Byron York’s Daily Memo: Are Trump allies trying to sabotage GOP in Georgia? by Byron York,
ARE TRUMP ALLIES TRYING TO SABOTAGE GOP IN GEORGIA? Wednesday witnessed one of the most extraordinary events in recent political history. With two critical Senate races underway in Georgia — with Republican control of the Senate at stake — two prominent allies of a Republican president traveled to the state to urge voters not to vote for Republican candidates.
Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, two attorneys who are pursuing lawsuits alleging massive voter fraud in the presidential election in Georgia and elsewhere, attended a “Stop the Steal” rally in Alpharetta, outside of Atlanta. The rally came a little more than a month before Georgia’s January 5 runoff elections, in which Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are running against Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. If either Perdue or Loeffler wins, Republicans will have a narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate. If both win, a 52-48 majority will give Senate Republicans more power. But if Democrats win both races, the Senate will be split 50-50 and in the control of Democrats, since a Vice President Kamala Harris will have the tie-breaking vote.
With the swearing-in of Joe Biden as president, and with Democrats remaining in control of the House, the future of the Senate is absolutely critical to Republican fortunes. If GOP lawmakers control the Senate, they can stop Biden’s agenda cold. If Democrats control, they can enact the Biden agenda, and in the process wipe away much of President Trump’s legacy. So Georgia is the whole ball game.
Which is why Wednesday’s rally was so weird. In her speech, Powell expanded on her theory that Dominion machines and Smartmatic software, developed for the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, were used to change millions of votes from Trump to Biden. Now, she puts more emphasis on China. “We’ve already traced a lot of the money that did this back to China,” Powell told the crowd.
“There was and is still massive voter fraud across this country,” Powell said. “It took all forms. It was not just the Dominion machines. We have experts and a witness who have explained to us that the fraud exists in the DNA of all the software that was run by any voting system in the country. So they all are at risk of having been manipulated.”
“I think that we will eventually find that the algorithm that flipped votes at a certain percentage from Trump to Mr. Biden was run all across the country,” Powell continued. “There might be a few areas that it wasn’t used in, but not many….We’ve had Internet white-hat hackers, I think they call them, who saw back doors open in the system and saw people in Iran and China and Hong Kong and Serbia and I don’t know how many countries having influence in our election system.” Powell has so far offered no concrete evidence to support her assertion. Indeed, on Tuesday she said “We will give all of our evidence to the Department of Justice as soon as we get it pulled together.”
Wood then urged voters to get back at China by not voting on January 5. “We’re going to send a message to Beijing, China,” he said. “We’re not going to let you take our country over….We’re not going to sell our votes to China. We’re not going to vote on your damn machines made in China. We’re going to vote on machines made in the USA.” (In the past, there have been bipartisan concerns that some of the components of voting machines, like LCD screens and some capacitors and resistors, are made in China.) Wood demanded that Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp call a special session of the legislature to address election concerns.
“There should not be a runoff,” Powell agreed. “Certainly not on Dominion machines. I think I would encourage all Georgians to make it known that you will not vote at all until your vote is secure.”
Then Wood attacked the Republican candidates in the coming runoff. “Where is Kelly Loeffler? Where is David Perdue?” He asked. “[Perdue] ought to be standing right here….Do not be fooled twice. This is Georgia. We ain’t dumb. We’re not going to vote on January 5 on another machine made by China. You’re not going to fool Georgians again. If Kelly Loeffler wants your vote, if David Perdue wants your vote, they’ve got to earn it.”
Wood said Loeffler and and Perdue must demand — “publicly, repeatedly, consistently” — that Kemp call a special session. “If they do not do it, they have not earned your vote,” he said. “Don’t you give it to them.”
So there it was: Wood and Powell, both wearing MAGA hats, urged Georgia Republicans not to vote for Republicans Perdue and Loeffler, indeed, not to vote at all, in the January 5 runoff. Watching, Los Angeles Times political reporter Mark Z. Barabak tweeted, “In decades covering politics, this is the first Don’t-Get-Out-The-Vote rally I’ve ever heard of.” And of course, if Republicans don’t vote, Democrats win.
What is going on? Perhaps Wood just wants Democrats to win. Breitbart News looked into Wood’s political past and discovered that while he has been a regular voter in Georgia, in every presidential and mid-term election since 2000, he “has not voted in a Republican primary since 2004, but did request Democrat ballots in 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2018 primary elections in Georgia.” Breitbart also found that while Wood has made “some donations” to Trump and the GOP in recent years, he “has long backed Democrats for federal office and especially for Georgia offices,” giving more than $40,000 to Democratic candidates from 2004 to 2018. So perhaps Wood would be totally fine with Democratic victories on January 5.
But that would be disaster for Republicans. It was all too much for Newt Gingrich, the Republican former Speaker of the House who represented Georgia for 20 years. “Lin Wood and Sidney Powell are totally destructive,” Gingrich tweeted Thursday morning. “Every Georgia conservative who cares about America MUST vote in the runoff. Their don’t vote strategy will cripple America.”
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