A defendant is on trial for murdering his parents. He asks for leniency from the court because, hey, he is an orphan! This Yiddish joke has served as the definition of “chutzpah” for a few hundred years. But thanks to the lawfare tricksters, we have a new explanation for the word.
On July 31, 2023, Andrew Weissman and Ryan Goodman, writing at Just Security, published an article predicting that the Special Counsel would charge Donald Trump with violating 18 U.S.C. §241 (“Conspiracy against rights”) and 18 U.S. Code §1512 (“Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant”) based on events on January 6, 2021—specifically, the electoral college vote count in the Senate.
Indeed, then-President Trump did speak and tweet that the vote count should be stopped. However, he was responding to, not committing, a crime—the crime being possible election fraud and a subsequent cover-up. Prosecuting Trump was a chutzpahdik continuation of the same wrongdoing.
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On election night 2020, the networks reported various stoppages of the vote count in various swing states. There were reports of stoppages in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Dekalb County, Georgia; and North Carolina. There were also questions about “frozen” return numbers in Wisconsin and Michigan. Most infamously, the lead election officials in the Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta seemed to have stopped their count when they sent other officials home on the specious justification of a non-existent water leak.
It was the stoppages that were the catalyst for all the election controversies that plague us to this day. Without those stoppages, Trump would never have held a press conference where, at 2:21 am, he stated that “all of a sudden it [the counting] is off” and then, at 2:29 am, that “we want all voting to stop; we don’t want them to find any ballots in the morning and add them.”
In fact, those stoppages were illegal, and, therefore, the votes counted afterward were arguably voidable or even void. South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Nevada, inter alia, had explicit language in their election statutes forbidding stopping the count—assumedly, for the obvious reason that stoppages provide great opportunity for cheating.
For example, Pennsylvania’s §1222 states, “…The election officers shall forthwith proceed to canvass and compute the votes cast, and shall not adjourn or postpone the canvass or computation until it shall have been fully completed.” (Emphasis added.)
Section 630 of Georgia’s Elections Code provides even greater detail, pointing at the magnitude of the issue:
The poll officers shall immediately proceed to canvass and compute the votes cast and shall not adjourn or postpone the canvass or computation until it shall have been fully completed, except that, in the discretion of the superintendent, the poll officers may stop the counting after all contested races and questions are counted, provided that the results of these contested races and questions are posted for the information of the public outside the polling place and the ballots are returned to the ballot box and deposited with the superintendent until counting is resumed on the following day. (Emphasis added.)
Surprisingly, before the election, secretaries of state from across America were already contemplating stopping vote counts. In an October 2020 discussion held during an election night reporting roundtable, New Mexico’s Maggie Toulouse Oliver informed the nation’s other secretaries that she was planning in advance to stop the count to keep the vote-counter employees fresh, out of concern for “humanity.” Was her speech a tacit wink and a nod order to her fellow travelers? Was she the central authority figure coordinating the strange antics of election night?
Amazingly, neither the statutes nor events at the conference have been raised in public, in print, in hearings, court proceedings. Even during Trump’s second impeachment following January 6, his representatives did not mention the vote-counting stoppage issue. Afterward, the issue was swept under the rug and forgotten in the frenzy of accusations, commemorations, testimonies, trials, and indictments.
Then, suddenly, on a Monday in July 2023, the very folks who have conducted the legal warfare against Trump for seven-plus years dared to bring it into the open. They accused Trump of illegal conduct in calling for a vote count stoppage—only this was a demand to stop illegal conduct—the vote stoppages on election night—from being ratified!
That’s chutzpah!
Warfare can be (legally, under certain conditions) conducted against foreign enemies. One does not conduct “war” against domestic opponents. That begins to sound like civil war, perhaps sedition because one cannot conduct a war within one’s own country.
Every day, Weissman, Goodman, and their colleagues, however, do just that—and brag about it as publicly as possible.
More than a year after they wrote that essay, the mind continues to reel. The entire “election denier” accusation, which still winds its way through the courts, stems from opposing a blatant crime committed on national television. A new election is days away. How can we expect the Trump campaign to be ready for whatever chicanery the Democrats will devise this time, we Republicans are still trying to deal with what happened in 2020?! Trump will need a Nixon ‘72 or Reagan ’84 type of trouncing to stop the steal.
Of course, if that does happen (and the election momentum is all with Trump), we will then buckle ourselves in for whatever Plan B/C/D the Lawfare orphans actuate.
Norman Krieg is a pseudonym.
(Note from the editor: In order to prevent Democrat cheating, the best advice this year is for Trump supporters to vote early and in person. This Mark Halperin commentary helps explain why. So, if you haven’t voted yet, what are you waiting for?)
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