DEMOCRATS AND THE MEDIA BLEW UP ALL NORMS TO GET TRUMP, AND SHOULDN'T LECTURE ABOUT ELECTION CONTESTS
Published Friday, November 20, 2020By William A. Jacobson
 “You maniacs, you blew it up” |
“You maniacs, you blew it up.” There are no norms left. Democrats and the media burned them all to the ground in the scorched earth attack on Trump that started before the 2016 election and continued without interruption through Election Day 2020.
The Trump campaign and various allied Republicans are contesting the results of the presidential election in several key swing states, particularly Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona. Some court cases have been filed, but the promise of more substantial legal efforts are in the offing.
On November 5, I urged Republicans to Stay the course on election contests and litigation – Almost 70 million Trump voters deserve the effort, but cautioned:
“At the end of the day, which could be just days or weeks away, we’ll know if Trump and his team have the goods. Almost 70 million Trump voters deserve the effort.”I also pointed out on November 7 that people should be realistic about the high hurdles to success whether in recounts or litigation, You are not alone, you have over 70 million friends:
“So it’s not over, but we have to be honest with ourselves that it remains a longshot. Trump needs hard evidence of major fraud, miscount, or computer malfunction to prevail in court. A specific category of ballot that was not legally cast is going to have to be identified, and it’s going to have to be in a sufficient quantity to make a difference.”Again on November 9, I emphasized to Stay focused on the prize:
“Folks, stay focused. Trump needs to find votes through recount or other vote count irregularity, or find a court to rule that specific categories of ballots were unlawfully cast, whether through fraud or contrary to election law. That’s the prize. Focus on the prize.”All that background and caution brings us to today.
Today Rudy Guliani and Sidney Powell held a news conference. Rudy laid out what he says affidavits and other evidence gathered shows about specific allegations of voter fraud, potentially involving tens or hundreds of thousands of votes. Those affidavits are not all public, with the understandable claim that the people involved fear retribution from the same Democrat supporters who have been attacking people physically and via online campaigns. That evidence is going to have to be submitted to a court soon, the clock is ticking.
The problem with the voter fraud as related by Rudy is that, by his own account, the illegal votes have become merged with the legal votes because numerous safeguards were eliminated or not followed. What Rudy appears to be left with is possible proof of widespread fraud, but no clear remedy. No judge or panel of judges is going to throw out several hundred thousand votes in the City of Philadelphia just because some of the votes were fraudulent. If the election was stolen, it was stolen in pre-election procedure and election night process, and there may be no lawful remedy other than the ballot box in 2022 and 2024.
Unlike Rudy, Sidney Powell offered few specifics. She has a unified theory of election software and hardware fraud that spans numerous countries, possibly “three-letter agencies,” and an election night execution of a preexisting plan across several jurisdictions. But something being possible is not the same thing as proof that it did happen. Powell says she has proof it happened, but she offered no details today. It would shake our system to the core if such evidence exists and is provable, but I don’t think people should get their hopes up. Prove me wrong, please, I’m practically begging her to do so, but in the end, she is going to need proof, not conjecture.
The Democrat and media reaction is to dismiss this effort as insane conspiracy theories not worthy of consideration. Challenging the election and refusing to “concede” is called a breach of all norms.
Excuse me, but there are no norms left. Democrats and the media burned them all to the ground in the scorched earth attack on Trump that started before the 2016 election and continued without interruption through Election Day 2020.
Remember when The Resistance doxxed electoral college electors after the 2016 election in an effort to coerce them into changing their votes, when Democrat politician declared the election stolen because the Russians took out Facebook ads, when many Democrats boycotted the inauguration and the first State of the Union Address? Or when Democrats rioted in D.C. during the inauguration? And how Democrat politicians have justified and in some cases encouraged attacks on Trump supporters, who in many big cities are now hunted for sport. I remember.
I’m so old, I remember when Democrats hired a foreign ex-intelligence agent to collude with the Russians to produce a phony dossier asserting, among other false things, Trump paid hookers to pee on a bed in Moscow because Obama once slept on it, then leaked those details to the media in collusion with the Director of the FBI, who himself went to the White House to meet the newly elected president Trump in order to set him up and create a pretext for leaking the dossier. Even before the election, Democrats and the media claimed unsavory ties between Trump and the Russians, and the Russia collusion assertion led to several years of efforts to paralyze the Trump administration, with once reputable law professors and political pundits throwing around accusations of treason that earned them reliable bookings on MSNBC and CNN, book deals, and hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers.
I’m even so old that I remember how almost weekly major newspapers like the NY Times and Washington Post would roll out serial “bombshells” showing Trump illegal or unethical conduct in office based on anonymous supposed intelligence and “senior administration sources familiar the matter” — yet time and again the bombshell turned out to be a dud, to be followed by a new bombshell as the prior one faded. This created a continuous crisis news cycle. I don’t believe these sources existed, or if they did, they were not as described, like the supposedly “senior” administration official who wrote an anonymous op-ed in the NY Times, only to reveal himself recently as a not so senior DHS official who didn’t even serve in the White House or in a position to be close to Trump. The NY Times used his anonymity to create the false narrative of a senior official close to Trump ready to spill the beans — if the Times deceived the public about that, nothing it says about anonymous sources close to Trump should be believed.
I’m also old enough to remember how Obama holdovers in the permanent bureaucracy leaked transcripts of diplomatic conversations between Trump and foreign leaders early in the administration, causing a serious breach of the president’s ability to conduct the nation’s business. Those same permanent bureaucrats continued to leak and conspire for years.
Believe it or not, I’m also old enough to remember when Democrats and the media told us Trump was sending his unmarked stormtroopers to scoop “mostly peaceful” protesters off city streets, but none of that was true. Or when we had a multi-week Democrat and media frenzy about how Trump’s goons supposedly were eliminating postal boxes throughout the country to prevent people from mailing in ballots, when it turned out that the images were of routine rotation of mail drop boxes.
And how big tech giants and mainstream media openly silenced important information about Biden family influence peddling.
I could go on and on and on. Read through our Trump Derangement Syndrome Tag for hundreds of examples. And almost all of it was aided and abetted by Never Trump Republicans.
So don’t lecture me about how Trump and his supporters are violating all norms of behavior expected of presidential administrations.
Democrat and media maniacs blew up all norms.
So I’m going to sit back and watch the election contests that are going on right now. Stay the course. If the evidence is there, it’s there. If it’s not, it’s not. We’ll abide by court decisions, but until those legal efforts are exhausted, there is no reason to listen to the people who defiled and destroyed everything they touched in their scorched earth effort to get Trump.
William A. Jacobson
William A. Jacobson is a Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Securities Law Clinic at Cornell Law School.