‘Next level insanity’: Trump shares message to jail senior Republicans
Donald Trump has shared a message from fringe right-wing lawyer Lin Wood calling for the imprisonment of senior Republican officials who refused to overturn the election result.
The bizarre post was aimed at Georgia governor Brian Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and retweeted by the US president.
The tweet included photos of Kemp and Raffensperger doctored to show them wearing face masks emblazoned with China’s flag.
“President Trump is a genuinely good man,” Wood wrote. “He does not really like to fire people. I bet he dislikes putting people in jail, especially ‘Republicans.’ He gave [Kemp] & [Raffensperger] every chance to get it right. They refused. They will soon be going to jail.”
Trump, who is well known to retweet outlandish conspiracy theories and attacks in his opponents, even managed to shock some critics who labelled the post “next level insanity”.
Since the race was called for President-elect Joe Biden, Trump and his allies, including Wood, have made dozens of baseless claims of coordinated voter fraud in Georgia and other states that voted for Democrat Joe Biden.
Wood is not part of Trump’s legal team but has launched his own lawsuits challenging the election result.
Trump and his legal team have lost virtually every single court challenge — numbering close to 60 — and the Electoral College has since officially confirmed Biden’s victory.
The defiant president has been particularly obsessed with Georgia, where Biden defeated him by just 12,284 votes, and where Republicans hold the top statewide offices. Two audits, including a full hand recount, confirmed the results.
Trump and his fake lawyer are now calling for Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger — both Republicans — to be put in jail for refusing to destroy democracy.
Lin also photoshopped Chinese flags on to their masks.
Next level insanity. pic.twitter.com/4MXWxKyWGL— Angry Staffer (@Angry_Staffer) December 15, 2020
Trump lawyer urges supporters to arm themselves
Late last month, the president called on Kemp to “overrule” Raffensperger, Georgia’s top election official, who had said that the election was conducted fairly and that the vast majority of fraud claims being brought to his office were not credible.
“The truth matters,” Raffensperger said. “There are those who are exploiting the emotions of many Trump supporters with fantastic claims, half-truths and misinformation, and frankly they are misleading the president as well, apparently.”
Wood, a plaintiff’s attorney in Atlanta, has emerged as one of the most vocal figures in Trump's attempts to overturn the election, often amplifying dangerous fringe rhetoric.
On Monday he urged Trump’s supporters to stock up on “2nd Amendment supplies” and other items in apparent anticipation of unrest over Biden’s presidency.
“Better to be safe than sorry,” he tweeted. “Make sure you have PLENTY of water, food, flashlights & batteries, candles, radio, 2nd Amendment supplies, & a plan to meet with leaders of your communities. Remember we only have 1 President at a time. Our leader is @realDonaldTrump, not Biden.”
Trump faces his own legal threats
While the outgoing president is fond of calling for the incarceration of his political opponents, it is him that faces an uncertain legal future once leaving office.
Once he leaves office, Trump also will have to fight several legal issues, all made more threatening because he will lose the legal protections afforded a sitting president.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance has been conducting a criminal investigation of Trump and the family company, the Trump Organization. The probe originally focused on hush-money payments made before the 2016 election to two women who said they had sexual encounters with Trump, which the president has denied.
But Vance, a Democrat, suggested in recent court filings the probe had broadened and could now focus on bank, tax and insurance fraud, as well as falsification of business records. Trump has called the case politically motivated harassment.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, also a Democrat, has an active tax fraud investigation into Trump and the family company.
It began after his former lawyer Michael Cohen told Congress the president inflated asset values to save money on loans and insurance, and deflated them to reduce real estate taxes.
Trump also faces separate defamation lawsuits related to alleged sexual assaults, both of which he denied, brought by two women – E. Jean Carroll, a former Elle magazine writer, and Summer Zervos, a 2005 contestant on The Apprentice.
with Yahoo News US, Reuters
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