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sabra's JournalArizona legislature shuts down after Giuliani tests positive for coronavirus
Source: The Hill
The two chambers of the Arizona state legislature will suspend their work this week after former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani tested positive for the coronavirus less than a week after spending hours testifying in front of Republican legislators in a futile bid to overturn the state’s election results.
Spokespeople for the state House and Senate confirmed to The Hill Sunday that the two chambers would cancel their planned meetings this week because of concerns over the spread of the coronavirus.
President Trump tweeted that Giuliani tested positive for the virus Sunday, and reports said he is receiving treatment at a Washington-area hospital.
Giuliani, Trump’s lead legal strategist in a series of cases the president has lost in court, has traveled to several states in recent days to testify — not under oath — about alleged election irregularities for which he has not offered evidence.
Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/528990-arizona-legislature-shuts-down-after-giuliani-tests-positive
Attorney General Barr considering leaving post before Trump exits office, source says
Source: CNN
(CNN)Attorney General William Barr is considering leaving his post before January 20, the day President Donald Trump leaves office, a source with knowledge of the matter confirmed to CNN.
The source confirmed that Barr is not happy with Trump, writing that Barr "is not someone who takes bullying and turns the other cheek!"
"He has not made a final decision," the source said.
The New York Times was first to report on Barr's thinking. CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/06/politics/william-barr-considering-leaving-office/index.html?utm_term=image&utm_source=twCNNp&utm_content=2020-12-07T01%3A41%3A02&utm_medium=social
Biden's already more popular than Trump's ever been (Gallup Poll)
Source: CNN
(CNN)Poll of the week: A new Gallup poll finds that President-elect Joe Biden has a 55% favorable rating and a 41% unfavorable rating.
The same poll gives President Donald Trump a 42% favorable rating and a 57% unfavorable rating.
What's the point: The 2020 election was, like almost every election involving an incumbent, mostly about voters' feelings toward said incumbent. Not enough attention, however, has been paid to the fact that the challenger was a fairly popular guy. He did not allow Trump to make this election a choice of the lesser of two evils.
Indeed, Biden is more popular than Trump has been at any point since he started running for president in June 2015.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/06/politics/biden-trump-popularity-analysis/index.html
Georgia GOP voting manager says threats against election official led to unloading on Trump
Source: MSN/The Hill
A top Republican elections official in Georgia said Sunday that threats against another official led to his unloading on President Trump during a press conference last week.
Georgia voting systems manager Gabriel Sterling told NBC News's "Meet the Press" that he was informed of threats against a contractor in Gwinnett County that sparked his fiery remarks directed at the president during the press briefing.
"What for lack of a better word set me off on Tuesday was about an hour before or an hour and a half before a previously scheduled news conference, I got a call from the project manager from Dominion Voting Systems out of Colorado who was telling me in a very audibly shaken voice that one of their contractors had received some threats in Gwinnett County," said Sterling, who voted for Trump in the election.
"When I was going through the Twitter feed on it, and I saw it basically had the young man's name, which was a very unique name, so they tracked down his family and started harassing them," he added.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/georgia-gop-voting-manager-says-threats-against-election-official-led-to-unloading-on-trump/ar-BB1bGpr5?ocid=ob-tw-enus-677
Trump demands names of the congressional Republicans who said they recognize Biden as winner
Source: The Hill
Trump demands names of the congressional Republicans who said they recognize Biden as winner
President Trump on Saturday demanded to know who the congressional Republicans were who acknowledged President-elect Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election.
The president was referring to a survey from The Washington Post that found that only 25 Congressional Republicans acknowledged Biden’s victory.
"25, wow! I am surprised there are so many. We have just begun to fight. Please send me a list of the 25 RINOS. I read the Fake News Washington Post as little as possible!" Trump tweeted on Saturday, referring to "Republicans in name only."
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The president continues to promote claims, without evidence, that the election was rife with voter fraud. However, Trump is growing isolated in his claims, and he has targeted Republicans who break from him.
Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/528899-trump-demands-names-of-the-congressional-republicans-who-said-they
Kellyanne Conway acknowledges Biden as apparent winner
Source: The Hill
Kellyanne Conway, former adviser and White House counselor to President Trump, acknowledged Joe Biden as the apparent winner of the presidential race in an interview that aired Friday.
“If you look at the vote totals in the Electoral College tally, it looks like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will prevail,” Conway said in an interview with The 19th. “I assume the electors will certify that and it will be official. We, as a nation, will move forward, because we always do."
Conway, Trump’s former 2016 campaign manager, acknowledged that the president is continuing to “exhaust all of his legal avenues” to challenge the results and said it was his right to do so.
But she also emphasized the need to have a peaceful transition of power, noting the General Services Administration’s decision last week to recognize Biden as the winner so that the transition could formally begin. Trump signaled his own approval of the move last week and also signed off on Biden receiving the President’s Daily Brief, a classified intelligence report delivered to the president on a daily basis.
Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/528800-kellyanne-conway-acknowledges-biden-as-apparent-winner
TikTok Sale Deadline on Hold as Talks With U.S. Continue
Source: Bloomberg
A deadline set by the Trump administration for the forced sale of TikTok’s U.S. assets will come and go Friday without a final deal, according to people familiar with the discussions.
While the deadline has been extended multiple times, TikTok isn’t expected to receive a new one, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the decision isn’t yet public. TikTok is still in talks with the U.S. government about a sale that satisfies the administration’s national security concerns, but Friday’s deadline will be allowed to lapse while the discussions continue.
The U.S. Treasury Department told TikTok and Chinese parent company ByteDance Ltd. that they won’t face a fine or other punishment for missing the deadline because the sides are still negotiating. The deal, which has been in the works for months, is close to being finished, and the administration is eager to complete it before President-elect Joe Biden takes office on Jan. 20, according to one of the people.
The White House declined to comment.
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-05/tiktok-sale-deadline-is-put-on-hold-as-talks-with-u-s-continue?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic
Fulton County Board of Elections addresses State Farm Arena video
Source: 11alive
9:20 a.m. | Here's what Fulton County Elections Director Rick Barron had to say about the surveillance video from State Farm Arena that has become a major point of contention among those who believe there was fraud in Georgia's election process:
"I'll just address the timeline of that evening - the staff at State Farm that evening, they began letting certain people go, no announcement was ever made to leave, for anyone to leave. Certain staff that were on the cutting stations, that were on the flattening stations, that were extracting from the inner envelopes, those staff left as work completed. I found out sometime, I think a little after10:30, that they were gonna cease operations and I told them not to do that... at about 11:15 they were fully scanning again, and once they were scanning Carter Jones, the State Election Board monitor, he told me 11:42 or 11:52 that he arrived. There were media in the room, external affairs representative there until approximately 11:15. The Secretary of States investigator arrived at 12:15, and they scanned until all the ballots they had available to scan were complete and then cleaned up the room.
"What the video shows is that they have pulled out plastic bins from underneath the desks, those are bins that they keep under their desks near the scanners. They will cut those seals that are on those, open those up and pull the ballots out.
"They were still in the process of cleaning so they hadn't sealed those ballot boxes up, so they were able to just start right back up, normal processing that occurred there.
Read more: https://www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/elections/georgia-recount-results-live-blog-dec-3/85-a4209de7-4213-4fe8-96be-37d7a2aa7676
https://twitter.com/BrendanKeefe/status/1334872971240935424
https://twitter.com/revrrlewis/status/1334851596912635906
Postal Service Delays Disenfranchised Thousands of Legally-Cast Ballots This Fall
Source: NBC Washington
US Postal Service workers likely delivered more than 99.9% of the nation’s mail ballots in-time to be counted this year, despite record participation and unprecedented pandemic-related challenges. However, it also appears the USPS disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters – who mailed legally-cast ballots the week before the election - through substandard performance.
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NBCLX analyzed election records - as well as postal records obtained through federal court filings - to find out how many ballots, cast the week before the election, were ultimately rejected.
Because each state collects ballot statistics differently, it’s impossible to know exactly how many ballots arrived after state deadlines or how many of those were due to USPS delays. But records indicate the figure is likely no more than a few thousand votes in any given state – not enough to change the results of a single battleground in 2020.
“All of us, I think, stopped a true disaster from happening,” said Remy Green, a New York attorney who sued President Trump, Postmaster DeJoy, and the USPS over delays this summer. “This could have been so much worse.”
Read more: https://www.nbcwashington.com/lx/postal-service-delays-disenfranchised-thousands-of-legally-cast-ballots-this-fall/2495351/?_osource=db_npd_nbc_wrc_twt_shr
Trump aide banned from Justice after trying to get case info
Source: AP
WASHINGTON (AP) — The official serving as President Donald Trump’s eyes and ears at the Justice Department has been banned from the building after trying to pressure staffers to give up sensitive information about election fraud and other matters she could relay to the White House, three people familiar with the matter tell The Associated Press.
Heidi Stirrup, an ally of top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, was quietly installed at the Justice Department as a White House liaison a few months ago. She was told within the last two weeks to vacate the building after top Justice officials learned of her efforts to collect insider information about ongoing cases and the department’s work on election fraud, the people said.
Stirrup is accused of approaching staffers in the department demanding they give her information about investigations, including election fraud matters, the people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.
The effort came as Trump continues to level baseless claims that he won the election and alleges without evidence that massive voting fraud was responsible for his defeat to President-elect Joe Biden.
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-politics-elections-7624560e990ec55383a2a3e421c3a52e
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