Wisconsin election officials are tiring of repeated attempts to delay and undermine the vote recount in two counties by Trump-aligned monitors who repeatedly interject and interrupt vote counters, the Associated Press reports.

Trump observers repeated ask the counters questions or object to every single ballot in an apparent effort to disrupt the recount, delaying the results before the votes can be certified.  Trump has paid for a recount in two counties, Milwaukee and Dane, which generally swing Democratic.

At one tabulation table in Milwaukee County, a Trump-aligned observer objected to every single ballot as it’s pulled out of the bag because the ballots have been folded.  At others, multiple Trump representatives are observing the counters, a violation of the rules that require one representative from each Party.

“Defendants’ motions to dismiss the First Amended Complaint are granted with prejudice. Leave to amend is denied. ‘Among the grounds that could justify a denial of leave to amend are undue delay, bad faith, dilatory motive, prejudice, and futility.’ Given that: (1) Plaintiffs have already amended once as of right; (2) Plaintiffs seek to amend simply in order to effectively reinstate their initial complaint and claims; and (3) the deadline for counties in Pennsylvania to certify their election results to Secretary Boockvar is November 23, 2020, amendment would unduly delay resolution of the issues. This is especially true because the Court would need to implement a new briefing schedule, conduct a second oral argument, and then decide the issues” – Order signed by Middle District of Pennsylvania Judge Matthew Brann.

“President Donald Trump participated in his final Group of 20 summit on Saturday by tweeting throughout the opening session and skipping a special side-conference focused on the coronavirus pandemic. It was a fitting end to Trump’s career in global multilateralism, which he has expressed his displeasure for since his first group summit – a G7 meeting held cliffside in Sicily – resulted in the feeling he was being ganged up upon by other world leaders.”

“It was unclear all week whether Trump would even be present for this year’s G20, which is being held virtually because of the pandemic. But on Friday evening, the White House released a schedule confirming his participation.  When the event began, Trump was among the nearly two-dozen world leaders who appeared via video-conference, beaming in from the White House situation room. But only 13 minutes after the scheduled 8 a.m. ET, start time, Trump was sending tweets focused on his efforts to overturn the results of the US presidential election.  By 10 a.m. ET, the President had departed the White House on his way to his namesake golf club outside Washington, DC” – CNN.

“Republicans have launched yet another lawsuit in Pennsylvania seeking to declare the state’s mail-in voting law unconstitutional, calling for the invalidation of millions of votes. A group of eight Republicans, including Congressman Mike Kelly are suing the Republican-majority Pennsylvania general assembly, the state’s governor Tom Wolf, and the Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, alleging legislation allowing mail-in voting in the state is unconstitutional.”

“According to reporter Matt Maisel of Fox43, Act 77 — which allows mail-in voting in the state — was passed with a majority of Republican support in the state’s Republican-majority general assembly in 2019. It passed Pennsylvania’s House 138-61, with only one Republican voting no. Every Republican senator voted yes on the legislation. Thus far, every legal challenge brought on behalf of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election by invalidating legally cast votes has been thrown out of court. The lawsuit alleges that in order for the state to expand its mail-in voting allowances, it would have had to amend its constitution, which it did not do. As a result, the lawsuit argues, all mail-in ballots are illegal” – The Independent.

Washington Post: “President Trump would have the world falsely believe that he won the election and is preparing for a second term. In private huddles and phone conversations, however, Trump has been discussing an entirely different next act: another presidential run in 2024. In a nod to the reality that he is destined to leave office in January, the president is seriously contemplating life beyond the White House, telling advisers that he wants to remain an omnipresent force in politics and the media — perhaps by running for the White House again.”

“Trump also has been exploring ways to make money for relatively little work, such as giving paid speeches to corporate groups or selling tickets to rallies. In addition, he may try to write a score-settling memoir of his time as president and appear on television, in a paid or unpaid capacity. Though there has also been considerable chatter among Trump’s associates about him starting a media company of his own, many close to the president said they believe that option is less likely, in part because it would be an arduous undertaking without guaranteed success. These advisers, like some others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss sensitive topics. There is also pressure on Trump to monetize his post-presidency in light of his personal debt and legal troubles. Payments are due over the next four years for over $400 million in loans and could incur substantial legal fees related to a bevy of investigations and lawsuits.”

A federal judge has ordered a Trump-appointed conservative filmmaker appointed to run the Voice of America and other government-run media outlets to cease making personnel and editorial decisions, the Associated Press reports.

Michael Peck’s tenure as the head of US Agency for Global Media, which started in June 2020, was immediately contentious as he fired the heads of  Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Middle East Broadcasting Networks, and the Open Technology Fund, non-partisan media tasked with providing American news and information into authoritarian foreign countries.

A conservative filmmaker who produced titles such as “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in his Own Words” and “Hollywood vs. Religion,” Peck has been accused of unduly politicizing the broadcasts of the USAGM networks, turning them into outlets supporting outgoing Republican president Donald Trump and his campaign. 

Watch: Hundreds of Activists Gather for ‘Stop the Steal‘ Rally in Georgia https://t.co/vUG1bqG9yg via BreitbartNews Big Rallies all over the Country. The proof pouring in is undeniable. Many more votes than needed. This was a LANDSLIDE!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 21, 2020

New York Times: “Excavations at a suburban villa outside ancient Pompeii this month have recovered the remains of two original dwellers frozen in time by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius one fateful morning nearly 2,000 years ago. The unearthing of the two victims – whom archaeologists tentatively identified as a wealthy Pompeian landowner and a younger enslaved person – offered new insight into the eruption that buried the ancient Roman town, which has been a source of popular fascination since its rediscovery in the 18th century.”

“The finding is an ‘incredible font of knowledge for us,’ said Massimo Osanna, the departing director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, said in a video issued by the Culture Ministry on Saturday. He noted that it was also ‘a touching discovery of great emotional impact.’ For one thing, the two were dressed in woolen clothing, adding credence to the belief that the eruption occurred in October of 79 A.D. rather than in August of that year as had previously been thought, Mr. Osanna said later in a telephone interview. The Vesuvius eruption was described in an eyewitness account by the Roman magistrate Pliny the Younger as ‘an extraordinary and alarming scene.’ Buried by ash, pumice and rocks, Pompeii and neighboring cities lay mostly dormant, though intact, until 1748, when King Charles III of Bourbon commissioned the first official excavations of the site.”

“Michigan’s attorney general is exploring whether officials there risk committing crimes if they bend to President Trump’s wishes in seeking to block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in their state, according to two people familiar with the review. The move by Dana Nessel, a Democrat, reflected a growing sense of unease among many in her party and some Republicans that the president was continuing his unprecedented efforts to reach personally into the state’s electoral process as he seeks to prevent Michigan from formally declaring a winner there. The attorney general is conferring with election law experts on whether officials may have violated any state laws prohibiting them from engaging in bribery, perjury and conspiracy, according to people familiar with the deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.”

“Biden won enough states to secure 306 electoral college votes to Trump’s 232. In Michigan, Biden led Trump by more than 150,000 votes. In the wake of Biden being declared president-elect on Nov. 7, the Trump campaign initially sought to file several legal challenges claiming the results were tainted by fraudulent ballots and widespread election fraud. But the campaign repeatedly lost those court cases for lack of evidence for its claims. In the past week, Trump and his allies have shifted their efforts to attempting to block the certification of results in several states, including Michigan. That included Trump speaking by phone Tuesday with Monica Palmer, a member of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, after she and her Republican colleague William Hartmann reluctantly agreed to certify the county’s election tally” – Washington Post.

“The Justice Department has met President Trump’s fantastical claims of widespread voter fraud with two weeks of skeptical silence, not taking any overt moves to investigate what Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, claims is a globe-spanning conspiracy to steal the election. Such deafening silence from one of the government’s main enforcers of election law indicates just how little evidence there is to support the wild, wide-ranging claims made by Trump and his supporters, most notably Giuliani in a Thursday news conference held inside the Republican National Committee headquarters” The Washington Post reports.

“Privately, Justice Department officials have said they are willing to investigate legitimate claims of vote fraud; Attorney General William P. Barr even loosened some restrictions that might otherwise have discouraged prosecutors from doing so before results are certified. But current and former officials said they thought Giuliani’s accusations sounded ‘crazy,’ and they have not seen or heard of any evidence suggesting large-scale fraud, let alone the kind of intercontinental conspiracy described by the president’s lawyer. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a politically sensitive matter.”

Politico: “President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the election results is about to smash into reality: a gauntlet of battleground state deadlines that are poised to extinguish his increasingly desperate attempts to hold onto the presidency. Michigan is due to certify its state results Monday. Arizona and Pennsylvania counties must also finalize their results the same day. On the heels of Georgia’s certification of Joe Biden’s victory on Friday, the series of administrative deadlines stands to all but formalize Biden’s win by officially affirming the results in enough contested states to put him over the 270-electoral-vote threshold. As late as Friday, the president summoned Michigan lawmakers to the White House as part of his last-ditch lobbying effort to convince them to intervene to stop the state’s certification of the election results. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany claimed the afternoon meeting was not ‘an advocacy meeting.'”

“‘There will be no one from the campaign there’ McEnany said during a press briefing Friday. ‘He routinely meets with lawmakers from all across the country.’ Campaign aides who were expected to be in attendance decided to skip the meeting after Rudy Giuliani’s son Andrew tested positive for coronavirus. After emerging from the meeting, Republican leaders of Michigan’s state House and Senate indicated that the election was in fact a topic of discussion. But they dealt a blow to Trump’s hopes, saying they did not hear or see anything that suggested the state’s 16 electoral votes should go to Trump, rather than Biden. Biden won the state by 154,000 votes.”

?? President Trump Talking Bobblehead ?? Limited Edition collector’s item ?? Rotate between 6 sound bites from actual Trump rallies ?? Makes a great holiday gift! ?? CLICK TO GET YOURS WHILE THEY LAST

— Keep America Great keepamericagreatshop Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Harry Enten: “President-elect Joe Biden is going to be the next president of the United States. That hasn’t stopped President Donald Trump and his campaign from claiming without any proof that there was wide scale fraud in the 2020 election. The truth, as confirmed by an audit of Georgia’s votes, is that Biden won this election. It’s highly unlikely that any recounts will change that. And we’re long past the point that candidates in Trump’s position have conceded in previous races. Last week, Georgia embarked on an audit (which was really more of a hybrid of an audit and hand recount) involving election workers checking every ballot by hand to make sure the vote counting equipment was accurate. This process is more involved than a mere machine recount.”

“Yet, even with a more involved process, Georgia’s count in the presidential race before the audit was largely confirmed. Biden was up by 14,156 votes before the audit, according to the Secretary of State’s office. Both the audit count and final certified count on Friday showed Biden ahead by more than 12,000 votes, per the Secretary of State’s office. That’s a shift from before the audit of less than 2,000 votes or less than 0.04 points in Biden’s margin, which stands at about 0.25 points in both the audit and final certified counts. Such movement is well within the range of what would be expected under a normal recount, let alone a more arduous count that this was. Based on over 30 statewide recounts since 2000 accumulated by FairVote, anything within 0.04 points is within one standard deviation of the changes between the initial count and recount. Even a shift of 0.1 points would be within the historical range of how much recounts have moved things in the past.”

AP: “Russia didn’t have to lift a finger. In the weeks before the U.S. presidential election, federal authorities warned that Russia or other foreign countries might spread false information about the results to discredit the legitimacy of the outcome. Turns out, the loudest megaphone for that message belonged not to Russia but to President Trump, who has trumpeted a blizzard of thoroughly debunked claims to proclaim that he, not President-elect Biden, was the rightful winner.”

“The resulting chaos is consistent with longstanding Russian interests to sow discord in the United States and to chip away at the country’s democratic foundations and standing on the world stage. If the 2016 election raised concerns about foreign interference in U.S. politics, the 2020 contest shows how Americans themselves, and their leaders, can be a powerful source of disinformation without other governments even needing to do the work. ‘For quite a while at this point, the Kremlin has been able to essentially just use and amplify the content, the false and misleading and sensational, politically divisive content generated by political officials and American themselves’ rather than create their own narratives and content, said former CIA officer Cindy Otis, vice president for analysis at the Alethea Group, which tracks disinformation. U.S. officials had been on high alert for foreign interference heading into Nov. 3, especially after a presidential election four years earlier in which Russian intelligence officers hacked Democratic emails and Russian troll farms used social media to sway public opinion.”

Massive voter fraud will be shown! https://t.co/F0iGNXtXZP

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 21, 2020

Washington Post: “When Wisconsin Republicans opened an office earlier this year in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood, it was meant to be a physical symbol of President Trump’s commitment to urban voters. But on Friday, as state officials began recounting ballots in Milwaukee County at the request of Trump’s failed reelection campaign, the office had become, for many residents, a symbol of Republican hypocrisy. ‘The president kept talking about Black voices mattering when he attempted to make inroads with the African American community,’ said Cavalier Johnson, president of the Milwaukee Common Council. ‘Then he loses the election, and turns right around and targets the same communities that these Black folks came from.’ Johnson, who is Black, reflected deepening outrage over the president’s push for a recount, which some characterized as an attempt to disenfranchise Black voters in a desperate and chaotic bid to stay in power.”

“Though Trump courted Black voters — and improved his showing over 2016 — he and his allies are now trying to deny President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in key battleground states by targeting ballots cast in heavily Black cities such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta and Milwaukee, arguing that these Democratic strongholds are hotbeds of fraud. Trump and his allies have presented no evidence of fraud or widespread error in any of these cities, and courts have repeatedly declined to grant their requests to invalidate ballots. Still, the president shows no signs of backing down, prompting Black leaders, political analysts and historians to cry foul at what they described as tactics reminiscent of those used to suppress the voice of Black voters following the Civil War.”

Hey @MittRomney, beautiful golf courses in Utah……maybe I'll move there, play a few rounds and unseat you. P.S. My wife is still waiting for her $2600 refund. Remember your wife canceled that Beverly Hills political luncheon fundraiser? But your campaign kept the money. https://t.co/ZMBZVZw3zZ

— Scott Baio (@ScottBaio) November 20, 2020

“Maricopa County’s election results are certified and final. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the elected body that oversees elections in Arizona’s most populous county, voted unanimously on Friday to approve the results of this month’s general election. The majority-Republican supervisors did so after spending hours on Friday afternoon asking election officials who oversaw the voting process numerous questions related to election fairness, security, technology and oversight. Before the vote, the supervisors, four Republicans and one Democrat, said they were satisfied with the answers” the Arizona Republic reports.

“Republican chairman Clint Hickman said there was no proof of fraud or misconduct in the election and he was confident that voters were provided with a fair election. He said that he ‘learned a lot about the character of people in this community’ on the matter, and he would not ‘violate the law or deviate from my own moral compass,’ even though he said that’s what some had pressured him to do. ‘No matter how you voted, this election was administered with integrity, transparency, and most importantly in accordance with Arizona state laws,’ Hickman said.”

Reuters: “Joe Biden on Saturday reached the two-week mark since becoming president-elect, with President Donald Trump stinging from back-to-back setbacks in his desperate, unprecedented bid to undo his election defeat. Biden, a Democrat, is preparing to take office on Jan. 20, but Trump, a Republican, has refused to concede and is seeking to invalidate or overturn the results through lawsuits and recounts in a number of states, claiming – without proof – widespread voter fraud.”

“That effort, which critics call an unparalleled push by a sitting president to subvert the will of voters, has met with little success. Trump’s campaign has suffered a string of legal defeats and appears to have failed to convince key fellow Republicans in states that he lost, such as Michigan, to buy into his unfounded conspiracy theories. Trump’s bid to cling to power appeared ever more tenuous on Friday after Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced a manual recount and audit of all ballots cast in the southern state had confirmed Biden as the winner there. A pair of Michigan Republican leaders delivered another blow when they declared on Friday night after a White House meeting with Trump: ‘We have not yet been made aware of any information that would change the outcome of the election in Michigan.’ Trump, in his first public comments in days about the election outcome, again asserted “I won” during a White House event on lowering drug prices earlier on Friday.”