Trump campaign knew voter fraud claims were baseless soon after election loss, says report – live

Joe Biden spoke to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau today after his country’s snap election, the White House said.

According to the White House’s readout of the conversation, Biden congratulated Trudeau on securing another term as prime minister.

“The two leaders underscored the strong and deep friendship between the United States and Canada, and discussed their shared commitment to strengthening the resilience and competitiveness of the U.S. and Canadian economies and coordinating on COVID-19 pandemic response,” the White House said.

“The President expressed to Prime Minister Trudeau his desire to continue working closely and deepening collaboration with Canada – one of our nation’s top partners.”

Although Trudeau was able to stay in office, his Liberal party did not meet its goal of securing a majority of parliament seats, meaning the prime minister will still need to work with other parties to advance his agenda.

Vice-President Kamala Harris met with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson before his afternoon sit-down with Joe Biden at the White House.

“As you will discuss with the president, the relationship between our two countries is a long and enduring one, one that we value,” Harris told Johnson.

The prime minister added, “It’s a great honor and privilege for me to be here, to meet you for the first time.”

Joe Biden will meet with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson this afternoon, hours after the US president addressed the UN general assembly.

Johnson shared a photo of himself boarding an Amtrak train from New York to Washington for the bilateral meeting.

The prime minister’s choice of transportation will likely delight “Amtrak Joe”.

Donald Trump’s advisers continued to level false allegations against Dominion Voting Systems even after the former president’s campaign had concluded they were baseless.

The New York Times reports:

According to emails contained in the documents, Zach Parkinson, then the campaign’s deputy director of communications, reached out to subordinates on Nov. 13 asking them to ‘substantiate or debunk’ several matters concerning Dominion. The next day, the emails show, Mr. Parkinson received a copy of a memo cobbled together by his staff from what largely appear to be news articles and public fact-checking services.

Even though the memo was hastily assembled, it rebutted a series of allegations that [campaign lawyer Sidney] Powell and others were making in public. It found:

• That Dominion did not use voting technology from the software company, Smartmatic, in the 2020 election.
• That Dominion had no direct ties to Venezuela or to [George] Soros.
• And that there was no evidence that Dominion’s leadership had connections to left-wing ‘antifa’ activists, as Ms. Powell and others had claimed.

According to the Times, it is unclear whether Trump himself saw the memo at the time. Regardless, the former president’s lies about voter fraud have been repeatedly fact-checked by numerous news outlets, and he has continued to spread them.

Newly released court documents show that Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign knew within weeks of the election that accusations against Dominion Voting Systems were false.

The New York Times reports:

Two weeks after the 2020 election, a team of lawyers closely allied with Donald J. Trump held a widely watched news conference at the Republican Party’s headquarters in Washington. At the event, they laid out a bizarre conspiracy theory claiming that a voting machine company had worked with an election software firm, the financier George Soros and Venezuela to steal the presidential contest from Mr. Trump.

But there was a problem for the Trump team, according to court documents released on Monday evening.

By the time the news conference occurred on Nov. 19, Mr. Trump’s campaign had already prepared an internal memo on many of the outlandish claims about the company, Dominion Voting Systems, and the separate software company, Smartmatic. The memo had determined that those allegations were untrue.

Trump has continued to pedal lies about fraud in the 2020 election up until now, almost a year after ballots were cast.

The former president has also extended those baseless claims to more recent elections, claiming they were also tainted by widespread fraud. Trump has, of course, presented absolutely no evidence to support those outlandish allegations.

House Democrats are moving forward with their plan to vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill next week, despite pushback from progressive lawmakers.

House majority leader Steny Hoyer confirmed this morning that the vote on the infrastructure bill will happen next Monday or Tuesday.

Hoyer added that the lower chamber will vote to advance the $3.5tn reconciliation package “as soon as it’s ready,” per Politico.

The announcement marks a defeat for progressives, who have insisted that they will not support the infrastructure bill without receiving assurances about the future of the reconciliation package.

Dozens of House progressives have indicated they are willing to block the infrastructure bill if necessary, which could potentially lead to the proposal’s defeat.

Given Democrats’ very narrow majority in the House, the future of the infrastructure bill may hang on how many Republicans choose to support it.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

• Congressional Democrats are facing multiple crises as they attempt to advance Joe Biden’s economic agenda. Intraparty divisions remain over both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the $3.5tn reconciliation package, while lawmakers are trying to simultaneously suspend the debt ceiling and extend government funding past the end of the month. Republicans remain adamant that they will not assist in any effort to increase the debt ceiling, even though Democrats helped them do just that during Donald Trump’s presidency.
• Biden addressed the UN general assembly and outlined his approach to foreign policy. As the US president receives criticism for his handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal and weathers France’s outrage over a nuclear submarine deal with Australia, Biden promised “a new era of relentless diplomacy”. “US military power must be our tool of last resort, not our first,” Biden said.
• Kamala Harris expressed her support for a “thorough investigation” of the treatment of Haitian immigrants at the US-Mexican border. The vice-president said the footage of US border patrol agents confronting Haitian immigrants on horseback and potentially using whips on them was “horrible”. “Human beings should never be treated that way,” Harris said. “And I’m deeply troubled about it.”

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Kamala Harris said she supports carrying out a “thorough investigation” into the treatment of Haitian immigrants at the US-Mexican border.

The vice-president’s comments come after footage surfaced of US border patrol agents rounding up Haitian immigrants on horseback and potentially using whips to push them back as they attempted to enter the country.

Asked about the footage by a reporter, Harris said the images were “horrible,” and she intends to speak to homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about the matter.

“Human beings should never be treated that way,” Harris said. “And I’m deeply troubled about it.”

The White House has similar criticized the border agents’ behavior, with press secretary Jen Psaki saying yesterday, “I don’t think anyone seeing that footage would think it was acceptable or appropriate.”

As the Guardian’s Sam Levine notes, Chuck Schumer’s pledge that Democrats will go it alone on voting rights legislation marks a shift in tone for the Senate majority leader.

However, Democrats will still have to contend with the obstacles presented by the Senate filibuster, which seems unlikely to be changed anytime soon.

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer warned that Democrats will “move on our own” if Republicans continue to block voting rights legislation.

Speaking on the Senate floor moments ago, Schumer pledged that the upper chamber would vote on the Freedom to Vote Act, the compromise voting rights bill unveiled by Democrats last week.

“It is my intention to hold a vote for the Freedom to Vote Act here on the Senate floor,” Schumer said. “If Republicans are unwilling to move forward, Democrats will have to move on our own.”

Of course, advancing the legislation would almost certainly require altering the Senate filibuster, and a handful of key Democrats, including Joe Manchin, remain opposed to that proposal.