The hearings of the House Select Committee on the Jan. 6th riot have featured a number of Republican lawyers, including former Attorney General Bill Barr, who opposed efforts to challenge the election after finding no support for the widespread election fraud claims of former President Donald Trump. The media called them “Team Normal.” That does not sit well with the most rabid activists who spent years demonizing Barr and others. Yet, the most ironic dissenting voice is that of former Clinton campaign General Counsel Marc Elias, who just ran a vehement column “Calling B.S. On Trump’s ‘Team Normal.'” Elias is a lawyer previously sanctioned in court and accused of lying about the hidden funding of the Steele Dossier by the Clinton campaign.
Elias objects to the praise given to these lawyers who stood up to a president at the risk of their own positions and future. He objects that they supported Trump when he “continued to lie about the election. They protected his fragile ego and damaged our democracy. This may be “normal” for those in Trump’s orbit. I suspect it is. But in reality, it is shameful and despicable. Calling it anything else is bullshit.”
Just as a reminder, Elias, a former partner at the firm Perkins Coie, has been accused of lying to conceal the campaign’s funding of the infamous Steele Dossier. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) fined the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for violating election rules in hiding that funding. Elias has previously been sanctioned for his conduct in litigation and recently lost an effort to gerrymander the Maryland voting districts. The alleged Elias’ lies would ordinarily seem a professional liability for any attorney but they seem an actual professional attraction for Elias.
Elias has featured prominently in the filings of Special Counsel John Durham. The key to many of these operations is someone referred to by Durham as “Campaign Lawyer-1,” who is now known to be Elias.
It was Elias who reportedly made the key funding available to Fusion GPS, which in turn enlisted Steele to produce his now discredited dossier on Trump and his campaign. As with the Alfa Bank allegations pushed by his co-counsel, Michael Sussmann, the Russian collusion claims were quickly discredited. Indeed, the dossier was viewed by American intelligence as containing likely disinformation from Russian intelligence services.
During the campaign, a few reporters did ask about the possible connection to the campaign, but Clinton campaign officials denied any involvement. It was only weeks after the election that journalists discovered that the Clinton campaign hid payments for the Steele dossier as “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to Perkins Coie.
New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said at the time that Elias denied involvement in the anti-Trump dossier. When Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.”
“It was not just reporters who asked the Clinton campaign about its role in the Steele dossier. John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, was questioned by Congress and denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Sitting beside him was Elias, who reportedly said nothing to correct the misleading information given to Congress.”
Democrats continue to hire Elias despite his checkered past. Elias has unsuccessfully led efforts to challenge Democratic losses. Elias has been sanctioned in past litigation.
Elias also was the subject of intense criticism after a tweet that some have called inherently racist. Democrats used the recent Georgia election law as a rallying cry for federalizing elections by labelling the law, as described by President Biden, “Jim Crow on steroids.” Elias argued that Georgia voters could not be expected to be able to read their driver’s licenses correctly — a statement that seemed to refer to minority voters who would be disproportionately impacted by such a requirement.
Elias was back in the news on another defeat in court recently. He filed in support of an abusive gerrymandering of the election districts in Maryland that a court found violated not only Maryland law but the state constitution’s equal protection, free speech and free elections clauses. The court found that the map pushed by Elias “subverts the will of those governed.”
Elias has been accused of making millions from gerrymandering and challenging election victories by Republicans (while condemning such actions by Republicans as “anti-Democratic”). He was involved in the New York redistricting that was ridiculed as not only ignoring the express will of the voters to end such gerrymandering but effectively negating the votes of Republican voters.
These lawyers showed the integrity that Elias failed to demonstrate in his past controversies. Despite their strong political ties to the President, these lawyers refused to be conduits or promoters of claims that they considered false or unsupported. That was hardly the profile of courage that emerged from the Clinton campaign. Even when Hillary Clinton and her adviser Jake Sullivan were pretending that the Alfa Bank story (manufactured through the campaign) was surprising news to them, Elias remained mum and, according to media, denied funding allegations on the Steele dossier.
Calling it otherwise is …. well … what Elias said.
Mollie Hemingway’s book Rigged exposed the role of Elias and his minions
J”ust as a reminder, Elias, a former partner at the firm Perkins Coie, has been accused of lying to conceal the campaign’s funding of the infamous Steele Dossier. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) fined the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for violating election rules in hiding that funding. Elias has previously been sanctioned for his conduct in litigation and recently lost an effort to gerrymander the Maryland voting districts. The alleged Elias’ lies would ordinarily seem a professional liability for any attorney but they seem an actual professional attraction for Elias.”
******************************
So what else is new with Mark Eliar? Lying is a “virtue” of sine qua non proportions in your job search if you’re a Dim. On an unrelated note, President Lyden just sent the oil companies a letter demanding they bail him out of the rising midterm election disaster with a bribe to the public of cheap oil prices! Ha! Son of a B, they ignored him!!!
“We Democrats may be bad guys but we are bad guys for good things, which makes us virtuous.” That is an interesting statement. That is the epitaph for some of the greatest monsters in human history. It’s just as bad as saying we are good but we have to do evil to achieve the universal good. Again this is a rapid road to hell.
Bill Barr took the evidence where it led him — in regards to the Russia Hoax and Trump’s election fraud hoax.
Republicans and Democrats might want to take some time to step back and consider independents — who didn’t buy either one of these two farces. They will sway upcoming elections.
So to the extent you want your party to embrace one or the other, you will be turning them off.
I am going to vote virtually Republican in the upcoming elections with at least one notable exception. While I will be voting to oust Whitmer, I will be voting FOR the Democratic Secretary of State in Michigan. She’s done a half-way decent job to begin with, but more importantly she is being challenged by a Trump election fraud hoaxer. And I will NOT be voting for her.
Hell yeah, Orange Man Bad, seeing gas under $2.40, women could give babies formula, had tampons & he wasn’t putting with the Pedos with their Drag Queen Story Time Pedo Grooming, etc…
Yeah, Trump’s endorsement for Michigan SoS Bad.
I’m not quite sure what to make of this. Bill Barr is not “Orange Man Bad.” You can believe in Trump derangement syndrome and still recognize that he lost the state. And Trump’s endorsement is not the issue. I’m confident in the electoral count as a whole. And with regard to the State of Michigan, I am confident beyond ANY reasonable doubt that Trump lost this state. The state election here was properly certified. And anyone who thinks there is evidence Trump won the State of Michigan is deluding themselves.
Today I don’t recall all that was screwed up with Michigan’s election, but I do remember they like many states there was plenty demonstrable election fraud.
Barr, just go look through the history & the times, he’s not looking to clean to me.
If someone wanted to dig through some 16-17 month old archives at some new media outlets they’d have the leads. ie: Infowars, Banned.Video, The Gateway Pundit, & many others.
LOL, one of the witnesses was the blonde with the beehive hairdo. Was she also chewing gum?
It would be easy to fix all the states voting system but the crooks on both side don’t want that.
Lord knows McConnell doesn’t want anyone looking Kentucky’s 2020 election.
Here is a Election fraud report I found on news aggregator ( The Liberty Daily) that includes some Michigan 2020 Election stuff.
Alex Newman I’ve found honest over the years, but you decide.
*******
https://libertysentinel.org/election-fraud-turn-over-the-rocks-and-watch-the-bugs-scurry-underneath
” I am confident beyond ANY reasonable doubt that Trump lost this state. “
Steve, I am not looking to find you right or wrong. Michigan was the one state where the conservative estimates of 2000 Mules didn’t change the election results. But, there was another problem in Michigan, a huge number of nursing home patients and elderly where people said they didn’t vote and others said they couldn’t. You seem certain about the election results in Michigan and you were close to the action, what do you know about that claim? You seem objective, and I haven’t read much about it for quite awhile.
I heard about those problems — nation-wide actually. Not specific to Michigan. But what exactly are you alleging? Are you claiming it was intentional? Someone deliberately intercepted or didn’t send the ballots? That would be grounds for legal challenges. My understanding is that COVID restrictions in multiple states, both red and blue, made it difficult. It’s not good when any citizen wishes to vote and ends up unable to do so for any number of reasons. But ultimately all the state can do is count the ballots it receives. My comment is limited to that.
I haven’t heard Trump use the argument that COVID restrictions took more votes away from him than Biden. It is certainly plausible that is the case. That would be an interesting argument for him to have used. “I would have won if everybody who had wanted to vote had voted.” My guess is he didn’t use it because it was not a basis for challenging the results. But had he come at it from that angle, he might have come out of it looking a lot better than he does now.
Stevej, I think my comment was unclear. I was talking about the elderly and nursing home patients that some said couldn’t or wouldn’t have voted, but their ballots were sent in. I had heard a number that was well over 100,000 for Michigan, and I think one sheriffs office announced an investigation. I am looking at answers that correct the voting process.
This could have occurred in any state.
I see. You are claiming actual fraud. The taking of someone else’s ballot, forging the signature and sending it in. Well at least with the nursing homes, it’s a semi-feasible concern as opposed to the fear of mail-in ballots in general. The latter concern doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. In the latter case what would have to happen. You would have to canvass neighborhoods, I suppose between midnight and four in the morning, peeking in people’s mailboxes for weeks until you saw a ballot. Taking it out, forging the signature, and sending it in. Or perhaps you had an inside man at the post office diverting them to you. Then you would have to explain why there was not a spike in people requesting duplicate ballots because they didn’t receive theirs. No such statistical spike has been produced. Not to mention that the people claimed to have pulled off such a thing couldn’t organize themselves out of a brown paper bag or balance their check books let alone pull off something like this.
But back to the nursing homes.
In Michigan, I have seen no evidence of a nursing home turnout anomaly. I think you may be thinking of Wisconsin. And while I’ll keep an open mind to any evidence you may have on that state, I’m not persuaded by Michael Gableman’s findings.
https://www.news-journal.com/michael-gablemans-numbers-on-wisconsin-nursing-home-votes-dont-add-up/article_b1f78c6c-91ed-5276-a4bc-f66b0eed76d5.html
Stevej, I don’t know if there was significant fraud or not involving the elderly and nursing home patients. I’m sure there was some, and I know there was talk of investigations but a lot of things are talked about. I don’t know what happened to all the talk. Thanks for the article on Wisconsin, but I brought up Michigan because I thought maybe a local had a better understanding.
Thanks. I think we need a more secure election process, but I don’t know that is going to happen. There have been some changes, but I don’t think enough.
News Alert!!! Re-run of Giligan’s Island attracts more viewers than the January 6 committee hearings even though in both instances they’re lost on a deserted island.
ThinkItThrough,
That would not surprise me, and well paid.
Everyone who thinks JeffSilberman comments too much give me a “like”. Everyone that thinks Jeff is an oddball with a Trump obsession give me a like. Everyone that thinks people like Jeff and one particular “Anonymous” guy is trying to ruin the comments section with what amounts to a “heckler’s veto” give me a like.
“ these lawyers refused to be conduits or promoters of claims that they considered false or unsupported.” according to Turley.
One only has to Google “election law violations”, “election fraud” “absentee ballot fraud”, “ballot boxes”, “Dominion voting machines,” “court election unconstitutional”, and “chain of custody” to find hundreds if not thousands of examples of both concrete and strongly circumstantial evidence of outright voter fraud, election law violations, and voting machine and election process irregularities that any thinking adult would argue question the validity of the election.
Many of these findings have only come to light in the past year. Here in Georgia 37 counties could not produce chain of custody documents required by Georgia and Federal law. At least one county deleted election records required by federal law to be preserved for 18 months. The documentary “2000 Mules” using the same cell phone geofencing techniques the FBI used to nab Jan 6 trespassers provided very strong evidence of absentee ballot fraud and illegal ballot harvesting. But yeah – there was no election fraud.
Marc Elias is a conman. Perkins-Coie is a Democrat Party front. Don’t forget it was Perkins-Coie who sent their attorney to Hawaii to get Obama’s “birth certificate” then the White House released it without any scrutiny or verification.
Considering the countless profferings of disinformation, treachery and illegal actions already on the public record done by the dems, (biden and family, schumer, pelosi and family, swalwell, waters, foxx and countless others), the public has pretty much made up its mind about whether the left is capable of ever speaking the truth. This discussion is more about saving face than anything else. Unfortunately, it has failed. The dems have virtually no credibility left except among their own bubble-enclosed selves.
a statement that seemed to refer to minority voters who would be disproportionately impacted by such a requirement.
Democrats always tell you exactly how they think about minorities. Specifically, minorities need the Democrats in the government, to be their nannies, protectors, hall monitors and tutors. Because according to Democrats, minorities lack the natural intellect of the rest of the population, and are not able, to follow simple direction.
Even when Hillary Clinton and her adviser Jake Sullivan were pretending that the Alfa Bank story (manufactured through the campaign) was new to them
Jake Sullivan, Bidens National Security Advisor. Sullivan should have to defend his reputation. But as the good Prof points out, what most would consider baggage to overcome, in the Democrat world, the bigger the lies, the larger the badge of honor.
John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, was questioned by Congress and denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Sitting beside him was Elias, who reportedly said nothing to correct the misleading information given to Congress.”
Lying before congress is a crime. Democrats know there is a two tier justice system and never have to be held accountable.
It’s the modern day White Man’s Burden.
If the GOP has the cojones to hold the Dems accountable after the Nov. 2022 election puts the GOP in a position to do so, accountability may result – one would hope so but………we’ll wait and see.
[b]bold[/b]
{i}bold{/i}
Turley is being disingenuous about something in this post. Turley’s disingenuousness about something obviously negates the well documented shadiness of Elias. We Democrats may be bad guys but we are bad guys for good things, which makes us virtuous.
Plus, Trump is orange.
Doing “good thigs” for people who neither want not need need it is not virtuous, it’s pure unmitigated evil, and the sad part is you people neither realize, nor believe that. It’s why your ilk need to not be defeated, you need to be destroyed, just like all the other poisonous ideologies that have arisen in history.
Yep, you are very sacrscant in your own mind, but in reality just deep swamp, sycophant liars, whose days of comeuppance is fast approaching Just continue to observe and ascertain the karma as it comes.
Turley and FOX are upset that only republicans are testifying against Trump under oath. So far, only Trump appointees and staff are telling what happened in the attempt to subvert the peaceful transfer of government. So on cue, FOX and Turley whip out anything and anybody to distract and distort.
Fishwings,
It’s certainly personal between Elias and Turley. One suspects that there must be some private interactions between the two which accounts for the bad blood.
As more time goes on, Turley and FOX are connected with the same narrative. His post about Pelosi not being fair to the republican’s and the committee structure is case in point.
Fishwings,
Before Trump was hired by Fox, he was very critical of Trump. He has never said a complimentary think about his character. He concedes that Trump is deplorable; he only insists that he was not impeachable or criminally liable.
But he has always left open the possibility as he does now that Trump could be found criminally liable provided that sufficient evidence is presented. This stands him apart from a Trumpist who will never accept Trump being found guilty.
Because if Trump goes down, they all go down with him and they know it.
JeffSilberman presents to us another “the walls are closing in on Trump” scenario. One would think that rehashing a lost cause would signal a loss of rationality but JeffSilberman continues on and on and on and on……. The walls have closed on on Jeff’s argument. Me thinks me hears a clanging cymbal.
JeffSilberman presents to us another “the walls are closing in on Trump” scenario.
**************************
Trump’s 129-8 in political endorsements. The walls are being blown wide open — and they know it.”
TiT,
We shall see who gets the last laugh. As to the Lost Cause, I seem to recall that last time the North beat the insurrectionists.
“He concedes that Trump is deplorable;”
Jeff is making things up again.
“But he has always left open the possibility” That Biden, Pelosi, Schumer might be found guilty. Jeff puts words in Turley’s mouth.
I think Jeff is the Avenatti of the blog, not so smooth a talker as he is a liar.
One suspects that there must be
retard doing what retards do. Making up stuff they think sounds smart…but no…just retard speak
Turley and FOX are upset that only republicans are testifying against Trump under oath. So far,
Thanks for providing the proof the committee is nothing but over produced theater. 100% Pelosi selected committee members, allows them to craft, curate, refine, and tailor the witness list, to best advance the fake narrative. Lawyers call your observation’ testimony against self interest’ and carries great weight.
You should try to read the post.
Elias wrote an essay because he doesn’t like people who are testifying being characterized as “Team normal”.
Turley – who happens to be normal – points out how utterly absurd it is for someone as sleazy and as morally bankrupt as Elias is to attack the character of “Team Normal”.
Because Turley is correctly pointing out that Elias is the wrong guy to be opining on someone else’s character, you claim he is engaged in distracting and distorting because he did not write about something you want him to write about.
Great summary Anon!
Uh, speaking if reminders: how about a reminder that this is not actually a court of law and likely has no ramifications whatsoever? It’s more a condensed version of the DNC’s behavior of the past 5 years made into a TV special. In the past that might even have been referred to as literal ‘propaganda’:
propaganda
[ prop-uh-gan-duh ]
noun
information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.
James,
Right you are.
Last ditch effort to stay in power come mid-terms?
Not working.
Bigger things on Americans minds than this dog and pony show are grocery bills, prices at the pump, crime and watching wokeness insanity spread through out the country.
Just read where some swanky LA private school went woke, and allegedly called Jews “oppressors.” Nothing says woke like antisemitism.
He should be behind bars with Hillary. Enough lies already.
Lefties are often sanctimonious liars.
Washington has low ethical standards, but lefties seem to be leading the way down.
Cat fight!
The sleazebag should be speaking from behind Iron Bars for all of his criminal violations.
Why is he not in prison already?
Why is he not being indicted by the Durham Special Counsel Investigation?
Why is Perkins Coie still in business?
Why. have not the whole bunch of them been disbarred for their conduct?
The Professor in a few short paragraphs lays out the misconduct…..the kind a Boot NCIS Agent could make without any real difficulty….but our wonder DOJ/FBI/IRS?Postal Inspectors cannot even find a way to begin an investigation into it all.
Why is that Professor….you can do it….proven by your article.
This is a Lincoln Log kind of case…..just take the pieces and join them together and in time you. have the cabin sitting their all done.
To quite the legendary Jesse Stone (played by Tom Selleck)…….”The information is out there….you just have to let it in.”.
Republicans need to fight fire with fire. When they win in a massive landslide…they need to PROSECUTE the criminals of the Democrat Party…lawyer or not!
Democrats are Fascist criminals trying to destroy America. There crimes are Obvious…but the DOJ/FBI are 100%…so they go unpunished!
can anyone explain why failed Hunter Biden took millions from China, Ukraine, Russians, Mexico, etc so he could use his dad’s Access to OUR Government?
Why hasn’t Pelosi son been Jailed after being indicted for crimes? Sen Menendez main money guy goes to kail for 20 years…but Sen Menendez walks when DOJ drop the case!
That plank in your eye must be getting pretty cumbersome.
guy:
“Democrats are Fascist criminals …”
****************************
Please stop insulting fascist criminals. Even those losers know you can’t win with $5 gas, $4 eggs and no baby formula or tampons.
Ah, the workings of free trade…
Afrighfulninny:
If you do the same for the baby formula …