It turns out that Donald Trump went pretty far to try and overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.

The New York Times, citing a newly discovered recording, reports that Trump tried to persuade the speaker of Georgia’s House of Representatives to call a special session that would nullify his loss in the state. In a December 7, 2020, phone call, Trump told then-Speaker David Ralston that he could call the session by saying it was “for transparency, and to uncover fraud,” adding, “Who’s gonna stop you for that?”

Ralston, a Republican attorney, chuckled and said, “A federal judge, possibly.” Ralston passed away in 2022.

BREAKING: A newly obtained recording from Dec. 7, 2020 exposes Trump pressuring Georgia House Speaker David Ralston to call a special legislative session to OVERTURN the election he lost.

Trump even coached him on the cover story, telling Ralston to claim it’s “for transparency”… pic.twitter.com/Gujri3bzbs

The Times obtained the recording Wednesday, less than a month after the criminal election interference case against Trump and 18 of his allies in Fulton County, Georgia, was dismissed. The audio record is part of several investigative documents from that case.

Trump’s call with Ralston lasted 12.5 minutes, during which Trump cited a series of false conspiracies of fraud in Georgia’s elections, claiming that he had actually won the state instead of losing by more than 11,000 votes. Trump said on the call that votes were “coming out of suitcases, luggage, and it was a lot of votes. It was probably more than 100,000. You know they ran them through three or four times, you know, the same votes.

“You know we won this thing by 400,000 or 500,000 votes,” Trump told Ralston, making up numbers out of thin air. “Just like we did Alabama and every other state in the South. And, uh, we won, we won, we won your state massively. They took votes away.”

Ralston didn’t keep the call to himself, telling special grand jurors investigating the case about what Trump told him. But the audio, and Trump’s exact words, were not public until now. Trump’s infamous demand to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021 to “find” 11,780 votes to overturn the election is more widely known.

The dismissal of the case, coupled with Trump’s election in 2024, means that the president is not likely to face justice over his attempts to overturn the election in Georgia, despite this damning recording. Trump has proven that if one has power, money, and the right political connections, they’re above the law in America.

Congress has frozen a Coast Guard admiral’s pending promotion until he explains the military branch’s disturbing stance on hate symbols.

Democratic Senators Tammy Duckworth and Jacky Rosen initially froze Admiral Kevin Lunday’s nomination to run the Coast Guard, questioning the maritime law enforcement branch’s new workplace harassment policy and its decision to downgrade swastikas and nooses from hate symbols to “potentially divisive.”

The senators’ objections effectively upend Lunday’s confirmation, which the Senate was scheduled to vote on this week, reported The Washington Post.

The fascism-friendly changes to the Coast Guard’s workplace harassment policy was abruptly reverted last month, mere hours after national news outlets began to report on the jarring update.

In a memo to personnel, Lunday—the Coast Guard’s acting commander—walked back the revisions almost as soon as they had been revealed, announcing that the prior version of the text was “canceled.”

“Divisive or hate symbols and flags are prohibited,” Lunday wrote in the memo, published November 20. “These symbols and flags include, but are not limited to, the following: a noose, a swastika, and any symbols or flags co-opted or adopted by hate-based groups as representations of supremacy, racial or religious intolerance, anti-semitism, or any other improper bias.”

The memo also clarified that the display of Confederate battle flags was still prohibited, unless they are a part of a historical display. Weeks later, it’s still not clear exactly who led the charge to reclassify such symbols.

“The policy rewrite was bad staff work,” a Coast Guard employee told the Post anonymously. “But the Coast Guard’s hands were tied in how we were able to address the mistake.”

Still, the changes have been quietly implemented since the downgraded harassment policy went into effect Monday, according to internal branch correspondence provided to Congress. That’s given lawmakers pause.

Duckworth told the Post that she did not understand why Lunday would simply not “delete the absurd characterization that clearly states a noose and swastika are merely potentially divisive symbols,” especially after having conversations with Lunday in which he affirmed “directly to me” that both images qualify as hate symbols.

“This shouldn’t be difficult,” Duckworth said.

Rosen, meanwhile, wrote on social media that her hold would remain in place “until the Coast Guard provides answers.”

Even some Republicans, including Senators Dan Sullivan and James Lankford, are demanding an explanation.

“There is no reason why there should be conflicting policies in place,” Lankford........

© New Republic