Was the Electoral College Vote…Illegal? Could Colin Powell be President?

This is an emerging story, and I haven’t seen anything to back it up so far – so there is a chance it is smoke and mirrors.

If true however, it means the Chumph was not elected and will go down by the Republican’s own hubris. A situation which would cause some major Constitutional problems.

Even more amusing is the fact that if this is true – then our next President could very well be someone who wasn’t even on the ballot.

We could wind up with another black President…Colin Powell. With the fast emerging news about Putin-Trump collusion, and the selection by Trump of several folks known to be in Putin’s pocket for high level positions – I think it is going to be real hard, even in a Republican dominated House to get a majority vote for Trump, especially against a respected and competent Republican like Powell. Powell’s name on the list gives the Republicans an out. And only about 30 Republicans would have to vote Powell – IF the chickenshit Dems shift their vote to Powell.

Powell is one of the few people who could successfully bring the country back together.

Colin Powell…Our New President?

At least 50 Donald Trump electors were illegally seated as Electoral College members: report

More evidence surfaces as calls mount to challenge congressional ratification of Electoral College vote

More than 50 Electoral College members who voted for Donald Trump were ineligible to serve as presidential electors because they did not live in the congressional districts they represented or held elective office in states legally barring dual officeholders.

That stunning finding is among the conclusions of an extensive 1,000-plus page legal briefing prepared by a bipartisan nationwide legal team for members of Congress who are being urged to object to certifying the 2016 Electoral College results on Friday.

“Trump’s ascension to the presidency is completely illegitimate,” said Ryan Clayton of Americans Take Action, who is promoting the effort. “It’s not just Russians hacking our democracy. It’s not just voter suppression at unprecedented levels. It is also [that] there are Republicans illegally casting ballots in the Electoral College, and in a sufficient number that the results of the Electoral College proceedings are illegitimate as well.”

“Republicans like to talk all the time about people voting illegally,” Clayton continued. “We have a list of a bunch of Republicans that allegedly voted illegally in the Electoral College. Pam Bondi is the attorney general of the state of Florida and the Florida Constitution says that you cannot hold two offices. And she holds the office of Attorney General and she holds the office of federal elector in the Electoral College. That is a violation of the law. That is a violation of the Constitution. And the vote that she cast in this election is illegal.”

A joint congressional session is scheduled to ratify the 2016 Electoral College vote this Friday. While there have been calls to challenge that certification—including one women-led effort saying Trump’s victory is due to voter suppression targeting people of color—the analysis that scores of Trump electors were illegally seated, and the additional finding that most states won by Trump improperly filed their Electoral College “Certificates of Vote” with Congress, is unprecedented.

Their research and report grew out of the legal activities surrounding the December 19 Electoral College meeting, where Clayton and others urged Republican electors to reject Trump saying they had a constitutional responsibility to pick a more qualified president.

Clayton is hoping that sufficient numbers of Republicans in Congress will not vote to ratify the Electoral College results, thus depriving Trump of the 270 Electoral College votes he needs to win the presidency. If that transpires, the House would then decide between the three top Electoral College vote-getters—Trump, Hillary Clinton and Colin Powell, he said. But before any of that can happen, there needs to be a formal challenge to ratifying the 2016 Electoral College results in Friday’s joint session of Congress, which is where the research finding that scores of Trump votes were illegally cast comes in.

“We have reason to believe that there are at least 50 electoral votes that were not regularly given or not lawfully certified (16 Congressional District violations and 34 Dual Office-Holder violations),” the executive summary of the Electoral Vote Objection Packet said. “The number could be over a hundred. We urge you to prepare written objections for January 6.”

“The compiling of the laws and evidence in this Electoral Vote Objection Package was completed by a national team of roughly 15 pro bono attorneys, law students, and legal assistants who represent no client or entity,” the summary said. “We are non-partisan—Democrat, Republican, and Independent. We live in different parts of the country, urban and rural, red states and blue states.”

Challenging the Electoral College

The Electoral College’s results have only been challenged twice since 1877. The most recent was in 2005, when an objection to Ohio’s Electoral College votes was filed by Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, D-OH, and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA. While that effort did not stop President George W. Bush’s reelection, it did force both chambers of Congress to debate for two hours before the Electoral College vote was ratified. Tubbs-Jones and Boxer used the podium to rail against GOP efforts to suppress the vote and disqualify ballots in communities of color.

The process for challenging the Electoral College vote is two-fold. First, a House member has to file a formal challenge and objection. Then one House member and one senator has to sign on, prompting each body to retire to their chambers for the two-hour debate.

The Electoral Vote Objection Packet briefing cites two main areas where 2016 Electoral College members were illegally seated and a third where their votes electing Trump were improperly sent to Congress.

“Specifically, at least 16 electors lived outside the congressional districts they represented in violation of state statutory residency requirements, and at least 34 electors held dual offices, in direct violation of statutes prohibiting dual-office holding,” the briefing’s executive summary says, noting this violates two sections of the U.S. Constitution.

The first group of illegitimate electors amounts to political carpetbagging. “In North Carolina, for instance,” the briefing says, a state law, “NCGS 163-1(c) states, ‘One presidential elector shall be nominated from each congressional district…’ Yet, we have voter registration cards showing that numerous North Carolina electors lived outside the congressional districts they represented.”

The report lists the following states and their number of illegitimate electors: Arkansas (two from outside its congressional district); Indiana (one), Louisiana (one), Michigan (one), North Carolina (seven), Oklahoma (one), and Texas (three).

The second group of illegitimate electors is based on the fact that presidential electors hold a federal office, however short-lived, and that directly conflicts with states that ban elected officials from holding more than one office at a time. Florida’s state constitution, for example, bars dual-office holding. Its Supreme Court has issued rulings that further define what constitutes an officeholder. And the state legislature has passed other laws treating them as public officials, such as reimbursing them for travel costs.

“Ironically, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has issued a number of Advisory Legal Opinions on dual-office holding, was a presidential elector,” the briefing said. “Her name was on the Governor’s certification list of Republican electors, and also Attorney General Bondi cast her electoral ballot on December 19. More Negron, who also cast an electoral vote, is currently president of the Florida Senate.”

The report lists the following states and their number of illegitimate electors based on dual-office holders: Alabama (two), Florida (12), Georgia (four), Iowa (two), Kansas (four), Kentucky (one), Michigan (one), Missouri (one), Nebraska (one), North Carolina (one), Ohio (one), Oklahoma (two), Pennsylvania (two), South Carolina (one), South Dakota (three), Tennessee (two), Texas (four), Utah (one), and West Virginia (three). This tally, which adds up to 49 electors, was taken from a spreadsheet accompanying the briefing and is a larger number than what was cited in the report’s executive summary, which is quoted above.

Finally, there is another area of concern. Apparently, 23 states—out of the 31 that cast Electoral College votes for Trump—did not properly report separate vote counts for president and vice-president to Congress. That violates the 12th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and a federal law requiring presidential electors in each state to “provide ‘two distinct lists of votes,’ one for the president and the other for the Vice President,” the briefing said. “Of 31 states, only eight states followed that law,” the report said. “Some states codify the federal law into their own state law regarding presidential electors. Of those, 15 states did not provide two lists of signatures on their Certificates of Vote.”

“We are not providing any legal advice,” the briefing’s disclaimer says. “We strongly suggest that members of Congress employ their own legal teams to verify our work.”

It may be that the efforts to convince Congress to challenge the ratification of the 2016 Electoral College amounts to little more than a Hail Mary aimed at derailing a Trump presidency. As of late Wednesday, Clayton thought there would be House members willing to object to certifying the Electoral College vote, but he was less certain about finding a senator willing to go along.

But even if a challenge is mounted and fails, it underscores the illegitimate basis of Trump’s presidency and the deep opposition to it, and refutes the GOP’s outrageous claim that it has a mandate for dismantling government programs across the board.

“We have a list of 50 illegal electors,” Clayton said. “That puts Donald Trump below the threshold that he needs to be elected president. Let’s debate it in an open session. According to the Constitution, the Congress, if nobody wins on the first round of balloting, picks from the top three candidates. That will be Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Colin Powell.”

 

About That Clinton Email Server – Sec State Colin Powell Did the Same Thing

And advised her to do it.

Another Clinton “scandal” blows up in right wing faces.

Hillary Clinton’s emails with Colin Powell released

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell told his successor, Hillary Clinton, that he used his own personal computer to communicate with friends and foreign leaders and sent emails without going through the State Department server, according to emails released Wednesday by congressional Democrats.

Clinton has previously said she reached out to Powell when she began serving as the nation’s top diplomat to find out how he used personal devices. In a four-paragraph email response from Powell, he told Clinton he didn’t use a BlackBerry, but detailed how he got around having his communications with both employees and people outside the State Department becoming part of the agency’s official record.

What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line (sounds ancient). So I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without it going through the State Department on their personal email accounts. I did the same thing on the road in hotels,” Powell wrote.

Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state has loomed over her presidential campaign and spurred intense criticism from Republicans. The email exchange between Clinton and Powell was released Wednesday by the State Department after Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pressed for it. They complained the full exchange was not part of earlier email document releases from the department that Republicans in Congress have asked for as part of their probe into Clinton’s email use….

Powell’s spokesperson recently told CNN that he wrote a memo about his own use of an AOL account to Clinton and said the account was for “unclassified messages and how it vastly improved communications within the State Department.”

Like…AOL is “secure”?

Colin Powell defends personal email use

Colin Powell is defending his use of a personal email account during his time as secretary of state, as Democrats stepped up complaints that the intense focus on Hillary Clinton’s email practices reflects a double standard.

Powell’s statement came after a top Democrat released an email Powell sent Clinton in early 2009 describing his use of personal communication devices in State’s secure executive suite despite warnings from security officials that such use could jeopardize classified information.

“Secretary Clinton has stated that she was not influenced by my email in making her decisions on email use. I was not trying to influence her but just to explain what I had done eight years earlier to begin the transformation of the State Department’s information system,” Powell said.

Powell adopted one of Clinton’s defenses Thursday, saying his actions didn’t jeopardize government record-keeping because official emails would have found their way into State’s official systems.

“With respect to records, if I sent an email from my public email account to an addressee at another public email account it would not have gone through State Department servers. It was a private conversation similar to a phone call. If I sent it to a state.gov address it should have been captured and retained by State servers,” Powell said. “I was not aware at the time of any requirement for private, unclassified exchanges to be treated as official records.”

In the email exchange released Wednesday by House Oversight Committee ranking Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings, Powell appeared proud that he had defied security officials by using hand-held devices in the agency’s secure spaces.

“They gave me all kinds of nonsense about how they gave out signals and could be read by spies, etc.,” Powell wrote, referring to personnel from State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. “I had numerous meetings with them. We even opened one [device] up for them to try to explain to me why it was more dangerous than say, a remote control for one of the many tvs in the suite. Or something embedded in my shoe heel. They never satisfied me and NSA/CIA wouldn’t back off. So, we just went about our business and stopped asking.”

Republicans don’t mind sacrificing Powell because he told the truth about the Iraq War.

 

Colin Powell and Current GOP “Juvenile Candidates”

Gravitas has become a foreign word in the Republican lexicon…

Colin Powell trashes GOP candidates for their ‘junior high’ antics that ‘belittle the country’

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell took time out from expressing his admiration for the late First Lady Nancy Reagan to say a few words about the rancorous fighting going on between the remaining GOP presidential candidates.

Knock it off.

Speaking with NPR’s Michel Martin on All Things Considered, Powell called their antics “junior high tricks” and compared the GOP debates to Jerry Springer’s shows.

“To stand there and do junior high school tricks on one another is belittling the country and belittling the office to which they are striving,” Powell said while remembering the “lack of any nastiness” he saw when working in the Reagan White House.

Powell referred to comments made by talk show host Jerry Springer in an interview last week, where Springer said of the debates, “Our show is a circus, but the presidency of the United States is not supposed to be a circus.”

Powell agreed, saying, “Even Jerry Springer thinks it’s gone too far, and when Jerry Springer thinks you’ve gone too far, my friends, you have gone too far.”

Powell did not specify any particular candidates in a field that has been winnowed down to businessman Donald Trump, Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

 

Colin Powell on Trolling Republicans

Powell went to work for George W. Bush due to loyalty to his father. That was catastrophic, not only for Powell’s reputation, but the entire country because of Dick Cheney.

Powell is not done sticking the fork in those scumbags yet…

Colin Powell admits he’s trolling the GOP: “I continue to be a Republican because it annoys them”

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said at the Washington Ideas Forum Wednesday that he only remains a Republican “because it annoys them,” the Hill’s Mark Hensch reports.

“I continue to be a Republican because it annoys them,” Powell told host Walter Isaacson. “I think the party has shifted much further right than where the country is, and it should be obvious to party leaders that they cannot keep saying and doing the things that they were doing and hope to be successful in national-level election in the future — not just in 2016.”

Powell also claimed that the current crop of GOP candidates is mistaken in believing that the majority of the country — Republicans included — doesn’t want the next president to act on immigration reform. “I think most Republicans understand that we need immigration, we are an immigrant nation [and that] it is in our best interest to do it,” he said.

However, he added, “there are pockets of intolerance within the Republican Party [and] the Republican Party had better figure out how to defeat that.”

Powell disagreed in particular with Donald Trump, saying that “if I was around Mr. Trump — Donald, who I know rather well — I would say, ‘You know, Don, let’s see what happens — let’s tell all the immigrants working in Trump hotels to stay home tomorrow. Let’s see what happens.’”

 

Colin Powell on Iran Nuclear Deal and Iraq

General Powell lays it out here relative to Middle East Foreign Policy, and the pending treaty with Iran. The situation in Iraq was predicted as early is 1991 at the beginning of the first Gulf War

The neo-conservatives were wrong about Iraq in 2003…And they are wrong about Iran today.

Colin Powell Backs Obama’s Iran Deal

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday threw his support behind President Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran, calling it “a good deal” that will move Iran off its current “superhighway” toward acquiring a nuclear weapon. 

Powell said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that critics of the agreement were ignoring the rapid development of Iran’s nuclear program dating back to the Bush years.

“They have been on a superhighway for the last 10 years to create a nuclear weapon or a nuclear weapons program, with no speed limit. And in the last 10 years they have gone from 136 centrifuges up to something like 19,000 centrifuges. This agreement will bring them down to 5,000 centrifuges, all of them under [International Atomic Energy Agency] supervision. And I think this is a good outcome.”

The Obama administration doesn’t need Powell’s support to help secure the political survival of the nonproliferation pact, as Senate Democrats already have enough votes to prevent Republican critics from overriding it. But Powell’s endorsement carries deep symbolic significance.

Powell served as secretary of state for former President George W. Bush during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Former Vice President Dick Cheney and other neoconservatives have blasted Obama’s Iran deal and blamed the Obama administration for the current violence in the Middle East. Powell, by contrast, argues that the current president is making good progress after being dealt a rough hand by his predecessors. 

“The fact of the matter is, we did it right in the first Gulf War. We had to listen to arguments for years afterwards about, ‘Why didn’t you go to Baghdad?’ And the 2003 war came along, and you saw why you didn’t want to go to Baghdad,” Powell said. “Once you pull out the top of a government, unless there’s a structure under it to give security and structure to the society, you can expect a mess.”

“Meet The Press” host Chuck Todd also played a clip of Dick Cheney in 1994 arguing that toppling Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War would have been irresponsible.

“If you take down the central government in Iraq, you can see pieces of Iraq flying off,” Cheney said at the time, describing a situation that would destabilize Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Cheney now blames Obama for problems in the region, saying the current administration abandoned a successful military project….

 

Gen Colin Powell on Trayvon Martin Verdict and Racism in America

Powell comes down on the side of rational people…

I think the verdict will have “staying power”, as I see it as an issue that will continue to strongly divide the country – argued and debated about much as the OJ verdict was for years. Further, unlike the OJ verdict, the issues of laws being passed by conservatives who in vast majority supported Zimmerman aren’t going to disappear anytime soon.

Colin Powell: Trayvon Martin verdict questionable

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday the jury verdict that freed the killer of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin was “questionable.” But he isn’t sure it will have staying power in the public consciousness.

Speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Powell said cases like Martin’s “blaze across the midnight sky” and are forgotten. George Zimmerman was acquitted earlier this summer of the fatal 2012 shooting in Florida

The first black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and first black secretary of state, Powell says America has come a long way toward racial equality 50 years after Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which came 50 years ago this week. Powell recalled being refused service when trying to buy a hamburger before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Minorities have many more opportunities today, but Powell says King would still demand work on education, housing and economic opportunities.

Powell also believes that the New Jim Crow voting laws in the red zone will backfire – which is the essence of why Trayvon won’t go away…

Colin Powell: Voter ID Laws Will ‘Backfire’ For Republicans

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Republicans on Sunday that the strict voter identification laws they’re pursuing around the country will damage the party’s standing with growing blocs of voters.

“[H]ere’s what I say to my Republican friends: The country is becoming more diverse,” Powell told Bob Schieffer on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “You say you want to reach out, you say you want to have a new message. You say you want to see if you can bring some of these voters to the Republican side. This is not the way to do it.”

“The way to do it is to make it easier for them to vote and then give them something to vote for that they can believe in,” Powell added.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling that struck down a key portion of the Voting Rights Act, Republicans in states like North Carolina, Florida and Texas have sought voter restrictions that critics, including Powell, say will disproportionately hurt minorities at the polls. North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed legislation earlier this month that requires voter identification, rolls back early voting hours and ends a state-supported voter registration drive. Powell condemned that particular law at an event in Raleigh last week.

Powell pointed out that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud, the very premise of the identification statutes.

“You need a photo ID. Well, you didn’t need a photo ID for decades before,” Powell said. “Is it really necessary now? And they claim that there’s widespread abuse and voter fraud, but nothing documents, nothing substantiates that. There isn’t widespread abuse.”

Powell predicted that such measures will blow up in Republicans’ faces.

“These kind of procedures that are being put in place to slow the process down and make it likely that fewer Hispanics and African Americans might vote, I think, are going to backfire, because these people are going to come out and do what they have to do in order to vote, and I encourage that,” he said.

During the interview, Powell also reflected on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, recalling times when he couldn’t eat in certain places due to the color of his skin, even though he’d just served his country.

“In my lifetime, over a long career in public life, you know, I’ve been refused access to restaurants where I couldn’t eat, even though I just came back from Vietnam: ‘We can’t give you a hamburger, come back some other time,'” Powell recalled. “And I did, right after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, I went right back to that same place and got my hamburger, and they were more than happy to serve me now. It removed a cross from their back, but we’re not there yet. We’re not there yet. And so we’ve got to keep working on it.”

One of the genesis of the modern conservative movement was the treatment of Vets after the Vietnam War by the American people and anti-war groups. That left a large scar on our national psyche.  Apparently it never imprinted on the conservative mindless that their feelings of being disrespected…

Might just be the same as experienced by black folks when they are confronted by racism driven discrimination.

 

Powell Blasts Cheney for “Cheap Shots”

Fascinating.

President Obama’s first failure was not putting all the Bushit SOBs in jail for their crimes.