by Observer R for the Saker Blog

The Biden v Trump 2020 election controversy has generated a lot of accusations and squabbles over evidence or lack thereof. Less common is an explanation of the strategy of the legal teams on both sides. To what extent is the Trump legal team trying to goad the voting system companies into suing the Trump campaign for defamation? How does the Trump team plan to get into a court where they can call for discovery, produce witnesses, and cross-examine witnesses? What is the Biden team’s strategy, other than trying to get the cases thrown out early to prevent dramatic movie-style courtroom battles? If the Trump team is trying to get to the Supreme Court as fast as possible, what do they plan to do once they get there? What is the strategy of the voting system companies, other than denials and refusing to show up at investigative hearings?

Possibilities

Do the political parties even want to win? If the stock market is a giant bubble and the real estate market is also pumped up by easy money and low interest rates, what happens when the bubble bursts? The economy has already slumped due to the virus and the lockdowns. The US national debt is way into the danger zone as is the budget deficit. The helicopter money cannot go on forever without the dollar going the way of Zimbabwe money. A possible result could be Great Depression II which would forever tarnish the reputation of whoever was President at the time. The President could look forward to being called Herbert Hoover II. The party in office at the time could look forward to defeat in the next election, and probably to defeats in several more elections. On the other hand, if the opposing party could put up a candidate for President in the 2024 election who could act, look, and speak like a proper president, that party might hold office for a considerable length of time. If successful, that President would fill a historical role as Franklin Delano Roosevelt II. In other words, winning the 2020 election might turn out to be like winning the proverbial poisoned chalice. Better for the party to wait until 2024.

The Democrats put up two candidates in 2020 who fared poorly in the primaries and generated very little enthusiasm in the campaign, with relatively small crowds of supporters. Campaigning from the basement was hardly inspiring and the many mental lapses provoked more sympathy than support. It seemed as if many of the ballots were not so much votes for Biden as votes against Trump. One could wonder if the Democrats did the calculations and decided to put up candidates who would likely lose the election. The Republicans, for their part, seemed to waste most of four years time when they should have been working on re-election tactics. The Republicans could have done something much earlier to set up competing television, print, and social media, instead of leaving the field mainly to the Democrats. The Republicans complained about slanted coverage and censorship being directed mostly at them, but did very little to combat it. The Republican administration was unable to get many of the federal agencies to act in a non-partisan manner. Finally, the Republican Party was also unable to put more polish on its candidates and to do a better job of writing speeches and sound-bites. It did not seem like they were very much interested in winning.

On the other hand, maybe the parties really did want to win in 2020. Both parties went at mud-slinging with gusto. The Democrats had the mainstream media in full cry, using every possible way, fair or foul, to discredit the other party’s candidates. The Democrats also made herculean efforts to ensure that their candidates received as many votes as possible, allegedly by any means possible. So, despite fielding a less-than-stellar cast of candidates, by election time the Democrats seemed determined to win. The strategy seemed to be that an avalanche of after-midnight absentee ballots would put Biden over the top in the swing states, then the mainstream television networks would call the election for Biden. At that point, Trump would make the usual concession speech and the Democrats could go forward with transition-team planning and house hunting. It all went according to plan, except for a small wrinkle when Trump declined to concede. He even went further and declared the election to be fraudulent. This off-script behavior so upset some of the media that they censored the President in mid-speech. At this point, the gloves came off and the Republicans decided to maybe look like they really wanted to win after all. Whistleblowers came forward and claims of scandalous irregularities appeared, along with a flurry of lawsuits. Even if it turned out not to be enough to keep Trump in the White House, it would serve to fire up the Republican base and help organize a four-year obstruction campaign against the Biden Administration. The Republicans even started greater use of alternative media instead of relying on crumbs from Fox News. The network had basically sided with the Democrats when it came to calling the election and Republican viewership and support for the network fell dramatically.

Difficulties

For the first three weeks after the election on November 3 things seemed to be going favorably for the Democrats. The Republican allegations were not taken seriously by the mainstream media and were considered more like sour grapes or just more Trump tantrums. Biden went ahead with setting up his team and most interest centered on who he would pick for the important cabinet posts. Foreign governments allied with the US immediately congratulated Biden on his supposed win, and even most of the holdout governments capitulated after a while. Notably, Israel and China were slow, but eventually got onboard. The only remaining major holdout was Russia. Republican attempts to seek remedy in the state courts seemed to go nowhere, and the Republicans could not get traction in the federal courts either. Biden looked like the winner. Then a few storm clouds appeared on November 25. Catholics and Jews had filed suit against the lockdown rules in New York, which they claimed discriminated against churches. They had lost a previous suit earlier in the summer, but this time the US Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 in their favor. It was noted that the newest justice cast the deciding vote, thus validating the intense worries of the Democrats when Trump was able to appoint three justices. In addition, on the same day, lawyers for the Republicans filed suits in federal courts seeking to invalidate the election results in Georgia and Michigan. Just prior to this, the Republicans had managed to get a public hearing in the Pennsylvania legislature concerning the allegations of improprieties in the election. A federal court in Nevada set a hearing for December 3 concerning election issues in that state. These actions moved the Republican complaints out of just the alternative media and gossip columns and into official channels. Now things began to get dicey for both parties.

More Difficulties

The lawyers for the Democrats will have to try to discredit the whistleblowers’ testimony and try to prevent election officials from being called to testify under oath in court. The mainstream media supporting the Democrats will have to try to minimize the court actions and direct public attention elsewhere. Lawyers for the Republicans will try to do the opposite. Of course, it may turn out that the Republican Party’s evidence is weak and not persuasive enough for the courts to interfere with the election results. On the other hand, if evidence of a major election scandal is produced, the recent action of the Supreme Court does not bode well for the Democrats. It will be very tricky for the Republicans to produce such evidence. This has nothing to do with the facts of the election, but with the outing of who did what and when. The alleged evidence appears to depend in large part on the activities of certain voting system companies.

Trump and his supporters keep calling for documents to be declassified, but nothing much seems to happen. One of the former CIA directors calls for keeping things classified, but it is not clear what, if anything, the classified information has to do with the election. If the Trump lawyers reveal the evidence they claim to have concerning voting fraud in the US, how can they prevent that action from indirectly producing evidence of voting fraud in other countries around the world that were using the same software, hardware, and voting system companies? Some articles on the internet allege that voting system companies operating at elections in the US are actually owned or controlled by foreign companies. We have been subjected to more than four years of allegations and investigations of foreign interference in US elections and hacking by foreign parties. So it would seem prudent to make sure that elections in the US are only supported by US-owned and controlled companies and only use software and hardware developed and built in the US. So the Democrats have every incentive to prove that the voting system companies are US companies and have US headquarters. The Democrats also have every incentive to abandon their long claim of Russian interference in US elections, as well as to deny any foreign hacking of the 2020 election systems. The Republicans have to walk a very narrow path as they cannot allege any Russian interference now after denying it for more than four years, but they cannot point a finger at Western countries being involved either. This latter problem means that the experience of elections in certain other countries should not be mentioned. The Republicans are thus left with blaming the usual suspects—Venezuela, Iran, China—who are the current bad countries listed by the Trump administration. The Republicans seem unlikely to claim in federal court that the “Deep State” is mounting a “color revolution” against them even though the actions appear to be right out of the much-discussed color revolution handbook.

Even More Difficulties

Up until the first week of December, the Biden supporters were mostly successful in preventing the Trump supporters from getting traction in the courts or in the mainstream media. The media had censored or spun the alleged voting scandals to such a great extent that most of the public did not know what Trump was talking about when he mentioned issues concerning Hunter Biden. This censorship began to fall apart when Hunter himself admitted that he was under investigation by the IRS concerning tax issues. Then some news media in Washington detailed how Hunter was also under investigation by US Attorneys in several states for possible illegal activities, and that Joe’s brother James Biden was also under investigation. The news about Hunter’s laptop gained wider circulation. In the meantime, however, the swing states certified the election for Biden despite the Republican efforts to delay. In an amazing coincidence, more information about the connections between the Bidens and China was aired at the same time as more information about Chinese spying in the US. So just as the Democrats used “RussiaGate” against Trump, the Republicans appear to be setting up “ChinaGate” to use against Biden. Then to top it all off, the State of Texas filed suit in the US Supreme Court against four of the swing states (Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) concerning the election. Texas was joined by eighteen other states, with three more leaning toward support. In response, nineteen other states joined the swing states against the Texas suit. This was an unprecedented legal maneuver that was mostly a surprise. The US Supreme Court was quick to dismiss the lawsuit on December 11, 2020, for “lack of standing” by Texas, thus joining other courts in finding procedural reasons for not getting involved. The Electoral College voting is on December 14 and is expected to favor Biden. There may be more surprises as analysts are wondering what was the point of Executive Order 13848, Imposing Certain Sanctions in the Event of Foreign Interference in a United States Election, signed September 12, 2018, as well as the reason for replacing the top managers of DoD intelligence immediately after the election. The Executive Order requires the Director of National Intelligence to issue a report by December 18, 2020, concerning the 2020 election. On January 6, 2021, Congress meets to certify the electoral vote. This is normally a rubber-stamp affair, but it is still possible to have a surprise at this point.

Future Difficulties

Regardless of who becomes President in 2021, a cloud will hang over future elections. Just as many Democrats still hold to the belief that the 2000 election for President was stolen, many Republicans will continue to believe that the 2020 election was stolen. If/when Biden is sworn in as President, the Republicans will worry that there will be little urgency on the part of the Federal authorities to investigate any aspect of the 2020 election. The Democrats will likely use their successful electioneering strategy in both the 2022 election and the 2024 presidential campaign. The strategy appears to be most applicable in densely populated areas which happen to be mostly Democrat. The strategy appears to be less useful in small towns and rural areas populated by Republicans. This asymmetry gives the Democrats an advantage in statewide elections, whereas district elections are more of a level playing field. A surplus of votes in one district does not affect the outcome in other districts, although such a surplus can swing a statewide total. This could affect statewide races for office such as governor, secretary of state, attorney general, US senator, as well as the national offices of President and Vice President. The Republicans will, therefore, be searching for a viable counter-strategy. If, on the other hand, Trump somehow stays in office, there might be a concerted effort by Federal agents to dismantle the big city voting strategy. The stakes are very high as the US states are rapidly becoming less united.