Trump secures victory in Electoral College, as bid to flip electors flops

Ha Ha Poor Democrats :-)

Donald Trump won the Electoral College vote on Monday and secured his election as the 45th president of the United States, as the latest – and perhaps last – stop-Trump movement failed to gain traction in state capitals.

A fervent push by anti-Trump forces to persuade electors to defect had turned the normally mundane civic procedure into high drama.
But Trump easily surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win, as representatives tabbed to cast ballots in accordance with their states’ Nov. 8 decision mostly adhered to the election results. After all the states had voted, Trump finished with 304 votes and Clinton had 227.
Texas put Trump over the top, despite two Republican electors casting protest votes.

We did it! Thank you to all of my great supporters, we just officially won the election (despite all of the distorted and inaccurate media).

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2016

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence afterward tweeted "congratulations" to his running mate while saying he was "honored & humbled" to be officially elected the next vice president.
Republican National Committee Co-Chair Sharon Day urged Trump’s detractors to stop fighting his election, now that his victory is affirmed.
“This historic election is now officially over and I look forward to President-elect Trump taking the oath of office in January,” she said in a statement. “For the good of the country, Democrats must stop their cynical attempts to undermine the legitimacy of this election, which Donald Trump won decisively in the Electoral College with more votes than any Republican since 1988.”
Elector antics were few and far between throughout the day, with most the disruptions occurring on the Democratic side. A Democratic elector in Maine tried to vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders, but switched to Clinton after it was ruled improper. Another who tried to vote for Sanders in Minnesota was replaced; a Colorado elector who tried to back Ohio Gov. John Kasich likewise was replaced. One of the biggest deviations was in Washington state, where three electors voted for Colin Powell and one voted for “Faith Spotted Eagle;” the remaining eight went to Clinton, the state’s winner.
It marked the first time in four decades the state's electors broke from the popular vote. Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman vowed to work with the state attorney general and charge the four unfaithful electors with a violation of Washington state civil law. Such violations carry a fine up to $1,000.
With Trump’s win now secured, a joint session of Congress is scheduled for Jan. 6 to certify the results.
Trump’s clear Electoral College victory could serve to deter any further last-ditch efforts to effectively nullify his November win and prevent his inauguration, though the battle may shift next to his Cabinet picks.
Few expected the “faithless elector” push to imperil Trump’s victory on Monday.
Only one Republican elector – Texas’ Chris Suprun – publicly stated he would vote for an alternative candidate. (He backed Kasich, while another Texas elector used his ballot to vote for former congressman Ron Paul.) More than three dozen Republicans would have had to abandon Trump to complicate his path to the presidency.
But GOP electors still faced immense pressure -- with some even receiving threats -- from Trump foes in the run-up to Monday’s Electoral College vote. Those urging disorder in state capitals often cited Clinton’s popular-vote win, by roughly 2.6 million votes, over Trump in November.
Celebrities made public appeals to electors to use the arcane process to upend Trump’s victory, as some Democratic electors tried to persuade their Republican counterparts to defect. Reports that U.S. intelligence officials determined Russia interfered in the election to boost Trump – findings disputed by Trump himself – only fueled efforts to wield the Electoral College vote as a political circuit-breaker.
As electors met, thousands of protesters descended on state capitals Monday in one last push to convince Trump voters to change their minds.
In Arizona, dozens of protesters gathered outside the meeting site, marching around the Capitol mall and carrying signs that said, "Stop Trump." More than 200 demonstrators gathered at Pennsylvania's Capitol, chanting, "No treason, no Trump!"
Both states, and dozens of others, cast their electoral votes for Trump anyway.
In Mississippi, Gov. Phil Bryant dismissed attempts to sway Republican electors.
"This idea … that we want to change the electors’ minds who have been dedicated to Donald Trump very early in the process I think is just misguided,” he said.
If nothing else, the furor over Monday’s proceedings has served to re-acquaint Americans with a process that few pay attention to every four years.
The Electoral College was devised at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. It was a compromise between those who wanted popular elections for president and those who wanted no public input.
The Electoral College has 538 members, with the number allocated to each state based on how many representatives it has in the House plus one for each senator. The District of Columbia gets three, despite the fact that the home to Congress has no vote in Congress.
To be elected president, the winner must get at least half plus one -- or 270 electoral votes. Most states give all their electoral votes to whichever candidate wins that state's popular vote. Maine and Nebraska award them by congressional district.
After a joint session of Congress certifies the results on Jan. 6, the next president will be sworn in on Jan. 20.
Trump already is nearly done naming his Cabinet appointees, as he prepares for confirmation hearings and the inauguration ceremonies, in addition to his first 100 days agenda.
Despite the transition process being well underway, Republican electors said they were deluged with emails, phone calls and letters urging them not to support the billionaire businessman in the days and weeks leading up to Monday’s proceedings. Many of the emails were part of coordinated campaigns.
"The letters are actually quite sad," said Lee Green, a Republican elector from North Carolina. "They honestly believe the propaganda. They believe our nation is being taken over by a dark and malevolent force."
Wirt A. Yerger Jr., a Republican elector in Mississippi, said, "I have gotten several thousand emails asking me not to vote for Trump. I threw them all away."
Arizona elector Robert Graham told Fox News on Saturday that the state’s 11 electors received hundreds of thousands of emails telling them not to vote for Trump and that he’s received information that some of the other 10 have been followed or have received a death threat.
“It’s out of hand when you have such … a small group of people that is pushing so hard against millions if not hundreds of millions of people who still appreciate this whole system,” said Graham, chairman of the Arizona Republican Party. “The Electoral College is part of the Constitution.”

Federal judge orders release of search warrant from Clinton email case

A federal judge on Monday ordered the release of the search warrant the FBI used to reopen their probe into Hillary Clinton’s private email server days before the November election.
U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel ruled Monday morning that the public had a right to see the warrant, which he said was secretly filed with the court on Oct. 30.
“The search warrant, the application for the search warrant, the affidavit in support of the application for the search warrant, and the search warrant return will be unsealed and posted on the Court's electronic case filing system” subject to redactions, Castel said in his order.
The Justice Department may seek to block the release before a federal appeals court.
The court dispute concerns the warrant agents used to get access to emails stored on a computer belonging to Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
FBI Director James Comey jolted the presidential race on Oct. 28 when he informed Congress that agents would be digging through the cache of emails between Abedin and Clinton for any new evidence related to Clinton's handling of sensitive State Department information.
Two days before the Nov. 8 election, Comey announced the inquiry had uncovered no new evidence of wrongdoing. Some in Clinton’s inner circle have blamed Comey for her loss, while President-elect Donald Trump’s advisers charge they’re making excuses.
The court documents are now set to be unsealed at noon Tuesday, with portions blacked out to conceal the names of the agents. The judge also ordered the redaction of any information about an open investigation of Weiner's online correspondence with a teenage girl.
Agents initially seized the computer in connection with that investigation.
Weiner, a Democrat, resigned his seat in Congress after sexually explicit texts and social media posts to various women. He tried for a political comeback two years later by running for mayor of New York, but his campaign was undone when evidence emerged that he hadn't given up his sexting habit.
Federal authorities began investigating him in late September after an online news outlet, the Daily Mail, published an interview with a North Carolina girl who said she had exchanged sexually explicit messages with him over several months.
Randol Schoenberg, a Los Angeles lawyer who specializes in recovering works of art stolen by the Nazis, petitioned the court to make the search warrant and supporting documents public.
In his order, Castel said public interest in the case overrode any privacy considerations.
"Ordinarily, a person whose conduct is the subject of a criminal investigation but is not charged with a crime should not have his or her reputation sullied by the mere circumstance of an investigation," he wrote. But in this instance, he said, the fact that the FBI investigated Clinton is hardly secret. "She has little remaining privacy interest in the release of the documents identifying her as the subject of this investigation."

Stupid Liberal Cartoons

Martin Sheen makes big mistake as he pitches elector not to vote for Trump

A group of Hollywood actor-vists are leading the effort to convince electors not to vote for President-elect Donald Trump on Monday, a hastily-arranged last-ditch bid that has led to at least one embarrassing mistake.
Martin Sheen, who played fictitious President Josiah Barlett on “The West Wing,” is featured in a personalized video designed to sway a Kansas elector, Politico reported. The piece is titled “Mr. Ashley McMillan” and Sheen implores “Mr. McMillan” to follow the example of America’s Founding Fathers. He’s hopeful that McMillan will switch his vote and become one of the 37 Republican electors required to possibly deny Trump the presidency.
Just one problem with Sheen’s pitch: Ashley McMillan is not a man.
“It’s my job to represent the people of Kansas on Monday. It was Martin Sheen’s job to get my name right. He failed. I won’t,” McMillan, who plans to vote for Trump, told The Daily Caller.
Sheen is joined in the main, non-personalized Unite for America video by the likes of “Will & Grace” actress Debra Messing, “Better Call Saul” star Bob Odenkirk and musician Moby.
“I’m not asking you to vote for Hillary Clinton,” Moby says during the ad, as soft piano music plays beneath his voice.
“What is evident is that Donald Trump lacks more than the qualifications to be president,” “M.A.S.H.” actor Mike Farrell says, with Messing delivering the blow: “He lacks the necessary stability.”
Sheen says the electors have “the opportunity to go down in the books as an American hero” if they don’t vote for Trump.
Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway on Sunday dismissed the effort as “out of work actors and actresses embarrassing themselves.”
“One guy played the president on the show ‘The West Wing.’ He’s not the president going to the West Wing. That’s Donald Trump,” Conway told Fox News’ Howard Kurtz on “Media Buzz.”
Trump is in line to get 306 of the 538 electoral votes under the state-by-state distribution of electors used to choose presidents since 1789.
The Associated Press tried to reach all 538 electors and was able to interview more than 330 of them. Many reported getting tens of thousands of emails, calls and letters asking them to vote against Trump.
But the canvass found overwhelming support for the system, and the nominee, among Republican electors. The AP found only one pledged to Trump who will refuse to vote for him.

Judge Jeanine Rips Michelle Obama: 'Since When Did 'Hope' Rise and Fall With You?'

Saturday on Justice, Judge Jeanine Pirro criticized Michelle Obama's recent comments to Oprah Winfrey that, after President-elect Donald Trump's victory, "we're feeling what not having hope feels like."
"This from a woman who, in 2008 at age 44, said 'for the first time I'm proud of my country' [but] eight years later you're out of hope?" Pirro said.
Pirro said the Obamas failed to bring their promise of "hope" to Americans in several crucial situations, including the beheading of journalist James Foley and the 13 hours that Americans were stranded on a rooftop in Benghazi.
She said Trump's election is proof that Americans "know what hope is", pointing to the tens of thousands of people who have braved cold weather to attend the president-elect's "thank-you tour" stops.
"For you, 'hope' is gone," Pirro addressed Mrs. Obama, noting that as of next month, the family will no longer be able to travel abroad at-will with a full presidential entourage.
Americans rejected the Obama's vision of hope, she said, adding that Mrs. Obama will be able to see firsthand the results of eight years of her husband's leadership once she leaves the White House.

Lynch says tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton was 'regrettable'

Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Sunday said she “regretted” her controversial tarmac meeting with former President Bill Clinton this summer while the FBI was still investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of a secret server for her emails during her tenure as secretary of state.
While Lynch has never portrayed the June 27 Phoenix meeting as anything other than a cordial encounter, the lengthy tete-a-tete onboard Lynch’s plane immediately raised questions about whether she – or the Justice Department – could be impartial in the Hillary Clinton investigation. Just days later, FBI Director James Comey called Hillary Clinton’s actions “extremely careless” but declined to recommend charges.
“I wish I had seen around that corner and not had that discussion with the former president, as innocuous as it was, because it did give people concern,” Lynch said on “State of the Union.” “It did make people wonder, ‘Is it going to affect the investigation that’s going on?’ and that’s not something that was an unreasonable question for anyone to ask.”
TRUMP: LYNCH-CLINTON MEETING 'OPENED UP A PANDORA'S BOX'
Asked why Clinton sought out the meeting with Lynch, the outgoing attorney general declined to speculate.
“Well, I can’t say what President Clinton saw or thought because I wasn’t in communication with him before that,” Lynch said. “I don’t know what was in his mind.”
Lynch played off the length of the conversation – reported to be around 45 minutes – as being a by-product of Clinton’s loquaciousness. She joked with host Jake Tapper that Clinton “is a talker.”
“And our conversation went on a lot longer certainly than I had anticipated, because it was just going to be ‘Hello, how are you?’ and everyone was just going to go on about their evening,” Lynch said.
But Lynch acknowledged the perception created by the private summit was a problem. Republicans frequently brought up the meeting and President-elect Donald Trump made it a staple of his stump speech as the November presidential election approached.
“I do regret sitting down and having a conversation with him because it did give people concern,” Lynch said. “And as I said, my greatest concern has always been making sure people understand the Department of Justice works in a way that’s independent and looks at everybody equally. And when you do something that gives people a reason to think differently, that’s a problem. It’s a problem for me. It was painful for me.”
Three days after the meetings, amid mounting questions, Lynch tried to take herself out of the equation, saying on July 1 that she would accept whatever recommendation career prosecutors and Comey made regarding bringing charges.

Clinton advisers point fingers at Huma Abedin, inner circle for loss

Maybe she's a Russian Spy :-)

While many of Hillary Clinton’s top advisers have focused their post-presidential election fury on blaming alleged Russian interference and FBI Director James Comey for Clinton’s loss, some in the so-called “Hillaryland” orbit are looking inward, including pointing fingers at Clinton’s most-trusted aide: Huma Abedin.
“The real anger is toward Hillary’s inner circle,” a Clinton insider told Vanity Fair for a Wednesday feature on Abedin. “They reinforced all the bad habits.”
One of the most important people in that “inner circle” was Abedin, 40, who has been by Clinton’s side since she was a White House intern during President Bill Clinton’s tenure. The email trove hacked from Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta and posted on WikiLeaks shows Abedin, the estranged wife of disgraced ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner, as an important resource for the campaign. The vice chair of the Clinton campaign, Abedin offered guidance on Clinton’s probable thoughts regarding upcoming events, meetings and calls before the requests ever made it to the Democratic presidential candidate. While her fingerprints don’t often appear on policy issues, she weighed in with authority on most other matters.
ABEDIN CLAIMS SHE NEVER RECEIVED FBI WARRANT
Clinton was known to keep an extremely small and tight-knit group around her, and, indeed, during the 2016 primary and presidential campaign, the core group – including Campaign Manager Robbie Mook, Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri, adviser Cheryl Mills, Podesta and Abedin – never changed.
One Clinton insider, however, said the closeness of that group also created problems, prompting dismissive answers when new ideas that originated outside the circle were suggested, Vanity Fair reported.
“Where in most presidential campaigns the circle grows broader and broader, hers grew smaller and smaller,” a source told Vanity Fair.
A spokesperson for the Clinton campaign disputed that notion to Vanity Fair and said the campaign’s plane seated up to three times as many people during the run-up to the November vote. Abedin declined to be interviewed for the feature.
Abedin’s proximity to Clinton – and in turn the limelight – also created another issue, according to some observers.
“She was enjoying the red carpet and enjoying the photo spreads much too much in my opinion,” one Clinton insider told Vanity Fair. “She enjoyed being a celebrity too much.”
Though Abedin’s next move seems to be in limbo now that Clinton’s political career appears to be over, she was recently spotted at Clinton’s “Thank You” holiday party for top-tier donors on Thursday and then at an after party with fellow attendees Mick Jagger and Reese Witherspoon, The New York Post reported.
“Maybe I’m just p----- off, but I really don’t give a s--- about what happens to Huma to be honest with you,” one close adviser to Clinton told Vanity Fair.

A Couple of Train Cartoons