Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis indicated last month that decisions on whether to charge any subjects of her investigation are “imminent.” Her year-long probe into whether Trump violated Georgia election law — in part by urging Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to reverse the outcome — featured extensive efforts to compel testimony form some of Trump’s top White House and campaign advisers, as well as his outside lawyers.
Dispite Willis’ preferences on timing, McBurney said he had to prioritize the public’s right to know about at least the general findings of the probe into alleged efforts to tamper with the 2020 election results.
“While publication may not be convenient for the pacing of the district attorney’s investigation, the compelling public interest in these proceedings and the unquestionable value and importance of transparency require their release,” McBurney wrote in his eight-page order.
A spokesperson for Willis did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the judge’s order and whether she will seek to appeal it.
McBurney ruled that aspects of the report that recommend whether to indict — or not indict — specific individuals should remain private for now in part because those individuals are not afforded the same due process rights during the grand jury process they would have in court if they’re charged.
While witnesses were permitted to have their lawyers nearby during the grand-jury proceedings, those lawyers were not permitted to sit in on the interviews to help mount a defense or rebut questions from prosecutors and grand jurors.
Willis’ office got court approval for the special grand jury investigation last January and impaneled the actual jury in May.
The probe stems in large part from a phone call Trump held with Raffensperger on Jan. 3, 2021, asking him to locate more than additional 11,000 votes for Trump so that he could be deemed the victor over Joe Biden in the state. Raffensperger and other state officials repeatedly told Trump they’d looked into allegations he’d made of fraud and hidden stashes ballots, but found nothing to support them.
While the Georgia officials stood firm, a recording of the call indicates Trump continued to press, largely ignoring their explanations.
But the probe significantly broadened over time to focus on Trump’s larger effort to subvert the 2020 election, in part by pushing allies in several states to deliver false sets of presidential electors to Washington. Among the witnesses Willis compelled to appear in Fulton County: Rudy Giuliani, Mike Flynn, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Mark Meadows, all of whom lost court battles to resist her summons.
Many legal analysts have said the call could amount to an illegal attempt to tamper with the election results, although Trump has described the call as “perfect.” The special grand jury also explored efforts other Trump supporters made to urge recounts or decertification of the election results in the days before Congress met to tally the electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump’s lawyers did not seek to intervene in the litigation over releasing the special grand jury’s report. The former president’s attorneys issued a statement last month saying they assumed the investigative body recommended no charges since it never subpoenaed him or sought a voluntary interview.
Trump’s attorneys did not immediately respond to a request Monday for comment on the judge’s new order.
Under Georgia law, special grand juries cannot return indictments, but their results can be used by prosecutors to take a case before a regular grand jury to seek criminal charges.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Shivamogga: Karnataka’s Bharatiya Janata President (BJP) Nalin Kumar Kateel on Wednesday stroke a controversy by saying that the upcoming assembly election in Karnataka is all “about Tipu vs Savarkar.”
Addressing the people on Wednesday, BJP state President Nalin Kumar Kateel said, “This (Assembly) election is all about Tipu vs Savarkar. They (Cong) allowed celebrating Tipu Jayanti which was not required, and spoke disgracefully about Savarkar. I challenge Siddaramaiah to discuss if our country needs a patriotic like Savarkar or Tipu.”
Meanwhile, BJP state president Kateel also challenged Siddaramaiah to debate on who is important for the state Tipu or Savarkar.
“People need to understand if they need a patriotic like Savarkar or Tipu,” said BJP state President Nalin Kumar Kateel.
Earlier on February 7, Senior Congress leader Siddaramaiah said that the Bharatiya Janata Party is not expanding the Karnataka Cabinet as it is avoiding appointing the son of its senior leader BS Yediyurappa.
Karnataka is likely to undergo Assembly elections in April-May this year to elect all 224 members of the Legislative Assembly.
An important source of BJP said, “On the one hand, work is being done to reorganize and restructure the booth committee, so that the booth committee becomes more strong, on the other hand ‘Booth Vijay Abhiyan’, ‘Janaspandana Rally’, ‘Jana Sangathan Yatra’ are going on to ensure BJP’s victory in Karnataka and the party leaders are continuously interacting with people through these rallies.”
The sources said that the BJP believes that the organization becomes stronger by booth empowerment; if the booth is strong then the organization will remain active.
“Three months are left for the Karnataka elections. In view of the 2023 elections, all these preparations are being done and after that, we will focus on 2024,” the BJP sources said.
As far as reshuffling is concerned in the Karnataka government, the BJP source said that only three months are left, so there will be no big change in it.
Agartala: West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee with her nephew and TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee during an election campaign rally for the upcoming Tripura Legislative Assembly elections, in Agartala, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023. (PTI Photo)
Agartala: West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee being greeted by supporters during an election campaign rally for the upcoming Tripura Legislative Assembly elections, in Agartala, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023. TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee is also seen.(PTI Photo)
Agartala: West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee with her nephew and TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee during an election campaign rally for the upcoming Tripura Legislative Assembly elections, in Agartala, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023. (PTI Photo)
Agartala: Union Home Minister Amit Shah will address two election rallies in Tripura on Monday.
Shah will address two election rallies at Khowai in the Khowai district and Santirbazar in the South Tripura district. The Union Minister will also join a road show in Agartala city today.
Before Shah’s arrival in the state, Tripura Chief Minister Dr Manik Saha on Saturday inspected preparation for Amit Shah’s February 6 rally in the state ahead of the state assembly election.
The Chief Minister visited both the rally spots at Santirbazar in South Tripura and Khowai in the Khowai district in order to ensure that everything was conducted flawlessly.
BJP posted a stunning victory in Tripura in the 2018 Assembly elections, a Left bastion. After its poll victory, BJP appointed Biplab Deb as Tripura’s Chief Minister and in May 2022 appointed Manik Saha for the role.
This is the second visit by the Union Home Minister to the state this year.
Earlier on January 5, he attended two Rath Yatras – one from North Tripura’s Dharmanagar and another from South Tripura’s Sabroom.
Recently, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) National President Jagat Prakash Nadda was on his visit to the state where he also addressed the public rally in Amarpur in the Gomati district.
The party is preparing itself to register another win in Tripura and has struck an alliance with its former ally Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT) which has fielded its candidates at five assembly seats.
For the elections at 60 Assembly seats in the northeastern state, which are slated to be held on February 17, the BJP has fielded 55 candidates.
Former CM Manik Sarkar, hailing from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), would also contest the upcoming Assembly polls to the state.
According to party officials, several other BJP leaders will also campaign in the northeastern state. For the first time, 11 women candidates have been given tickets in the state assembly election.
Telangana CEO Vijas Raj at the training programme. (Image: Siasat)
Hyderabad: Telangana Chief Electoral Officer Vikas Raj on Friday said that EROs and EAROs should have full understanding of election management keeping in mind the (upcoming) elections.
Vikas Raj, who was the was the chief guest at a two-day training program for state level deputy Tahsildars (elections) at the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) office, said that officials involved in elections should be fully aware of the rules. The Telangana CEO stated that Assistant Electoral Registration (AERO) should properly instruct booth level officials about electoral rolls for the polls.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) official said that and Booth Level Officers (BLO) should be able to provide information to citizens on all forms. “AEROs should be aware of election expenses and check the performance of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) EVMs from time to time,” said Vikas Raj.
The Telangana CEO also said that strong measures should be taken for effective polling in the state. “Voters should be given advance information about changes in their name, address and constituency. Before this, Form-6, 7, 8 should be spread widely,” said Vikas Raj during the programme the the GHMC area.
Vikas Raj also explained that the appointed officials will provide training for two days on the management of electoral rolls and EVMs. 119 deputy Tahsildars (elections) of assembly constituencies in the GHMC area participated in the programme.
SRINAGAR : The Election Commission of India has approved the appointment of Divisional Commissioner Kashmir P K Pole as Chief Electoral Officer of Jammu and Kashmir.
Quoting sources the news agency KNO reported that the poll body has finalized name of Pole as CEO of the UT.
The post was lying vacant after Hirdesh Kumar went on central deputation and was posted with the EC.
Srinagar, Feb 02: The Election Commission of India has approved the appointment of Divisional Commissioner Kashmir P K Pole as Chief Electoral Officer of Jammu and Kashmir.
Sources told the news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO) that the poll body has finalized name of Pole as CEO of the UT.
The post was lying vacant after Hirdesh Kumar went on central deputation and was posted with the EC—(KNO)
There is expected to be a more intentional recruiting effort from national organizations focused on election clerks and other similar positions this cycle, in an effort to counter a potential wave of MAGA-like candidates running for those under-the-radar positions.
Run for Something, a liberal organization founded after Trump’s election focused on lining up candidates to run for office across the ballot, launched “Clerk Work” last year to recruit candidates for local positions in the election process. It covers everything from county clerks to boards of supervisors.
The group had a hand in recruiting more than 220 candidates in the midterms for voting-related positions, Run for Something co-founder Ross Morales Rocketto said in an interview. That included 32 top-tier candidates, with a focus on county clerk positions in states like Colorado and California and county commissioners in Nevada. The group said 20 of them won their contests, including 10 of the 13 who were running against candidates Run for Something identified as an “election denier.”
“The thing that keeps me up at night isn’t whether we can beat most of these folks — I think we can beat them in most places — it’s actually whether we get people on the ballot to run against them,” Morales Rocketto said. “And that to me is actually the harder challenge in all of this.”
Over the next two years, the group is focusing in on a handful of states — including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Texas and Michigan — as top priorities to recruit election officials.
Keep Country First Policy Action, a group founded by allies of former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), also launched an effort last year to recruit “pro-freedom, pro-democracy” candidates for office, with a focus on local election positions.
In interviews, local officials who will be on the ballot in 2024 said they expected it to be a challenging election, with the added attention on both the official side of the job, as they prepare their offices for a busy presidential election year, and on their own individual campaigns.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Agartala: The Tripura Assembly election schedule, announced by the Election Commission on January 18, remains unchanged, Chief Electoral Officer Gitte Kirankumar Dinkarrao said on Friday, citing “confusing posts” on various social media sites.
With election to the 60-seat Tripura assembly would be held on February 16, the last date of filing of nomination papers is January 30 and the scrutiny of papers and relevant documents would be done the next day. The last date of withdrawal of the candidatures is February 2.
Vote will be counted on March 2.
The CEO, while talking to the media, said that regarding any information and dates every one must follow the EC website, Twitter handle and Facebook page. He said that after the issuance of the notification by the Election Commission on January 21, 76 candidates of various political parties, including main opposition CPI-M, filed their nomination papers so far.
But conservative conspiracy sites like The Gateway Pundit and the Thomas More Society, a nonprofit that filed lawsuits that unsuccessfully sought to overturn the 2020 election, have attacked ERIC as part of a liberal plot to control the underpinnings of American elections.
Allen’s abandonment of ERIC illustrates how ideas stemming from the falsehood of a stolen presidential election remain in the bloodstream of the American democratic system, even after its most well-known proponents were shut out from winning key positions in major swing states in the midterms.
It also suggests the era of bipartisan, behind-the-scenes, mundane cooperation on the mechanics of running elections is at risk.
“It’s not the start, nor the end,” said David Becker, a former DOJ attorney who was central to setting up ERIC over a decade ago. “If you’ve been to any meetings of election officials over the last few years — if you’ve been to anything where consensus is attempted — it seems that fewer and fewer want to engage in that.”
Becker, who is now the founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, retains a non-voting position on the board of ERIC, which is otherwise made up of voting representatives from member states.
Allen’s office did not respond to an interview request or to written questions about his decision to pull the state out of ERIC. But in a statement accompanying his letter to ERIC, he said that: “Providing the private information of Alabama citizens, including underage minors, to an out of state organization is troubling to me and to people that I heard from as I traveled the state for the last 20 months.”
ERIC collects voter registration and motor vehicle data from each member state regularly throughout the year, the organization says. That data is used to produce several reports identifying voters on their rolls who may have moved to or from other member states or within a state, who may be registered in multiple states — which in itself is not a crime — or who may have died.
The system can also generate a report on voters who may have voted in different states in the same election — which generally carries criminal penalties — and people who appear to be eligible but are unregistered to vote, which ERIC members are required to contact.
The Gateway Pundit published a series of posts in mid-January 2022 about ERIC, claiming it was part of a left-wing cabal. And in December 2022, the Thomas More Society said it has filed complaints in three states about ERIC and planned to continue to do so in more. A spokesperson for TMS did not respond to a request for an update on the filings.
Allen was the second secretary of state to pull his state out of ERIC. Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, a Republican, announced last January that Louisiana would “suspend” its participation in the program and sent a letter in July withdrawing entirely.
John Tobler, a spokesperson for Ardoin’s office, said the office had conversations with ERIC officials before it left, but did not make Ardoin available for an interview and declined to answer specific questions about the move.
The announcement from Ardoin’s office about the suspension alleged: “concerns raised by citizens, government watchdog organizations and media reports about potential questionable funding sources and that possibly partisan actors may have access to ERIC network data.”
In a statement at the time, Ardoin said he spoke with “election attorneys and experts,” but did not identify those people, nor the watchdog groups and media reports. Ardoin’s campaign website says he “demanded answers from ERIC … to keep Louisiana’s elections secure,” linking to a brief local news article from January about the announcement.
On the campaign trail, Allen more closely echoed the postings from Gateway Pundit website: He said he opposed ERIC because it was a “Soros-funded, leftist group,” referencing the prominent liberal donor George Soros.
The group is entirely funded and controlled by member states, after receiving initial startup support from The Pew Charitable Trusts in 2012.
Despite the two states leaving the organization, ERIC still broadly maintains bipartisan support. Republican officials have praised ERIC for helping their states remove from the rolls voters who have either moved out of state or died, and for its use as a backstop to catch people who potentially cast ballots in two different states in one election.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis highlighted ERIC by name in a summer press conference as helping to catch potential cases of double voting. (DeSantis announced the state would join ERIC in 2019.) And one of its biggest proponents of the program was Allen’s predecessor, now-former Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, who regularly defended the value of ERIC after Allen raised it as an issue on the campaign trail.
“ERIC does something that no other entity is capable of doing,” Merrill, a Republican, said in an interview in November, following the midterm elections. “The people who have complaints about ERIC and who have concerns about ERIC, don’t understand ERIC.”
Trey Grayson, a Republican and former Kentucky secretary of state who remains active in the election administration community, said in a text that he was a “big fan” of ERIC and that it was an “important tool” to maintain accurate voter rolls. He said it was disappointing to see the two states leave the group.
“I especially find it disappointing because in general we Republicans tend to care more about cleaning up the voter rolls,” Grayson wrote. “And these Republican secretaries are shooting those efforts in the foot with their decisions.”
Officials from other member states also expressed displeasure over the exit of Louisiana and Alabama. Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, said he was “disappointed with the decision because I think the more members there are in ERIC, the stronger ERIC is.”
The scuffle around ERIC is just one point of agitation between election officials. Recent public meetings of the National Association of Secretaries of State, a longstanding, bipartisan organization, have showcased the tension growing within the group. Sessions at NASS meetings now focus on the increasingly fraught task of ensuring the safety of election officials from physical threats, and there has been public chatter about the risk of insider threats to election offices.
And a few sessions have triggered sharp disagreements among secretaries that, at times, have gotten heated. That could continue to grow, with several newly-elected secretaries in red states who have at least questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election now eligible to join the organization, Allen among them.
But Simon — who is set to assume the NASS presidency in the summer of 2024 and helped lead a near-unanimous NASS resolution for election audits in 2021 — said he was still hopeful that there would be plenty of room for behind-the-scenes election cooperation to survive and thrive.
“I actually have thought about that,” Simon said when asked if the tension around ERIC could metastasize into something more. “We might have differences, including on this issue, but I really don’t think it changes the fundamentals. … So I don’t see this as a body blow to cooperation among secretaries of state of varying political viewpoints.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
