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ATLANTA – Georgia, perhaps more than any other state in the country, continues to be haunted by some sort of zombie campaign to produce a Trump victory, a month after election day.
Although Gov. Brian Kemp has already certified President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the state, his fellow Republicans plan to hold two state Senate committee hearings on Thursday that are likely to deepen the issue of Whether the state election was, as President Trump wrongly put it, “rigged.”
Mr. Trump will soon be presenting his case in person. The president, who berated Mr. Kemp and other local Republicans for failing to undo Mr. Biden’s victory, will hold a rally on behalf of outgoing Republican senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, in Valdosta on Saturday before a double second round in January. which will determine the balance of power in the upper chamber.
On Thursday, Democrats announced that former President Barack Obama would host a virtual rally Friday for Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, Ms Loeffler and Mr Perdue’s Democratic challengers. Mr Obama will be joined by Stacey Abrams, the former Georgian lawmaker and gubernatorial candidate who has championed the right to vote in the state.
Many Republicans in the state continue to go to great lengths – and twist into political pretzels – to curb the president’s outrage over his loss of the state, in hopes of showing his supporters that they are doing all they can to uproot. any hint of fraud to substantiate Mr. Trump’s baseless claims.
For some Republicans, the most pressing concern is that the president’s continued efforts to undermine confidence in the electoral process will reduce Tory participation in the all-important Jan.5 second-round races for the seats.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, due for re-election in 2022, is one of many prominent Georgian Republicans who bend their actions to two competing imperatives: upholding the integrity of their state’s election while trying to survive the strange and the evolution. political weather systems generated by the mercurial Mr. Trump.
The president may well spring from conspiracy theories and acrimony – he has publicly attacked Mr. Raffensperger and Mr. Kemp for failing to comply with his wishes – but he is also the most popular figure in the Republican Party.
Mr Raffensperger, 65, most likely concerned about his future in politics, tried to survive Mr Trump’s onslaught by mixing repelling and staying in line.
On Wednesday, even as Mr. Raffensperger said Mr. Trump lost, he made it clear that he was still a Trump man at heart: “We wish our guy won the election,” he said. he said, “But it doesn’t. It doesn’t look like our guy won the election.
Mr Kemp, who is also due for re-election in 2022, has followed a similar strategy. In a tweet on Monday, Mr. Trump called Mr. Kemp “unhappy” and urged him to intervene in the election. On the same day, Mr. Kemp’s campaign sent an email stating that Republicans in Georgia “must unite as a party to advance President Trump’s bold and conservative agenda.”
With President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. rolling out a regular list of top jobs picks and Congress working to pass a compromise stimulus package, much of Washington appears to be moving away from the electoral theaters that unfolded during much of the past month.
Even President Trump, while questioning the results through the remaining reduction channels, also appears to be at least considering the next steps.
He made it clear that he remained deeply committed to the fight against the election result, releasing a recorded 46-minute screed on Wednesday in which he spoke angrily and complained about a “rigged” vote. It came about the day after his own attorney general, William P. Barr, said that despite investigations by the Department of Justice and the FBI, “to date we have not seen scale that could have had a different result in the election. “
Still, Mr Trump has signaled that he may consider becoming the second president in U.S. history to win another term following his defeat. He also discussed steps he could take to self-isolate ahead of the 2024 presidential election, such as preventative pardons for family members before leaving office.
It remains to be seen how serious he is. Many allies believe the president’s speech on another race in 2024, when he turns 78, is more about maintaining relevance, allowing him to raise funds, assuage his injured pride, and try to make a living. get rid of the loser tag.
But even if it’s just for the show, Mr. Trump’s speech on a 2024 campaign has already frozen the Republican field and could delay the emergence of a new generation of leaders while keeping the party attached to a figure. politically polarizing for months or years.
Senator David Perdue, the Republican of Georgia facing a run-off election that could determine Senate control, completed 2,596 stock transactions in a single term, including, at times, 20 or more transactions in a single day.
The number of transactions far exceeded that of his colleagues in the Senate, according to a Times analysis. And the timing of some of them has raised questions about conflicts of interest, drawing attention to the senator’s investment portfolio just weeks before a very important run-off.
The Justice Department had investigated the senator for possible insider trading in the sale of more than $ 1 million in stock in financial analysis firm Cardlytics. In the end, prosecutors refused to press charges.
The Times analyzed data compiled by the Senate Stock Watcher, a non-partisan website that aggregates publicly available information about lawmakers’ trading. Mr Perdue’s deals – mostly in stocks, but also bonds and funds – have accounted for nearly a third of all Senators’ transactions reported in the past six years.
The data also shows the extent of transactions made by Mr. Perdue in companies that could profit from policy and spending issues that are not only referred to the Senate as a whole, but also to the committees and subcommittees to which he served. seat.
As a member of the Senate Cyber Security subcommittee, Mr. Perdue cited a chilling report on overseas hackers who pose a threat to U.S. computer networks. The report was produced by a California company called FireEye, a federal entrepreneur with stock that Mr. Perdue has bought and sold 61 times since 2016. At one point, he owned up to $ 250,000 in company stock. .
Ivanka Trump testified in a closed-door deposition on Tuesday in a lawsuit filed in January by the District of Columbia attorney general, saying President Trump’s inaugural committee overpaid the Trump International Hotel in 2017.
The deposition is part of a series now underway after Attorney General Karl A. Racine of Washington, a Democrat, succeeded in pushing back a September effort by lawyers on the Trump inauguration committee and the Trump organization to close the case, which was pending in federal court in Washington.
Others filed to date include Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a major donor to Mr. Trump and chairman of the inaugural committee, and Mickael Damelincourt, general manager of Trump International Hotel in Washington.
The lawsuit claims Ms Trump was told before the inauguration in January 2017 that the initial amount the hotel intended to charge the nonprofit groundbreaking committee – $ 450,000 per day – was considered too high .
Mr Damelincourt then lowered the proposed fee to $ 175,000 per day for the rental of the hotel’s presidential ballroom, but documents suggest it was even more than some staff thought reasonable.
Mr. Racine’s lawsuit says that even with this lower price, the inaugural committee “violated district law by operating a non-profit organization to engage in personal transactions.” No details of the deposition were released. Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former Trump family aide who helped organize the inauguration, is expected to file her statement next week.
The lawsuit brought by Mr. Racine is a civil matter. It is separate from an investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, who investigated the inaugural donors, who raised and spent at least twice as much as its predecessors, a total of more than $ 107 million. dollars.
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