Abuse of Power

Donald Trump knew he lost the 2020 election, but he did not want to leave the White House and admit his loss publicly so he lied. He lied and he repeatedly tried to force the U.S. Department of Justice to back up those lies and “leave the rest to him.” He was asking his handpicked senior DOJ officials to participate in a criminal conspiracy orchestrated by Trump and his henchmen that at its heart was nothing short of a coup to illegally seize power and overturn the will and the vote of the American people.

Donald Trump knew he lost the 2020 election, yet for months he continued to attempt to cajole and coerce state legislators and election officials into violating their oaths of office and overturn the 2020 election. Before he turned violent insurrectionists loose on the United States Capitol on January 6th, he turned mobs loose on the homes of local elections officials in an effort to intimidate those officials into breaking the law and falsifying election results to hand him an election he lost at the ballot box.  

"One of the upsides, even when you have a lousy commission, is that you have created enough of a record for the court to review and be able to create some alternative that is fair," said Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director at the voting rights organization Common Cause. The court battle has gotten ugliest in Ohio, where voters will be casting ballots in congressional districts that the state Supreme Court says were unconstitutionally drawn. Feng pointed to an "escape hatch" the legislature created in the competing proposal it put forward for creating a commission, where "even if a partisan or racial gerrymander has been found, a court may not impose a remedy by itself." "It has to go back to the legislature to be drawn," Feng said. "And so that circular, multi-layered stages of Dante's Hell has been imposed on Ohio."

"It was grift, pure and simple, but on a massive scale," said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, in a prepared statement. "Donald Trump was not content to just ignore the will of the American people and attempt to steal the 2020 election in a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy. He was determined to make a lot of money doing it."

Donald Trump and his attorneys knew that they were asking then-Vice President to violate the law and his oath of office by rejecting electoral votes on January 6th.   Testimony today before the January 6th Committee by Trump administration officials and attorneys made that abundantly clear. Former president-Trump and his attorney John Eastman showed their contempt for the rule of law and that they were willing to do almost anything to avoid the peaceful transfer of power after losing the 2020 presidential election. That is precisely why Eastman asked for a presidential pardon before Donald Trump eventually left office.  

Mario Jimenez, a former election official in the state who now works as the campaign director for the New Mexico chapter of Common Cause, a watchdog group, noted New Mexico law makes it a criminal offense to knowingly violate election laws. “They were instructed by their county attorney on the things they can and cannot do … despite being notified by their own legal expert and this very experienced county clerk, they continue to wilfully break the law and not serve their community or their constituents.”