the political structure, including the executive, the legislative, the judiciary, the district councils and the civil service.”

— With assistance by Iain Marlow, Kari Soo Lindberg, Jing Li, Chloe Lo, and Colum Murphy

(Updates with Hong Kong requiring district councilors to pledge allegiance to China and Foreign Ministry comment. A previous version of this story corrected the day the city was expected to unveil rules for district councilor oaths to Tuesday.)

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US

Dominion Sues MyPillow, CEO Mike Lindell Over Election Claims

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WASHINGTON—One of the largest makers of voting machines in the U.S. on Monday sued a prominent supporter of former President Donald Trump, alleging that the businessman had defamed the company with false accusations that it had rigged the 2020 election for Joe Biden.

Dominion Voting Systems sued Mike Lindell, chief executive of Minnesota-based MyPillow Inc., and his company in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking more than $1.3 billion in damages.

In its complaint, the company cites a number of statements made by Mr. Lindell, including in media appearances, social-media posts, and a two-hour film claiming to prove widespread election fraud. Mr. Lindell said he helped produce the film, which he released online in early February.

The complaint alleges that Mr. Lindell made false claims about the integrity of Dominion’s voting machines and that he knew no credible evidence supported his claims that the company had stolen the election from Mr. Trump—what Dominion has called the “Big Lie.”

“He is well aware of the independent audits and paper ballot recounts conclusively disproving the Big Lie,” the complaint states. “But Lindell…sells the lie to this day because the lie sells pillows.”

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World

Squawking bird blows the whistle on fake video trying to tilt Ecuador election | Ecuador

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An attempt to influence the Ecuadorian elections with a fake video purportedly showing leftwing guerrillas endorsing one of the candidates was thwarted by a ground-dwelling bird and a keen-eared ornithologist.

In the video, shared on social media before the election’s first round on Sunday, three masked and armed men stood before the red and black flag of the ELN – Colombia’s largest remaining guerrilla force – and expressed their support for the leftist candidate Andrés Arauz.

A caption at the foot of the screen described the setting as the “Colombian jungle”, but a shrill whistle from somewhere in the shrub gave the game away.

The video purporting to show ELN support for the leftist candidate Andrés Arauz. Photograph: Manuel Sánchez/Twitter

“I recognised the whistle instantly and I knew that the video could not have been filmed in Colombia,” said Manuel Sánchez, an ornithologist and bird guide. He had identified the avian whistleblower as a pale-browed tinamou – which is not native to Colombia.

“Tinamous are quite primitive birds. They live on the forest floor and they don’t sing; they have short, inflected whistles,” said Sánchez. “It was just luck that this particular species lives in a very small and rare dry forest ecosystem in western Ecuador and north-west Peru.” Although the ELN have previously operated in northern Ecuador, there is no record of activity in those ecosystem areas.

Spelling mistakes, strange accents and unlikely weaponry further undermined the authenticity of the video, which emerged after the Colombian weekly magazine Semana claimed it had uncovered documents showing ELN support for Arauz. The ELN denies the claim and disavowed the video.

In recent years, organizations such as Bellingcat have mobilized citizen journalists and volunteer experts to verify or disprove online videos. Although the Colombian military has previously used ornithologists to help locate hostages from audio recordings, this is the first time such a process has been used to clip the wings of fake guerrillas.

Sánchez hopes the attention his own tweets have brought will draw international attention to the plight of the pale-browed tinamou’s habitat. “The Tumbesian dry forest we share with Peru is one of the most threatened ecosystems in the Americas, due to the growth of the shrimping industry, agriculture and roads,” he said.

Ecuador will hold a runoff vote in April.



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US

Fired Fox News political editor calls out ‘hype men in the media’ who helped Trump attempt to ‘steal an election’

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Chris Stirewalt, who drew scorn from Trump and his supporters after calling the state of Arizona early on election night for now-President Joe Biden, did not name Fox News while leveling criticism against the media in his Los Angeles Times piece. But it was clear that he was referring to the right-wing cable channel throughout his critique.

Stirewalt said the “rebellion on the populist right against the results of the 2020 election” was a result in part of Trump’s “hype men in the media” who helped him try to “steal an election or at least get rich trying.”

Fox News, which did not respond to a request for comment on Stirewalt’s piece, employs several propagandists in the roles of hosts or on-air contributors who pushed erroneous claims of election fraud in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

Star hosts with large platforms and massive viewership, such as Sean Hannity, for weeks pushed the belief that the election had been stolen from Trump.

What’s become known as “The Big Lie” culminated in the January 6 terror attack in which a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol building in an attempted insurrection that turned deadly.

Stirewalt wrote that the refusal to believe the election results among many Trump supporters was a “tragic consequence of the informational malnourishment so badly afflicting the nation.”

“When I defended the call for Biden in the Arizona election, I became a target of murderous rage from consumers who were furious at not having their views confirmed,” Stirewalt added. “Having been cosseted by self-validating coverage for so long, many Americans now consider any news that might suggest that they are in error or that their side has been defeated as an attack on them personally.”

In his piece, Stirewalt described the US “as a nation of news consumers both overfed and malnourished.”

“Americans gorge themselves daily on empty informational calories, indulging their sugar fixes of self-affirming half-truths and even outright lies,” he wrote.

The Fox News decision desk’s call of Arizona came early on election night, generating controversy and infuriating Trump and his team who attempted to have it reversed.

Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Trump and a former senior White House official, even got in touch with Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire owner of the network, in an attempt to get Fox News to take back its call.

But the network stood by it, and Stirewalt aggressively defended it on the network’s air during election week. The call, which was questioned by some data wonks for having been made so early, ultimately proved to be correct. However, earlier this month, Stirewalt was let go from the network he had called home for more than a decade.

Fox News framed firing Stirewalt as part of a larger organizational restructuring. But people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post that it was due in part to Murdoch believing the network had mishandled its Arizona call.

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World

On first call with Putin, Biden raises election interference, bounties, Navalny poisoning

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Biden also intended to support Ukrainian sovereignty and his goal of extending a nuclear arms treaty for five years with Russia, Psaki said.

The two leaders agreed to “work urgently” to extend the nuclear treaty by Feb. 5, when the deal is slated to expire, according to the Biden administration’s readout of the call. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty limits the two nation’s deployed nuclear weapons to 1,550 each.

“They also agreed to explore strategic stability discussions on a range of arms control and emerging security issues,” the readout said.

Biden and Putin agreed to be transparent and communicate consistently, according to the readout.

“His intention was also to make clear that the United States will act firmly in defense of our national interests in response to malign actions by Russia,” Psaki told reporters.

Biden’s agenda for his call with Putin struck a decidedly different tone than former President Donald Trump, who was the subject of significant criticism for his relatively soft rhetoric toward Russia, especially relative to his broader America-first approach to foreign policy. Trump routinely attempted to undermine widely accepted evidence about the Kremlin’s 2016 election interference, at one point telling reporters that he would take the Russian president’s word over that of the U.S. intelligence community on the issue.

Biden has vowed to turn the page from the Trump administration on U.S.-Russia relations and take a stronger stance against the Kremlin.

In April 2018, Trump blamed poor relations between the U.S. and Russia on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential collusion between the Kremlin and Trump’s campaign. The investigation found no Trump-Russia conspiracy but established that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in “sweeping and systematic fashion.” Mueller’s report also found repeated communication between Trump associates and people who indicated they had potentially harmful information about Hillary Clinton.

On the large-scale hack into federal agencies uncovered in December — which intelligence agencies said was likely Russia’s doing — Trump baselessly suggested it may have been China. Biden has promised a forceful response to the campaign.

“My administration will make cybersecurity a top priority at every level of government,” Biden said in a statement, “and we will make dealing with this breach a top priority from the moment we take office.”

After less than a week in office, Biden has now been on calls with several prominent foreign leaders, including U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico.

Biden has pledged to “restore dignified leadership at home and respected leadership on the world stage” in the wake of Trump’s foreign policy.

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US

Rep. Scott Perry played role in Trump contesting election

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The New York Times is reporting Susquehanna Valley congressman Scott Perry played a significant role in persuading then-President Donald Trump to contest the results of the 2020 election. The NYT cites an unnamed source who told its reporters, Rep. Perry introduced President Trump to former U.S. Justice Department Official Jeffery Clark, who was sympathetic to Trump’s claims that the election was stolen.The source also claimed that Perry and Clark planned to have the Justice Department send a letter to Georgia to investigate the possibility of voter fraud in states’ election results. The report goes on to state, acting Attorney General Jeffery Rosen refused to send that letter. Pennsylvania’s Attorney General Josh Shapiro has reacted to the article on Twitter saying: “Representative Perry ought to familiarize himself with Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of our Constitution. There must be consequences for this conduct.”A fellow Pennsylvanian in the state house, Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta has released a statement calling on Perry to resign saying, “Scott Perry, this is not your first time being a national embarrassment but make it your last – resign.”On Sunday, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chairwoman Nancy Patton Mills released the following statement on the PA Dems. website. “Scott Perry has disgraced South Central Pennsylvania, failed his country, and betrayed the trust of anyone who cares about our democracy. He is a stain on our Congress and must resign immediately.””If he fails to do so, Leader McCarthy must remove him from his committee assignments, and the NRCC and PA GOP must formally refuse to spend on his behalf.” WGAL News 8 has reached out to Rep. Perry’s office for comment and has not heard back.

The New York Times is reporting Susquehanna Valley congressman Scott Perry played a significant role in persuading then-President Donald Trump to contest the results of the 2020 election.

The NYT cites an unnamed source who told its reporters, Rep. Perry introduced President Trump to former U.S. Justice Department Official Jeffery Clark, who was sympathetic to Trump’s claims that the election was stolen.

The source also claimed that Perry and Clark planned to have the Justice Department send a letter to Georgia to investigate the possibility of voter fraud in states’ election results.

The report goes on to state, acting Attorney General Jeffery Rosen refused to send that letter.

Pennsylvania’s Attorney General Josh Shapiro has reacted to the article on Twitter saying: “Representative Perry ought to familiarize himself with Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of our Constitution. There must be consequences for this conduct.”

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A fellow Pennsylvanian in the state house, Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta has released a statement calling on Perry to resign saying, “Scott Perry, this is not your first time being a national embarrassment but make it your last – resign.”

On Sunday, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chairwoman Nancy Patton Mills released the following statement on the PA Dems. website.

“Scott Perry has disgraced South Central Pennsylvania, failed his country, and betrayed the trust of anyone who cares about our democracy. He is a stain on our Congress and must resign immediately.”

“If he fails to do so, Leader McCarthy must remove him from his committee assignments, and the NRCC and PA GOP must formally refuse to spend on his behalf.”

WGAL News 8 has reached out to Rep. Perry’s office for comment and has not heard back.



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US

Madison Cawthorn: GOP congressman who voted to overturn election results admits 2020 race not fraudulent

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The freshman congressman made the comments to CNN’s Pamela Brown when pressed about his lingering views on the November election results.

Cawthorn was one of more than 120 House GOP members who voted to sustain the objection to electoral votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania earlier this month when Congress met to to certify President-elect Biden’s victory.

“Yes, I think I would say that the election was not fraudulent. You know, the Constitution allowed for us to be able to push back as much as we could and I did that to the amount of the constitutional limits that I had at my disposal. So now I would say that Joseph R. Biden is our president,” he added.

There have been no credible allegations of any issues with voting that would have impacted the election, as affirmed by dozens of state and federal courts, governors, state election officials and the departments of Homeland Security and Justice. And not one of the Republican officeholders objecting to Biden’s victory have objected to Trump’s wins, or in some cases their own wins, on the same day.

Since Biden’s inauguration, Cawthorn has signed onto a letter along with 16 other GOP House freshmen, saying they look forward to working with Biden. Notably, Cawthorn is the youngest member of Congress in modern history, according to US House records, at just 25 years old.

“So when I contested to the election, that was within the constitutional guidelines that the framers had set up. But after I’ve done that and the electors and the delegates from each state elected Joe Biden as our president, I respect the office. He is my president, and I want to work with him to make sure that we can bring some meaningful change to the American people,” Cawthorn said.

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US

Trump plotted to pick loyalist as acting AG to help overturn election

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  • Trump reportedly worked with a Justice Department lawyer to try and oust the acting attorney general. 
  • He wanted to replace Jeffrey Rosen with lawyer Jeffrey Clark, The New York Times reported. 
  • Trump backed down after a group of top DOJ leaders said they’d resign if Rosen was fired.
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Donald Trump reportedly plotted with a Justice Department lawyer to oust acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen so he could place a loyalist who would put pressure on lawmakers in Georgia to overturn the election in his favor, The New York Times reported Friday.

The story recalls Trump’s final efforts to hold on to power in the days leading up to President Joe Biden’s inauguration.

According to The Times’ Katie Benner, Trump and Jeffrey Clark were working on ways to stir up doubts about the election results. Rosen had not cooperated with Trump’s alleged plan, prompting him to seek out a willing participant in Clark, The Times reported.

Top leaders at the Justice Department threatened to resign if Rosen was fired, which forced Trump to abandon the idea, but not before Clark and Rosen made their opposing arguments to Trump, the newspaper reported.

Trump and Republican allies lost several dozen lawsuits attempting to overturn election results.

Read more: Trump’s threat to bolt from the Republican Party could spark a serious legal fight over his ‘gold mine’ list of supporters who have helped fill the GOP coffers with billions of dollars

Allies including pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell have pushed a baseless conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems switched votes for Trump to votes for Biden in the election. Dominion filed a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against Powell earlier this month. 

The Times reported Trump also pressured Rosen to appoint special counsels, specifically one that would investigate Dominion. 

Insider was unable to reach Clark, and the Justice Department did not reply to a request for comment at the time of publication. 

Clark told The Times its report, which was based on interviews with four former Trump officials, had inaccuracies but did not specify what they were. 

“Senior Justice Department lawyers, not uncommonly, provide legal advice to the White House as part of our duties,” Clark said. “All my official communications were consistent with law.”

In December, Rosen and deputy attorney general, Richard Donoghue reportedly denied Clark’s request to have the department hold a news conference and say they were investigating the fraud allegations.

Trump had focused on the state of Georgia, where Biden had won by a small margin. The Trump administration had put pressure and attacked the then US Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, Byung J. “BJay” Pak. Pak resigned from his role on January 4 and the Justice Department replaced him the next day. 

The Washington Post reported on Thursday the inspector general is now investigating Pak’s sudden departure.

Pak isn’t the only Georgia official Trump tried to pressure. Trump also pleaded with the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” additional votes to help him win. 

Additionally, The Times reported Clark had asked Rosen and Donoghue to send Georgia officials a letter that falsely said the department was investigating the state for voter fraud and that they should overturn Biden’s win. On December 31, Rosen and Donoghue told Clark he was wrong since there was no evidence of any fraud. 

Read more: SCOOP: Trump taps his former chief of staff and impeachment lawyers as the gatekeepers to his papers during his post-presidency

Over that weekend, Clark met with Trump and came back to tell Rosen he would replace him ahead of January 6, when Congress met to certify the votes. 

Rosen refused to step down and worked with White House counsel, Pat Cipollone to schedule a meeting with Trump later that night, The Times reported. 

Rosen, Donoghue, and Clark met with Trump, Cipollone, and his deputy Patrick Philbin. Cipollone ultimately convinced Trump it would be unwise to fire Rosen. 

Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud have been criticized as the spark that fueled the attempted insurrection on January 6 at the US Capitol. Trump supporters breached the building and clashed with law enforcement, halting the joint session of Congress as lawmakers were set to formalize Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. The riot lead to the deaths of five people. 

The House impeached Trump on a charge of inciting an insurrection. The Senate will soon hold a trial and vote on whether to convict the former president. This is the second impeachment Trump faced in his four years in office. 

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