[EL] ELB News and Commentary 2/3/21

[Rick Hasen]

“Trump Supporters’ Own Explanations For Assaulting The Capitol Are Undercutting His Impeachment Defense”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120735>
Posted on February 3, 2021 8:11 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120735> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Zoe Tillman<https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/trump-impeachment-capitol-rioters-fight-like-hell> for BuzzFeed:

Former president Donald Trump formally responded Tuesday to the charges filed by House Democrats in his second impeachment, denying that he incited a mob to violently descend on the Capitol building to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s win.

But court records in the 175-plus criminal cases filed so far in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection reveal that’s exactly what at least some of Trump’s supporters thought he was directing them to do.

“[T]oday President Trump told Us to ‘fight like hell,’” Troy Smocks, a Texas man charged with making threats, posted on Jan. 6 on Parler<https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-parler-aws>, quoting Trump’s speech to supporters before the insurrection, according to the government’s court filings. Smocks appeared to admit to participating in the attack on the Capitol in his posts, although he isn’t charged with that; he urged his followers to get weapons and prepare to “hunt” Democrats, tech executives, and others he considered “enemies of Our constitution,” writing, “We now have the green light.”

“[Trump] said that Our cause was a matter of national security, and that these people behind the massive fraud must be arrested and brought to justice. And that task, falls on the shoulders of We The People…. the American Patriots,” Smocks wrote, court documents say. A judge ordered him to be held in jail pending trial, citing his posts on Parler.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“The Self-Destructive Downside to Corporate Political Spending; There are risks to the bottom line when a firm’s shadowy political donations run counter to its image of social responsibility”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120733>
Posted on February 3, 2021 8:07 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120733> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Bill Snyder<https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/self-destructive-downside-corporate-political-spending> at Stanford Business.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>


“Election workers weren’t surprised by the Capitol riot. Trump’s supporters targeted them first.”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120731>
Posted on February 3, 2021 8:04 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120731> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Jane Timm<https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/election-workers-weren-t-surprised-capitol-riot-trump-s-supporters-n1256535> for NBC News.
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Posted in chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>


“Trump doubles down on false election claim in impeachment response”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120729>
Posted on February 2, 2021 8:12 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120729> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Politico:<https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/02/house-impeachment-brief-trump-responsible-capitol-attack-464930>

Trump’s legal team filed its first official response to the House’s impeachment charge later Tuesday, denying that the former president sought to subvert the election results and incited the violence at the Capitol. The submission foreshadowed Trump’s legal strategy for the trial, which begins next Tuesday but is not expected to last as long as last year’s three-week trial.

Trump’s lawyers, Bruce Castor and David Schoen, also advanced the former president’s false claims that the election results were “suspect,” asserting that Trump has a First Amendment right to express that view.

“Insufficient evidence exists upon which a reasonable jurist could conclude that the 45th president’s statements were accurate or not, and he therefore denies they were false,” Castor and Schoen wrote, adding that Trump “denies” it is false to say he won the election “in a landslide.”

Castor and Schoen only joined Trump’s legal team in the last few days, after the initial defense attorneys pulled out over disagreements about whether to buttress Trump’s false claims about the election. Even some of Trump’s allies are warning the legal team against leaning into Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations as part of the defense strategy.

“If they start trying to prove that Georgia and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were stolen, that’s when you’re going to lose everybody,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said. “That’s when most of us will be ready to move on.”

The 14-page brief <https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/16bdafa3-e0b8-4353-b541-0e7409ebad89/note/45a27d31-ddb9-443c-974b-decedb2e8254.#page=1> begins with a typo misspelling “United States Senate” on the first page.
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Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>


“Why the G.O.P. Argument Against Trying Trump Is So Dangerous”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120727>
Posted on February 2, 2021 8:05 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120727> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Bob Bauer NYT oped<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/opinion/trump-impeachment-republicans.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage>:

So less than a month after the events of Jan. 6, the impeachment process might be foundering on the remarkable claim — one that some senators seem to have adopted disingenuously so that they can avoid a defense of Mr. Trump’s action and pose instead as guardians of the Constitution. It is the claim that a president can escape the consequences of egregious, impeachable conduct, and in particular disqualification from future office, so long as the Senate runs out of time to try the case before the end of his term.

This Republican argument wholly misconstrues the text, history and structure of the Constitution’s impeachment clause. It is a mistake to minimize impeachment’s broader objectives by suggesting that removal from office was somehow its only or primary function.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“The Peril and Promise of Redistricting Reform in H.R. 1”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120725>
Posted on February 2, 2021 7:44 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120725> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Mike Parsons<https://blog.harvardlawreview.org/the-peril-and-promise-of-redistricting-reform-in-h-r-1/> for the Harvard Law Review Blog.
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Posted in redistricting<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>


Attorney Lin Wood, Who Has Posited Bonkers Conspiracy Theories About the 2020 Election, May Have Voted Illegally in Georgia While Being a South Carolina Resident<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120723>
Posted on February 2, 2021 4:07 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120723> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Wow again<https://www.wsbtv.com/news/politics/exclusive-attorney-lin-wood-under-investigation-over-whether-he-voted-illegally-november-officials-say/FIMPMEJHFFFBBA66O5P5QEY25E/>.
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Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>


Just Watch This<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120721>
Posted on February 2, 2021 4:04 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120721> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

wow<https://twitter.com/JasonSCampbell/status/1356719881564086272?s=20>
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Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>


More on Small Donors: “Hawley rakes in grassroots cash after Capitol attack”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120718>
Posted on February 2, 2021 10:10 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=120718> by Richard Pildes<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=7>

From Axios<https://www.axios.com/hawley-grassroots-cash-capitol-attack-5bff7ed5-b15a-48dc-a6cf-d5c9418a5687.html>:

January was Sen. Josh Hawley’s best fundraising month—by far—since his 2018 election, with a flood of small-dollar donations more than eclipsing the corporate cash he lost after leading an effort to block certification of President Biden’s Electoral College win.

Why it matters: Corporate PACs cut ties with the Missouri Republican after the Capitol insurrection that followed the Hawley-led gambit. But his grassroots fundraising bonanza in the weeks after shows the GOP base still firmly in Hawley’s camp.

What’s new: According to a memo released by Hawley’s campaign<https://joshhawley.com/recent-missouri-statewide-survey-fundraising-data/> on Monday, his political operation brought in $969,000 in January.

That’s more than Hawley’s campaign has raised in any single month since October 2018, just before he was elected to the Senate.

The average donation in January was $52, with contributions from roughly 12,000 new donors, according to the campaign. It now has roughly $2.1 million cash on hand.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>



--
Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
Irvine, CA 92697-8000
949.824.3072 - office
rhasen at law.uci.edu<mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu>
http://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/
http://electionlawblog.org<http://electionlawblog.org/>



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