Election 2020: Lies, Damn Lies and Fact Checks

Not too much on this Sunday morning, and that's good. Maybe I'll get beyond it to something else.

First from Dan Chaitin at WaEx, Garland charts DOJ collision course with Maricopa County election audit

The Justice Department is staffing up and will apply new "scrutiny" to controversial audits looking for evidence of fraud in the 2020 election, Attorney General Merrick Garland declared on Friday.

The message was the clearest signal yet that the Biden administration is gearing up to crack down on the Republican-led Arizona Senate's review in Maricopa County, which has attracted GOP officials from other states to consider their own audits and praise from former President Donald Trump, who insists the November contest was rigged despite assurances by elections officials it was secure. A clash could very well happen before the audit is complete and its findings are released in a report expected to be released this summer.

Garland didn't mention Maricopa County by name, but he nevertheless charted a collision course echoing a call to action made by Eric Holder, an attorney general during the Obama administration, for the Justice Department to become “aggressively involved” in pursuing possible violations of federal law in the case of the audit and to prosecute violators of these laws when needed.

"As part of its mission to protect the right to vote, the Justice Department will, of course, do everything in its power to prevent election fraud, and if found, to vigorously prosecute it," Garland said.

"But many of the justifications proffered in support of these post-election audits and restrictions on voting have relied on assertions of material vote fraud in the 2020 election that have been refuted by law enforcement and intelligence agencies of both this administration and the previous one, as well as by every court, federal and state, that has considered them," he added. "Moreover, many of the changes are not even calibrated to address the kinds of voter fraud that are alleged as our justification."

The Biden Administration has a real problem: nobody hires 100 lawyers to hide an election victory.

Nobody has the DOJ interfere in a state ordered audit because they won fair and square.

— Emerald Robinson ✝️ (@EmeraldRobinson) June 12, 2021

As Insty quips Shouldn’t it be “we welcome scrutiny because it will underscore that our victory was fair?”

Fox, Collapsed Lafayette Square narrative is yet another 'fact-checked' story gone bad, "Fact-checkers having to walk back 'supposedly all-knowing rulings' damaging media's credibility, experts tell Fox News" 

"Fact-checked" mainstream media stories unhelpful to Republicans or conservatives – like ones related to Russia or vaccine development or police shootings or the origins of the Coronavirus – have later fallen apart or been amended, updated, corrected, or retracted over the past few years. And observers are taking note it doesn't seem to go the other way.

"I have been through a lot of fact checks, and I cannot recall a check favoring the right half of politics that's been reversed," the conservative Media Research Center's Tim Graham told Fox News. "This pattern of fact checkers having to walk back their supposedly all-knowing rulings underlines how eager they are to solidify Democrat narratives and undermine conservative journalism."

It's been obvious for years now that "fact checking" has morphed into left-wing partisan punditry with a false gloss of authority.  W.J. Antle at MSN, Democrats claim to care about truth — until it's something they got wrong about Trump. Dan Payne at JTN, 'Proven right': Trump savors post-presidency vindication streak

Here are five significant shifts in conventional wisdom and prevailing media narratives that have the former president crowing, in effect, "I told you so!

1. Lab-leak reversal: Trump had been an early promoter of the possibility that the SARS-Cov-2 virus escaped from a Chinese virology lab, but the hypothesis received widespread backlash from members of the press and scientific community, with Trump being accused of spreading a racist conspiracy theory. . .

2. Growing evidence hydroxychloroquine may be effective COVID-19 treatment: Trump had suggested as much early on in the pandemic last year, but his remarks were followed by widespread scientific and media ridicule, with numerous medical officials claiming that HCQ offered no benefit to those suffering from the coronavirus. . .

3. Intelligence Community doubts about Russian bounties on U.S. troops in Afghanistan: Trump had earlier been slammed for allegedly having known of the reported bounties without taking action on them. Then-candidate Joe Biden called that alleged lapse "beyond the pale" and "a betrayal of the most sacred duty we bear as a nation.". . .

4. IG debunks Lafayette Park photo-op myth — This week an inspector general report revealed that a much-maligned clearing of protesters from D.C.'s Lafayette Park last year was unrelated to the president's subsequent passage through the public space.. . .

5. Washington Post corrects report Trump urged election official to "find the fraud": The claim that Trump pressured Georgia's top elections investigator to "find the fraud" in the state's 2020 presidential vote was explosive enough to have made it into the 2021 impeachment memorandum of House Democrats. In its correction two months after the story was first published, the Post admitted that it had "misquoted Trump's comments on the call, based on information provided by a source."

AP, cited at Fox 5, Governor signs law giving Nevada 1st presidential primary

Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak on Friday signed a law that would make Nevada the first state to vote in the 2024 presidential primary contests, bumping Iowa and New Hampshire from their leadoff spots.

Signing the law is a gamble.

It’s likely to set off maneuvering by other states, especially Iowa and New Hampshire, to move up their contests. The national political parties would need to agree to changes in the calendar, or state parties could risk losing their delegates at presidential nominating conventions.

The Democratic National Committee has not yet signaled whether it would support the calendar shakeup and isn’t expected to start writing rules for its nominating process until next year. Republicans in four early presidential nominating states this week all jointly opposed the move, saying they’re committed to preserving the historic schedule.

I think there's too much emphasis on New Hampshire and Iowa, but it would sure be funny if this touches off a race by states to be first. Let's hold all the primary's and caucuses 2 years ahead!