POTUS/General Election Thread 2020 + Aftermath

[ReluctantSamurai]

It would not surprise me if this is attempted:

https://www.vox.com/2020/12/20/22191...election-fraud

President Donald Trump asked key advisers about appointing a controversial lawyer formerly associated with his campaign as a special counsel charged with overseeing an investigation of alleged — and nonexistent — voter fraud, according to a report from the New York Times.

According to Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Trump held a meeting at the White House on Friday to weigh whether to name Powell as a special counsel to investigate his repeatedly debunked claims of mass voter fraud in last month’s presidential election.

It is not clear that Trump could actually appoint Powell — or anyone else — to investigate fraud as a special counsel in his remaining days in office.

[...] special counsels are usually appointed by the US attorney general, and that counsel would be supervised by the attorney general themselves. Trump could ask Barr to appoint Powell, but it is not clear that he would do so, and Barr is due to step down on Wednesday.

Should his Justice Department refuse to cooperate, Trump could name a special counsel without DOJ support. But that person would essentially be toothless, with no access to federal law enforcement resources, subpoena power, or the ability to set up a grand jury.

The other possibility is that Trump, in his final weeks in office, could fire Rosen and replace him with someone more likely to enact his wishes, although who that person could be is not immediately obvious.

All the talk about seizing voting machines, or enacting the Insurrection Act is simply a smokescreen for the obvious reason for such skullduggery:

And having a special counsel on election fraud would be a powerful legacy. The Biden administration would likely face pressure not to interfere in a special counsel investigation, even one led by a partisan actor like Powell, thus ensuring that debate over the legitimacy of the last election would continue at the federal level even once Trump is no longer in office.

If Trump can pull this off, we are guaranteed a media circus for who knows how long that continues to keep the MAGA base stirred up for months about "voter fraud" (and of course keeps the Save America money scam going), and will continue to give oxygen to the possibility of more violence from far-right groups.