The resounding 306 electoral votes Donald Trump earned on Election Day and Hillary Clinton’s concession speech seem a distant memory now as the Democratic Party nominee, President Obama and others employ various measures to keep Trump out of the Oval Office or at least delegitimize his presidency.
Now, another 19 members of the Electoral College, who are scheduled to vote next week to formalize Trump’s 2016 election victory, joined an original group of 10 electors Tuesday in demanding “information on the allegations that Russia was working on behalf of Donald Trump.”
And one member of Congress has come out with new demands that electors reject Trump “even though he conceded … that the Republican won the election ‘fair and square.'”
In Colorado, two Hillary Clinton electors are suing to be granted permission to reject the voters’ wishes (another Clinton presidency) so they can vote for a different Republican, not Trump, inviting a contemptuous response from the state attorney general.
In a filing submitted to the court, Attorney General Cynthia Coffman, a Republican, said: “This court should not countenance plaintiffs’ attempt to dismantle the Electoral College from within. It should reject as an affront to this nation’s model of democracy this effort to disenfranchise millions of Coloradans by usurping their collective choice of candidates and replacing it with plaintifff’s own personal opinions about who is fit for the office of president.
“Holding otherwise would cause chaos.”
But chaos apparently is the point of the case brought by Democrat electors Polly Baca and Robert Nemanich.
Politico said they’re “hoping that a legal win undermines similar laws in 28 other states, including several in which Republican presidential electors have expressed skepticism about Trump’s candidacy.”
“Without those laws on the books, they argue, more Republican electors might be willing to defect from Trump and support an alternative candidate.”
The 10 Electoral College members, according to the New York Post, are being organized by Christine Pelosi, the daughter of Trump arch-critic Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader.
The 10 wrote to the director of National Intelligence insisting they be told before they vote about “allegations that Russia was working on behalf of Donald Trump.”
“The electors require to know from the intelligence community whether there are ongoing investigations into ties between Donald Trump, his campaign or associates, and Russian government interference in the election, the scope of those investigations, how far those investigations may have reached, and who was involved in those investigations.”
They continue, “We further require a briefing on all investigative findings, as these matters directly impact the core factors in our deliberations of whether Mr. Trump is fit to serve as president of the United States.”
What do YOU think? What’s behind this Russia election hack claim? Sound off in today’s WND poll
Trump, busy interviewing and naming nominees for his administration in advance of his inauguration on Jan. 20, responded only briefly to the controversy.
“Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card. It would be called conspiracy theory!” he said on social media.
“Unless you catch ‘hackers’ in the act, it is very hard to determine who was doing the hacking. Why wasn’t this brought up before the election?”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., broke with Trump over Russia on Monday, saying he supports a congressional investigation into claims Russian hackers tried to influence the election.
“Let me just speak for myself: The Russians are not our friends,” McConnell told reporters at a Monday morning news conference.
“I think we ought to approach all of these issues on the assumption the Russians do not wish us well,” he said.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., parroted McConnell.
“Any foreign intervention in our elections is entirely unacceptable,” Ryan said in a statement. “And any intervention by Russia is especially problematic because, under President Putin, Russia has been an aggressor that consistently undermines American interests.”
In fact, after Obama ordered a “full report” on claims of Russian tampering, it was the CIA that escalated the claims of election interference, a strategy that the U.S. intelligence community routinely uses in elections in other nations.
The CIA, which is headed by John Brennan, said Russia “quite” clearly meddled but offered no details.
Brennan participated in a meeting with Muslim law students facilitated by the Islamic Society of North America, a group designated as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terror-financing cast in U.S. history. He has declared himself a “citizen of the world” and insists the U.S. government should never engage in “profiling” in pursuit of national security. He also defined “jihad” as an act “to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal” and said it should not be used to describe the activities of terrorists. He also defended the terror group Hezbollah as “members of parliament, in the cabinet; there are lawyers, doctors, others who are part of the Hezbollah organization.”
But the FBI, Zerohedge reported, “isn’t buying the ‘fuzzy and ambiguous” assertions from the CIA.
And BizPacReview said, “The FBI did not corroborate the CIA’s claim that Russian had a hand in the election of President-elect Donald Trump.”
“A senior FBI counterintelligence official met with Republican and Democrat members of the house Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in order to give the bureau’s view of a recent CIA report. The official did not concur with the CIA, frustrating Democrats,” the report said.
BizPacReview continued, “The different conclusions reached by the two intelligence agencies is a reflection of their different institutional styles. CIA officials often use past behavior and analysis based on gathered intelligence to advise leaders, whereas the FBI comes from a more legalistic background which relies on hard evidence to make a case.”
It was Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., who conceded Trump won “fair and square.”
But he also wasn’t able to let it go.
“We’re 5 wks from Inauguration & the President Elect is completely unhinged,” he blasted out on his social media connections. “The electoral college must do what it was designed for.”
Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, sided with the FBI, BPR said.
“There is no clear evidence – even now. There’s a lot of innuendo, lots of circumstantial evidence, that’s it,” he said.
On social media, conservative talk-radio host and columnist Ben Shapiro reminded Democrats that “3 times the Democrats were fine with Russians intervening in American elections.”
And he referenced a Daily Wire report that cited Obama in March 2012 being caught on a live microphone telling Russian President Dmitri Medvedev: “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.”
The report noted Ted Kennedy also asked Russia to intervene against President Reagan. And there was a move to help Kennedy against Nixon in the 1960s.
But the talking points continued. Even on Monday, the White House was claiming “Trump was the beneficiary of Russian meddling.”
This, a CNN report explained, was because “it was the president-elect who praised Vladimir Putin on the campaign trail.”
“The emails that had been hacked and leaked by the Russians, these were emails from the (Democratic National Committee) and John Podesta, not from the (Republican National Committee) and Stephen Bannon,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said.
The emails, however, came from WikiLeaks, which has denied that they were obtained from or through Russians.
Earlier, Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., said the Electoral College should consider claims of Russian interference in a race his party’s candidate lost by a significant margin.
Jones was dropped from the Obama administration several years ago over his radical past.
The Democratic campaign to refuse to recognize the 2016 election will of America has included threats to the electors.
Radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh cited the “threats, these emails, these phone calls, this intimidation effort” and wondered why they weren’t being investigated.
Limbaugh said: “This is a sleazebag effort if there ever was one. These are the kind of people that need to be pounded into the ground. They need to be defeated to the point that they’re demoralized and don’t ever try this again. I’m thinking sign surrender papers on the deck of the USS Missouri.”
The Electoral College is set to vote Dec. 19 to make Trump’s presidential victory official, but as WND reported, many of the electors are being bombarded with “dozens and dozens of death threats” from Hillary Clinton supporters urging them to switch their votes to Clinton.
That was at a time when Politico reported: “Anti-Trump forces are preparing an unprecedented assault on the Electoral College, marked by a wave of lawsuits and an intensive lobbying effort aimed at persuading 37 Republican electors to vote for a candidate other than Donald Trump.”
Watch Michael Banerian, one of Michigan’s 16 electors, talk about the threats he has received on his life if he doesn’t switch his vote from Trump to Clinton:
[jwplayer IL4OK4Gv]
The exact benefit to Russia to having Trump in the White House has not yet been explained, either.
In fact, one of the most influential and highly quoted Russian intellectuals, professor Valery Solovei, says Russian officials will have to face an abrupt new reality on Jan. 20 when Trump is inaugurated.
In a report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, he said: “Trump is not Obama. In the foreign policy domain, the Obama administration was the weakest postwar American administration. Trump cannot allow himself such weakness. Therefore, though the situation opens some new possibilities before us, it carries much larger risks.
“The new American administration will react from a position of strength, and we can never win in this competition. The Soviet Union had lost it, and Russia is much weaker than the Soviet Union. Our (Russia vs. U.S.) potentials are grossly disproportionate, have no illusions about it.”
What do YOU think? What’s behind this Russia election hack claim? Sound off in today’s WND poll
