The Benefits and Pitfalls of Having Former FEC Commissioner Don McGahn as Your Campaign Lawyer

Of all the posts I’ve written about Roger Stone, I’m only aware of two that he responded to directly. One was this post from September 5, laying out how stupid Stone was for using Jerome Corsi’s August 31 report as a cover story for his August 21 “time in the barrel” tweet. We now know that the very next day, Jerome Corsi would tell material lies to Mueller’s team in an attempt to sustain a cover story that started with that August 31 report. Indeed, we also know that 16 days after I wrote that post, Corsi would testify to the grand jury that the August 31 report was written entirely to offer cover for that August 21 tweet (and, I suspect, Stone’s August 15 one).

Perhaps before this is over I’ll get the opportunity to play poker with Roger Stone.

The other post Stone reacted against — and he reacted even more aggressively — was this post focusing on Don McGahn’s history of helping Trump’s people get out of campaign finance pickles.

To be fair to rat-fucker Roger, the post actually laid out how Don McGahn has been covering for Trump’s campaign finance problems for seven years, not just Roger’s.

Of significant import, that history started in the follow-up to events from 2011, when Trump’s then-fixer, a guy named Michael Cohen, set up a presidential exploratory committee using Trump Organization funds. Democrats on the FEC believed that violated campaign finance law, but a guy named Don McGahn weighed in to say that FEC couldn’t use public reporting to assess complaints.

During McGahn’s FEC tenure, one of those he helped save from enforcement action was Trump himself. In 2011, when the future president-elect was engaged in a high-profile process of considering whether to enter the 2012 race for the Republican presidential nomination, Trump was formally accused in an FEC complaint of violating agency regulations. The case was dismissed on a deadlocked vote of the FEC commissioners.

A four-page complaint filed by Shawn Thompson of Tampa, Fla., accused Trump of illegally funneling corporate money from his Trump Organization into an organization called ShouldTrumpRun.com. McGahn and fellow FEC Republicans Caroline Hunter and Matthew Petersen voted to block FEC staff recommendations that Trump be investigated in the matter—designated Matter Under Review (MUR) 6462.

Ultimately, Trump opted not to run for president in 2012. Nonetheless, FEC staff attorneys concluded his activities before that decision may have violated campaign finance rules regarding money raised to “test the waters” for a candidacy. A staff report from the FEC Office of General Counsel, based largely on news articles and other documents about Trump’s flirtation with running for president—including Trump’s own quoted statements— recommended that the commissioners authorize a full FEC investigation backed by subpoena power.

FEC Democrats voted to pursue the recommended probe, but the votes of McGahn and the other FEC Republicans precluded the required four-vote majority needed for the commission to act.

McGahn and Hunter issued a “ statement of reasons” explaining their votes in the Trump matter in 2013. The 11-page statement blasted FEC staff attorneys in the Office of General Counsel for reviewing volumes of published information regarding Trump’s potential 2012 candidacy in order to determine whether to recommend that the FEC commissioners vote to authorize a full investigation. McGahn and Hunter argued that the FEC counsel’s office was prohibited from examining information other than what was contained in the formal complaint submitted in the case.

The Office of General Counsel shouldn’t be allowed to pursue an “unwritten, standardless process whereby OGC can review whatever articles and other documents not contained in the complaint that they wish, and send whatever they wish to the respondent for comment,” the Republican commissioners wrote.

In the context of rat-fucking Roger, in 2016, McGahn succeeded in getting a bunch of Democrats’ lawsuits against Stone’s voter suppression efforts in swing states thrown out.

But the history these sleazeballs all share is relevant for a reason explicitly raised in the SDNY Cohen filing last night. In the middle of the most shrill passage in the entire shrill filing (one that also uses language that might be more appropriate in — and is likely to eventually show up in — a ConFraudUs charge), SDNY notes that Cohen can’t play dumb about campaign finance law because of his 2011 run-in with the law.

Cohen’s commission of two campaign finance crimes on the eve of the 2016 election for President of the United States struck a blow to one of the core goals of the federal campaign finance laws: transparency. While many Americans who desired a particular outcome to the election knocked on doors, toiled at phone banks, or found any number of other legal ways to make their voices heard, Cohen sought to influence the election from the shadows. He did so by orchestrating secret and illegal payments to silence two women who otherwise would have made public their alleged extramarital affairs with Individual-1. In the process, Cohen deceived the voting public by hiding alleged facts that he believed would have had a substantial effect on the election.

It is this type of harm that Congress sought to prevent when it imposed limits on individual contributions to candidates. To promote transparency and prevent wealthy individuals like Cohen from circumventing these limits, Congress prohibited individuals from making expenditures on behalf of and coordinated with candidates. Cohen clouded a process that Congress has painstakingly sought to keep transparent. The sentence imposed should reflect the seriousness of Cohen’s brazen violations of the election laws and attempt to counter the public cynicism that may arise when individuals like Cohen act as if the political process belongs to the rich and powerful.

Cohen’s submission suggests that this was but a brief error in judgment. Not so. Cohen knew exactly where the line was, and he chose deliberately and repeatedly to cross it. Indeed, he was a licensed attorney with significant political experience and a history of campaign donations, and who was well-aware of the election laws. 11 In fact, Cohen publicly and privately took credit for Individual-1’s political success, claiming – in a conversation that he secretly recorded – that he “started the whole thing . . . started the whole campaign” in 2012 when Individual-1 expressed an interest in running for President. Moreover, not only was Cohen well aware of what he was doing, but he used sophisticated tactics to conceal his misconduct.

11 Cohen was previously the subject of an FEC complaint for making unlawful contributions to Donald Trump’s nascent campaign for the 2012 presidency. The complaint was dismissed for jurisdictional reasons, but it certainly put Cohen on notice of the applicable campaign finance regulations. See In the Matter of Donald J. Trump, Michael Cohen, et al., MUR 6462 (Sept. 18, 2013). [my emphasis]

To the extent that Cohen and his sole client, Individual-1, committed campaign finance crimes in 2016 — especially the corporate funding of campaign activities — they can’t claim to be ignorant, because they only narrowly avoided proceedings on precisely this point in 2013.

That’s all the more true given that that very same FEC commissioner was their campaign lawyer.

Now, any discussion about Cohen’s knowledge of campaign finance law in this instance is one thing if you’re talking whether SDNY will charge Trump and his company with conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws because Cohen bought off several women. But then there’s the matter of SuperPACs that illegally coordinated with Trump Org, and other dark money groups — including Stone’s — that coordinated with the campaign. Given that the donation Manafort lied about to Mueller is reportedly from Tom Barrack’s SuperPAC (along with his lies about whether he and Barrack met with Konstantin Kilimnik right after he got fired), that may be a campaign finance problem as well. Kilimnik partner Sam Patten has already pled guilty for using a straw donor to hide the foreign oligarchs ponying up to attend Trump’s inauguration, so that’s a second campaign finance guilty plea from people close to Trump and his aides, in addition to Cohen’s.

And all that’s before you get to the big one, Russia’s direct assistance to the campaign as part of a quid pro quo, and the stakes of whether any of the players can be said to know campaign finance law go up.

In short, Trump’s campaign was a serial campaign finance disaster in 2016, even in spite of having former FEC commissioner Don McGahn at their legal helm. And even if they weren’t running these legal questions by McGahn, Individual-1 and his fixer, at least, were also (as the government has already now alleged) “on notice of the applicable campaign finance regulations.”

Remember: After meeting with prosecutors for 20 hours late last year, McGahn had something around another 10 quality hours with Mueller’s prosecutors. The assumption has always been that those interviews were exclusively about the cover-up (though this May AP story on Tom Barrack’s own questioning describes that, “Investigators have for months been inquiring about the Trump campaign’s finances and compliance with federal election law,” and it doesn’t even include a single one of the crimes laid out here).

But it’s highly likely McGahn has given significant testimony about the (campaign finance) crime.

As I disclosed in July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post. 

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49 replies
  1. Alan says:

    Another thing working against Trump is his publicly stated attitude about campaign finance violations, something to the effect of no big deal, you just pay a fine and it goes away.  That attitude basically expresses that he knows what the law is but doesn’t care.

    • P J Evans says:

      It’s what he’s been doing since he was young, and probably the only way he knows to run a “business”. (I doubt if he’s been honest since he was old enough to get into his parents’ wallets.)

    • Watson says:

      ‘you just pay a fine and it goes away’
       
      That cavalier attitude of the well-to-do was captured for me in the 2007 arrest of MLB pitcher Jake Peavy. He double-parked to drop off his bags at the Mobile Airport, and was told by airport police to move his car. Peavy, who earned over $100M in his career, refused, telling the cop, ‘Write me up a ticket and I’ll pay for it.’ The stand-off went on for a while, and Peavy ended up in the Mobile County Metro Jail before he was released on a $350 bond for disorderly conduct.

    • pseudonymous in nc says:

      Hence ConFraudUS, a prosecutorial approach that implies FARA and FEC violations are either ignored, blocked by ineffective enforcement structures or treated like the fines polluters pay as the cost of doing business.

      And the language of SDNY is, as EW says, totally ConFraudUS: “Cohen deceived the voting public.”

      • uppercut says:

        2018 RNC Finance crew: Wynn as Chairman, Broidy, and Cohen. What could go wrong?

        ….btw Trump has amassed nearly $100 million for his 2020 Make America Gag Again campaign.  Obama and Shrub had less than 3 million at this point in their terms.

  2. Jenny says:

    McGahn very shady while FEC commissioner.  Ethics violations?  Also very questionable considering he oversaw the selection process of Supreme Court nominees while in the WH of Gorsush and Kavanaugh.  All of these lawyers are in bed together with the Federalist Society.  Rather than “Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice.”  More like “Donald, Don, Leonard, Neil and Brett.”

  3. TheMoscowProject says:

    Comey said that counter intelligence investigation that began in summer 2016 identifies four Americans. Who are they? I can guess George P, Carter Page, and perhaps now we know that Manafort was the third.

    is there good reporting that shows who are these four Americans?

    • Peterr says:

      Given how Trump was warned by Sally Yates about Michael Flynn being compromised, I’d say the odds are high he’s one of those four.

      • emptywheel says:

        Yes. I believe that’s right: Pap, Page, Manafort, and Flynn. I’m actually genuinely curious when the one on Stone got opened, and whether it started as cI or something else.

  4. der says:

    My suspicion still is that Mitch McConnell is in there somewhere. In the way-back machine, olly, olly oxen free!

  5. orionATL says:

    hey, it’s soccer time – u.s. national professional men’s soccer championship. mercedes benz stadium, atlanta. 70,00 fans, chanting and singing  in the stands like it was england or germany. fox sports coverage. atlanta united vs portland timber.

    is this the year, finally? espero!

    • bmaz says:

      Thing is, McGahn is not a bad campaign lawyer. Not at all. Heck he was formerly head of the Federal Election Commission.

  6. Rusharuse says:

    Please explain . .

    “Mr. Giuliani was making statements that appeared to be based on his knowledge of workings inside the FBI New York,” Mr. Comey said. “And then my recollection is there were other stories that were in the same ballpark that gave me a general concern that we may have a leak problem—unauthorized disclosure problem out of New York, and so I asked that it be investigated.”

    Mr. Comey said he was fired from the Federal Bureau of Investigation before the outcome of the probe was complete, and the status of the investigation is unknown.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/comey-tells-house-panel-he-suspected-giuliani-was-leaking-fbi-information-to-media-1544322346

    • Trip says:

      I read that in the transcript. It seems to have died? Also, I thought any minute Trey Gowdy would short circuit and start bleep-boo-bloppin’ Benghazi until a flash of fire would shut him down. Talk about his life’s work.

    • greengiant says:

      The Weiner affair caused a lot of damage. McCabe jumped the shark responding to the WSJ. Interesting Comey point of view. Speculative theory is that GOP operatives ( or Alex Jones types) either spammed Prince and Guiliani or that Prince and Guiliani were part of the conspiracy. Sometimes the players believe what they are told instead of doing some research. The big boys always use multiple independent teams to confirm things. Because sometimes even solid sources can make mistakes.

  7. Naomi says:

    Please fill in a gap for me…

    “To the extent that Cohen and his sole client, Individual-1, committed campaign finance crimes in 2016…”

    Cohen was claiming several clients when the Taint Team came on duty…   did they determine Cohen had only one client?

    Would certainly see Marcy playing with some of Murdoch’s minions (Sean Hanity).

  8. Trip says:

    Trump name returns to marketing efforts for namesake riverfront skyscraper
    The president’s name was conspicuously absent from an earlier effort to market Trump Tower’s retail space
    .

    ..But a more recent brochure, published by A-R-C Real Estate, prominently features the Trump International Hotel & Tower name on its front page, imposed over a rendering of the building featuring a fully-occupied terrace space…Trump personally reported making more than $8 million last year off the building, the city’s second-tallest tower. His son Donald Jr. met with Downtown Alderman Brendan Reilly (42nd) over the summer to discuss potential retail tenants for the Riverwalk level of the tower, which has sat vacant since the 92-story building was completed in 2008.
    https://therealdeal.com/chicago/2018/12/08/trump-name-returns-to-marketing-efforts-for-namesake-riverfront-skyscraper/#new_tab

    Side Note reminder: Another Alderman, Edward Burke had his office raided on November 29th. His law firm acted as attorney for Trump Inc on property tax assessments. No word if that is related to the raid. But I guess the Trump brand isn’t considered precarious in Chicago now?

    I suppose you need the name to tip off the Saudis on where to park. /s

  9. orionATL says:

    “In the middle of the most shrill passage in the entire shrill filing (one that also uses language that might be more appropriate in — and is likely to eventually show up in — a ConFraudUs charge)”

    i understand it is just common journalistic parlance, but i really hate to see the adjective “shrill” used to belittle outrage at outrageous misbehavior, even with humor.

    i  feel strongly outraged at what cohen, and manafort, and perscale, and trump, and stone, and fox news, and the nytimes, et al put over on us in 2016. i don’t consider myself shrill at all, just expressing legitimate, common human emotions of disgust, contempt, distrust as i learn of their deceptive schemes that disguised reality and befuddled our political decision making.

  10. JPM says:

    What are the odds that a serial campaign finance violator, lifelong fraudster and serial bankrupt such as Trump legitimately took from his own pocket the $70 million that, according to his FEC filings, he contributed to his campaign?  Slim to none and slim just left town.  Trump couldn’t even raise a measly few hundred thousand to pay off ex mistresses.  The $70 million was probably mostly of foreign (Russian and Saudi) origin, laundered through the Trump organization and injected into the campaign as part of the conspiracy to defraud the US.

    That is most likely what the Russia probe will ultimately turn up.

  11. Eureka says:

    In the context of rat-fucking Roger, in 2016, McGahn succeeded in getting a bunch of Democrats’ lawsuits against Stone’s voter suppression efforts in swing states thrown out.

    A couple of their 2016 campaigns/ratfuckeries have been bothering me so strongly since reliving 2016 peri-midterms that I cannot let them go:  the Amish for Trump (started as Amish PAC) and the Stop The Steal Poll Watchers.  I see them as explanations/ploys to set expectations that they could win the rust belt/midwest/swing area, as cover stories for ‘legitimately’ winning PA (OH) MI WI, e.g., when they knew they had illegitimate RU help, especially from the stolen DNC analytics.  (While we don’t know where in the country- if even localized- such data pointed, I’ve personally focused on the value of the DNC analytics because I know they are damn good around these parts, and while of course as PA knowledge- and pov-biased as I am, all were shocked when PA went GOP for pres. for the first time since ’88.  Plus there are those shifted ad buys…And the Comey letter wiping out local memory of HRCs visits to tougher redder parts…but I digress-ish.)
     
    I have to insert a mid-preface that I am tired, don’t have all of my ‘reasons’ currently in mind, and am not sure of any evidentiary values latent in these things, and will probably have to add links and clean this up tomorrow.  Oh and I am a week behind on the news- and what a week to have been absent from class.
     
    First chronologically (as deployed for the general), the Amish for Trump.  This started as Amish PAC, unrelated to Trump, apparently as a support for Ben Carson.  Filed/registered April 2016.  Some early publicity (e.g. May 2016 Politico), but mainly a big PR push in PA, OH late summer 2016.  I had looked around at FEC and Open Secrets a little:  no PAC-to-PAC transfers; donors from other states but with local connections; one big/recurrent early donor got ~two-thirds vs three-quarters of his money back in donations from the PAC in the same cycle (same person also got money from Raytheon).  I really don’t know what to look for, not my area of expertise, probably all on the up and up, etc.  Though I don’t get how they can say they are not for any specific party or candidate yet clearly be pro-GOP and at the time of billboarding expenditures be for Trump.  Treasurer by the name of Swindle, lol.
     
    What was more interesting was that they were planning on getting relatively few votes out of this, based on D-vs-R registration-drive differences (regardless of how many they actually got, which I still don’t know).  The public face of the PAC doing all the publicity was citing- hyping- even a 400 vote gain in PA as making a potentially huge difference, say sparing Trump a recount (IIRC this was before the election, will have to check).
     
    Then came what we would later come to know as the ‘fake news’ drill.  Some guy wrote an article posing as news, claiming that ~ all of the Amish were voting for Trump, ~mathematically guaranteeing him victory.  Like all the chaos agents who got tracked down and gave interviews at that time and in the aftermath of the election, guy said he was NOT a Trump supporter- really was pro-HRC.  (Something something about RU and Macedonia- remember how these folks would show up on the likes of Dr Oz, saying they supported no one or really supported HRC, just wanted to make money, that whole routine?)  Anyway, the guy eventually was found dead in the Phoenix area, again IIRC.
     
    Even today (well, Nov.), if you duckduckgo the keywords Amish Trump, top of the fold results are from RT, gateway pundit, etc.
     
    I feel like I am forgetting a ‘reason’ or two here, but possible cover story, dovetailing evolution into disinformation campaign territory is probably enough.
     
    Second, the Stop the Steal Poll Watchers, which got lots of hype October into November (and which is implicitly referenced in the post here, I think).  I am using this phrase to short-hand the ‘rigged election’ ‘inner cities’ rhetoric that started with rally calls for people to watch the polls and culminated in the ‘poll watchers’ scheme (including Stone’s stated-to-be distinct ‘exit polling’ plans for PA, OH among other locales).  As a general member of the public, all of the steal/stolen/rigged election poll watchers/ exit polling / Stop the Steal rhetoric blurs into one thing as I perceive it, though Stone and others may wish to make distinctions for their purposes.  (Add:  I had written this comment before consulting Stone’s archived tweets trumptwitterarchive.com, where I see he takes pains to distinguish “exit polling” from “poll watching” November 2016; but in March 2016 primaries, he cites the need for “poll watchers” to Stop the Steal.  No wonder I am so confused ;).)
     
    I think rust-belt/midwest strategy here especially because they drew a broad brush through the area by citing Philadelphia and Chicago specifically as targets.
     
    I have to relocate a particular article (I think from Politico) with the horrible nasty racist white supremacist quotes about their plans. 
     
    But interestingly, when some question was raised about the racists going off half-cocked independently,  one who was interviewed said that they were coordinating their efforts working with the campaign- but remember Roger wasn’t *with* the campaign then.  Maybe that’s why he focused on “exit polling” rather than “poll watching.”
     
    Of course Rudy was quite vociferous about inner-city election-rigging as well.
     
    There were plenty of other PA oddities, which I presume to have been locally ‘managed;’ I omit those on that assumption (which may not be accurate), to stick here with (inter)nationally-known campaigns.    My gut says there are some theres there. 
     
    The Amish efforts (PA, OH) and Stop the Steal Poll Watchers (Phila, Chi ‘inner cities’) locationally signal “rust belt/ midwest strategy,” and neither seems a plausible or legitimate means to have won those areas; neither was clean of shenanigans, either (again, re Amish effort, I only know of shenanigans as the later, ostensibly separate, disinfo campaign).  In fact, both seem most notable for their degrees of noise.

  12. Eureka says:

    In the context of rat-fucking Roger, in 2016, McGahn succeeded in getting a bunch of Democrats’ lawsuits against Stone’s voter suppression efforts in swing states thrown out.

    A couple of their 2016 campaigns/ratfuckeries have been bothering me so strongly since reliving 2016 peri-midterms that I cannot let them go:  the Amish for Trump (started as Amish PAC) and the Stop The Steal Poll Watchers.  I see them as explanations/ploys to set expectations that they could win the rust belt/midwest/swing area, as cover stories for ‘legitimately’ winning PA (OH) MI WI, e.g., when they knew they had illegitimate RU help, especially from the stolen DNC analytics.  (While we don’t know where in the country- if even localized- such data pointed, I’ve personally focused on the value of the DNC analytics because I know they are damn good around these parts, and while of course as PA knowledge- and pov-biased as I am, all were shocked when PA went GOP for pres. for the first time since ’88.  Plus there are those shifted ad buys…And the Comey letter wiping out local memory of HRCs visits to tougher redder parts…but I digress-ish.)

    I have to insert a mid-preface that I am tired, don’t have all of my ‘reasons’ currently in mind, and am not sure of any evidentiary values latent in these things, and will probably have to add links and clean this up tomorrow.  Oh and I am a week behind on the news- and what a week to have been absent from class.

    First chronologically (as deployed for the general), the Amish for Trump.  This started as Amish PAC, unrelated to Trump, apparently as a support for Ben Carson.  Filed/registered April 2016.  Some early publicity (e.g. May 2016 Politico), but mainly a big PR push in PA, OH late summer 2016.  I had looked around at FEC and Open Secrets a little:  no PAC-to-PAC transfers; donors from other states but with local connections; one big/recurrent early donor got ~two-thirds vs three-quarters of his money back in donations from the PAC in the same cycle (same person also got money from Raytheon).  I really don’t know what to look for, not my area of expertise, probably all on the up and up, etc.  Though I don’t get how they can say they are not for any specific party or candidate yet clearly be pro-GOP and at the time of billboarding expenditures be for Trump.  Treasurer by the name of Swindle, lol.

    What was more interesting was that they were planning on getting relatively few votes out of this, based on D-vs-R registration-drive differences (regardless of how many they actually got, which I still don’t know).  The public face of the PAC doing all the publicity was citing- hyping- even a 400 vote gain in PA as making a potentially huge difference, say sparing Trump a recount (IIRC this was before the election, will have to check).

    Then came what we would later come to know as the ‘fake news’ drill.  Some guy wrote an article posing as news, claiming that ~ all of the Amish were voting for Trump, ~mathematically guaranteeing him victory.  Like all the chaos agents who got tracked down and gave interviews at that time and in the aftermath of the election, guy said he was NOT a Trump supporter- really was pro-HRC.  (Something something about RU and Macedonia- remember how these folks would show up on the likes of Dr Oz, saying they supported no one or really supported HRC, just wanted to make money, that whole routine?)  Anyway, the guy eventually was found dead in the Phoenix area, again IIRC.

    Even today (well, Nov.), if you duckduckgo the keywords Amish Trump, top of the fold results are from RT, gateway pundit, etc.

    I feel like I am forgetting a ‘reason’ or two here, but possible cover story, dovetailing evolution into disinformation campaign territory is probably enough.

    Second, the Stop the Steal Poll Watchers, which got lots of hype October into November (and which is implicitly referenced in the post here, I think).  I am using this phrase to short-hand the ‘rigged election’ ‘inner cities’ rhetoric that started with rally calls for people to watch the polls and culminated in the ‘poll watchers’ scheme (including Stone’s stated-to-be distinct ‘exit polling’ plans for PA, OH among other locales).  As a general member of the public, all of the steal/stolen/rigged election poll watchers/ exit polling / Stop the Steal rhetoric blurs into one thing as I perceive it, though Stone and others may wish to make distinctions for their purposes.  (Add:  I had written this comment before consulting Stone’s archived tweets trumptwitterarchive.com, where I see he takes pains to distinguish “exit polling” from “poll watching” November 2016; but in March 2016 primaries, he cites the need for “poll watchers” to Stop the Steal.  No wonder I am so confused ;).)

    I think rust-belt/midwest strategy here especially because they drew a broad brush through the area by citing Philadelphia and Chicago specifically as targets.

    I have to relocate a particular article (I think from Politico) with the horrible nasty racist white supremacist quotes about their plans.

    But interestingly, when some question was raised about the racists going off half-cocked independently,  one who was interviewed said that they were coordinating their efforts working with the campaign- but remember Roger wasn’t *with* the campaign then.  Maybe that’s why he focused on “exit polling” rather than “poll watching.”

    Of course Rudy was quite vociferous about inner-city election-rigging as well.

    There were plenty of other PA oddities, which I presume to have been locally ‘managed;’ I omit those on that assumption (which may not be accurate), to stick here with (inter)nationally-known campaigns.    My gut says there are some theres there.

    The Amish efforts (PA, OH) and Stop the Steal Poll Watchers (Phila, Chi ‘inner cities’) locationally signal “rust belt/ midwest strategy,” and neither seems a plausible or legitimate means to have won those areas; neither was clean of shenanigans, either (again, re Amish effort, I only know of shenanigans as the later, ostensibly separate, disinfo campaign).  In fact, both seem most notable for their degrees of noise.

    • Eureka says:

      re Stop the Steal/Poll Watchers schemes:

      Each of these links cites (or concatenates) different instances of the campaign’s ‘they’re gonna steal our votes/rigged election’ mantras:

       
      Trump camp continues assault on democracy, as Rudy Giuliani maintains he’d ‘have to be a moron’ to say election wasn’t rigged  – NY Daily News

      You said it, Rudy.

      Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, building on Donald Trump’s lie that the November election is rigged against him, railed Sunday that he “would have to be a moron to say” that the election in cities like “Philadelphia and Chicago is going to be fair.”

      (snip)

      “I’ve found very few situations where Republicans cheat,” Giuliani said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “They don’t control the inner cities the way Democrats do.”

      “I’m sorry. Dead people generally vote for Democrats rather than Republicans,” Giuliani said. “I can’t sit here and tell you that they don’t cheat, and I know because they control the polling places in these areas.

      “They leave dead people on the rolls and then they pay people to vote as those dead people, four, five, six, seven, eight times,” he added.

      RIP old NY Daily News:  remainder of article is an otherwise delightful exercise in direct calling-out- of- BS language.
      Trump warns of ‘rigged’ election as Giuliani makes racially charged claims | US news | The Guardian
      Cites Rudy’s same SOTU appearance, but lots of other quotes about the issue (Pence, Trump, Ryan etc.) and context of Trump assault accusations.
      Let’s take Rudy Giuliani’s voter-fraud theories to their natural conclusion – The Washington Post
      Lol, WaPo runs the numbers and other logistics on bussing-in folks to pose as dead people and vote four or five times as per Rudy quotes.

       
      Rudy Guiliani says Philly is the place where Dems will steal election from Trump: Is he right? | PennLive.com

      “Suppose she wins Pennsylvania by 50 votes,” Giuliani said Thursday to reporters.

      Democrats would “steal a lot more than 50 votes in Philadelphia,” Guiliani said. “I guarantee you of that. And I’ll tell you how they will do it — they’ll bus people in who will vote dead people’s names four, five, six times . . . or have people in Philadelphia paid to vote three, four and five times.”

    • Eureka says:

      (continued- goes after a comment that needs fishing out of moderation- I had put four links in it, oops)

      This piece is a bucketloader of quotables, I am not even sure where to begin and end.  Features neo-nazi plans, interviews; Roger Stone quotes.  This is the one with the horribly nasty racist content to which I had referred.  Plans for “poll watching,” “exit polling,” black vote suppression:

       
      White nationalists plot Election Day show of force – POLITICO
      https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/suppress-black-vote-trump-campaign-230616

      A senior Trump adviser told Bloomberg Businessweek last month that the campaign is working on a three-pronged voter suppression strategy that includes an effort to depress black turnout. Though other Trump advisers later pushed back on the report, Anglin’s partners say they are hoping to put Trump over the top by doing just that.

      (snip)

      “We also have some teams going in to the ghettos in Philly with 40s and weed to give out to the local residents, which we think will lead to more of them staying home. We have had success with this in the past,” wrote the representative of TheRightStuff.biz, who said four teams of two employed this tactic in Detroit during the Democratic primary in an effort to help Bernie Sanders. “40s” are 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor. POLITICO could not independently verify his claims.

      (snip)

      Stone, who first began advising Trump in the ’80s and describes the alt-right as “the new mainstream,” has also come under scrutiny for his Election Day plans. The Republican operative — less concerned with fraud committed by voters than with vote-rigging by elections officials — is organizing a volunteer exit-polling operation he hopes will reach 7,000 precincts that he sees as prone to rigging because of the voting methods employed and their one-party control. Stone said the precincts targeted included 2,000 in Philadelphia as well as some Republican-controlled areas in Ohio, though he declined to specify where. “If I told you, I would be warning the [Republican Gov. John] Kasich machine,” he said.

      (snip)

      Other groups are combining poll-watching with more traditional forms of politicking, including leafleting, rallies and get-out-the-vote efforts.

      (snip)

      “We have some of our members that are doing poll watching, but they’re not doing it as American Freedom Party members,” he said. “They’re doing it through the Trump campaign.”

      “We have a lot of people that are involved with the get-out-the-vote through the various Trump organizations,” said the Los Angeles-based Johnson…

      (internal links removed from quote blocks)

    • Eureka says:

      Re Amish for Trump- first, re Amish PAC efforts in PA, OH:
      For Donald Trump, the Plain People are plainly in play
      Article from a PA paper, pre-election, where they were looking for modest numbers.
       
      Amish helped Trump win – Times Gazette
      Article from OH paper, post-election, where the claims seem very “optimistic” and fast and loose with the facts (facts within each article are available for any reader to surmise same; I add that I know of 2016 Phila and collar suburbs vote suppression/irregularities that may swamp these claims by one or two orders of magnitude).

    • Eureka says:

      Re Amish for Trump fake news:

       
      FACT CHECK: Amish in America Commit Vote to Donald Trump, Mathematically Guaranteeing Him a Presidential Victory
      How A Prankster Convinced People The Amish Would Win Trump The Election
      Paul Horner, Fake News Purveyor Who Claimed Credit For Trump’s Win, Found Dead At 38

      (aside:  title reminds me that in the OH Amish PAC article, the PAC guy apparently thought or said that Trump wouldn’t have won PA without the Amish vote.)

      Article links to a 2014 WaPo piece on Horner, discussing his ~~ ‘Obama uses federal funds for Mississippi Muslim culture museum’ hoax.  Also, it’s from this article where i had gotten the “Ru Macedonia something something” in my original comment:  it simply refers to the fact that the fake news business had then-been associated with such places.

    • Eureka says:

      Bonus content, from 2014 (or earlier) I think (I see no dateline)- when Stone had other aspirations in Florida:

      People United for Medical Marijuana recently announced that Republican-turned-libertarian Roger Stone, a Miami Beach political operative who’s considering a bid for governor, is joining the effort.

    • Eureka says:

      Adding first reply to myself, in two parts- in case that comment just vanished and is NOT stuck in moderation.  1 of 2:

       
      re Stop the Steal/Poll Watchers schemes:
      Each of these links cites (or concatenates) different instances of the campaign’s ‘they’re gonna steal our votes/rigged election’ mantras:
      Trump camp continues assault on democracy, as Rudy Giuliani maintains he’d ‘have to be a moron’ to say election wasn’t rigged  – NY Daily News

      You said it, Rudy.
      Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, building on Donald Trump’s lie that the November election is rigged against him, railed Sunday that he “would have to be a moron to say” that the election in cities like “Philadelphia and Chicago is going to be fair.”
      (snip)
      “I’ve found very few situations where Republicans cheat,” Giuliani said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “They don’t control the inner cities the way Democrats do.”
      “I’m sorry. Dead people generally vote for Democrats rather than Republicans,” Giuliani said. “I can’t sit here and tell you that they don’t cheat, and I know because they control the polling places in these areas.
      “They leave dead people on the rolls and then they pay people to vote as those dead people, four, five, six, seven, eight times,” he added.

      RIP old NY Daily News:  remainder of article is an otherwise delightful exercise in direct calling-out- of- BS language.
      Trump warns of ‘rigged’ election as Giuliani makes racially charged claims | US news | The Guardian
      Cites Rudy’s same SOTU appearance, but lots of other quotes about the issue (Pence, Trump, Ryan etc.) and context of Trump assault accusations.

    • Eureka says:

      2 of 2, first reply to my original comment:

       
      Let’s take Rudy Giuliani’s voter-fraud theories to their natural conclusion – The Washington Post
      Lol, WaPo runs the numbers and other logistics on bussing-in folks to pose as dead people and vote four or five or more times as per Rudy quotes.

      Rudy Guiliani says Philly is the place where Dems will steal election from Trump: Is he right? | PennLive.com

      “Suppose she wins Pennsylvania by 50 votes,” Giuliani said Thursday to reporters.
      Democrats would “steal a lot more than 50 votes in Philadelphia,” Guiliani said. “I guarantee you of that. And I’ll tell you how they will do it — they’ll bus people in who will vote dead people’s names four, five, six times . . . or have people in Philadelphia paid to vote three, four and five times.”

    • Eureka says:

      One more thing.  I searched Stone’s tweets back to ~ Feb 2016 and found no instance of  “Amish.”  Given Stone’s Trump-campaign-focused feed, this seems highly unusual.  It’s also odd given the focus on white supremacists (documented in the Politico article above and elsewhere) and whiteness, and Amish being white folk.

       

      Anyway, I wonder why he didn’t want to intersect with the Amish effort, and also wonder what other sub-campaigns, if any, he failed to cheer-lead on his feed.  Omissions/avoidances can point to important relationships.

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