Biden Orders Trump Visitor Logs Turned over to House Select Committee

The House Select Committee investigating the attempted coup wants to know whom Donald Trump spoke to on the phone on January 6, an issue we wrote about on Monday. It also wants to know who visited Trump in person that day. Consequently, it has asked the National Archives to turn over the White House visitor logs (assuming the logs are correct, which may or may not be the case). Donald Trump has invoked executive privilege to block the Committee from getting the logs. However, Joe Biden has trumped Trump by invoking the "one president at a time" rule and ordered NARA to give Congress the logs unless a court orders otherwise within 15 days. Needless to say, Trump will now file suit to try to get a court to block NARA from giving the Committee the logs.

So far, Trump has struck out just about every time he has asked the courts to block the Committee from getting information it deems necessary to do its work. The courts have repeatedly ruled that when the sitting president wants one thing and a former president wants something else, the sitting president wins. In this case, Trump is going to have to try to make a case that he was entitled to have secret visitors come see him and be able to shield that from Congress and the public. It is a very weak case, even absent a request from Congress, and is even weaker when Congress is investigating possible illegal behavior on the part of the executive branch.

Last month, the Supreme Court refused to block the release of other Trump administration documents the Committee wanted. The Committee has now received those documents. There is no reason to believe this case will end any differently. Most likely Trump's lawyers have already told him that he is going to lose, so he is probably just hoping to stall for a few more months. That may not work, though, since sometimes the courts have moved quickly in this type of case. (V)

Lots of Legal Action Coming Up This Year

Although in emergencies the courts can move quickly, normally they work extremely slowly, but eventually there are hearings and trials and rulings. There are quite a few pieces of court action scheduled for the months ahead, and many of them relate to Donald Trump or his buddies or supporters. BusinessInsider has compiled a list of them. Here is a summary of some of the more interesting ones:

• Feb. 17: Donald Trump has been out of office for a year, but investigations into his inauguration are still going on, ever so slowly. There will be a hearing today on whether the case can go forward. There are a lot of unanswered questions about where the money came from and where it went. If the case goes forward, then the discovery process can start. Sometime in a couple of years there might even be a trial. Probably by the time it goes the trial, all the key witnesses will be long dead, so the judge will call it a mistrial.
  
  
• Feb. 28: The first actual trial of sometime indicted for his role in the attempted coup will begin on Feb. 28. The accused is Guy Reffitt, who is charged with civil disorder, obstructing Congress, and taking a semiautomatic weapon into the Capitol. This trial will give a clue on how the Dept. of Justice plans to handle later trials.
  
  
• March 7: Trump spent months trying to block the House Select Committee from getting documents about what he was doing on Jan. 6. He claimed executive privilege but the Supreme Court refused to take the case. The Dept. of Justice gave Trump until March 7 to determine his next step. No doubt Trump will try for more delays.
  
  
• April 4: The second special grand jury empaneled by the Manhattan D.A. looking into the Trump organization's finances is scheduled to finish on this date.
  
  
• May 2: Back in 2015, there was a protest outside Trump Tower. The protesters claimed Trump's security guards roughed them up and they sued. Jury selection is scheduled to start on May 2, 6 years after the event. A video of a deposition Trump gave is expected to be played during the trial.
  
  
• May 2: Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis has asked for special grand jury to be empaneled on May 2 to investigate Trump's "request" to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to "find 12,000 more votes." Once the grand jury is in place, she can start sending out subpoenas. Raffensperger is running for reelection and no doubt does not want to testify voluntarily, since Trump supporters will see that as treason. However, when Willis subpoenas him, he will definitely show up and testify. A big unknown here is whether Willis will subpoena Trump and what happens when he refuses to show up, which is a virtual certainty.
  
  
• May 13: One of Trump's biggest supporters, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), is under investigation on federal sex trafficking charges. His buddy, Joel Greenberg, is said to be cooperating with the government. A federal judge wants to know how that is going before sentencing Greenberg for allegedly helping Gaetz move underage girls across state lines. May 13 is when the judge make his final decision.
  
  
• June 29: Some people have sued the Trump Organization for running a pyramid scheme. They want to see the "Celebrity Apprentice" tapes and on June 29, they will get them.
  
  
• June 30: Willis has said she will decide whether to charge Trump in the first half of 2022. Of course, a lot depends on whether Raffensperger shows up on time and tells her under oath that which she has read 1,000 times in the media. Needless to say, Trump is not going to show up by June 30, but she may feel that the recording she will subpoena from Raffensperger is enough for an indictment.
  
  
• July 12: The New York State Supreme Court will hold a hearing on the case brought by the Manhattan D.A. against Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, who received income-in-kind from the organization and didn't pay the required taxes on it. The prosecution has 6 million pages of documents that it got during discovery. The judge wants to know how they are doing. He could schedule a trial for later this year. If Weisselberg wanted to make a deal to save his own neck, he would have done it already, so it looks like he will fall on his sword to save Trump. The D.A. could yet go after Weisselberg's son for tax evasion if he wants to, to increase the pressure.
  
  
• July 18: Steve Bannon got a congressional subpoena and told Congress to shove it. The Dept. of Justice then indicted him for this act of defiance. On July 18, his trial begins and we will discover whether obeying a congressional subpoena is mandatory or a user option.
  
  
• Sept. 7: Tom Barrack, another Trump crony and the chairman of the Trump inaugural committee, had a side gig lobbying for the United Arab Emirates. That is actually legal—as long as you register as a foreign agent, which Barrack did not do, of course. Barrack's trial begins on Sept. 7. There might be a couple of questions about whether the UAE donated a whole pile of money to the inauguration, what they got in return, and Barrack's role in all this.
  
  
• Nov. 7: Trump's world is complicated because so many of the people he deals with commit crimes independent of him. They can sometimes be pressured on those cases. On Nov. 7, Roger Stone goes on trial in federal court on charges that he cheated on his federal taxes to the extent of $2 million.
  

And these are only the cases already scheduled. There could be plenty of others scheduled later this year. (V)

Senate Republicans Are Blocking Fed Nominees

Although Senate Republicans do not have a majority and cannot vote down Joe Biden's nominees, they do have a way to block nominations: Stay home. If every Republican refuses to show up at a committee hearing on a nominee, there will not be a quorum and there cannot be a vote. They are doing precisely that now in the Banking Committee to block Joe Biden's slate of nominees to the Fed, including a second term for Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and a second term for Vice Chairwoman Lael Brainard. Republicans don't actually oppose either of these folks. The nominee they don't like is Sarah Bloom Raskin, who would be the Fed's top Wall St. regulator. If the name "Raskin" sort of vaguely rings a bell, it is probably because the nominee is married to high-profile House Democrat Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the lead impeachment manager on Donald Trump's second impeachment.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, says that he has some questions for nominee Raskin to which he does not have satisfactory answers. In particular, he is not happy with her views on climate change and her desire for Wall St. banks to reserve large amounts of money in preparation for climate disasters that will cause some of their loans to fail, even when the borrower is creditworthy. The banks don't want to do this.

The Committee chairman, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), has criticized the Republicans, saying: "If my colleagues are as concerned about inflation as they claimed to be, on this committee and beyond, they will not slow down this process, which will hurt workers, their families and our recovery." In other words, Republicans claim that they are terribly concerned about inflation, but refuse to fully staff the only federal agency (the Fed) that actually has some real power to do something about it. So put up or shut up.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has urged Biden to withdraw Raskin and replace her with someone else. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki shot that down instantly, saying: "Such an extreme step would be totally irresponsible at a time when it's never been more important to have confirmed leadership at the Fed to help continue our recovery and maintain price stability." That sounds like Biden is not going to withdraw her name, but the Committee Republicans aren't backing down either. This means that there could be three vacant seats on the Fed's governing board indefinitely.

An additional complication is Raskin's role on the board of a Colorado payments company long ago that got access to the Fed's payment system, allowing it to handle payments without going through a bank. There is nothing really unusual about this, but the Republicans are raising the issue because Raskin was on the board of the company. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) is upset because the Colorado company got access to the Fed's payment system and specialized companies in Wyoming in the crypto business have not gotten access. Of course, that could be because the Fed doesn't think that crypto is a legitimate financial asset. The Kansas City Fed came to Raskin's rescue and issued a statement that the state of Colorado had fully approved the company on whose board Raskin sat and thus it was eligible to access the Fed's payment system. (V)

2022 Elections May Be Underfunded

During the 2020 elections, huge numbers of changes needed to be implemented quickly and states and counties didn't have the money to do them. They were rescued by private donations, including $300 million from Mark Zuckerberg. The needs in 2022 will be just as great and no one expects private donors to come to the rescue this time.

Tiana Epps-Johnson, executive director of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, said that if Congress does not act quickly to fill the gap it will really have a negative impact on the midterms. The shortfall means fewer polling places, reduced access to early voting or mail ballots, and delayed security upgrades—even in states that have embraced expanding voter access, let alone that have moved to restrict it. She added: "That's how you end up with lines that wrap around city blocks."

The Center is calling for a federal investment of $20 billion over 10 years. An amount of $2 billion/year is a drop in the bucket in a $7-trillion federal budget. But appropriating even $2 billion would require Senate Republicans to agree to it and there is no such agreement now. Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), who helped engineer a $380 million grant to the states for elections in 2018 said there is too much of that unspent to warrant giving the states any more money. However, the unspent money can't be used for operations, only for new voting machines, and states are moving away from voting machines altogether. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) said: "This should be a bipartisan priority. Unfortunately it's not."

Simple things can be hugely problematic here. The cost of paper has gone up 50% due to workers at paper mills getting COVID and mills switching from making paper to making cardboard boxes for online e-commerce. Elections need a lot of paper, for ballot applications, ballots, and envelopes.

Private donors will be wary about giving money in 2022 due to criticism from Republicans that the money in 2020 mostly went to cities rather than rural areas. Epps-Johnson said that was because it was the cities that were having trouble and made the requests. Rural areas didn't need help and didn't ask for it. States have their own budget problems, so if Congress doesn't come through, there are likely to be many problems with election administration in the fall. In some states, this could become a partisan issue, with partisan secretaries of state deciding which counties get money to print ballots and which don't. The consequences for election integrity are pretty grim. (V)

Do Republicans Stand for Anything?

Catherine Rampell has an interesting piece in the Washington Post about the modern Republican Party. Her rhetorical question is: "Are the Republicans hiding their real agenda or do they just not have one?" This is not an idle question. Political parties everywhere in the world normally have an agenda that they promise tto carry out if they obtain power. That is even true in countries like China that don't have actual elections. The Communist Party there has five-year plans and more that they intended to carry out. These are not secret. The only major party that doesn't have a party program is the U.S. Republican Party. In 2020, it just said it would do whatever Donald Trump wants. That is not a party program. In the past, Republicans were for smaller government, lower taxes, less regulation of businesses, free international trade, opposition to abortion, and a whole raft of specific items. Now it is an election year and they don't seem to be for or against anything. Rampell is wondering if they are hiding their real agenda or maybe they really don't have one anymore.

At one point, the Republicans fancied themselves as the "party of ideas." In 1994, Newt Gingrich wrote the "Contract with America">, listing eight specific promises. Some of them made no sense (e.g., declaring that all U.S. laws applied to members of Congress, something that was already the case), some of them were highly technical (e.g., reducing the number of House committees and have term limits for their chairs), but some had actual content (e.g., requiring bills that increase taxes to have a three-fifths majority). Most of them dealt with congressional procedures, but at least it was a specific list of things the Republicans stood for. And until 2020, every Republican National Convention drew up a detailed platform of what the Party stood for. Now there is nothing besides opposition to Democrats across the board and culture war grievances. The RNC has no intention of issuing a platform in advance of the 2022 midterms. When he was recently asked what he would do if Republicans captured Congress in 2022, Mitch McConnell said: "That is a very good question. And I'll let you know when we take it back." Does McConnell have a secret agenda or is he merely interested in power for its own sake?

When Vice Chair of the Senate Republican Conference Joni Ernst (R-IA) was asked the same question, she said her top priority was tackling inflation. Only she refused to say how. The "how" is the hard part.

It is very possible that the Republican Senate caucus is so divided that it doesn't have a plan for 2023 other than blocking everything Joe Biden wants. It is also possible that there really is an agenda, but that Republicans know it is so unpopular (e.g., cutting taxes for billionaires, appointing right-wing judges, and gutting environmental regulations) that it has made the calculation that acting like there is no agenda will get more votes than laying out the real agenda. But if Republicans eke out a tiny majority in the Senate in 2022 or 2024 and really don't have party-wide agreement on what they want, they could end up in the same situation the Democrats are in now, with a handful of recalcitrant senators blocking the other ones. For example, if Republicans get 51 seats in the Senate and want to pass a federal law banning all abortions starting 8 hours after conception, but Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME) don't agree, they won't be able to get anything done, either. (V)

Missouri Senate Race Is Up for Grabs

One of the more exciting Senate primaries so far is the Republican one in Missouri. So far, six more-or-less plausible candidates have filed, but the filing deadline for the Aug. 2, 2022 primary is March 29, so more could jump in. Here are the most plausible ones so far:

• Eric Greitens: Former governor who resigned in disgrace after sexually assaulting and blackmailing his hairstylist
• Vicki Hartzler: Former state representative and current U.S. representative from MO-04
• Billy Long: Former auctioneer and current U.S. representative from MO-07
• Mark McCloskey: Private lawyer who became famous for 15 minutes for pointing a gun at BLM protesters
• Dave Schatz: President pro tempore of the Missouri state Senate
• Eric Schmitt: Former state senator, former state treasurer, and current state attorney general

Much of the Missouri state Republican establishment is backing the guy who committed sexual assault and blackmail (Greitens) and escaped impeachment only because he resigned before the legislature could pass a bill to impeach him. Oh, and Greitens was also indicted for invasion of privacy and computer tampering, but those charges were dropped when he resigned. The main exception is Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who recently endorsed Hartzler, even though she is basically unknown outside her district.

Even though Hartzler has not been begging for Trump's support, that doesn't mean she is some kind of closet leftist. She has just released a biting transphobic television ad targeting a transgender swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania (which, according to Google maps, is not in technically in Missouri). Hartzler claims that the swimmer, now Lia Thomas, changed genders to be able to compete against women instead of against men. Hartzler appears in the ad and says: "Women's sports are for women, not men pretending to be women."

One important factor here is that Donald Trump has not endorsed anyone (yet). All of the candidates except Hartzler are running in the Trump lane—some with more enthusiasm than the others, though. Early on, Schmitt was the Trumpiest of them all, but he is so far to the right that other Republicans are worried that he could repel independents in the general election. More recently, Long has tried to out-Trump Schmitt and the others. Some Republicans have asked Long to drop out in return for support to be reelected to his House seat. But his district is R+23, so that promise doesn't mean a lot to him and he has adamantly refused to drop out. He also torched Hawley for his endorsement of Hartzler. He was kind of hoping for it himself.

What suddenly shook up this race is a new poll that shows the sexual assaulter Greitens leading Marine Corps veteran Lucas Kunce, the least unknown of the many unknown Democrats, by only 4 points, 42% to 38%. Every Republican in Missouri is well aware of how things went with Todd "legitimate rape" Akin in 2012. They also know that Akin never raped anyone, he just mused that rape victims don't get pregnant unless the rape is "legitimate." Greitens actually sexually assaulted someone and the Democrats would have a field day with that, especially if they run a straight-arrow Marine Corps veteran. In short, what Greitens did is 10x worse than what Akin did, and Akin lost.

Hawley is probably thinking along these lines and is afraid that Greitens could get the nomination and go down in the general election. Greitens is currently leading in the polls, with Schmitt second. The Senator's hope is to give Hartzler a boost and pray that Trump doesn't jump in and endorse one of the Trumpy candidates. Trump hasn't said anything yet, but many people in his orbit have endorsed Greitens. After all, tying up your mistress and taking nude photos of her to blackmail her is the kind of behavior you might see from Trump himself. Among other people who have endorsed Greitens are Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, Bernard Kerik, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Sebastian Gorka, and the D.C. legal power couple Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing, both of whom are close to Trump. Hartzler's other endorsers include Michele Bachman and Tony Perkins. The only person of consequence who has endorsed Schmitt is billionaire Peter Thiel, although the Koch Network is also supporting him. (V)

Portman Backs Timken

The Ohio Republican Senate primary is just as complicated as the Missouri one, but different. There are five more-or-less plausible Republicans running, and new ones can't jump in because the filing deadline has already passed for the May 3 primary. The most plausible candidates are these:

• Matt Dolan: Wealthy state senator and part owner of the Cleveland Guardians baseball team
• Mike Gibbons: Wealthy investment banker willing to spend what it takes to win
• Josh Mandel: Former state treasurer
• Jane Timken: Wealthy former chairwoman of the Ohio Republican Party
• J.D. Vance: Wealthy former hillbilly, best-selling author, Marine Corps veteran, and venture capitalist

A quick perusal of the list reveals that only one of the candidates has held statewide office before, while the others would like to buy their way in and can afford to do so. It is going to be a humdinger of a race and Ohio television stations will make a lot of money this year. Since Donald Trump has not chimed in yet, the race is unsettled. Originally, Trump was planning to endorse Timken, but aides talked him out of it, probably because she didn't appear to be the favorite and he hates to back losers. Now, retiring Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), whose seat all the contenders want to sit in, has endorsed Timken. This endorsement will surely help her catch up with the others, who she had been trailing.

It's going to be an unbelievably expensive race. Gibbons and Dolan have already each put in $10 million of their own money and there are months to go. Vance has billionaire Peter Thiel on his side and Thiel has chucked in $10 million so far. Timken has put in only $3.5 million of her own money, but she also raised $3.5 million from donors. Mandel has the least money but is polling the best as he is the best-known of the candidates. In addition to being elected state treasurer twice, he ran for the Senate in 2012 and lost, and ran again in 2018 and dropped out.

Mandel is acting the Trumpiest of all, but it is just for show. He isn't really a true believer and will say whatever he thinks will please Trump, figuring that fooling Trump isn't that hard. Vance is also vying hard for Trump's endorsement, and like Mandel, doesn't believe the things he (Vance) is saying. But unlike Mandel, Vance is on record calling Trump an "idiot" in 2016. This may make getting Trump's endorsement tricky. Timken is the most circumspect of the bunch and is generally careful about what she says. Portman's endorsement could be a big help. But until Trump weighs in, everything is really up in the air.

Unlike Missouri, the Democrats almost have their nominee lined up: Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH). He is a strong candidate and most of the Party is behind him. However, he is being challenged by a young progressive Black lawyer and community organizer, Morgan Harper. Ryan has agreed to debate Harper, which will give her a huge amount of exposure and could help her. If Ryan wins the primary he might actually have a shot at winning the general election, especially if there is a lot of bad blood created during the Republican primary. If Harper pulls off a huge upset and wins the primary, we very much doubt that a young Black woman has much of a chance in a state where old white men still dominate. (V)

Three School Board Members Recalled in San Francisco

Schools are the new battleground and California is recall central, so it was inevitable that there would be recall races for the San Francisco school board. On Tuesday, the chairwoman and two other members of the school board were recalled in landslide defeats. Unlike gubernatorial recalls, the voters didn't have to pick replacements. When a school board member is recalled, the mayor, currently London Breed (D), appoints replacements. Breed supported the recalls. This was the first recall election of a city public official in 40 years. The only reason the other four board members were not on the recall ballot is that they were elected in November, and city election rules don't allow recalls of members just elected. Otherwise there would be recall campaigns started the day after all officials took the oath of office.

All three members were crushed. Board president Gabriela López lost 75% to 25%. Members Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga lost 79% to 21% and 72% to 28%, respectively. All three are minorities, which in San Francisco is normally good, but not this time.

Was the problem about masks in schools? Actually, no. That didn't play a role at all. A major part of the problem was that during the pandemic, the board wasn't so much interested in whether the children were safe or learning anything. It was busy with more important issues, like renaming 44 schools that were named for racists, including famous male racist Abraham Lincoln and famous female racist Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). It's good to know that the board was not sexist in its actions. The George Washington School and Paul Revere School were also slated to get new names.

This renaming exercise in the middle of a pandemic, when the schools were closed, didn't sit well with a lot of not-as-woke-as-you-might-have-expected San Franciscans. In addition, the board changed the admissions policy at Lowell High School, generally seen as the best one in the city. It used to have a merit-based admissions policy but the board changed it to a random lottery. That didn't go over so well with many Chinese Americans, whose kids represent a disproportionate shared of the student body at Lowell. They perceived the change as anti-Chinese bigotry and voted in unusually large numbers.

Each of the board members had different individual problems, in addition to the generic ones that affected all of them. Collins posted some crude racist tweets in 2016 that accused Asian Americans of using "white supremacist thinking." When they surfaced, the board removed her from the vice presidency of the board. She also recently tried to sell her house for $3,249,000, which even in San Francisco is a lot of money. The ad said that the house had recently been renovated by a top architect. It turns out that was her husband. But apparently she didn't file any of the required permits and neighbors complained about dangerous work being done on expired permits. In 2018, the contractor was fined. The whole affair gives off an aura of "following the law is for the little people, not for me." And she got caught at it.

López blamed the recall measure against her on people not liking a Latina as board president. She said: "So, I do believe if it wasn't someone with my background, and I'll speak for myself, my experience, my understanding or cultural understandings, I don't think I would be getting as much pushback as I am now." She also defended the decision not to include any historians on the board-appointed committee that voted to get rid of Lincoln, Washington, and Revere. The committee consisted entirely of "community members." In fairness, everyone knows historians are sketchy, always helping themselves to a second bagel from the refreshments table.

Moliga, the first Pacific Islander to be elected to public office in San Francisco, is the only man and least controversial of the three. He said: "In my case, I've not done anything to warrant immediate removal." He further said that if people don't like how he is doing his job, they can vote him out at the next regular election. He did the best of the three in the recall, being only 44 points under water, compared to Collins, who was 58 points under.

The school renaming issue isn't the first time the board has flexed its wokeness muscles. In 2019, it decided to cover up a historic WPA-era mural at George Washington High School painted by Victor Arnautoff that depicts George Washington standing near a dead Native American. Arnautoff was a social realist who tried to depict things as they were, especially the stories of people who were being ignored. Here is the mural.

Arnautoff's intention was to show how cruel Washington really was, but that wasn't good enough for the board, which twice voted to remove it. The school's alumni association sued, arguing that the mural depicted part of American history and students should be exposed to all of it, the good, the bad, and the ugly. The board argued that the mural, however accurate and important historically, hurt some students' feelings, and that is what counts. A superior court judge, Anne-Christine Massullo, ruled for the alumni association last summer. After the ruling, on a narrow 4-3 vote, the board reversed its earlier decision to paint over the mural. Instead, it will install a wooden panel over it.

Do these recalls have national implications? Possibly. Many parents are very angry with school closures because: (1) their children didn't learn much at Zoom School and (2) they had to take off time from work to make sure the kids stayed in Zoom School and didn't start playing video games on the computer instead. The question is who gets blamed. In states where a Democratic governor closed the schools, Republicans will surely bring that up again and again. Will it hurt? Depends. If everything is back to normal by November, most people may have forgotten about it and it probably won't be a big factor. If the omega variant is raging and classical scholars are being besieged with questions about what to call the next variant now that all the Greek letters have been used up, school closures could still be an issue. In addition, the recall elections show that even in woker-than-thou San Francisco, there are limits to how much wokeness people will take. And if condemning Abraham Lincoln and George Washington as a racists doesn't fly there, it is not likely to fly in Charlotte or Atlanta. (V)

Election Denier Is Running to Run Elections in Colorado

The clerk of Colorado's Mesa County, Tina Peters, has loudly claimed that Donald Trump won in 2020. Since the former president is currently living in Florida instead of D.C., she has decided to help right matters next time by filing to run for Colorado secretary of state.

But the Peters story is a bit more complicated than just another conspiracy theorist running for secretary of state. There are so many of them, that you have to be at least a bit special to get noticed. Somehow, ballot images from the state's election server leaked out. That almost certainly means that someone with access did the leaking. The current secretary of state, Jena Griswold (D), thinks that Peters was the leaker. The Colorado AG, Philip Weiser (D) thinks there is something to that and has launched an investigation of Peters, who has denied it. She recently turned herself in after a warrant for her arrest was issued for obstructing government operations. She is definitely a cut above (or below) your average garden-variety conspiracy theorist,

Peters has repeatedly said that a software update deleted votes. However, The Denver Post noted that all elections in Colorado are conducted by paper ballot and the 2020 ones were recounted by hand multiple times with no sign of fraud. The Post called her "dangerous."

Peters announced her candidacy on—naturally—Steve Bannon's podcast. However, even with Bannon's implicit blessing, Peters is no shoo-in for the Republican nomination. Three other Republicans are already in the race and Democrat Griswold is probably the favorite anyway since Colorado has become a fairly blue state. But if Trump were to weigh in strongly for Peters, it would greatly increase the chances of her winning the GOP nomination and being crushed in the general election. (V)

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