The Big Lie is dying, and dying badly. This stage of the testimony is apparently coming from Trump associates. It’s lethal. The Jan 6 committee is now reciting a litany of alleged acts by the Trump administration following the electoral defeat in 2020. The sheer scale and scope of the allegations are extraordinary.
There was supposedly a plan to appoint a new Attorney General. The new AG would say there was voter fraud and send Republican electors to the Electoral College to overturn the election through state electoral college votes.
More extraordinary is the vast amount of money that allegedly came from donors to fund an “electoral defense fund”. Some donors were supposedly receiving 25 emails a day soliciting donations. There was no such fund, according to the committee. That’s simple fraud, if true. It also puts the fundraising actions into the criminal category under Federal law.
…So where did the money go?
It’s an odd coincidence that money has to go somewhere after it’s transferred to someone else. There are a lot of people in this mix. Trump, Trump-related organizations, and Trump associates are the obvious likely recipients, but who got what?
Hundreds of millions of dollars don’t just go nowhere. There will be copious financial records of transfers and transactions, to start with. There will also be third-party records through service providers. These transactions can be proven to have occurred. Expect a lot of flying feathers when the beneficiaries of these donations are outed.
One of the more interesting new bits of information is that a large part of Trump’s inner circle threatened to resign en masse if the electoral fraud proceeded. Trump supposedly dropped that option, yet also allegedly went ahead with the “get me some votes from Georgia” allegations?
Also, the Stop the Steal campaign has continued, noisily, for years afterward. As a PR exercise, it’s been wallowing among the QAnon fringe and other groups as well as Trump’s support base. It’s not anything like as big an attention-getter these days. The world has moved on, but it seems Trump hasn’t.
The New York Times couldn’t resist a perfectly fair jibe at what Trump officials are saying now compared to their statements at the time. It’s a grab bag of anecdotes, but it’s also a far cry from any sort of dignity in American government.
The end
The long, crass, excruciating Trump saga is a long bottomless pit of similar turgid issues. Anything he does seems to turn into a court case. He could call himself a professional litigant given the sheer number of legal cases he’s raised alone. From the decade-long chase after his tax returns to porn stars to “grabbing them” to his high turnover of appointees, it’s all been pretty much the same – Tacky at best.
Many analysts have disputed just about any number Trump has ever cited on any subject. When it comes to counting votes real or imaginary, that’s hardly an asset. Nobody ever bought the electoral fraud claim, because it simply didn’t happen.
True to type, Trump has now landed himself in very serious trouble if any of these allegations are true. Given that these allegations are coming from his own people, it’s game over.
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
