Pres. Donald Trump
WILMINGTON, Del, (Reuters) – President Donald Trump called in his lawyers to shore up his dimming re-election prospects, but legal experts said the flurry of lawsuits had little chance of changing the outcome but might cast doubt on the process.
As Trump’s paths to victory narrowed, his campaign today was ramping up legal challenges and filed its latest case in Nevada. On Wednesday, the campaign sued in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia and asked to join a pending case at the U.S. Supreme Court.
Experts said the litigation serves to drag out the vote count and postpone major media from declaring Biden the victor, which would have dire political implications for Trump.
“The current legal maneuvering is mainly a way for the Trump campaign to try to extend the ball game in the long-shot hope that some serious anomaly will emerge,” said Robert Yablon, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. “As of now, we haven’t seen any indication of systematic irregularities in the vote count.”
Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said in a statement Wednesday the lawsuits were aimed at ensuring legal votes were counted.
“The lawsuits are meritless,” said Bob Bauer, who is part of Biden’s legal team. “They’re intended to give the Trump campaign the opportunity to argue the vote count should stop. It is not going to stop.”
Ultimately, for the lawsuits to have an impact, the race would have to hang on the outcome of one or two states separated by a few thousand votes, according to experts.
In Michigan and Pennsylvania, Trump asked courts to temporarily halt the vote counts because the campaign’s observers were allegedly denied access to the counting process.
At the Supreme Court, the campaign is seeking to invalidate mail-in votes in Pennsylvania that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive by the end of Friday.
In Georgia, the Trump campaign asked a judge to require Chatham County to separate late-arriving ballots to ensure they were not counted.
The Georgia case was dismissed on Thursday, according to the Associated Press.
“There is no consistent strategy there,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. She said the campaign was “throwing theories at a wall to see if anything sticks for long enough to muck up the waters.”
Edward Foley, who specializes in election law at the Moritz College of Law, said the cases might have merit but only affected a small number of ballots and procedural issues.
“But merit in that sense is very different from having the kind of consequence that Bush v. Gore did in 2000,” said Foley.
In that case, the Supreme Court reversed a ruling by Florida’s top court that had ordered a manual recount and prompted Democrat Al Gore to concede the election to Republican George W. Bush.
The 2000 election was improbably close, with a margin of 537 votes in Florida deciding the outcome.
The campaign is still challenging late arriving mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, which according to media reports numbered in the hundreds so far, likely too few to have a meaningful impact.
In addition, it appears increasingly likely Biden can win the race even if he loses the state.
Biden is forecast to carry Michigan, according to Edison Research, and stopping the count would do little to help Trump, according to experts.
Michigan’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Trump’s litigation was aimed undermining a system that appeared poised to deal him a defeat.
“It’s a frivolous lawsuit and it’s really an example of the type of misinformation designed to sow seeds of doubt among our voters about the integrity of our elections process,” said Benson on Wednesday in an interview with TV network MSNBC.
Experts said the lawsuits and claims of fraud might be aimed at softening the sting of being bounced from office by calling the process into question.
“The litigation looks more like an effort to allow Trump to continue rhetorically attempting to delegitimize an electoral loss,” said Joshua Geltzer, a professor at Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy & Protection.
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Dream on Donald. The reality is that you are toast and everybody knows it. The coming months as a lame duck will be painful and lots of damage might still be ahead of us.
Analysis | Biden Launched His Election Campaign Talking About Antisemitism – and Never Let Go
The white nationalist march in Charlottesville reminded Joe Biden of Europe in the 1930s and convinced him to run for president. It became a central theme in his march to the White House
Allison Kaplan Sommer | Haaretz
From the moment he began his 2020 presidential campaign, former Vice President Joe Biden made it clear that a driving force in his decision to run was a desire to quench the flames of racism, bigotry and antisemitism that the Trump era had ignited.
BIDEN BEGAN HIS RACE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE IN THE SPRING OF 2019 WITH A SPEECH EXPLAINING THAT IT WAS THE FAR-RIGHT RALLY IN CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA, IN AUGUST 2017, THAT CONVINCED HIM TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT AND TAKE ON THE “BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF THIS NATION”.
Speaking about Charlottesville, in his campaign video announcement Biden said:
“WE SAW KLANSMEN AND WHITE SUPREMACISTS AND NEO-NAZIS COME OUT IN THE OPEN, THEIR CRAZED FACES ILLUMINATED BY TORCHES, VEINS BULGING, AND BEARING THE FANGS OF RACISM CHANTING THE SAME ANTISEMITIC BILE HEARD ACROSS EUROPE IN THE ’30s. ”
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S REACTION TO THE UNREST, including the death of a young protester in a car ramming attack, “STUNNED THE WORLD AND SHOCKED THE CONSCIENCE OF THIS NATION,” Biden said, as vivid images of the Charlottesville violence played across the screen.
In the video, Biden attacked Trump for saying there were “VERY FINE PEOPLE ON BOTH SIDES” of the protests. Biden said:
“THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES ASSIGNED A MORAL EQUIVALENCE BETWEEN THOSE SPREADING HATE AND THOSE WITH THE COURAGE TO STAND AGAINST IT. AND IN THAT MOMENT, I KNEW THE THREAT TO THIS NATION WAS UNLIKE ANY I HAD EVER SEEN IN MY LIFETIME.”
As most of his Democratic rivals in the primaries focused heavily on policy issues, Biden kept the morality battle front and center.
This struck a chord with American Jews, who were experiencing an unprecedented level of anxiety and fear of physical threat, after the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in October 2018 that killed 11 worshippers – the deadliest attack against Jews in American history.
It’s interesting to note that on April 27, 2019 – just two days after Biden announced his candidacy – another synagogue was attacked, this time in Poway, California, in another deadly antisemitic attack.
After Biden defeated his Democratic Party rivals and clinched the nomination, to the surprise of many people, he returned to the same theme in his acceptance speech at this year’s Democratic National Convention.
He recalled how the “neo-Nazis and Klansmen and white supremacists” marched and chanted in Charlottesville, and Trump’s “both sides” reaction “was a wake-up call for us as a country. And for me, a call to action. At that moment I knew I’d have to run.”
At various junctures in the general election campaign, the Trump campaign attempted to push back against Biden’s message, accusing him of working with critics of Israel in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
Throughout the campaign, the Biden camp worked strenuously to give the Republicans as few opportunities as possible to successfully land such charges.
When Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour – a supporter of the boycott, sanctions and divestment movement – spoke briefly at the convention and the GOP attacked the move, the Biden camp hit back quickly. They shut down the criticism by disassociating the campaign from Sarsour and her comments.
This year’s Democratic Party platform was the clearest evidence that Biden’s team had taken firm control of the messaging on antisemitism and Israel to immunize the campaign from such attacks.
The platform’s wording on the issues reflected a more moderate and traditional approach toward Israel than the more progressive wing of the party had lobbied for. It expressed explicit opposition to those who “unfairly single out and delegitimize Israel, including at the United Nations or through the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.”
But Biden never stopped pressing the “Charlottesville theme” in the campaign. His platform noted that “PRESIDENT TRUMP’S WORDS AND ACTIONS HAVE GIVEN SAFE HARBOR AND ENCOURAGEMENT TO RACISTS, ANTISEMITES, ANTI-MUSLIM BIGOTS AND WHITE SUPREMACISTS.”
In the closing days of his campaign, Biden marked the second anniversary of the Tree of Life shooting with an opinion piece that ran across the Jewish and Israeli media, calling antisemitism “a cancer that has fueled a dangerous rise in hate crimes over the past four years, from Charlottesville and Pittsburgh to Poway.”
“If I have the honor of being elected, you have my word: We will forcefully denounce this evil, no matter the source,” he vowed, promising to “lead a comprehensive strategy for battling antisemitism.”
INDEED, THE UNITED STATES IS NOT THE SAME PLACE IT WAS WHEN BIDEN ANNOUNCED HIS CANDIDACY.
Battered by COVID-19 and its devastating economic cost, America is in the midst of a severe crisis. Biden began his campaign by promising to fight for the soul of the nation. NOW HE WILL FIRST OF ALL HAVE TO FIGHT FOR ITS HEALTH AND ECONOMIC SURVIVAL.
Leica and the Jews (Leica Freedom Train)
By LR ADMIN | Published: SEPTEMBER 8, 2020
THE LEICA IS THE PIONEER 35MM CAMERA. It is a German product – precise, minimalist, and utterly efficient.
Behind its worldwide acceptance as a creative tool was a family-owned, socially oriented firm that, during the Nazi era, acted with uncommon grace, generosity and modesty. E. Leitz Inc., designer and manufacturer of Germany’s most famous photographic product, saved its Jews.
And Ernst Leitz II, the steely-eyed Protestant patriarch who headed the closely held firm as the Holocaust loomed across Europe, acted in such a way as to earn the title, “the photography industry’s Schindler.”
As soon as Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany in 1933, Ernst Leitz II began receiving frantic calls from Jewish associates, asking for his help in getting them and their families out of the country. As Christians, Leitz and his family were immune to Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg laws, which restricted the movement of Jews and limited their professional activities.
To help his Jewish workers and colleagues, Leitz quietly established what has become known among historians of the Holocaust as “the Leica Freedom Train”, a covert means of allowing Jews to leave Germany in the guise of Leitz employees being assigned overseas.
Employees, retailers, family members, even friends of family members were “assigned” to Leitz sales offices in France, Britain, Hong Kong and the United States, Leitz’s activities intensified after the Kristallnacht of November 1938, during which synagogues and Jewish shops were burned across Germany.
Before long, German “employees” were disembarking from the ocean liner Bremen at a New York pier and making their way to the Manhattan office of Leitz Inc., where executives quickly found them jobs in the photographic industry.
Each new arrival had around his or her neck the symbol of freedom – a new Leica camera.
The refugees were paid a stipend until they could find work. Out of this migration came designers, repair technicians, salespeople, marketers and writers for the photographic press.
Keeping the story quiet The “Leica Freedom Train” was at its height in 1938 and early 1939, delivering groups of refugees to New York every few weeks. Then, with the invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, Germany closed its borders.
By that time, hundreds of endangered Jews had escaped to America, thanks to the Leitzes’ efforts. How did Ernst Leitz II and his staff get away with it?
Leitz, Inc. was an internationally recognized brand that reflected credit on the newly resurgent Reich. The company produced cameras, range-finders and other optical systems for the German military. Also, the Nazi government desperately needed hard currency from abroad, and Leitz’s single biggest market for optical goods was the United States.
Even so, members of the Leitz family and firm suffered for their good works. A top executive, Alfred Turk, was jailed for working to help Jews and freed only after the payment of a large bribe.
Leitz’s daughter, Elsie Kuhn-Leitz, was imprisoned by the Gestapo after she was caught at the border, helping Jewish women cross into Switzerland. She eventually was freed but endured rough treatment in the course of questioning.
She also fell under suspicion when she attempted to improve the living conditions of 700 to 800 Ukrainian slave laborers, all of them women, who had been assigned to work in the plant during the 1940s.
After the war, Kuhn-Leitz received numerous honors for her humanitarian efforts, among them the Officier d’honneur des Palms Academic from France in 1965 and the Aristide Briand Medal from the European Academy in the 1970s.
Why has no one told this story until now? According to the late Norman Lipton, a freelance writer and editor, the Leitz family wanted no publicity for its heroic efforts. Only after the last member of the Leitz family was dead did the “Leica Freedom Train” finally come to light.
It is now the subject of a book, “The Greatest Invention of the Leitz Family: The Leica Freedom Train,” by Frank Dabba Smith, a California-born Rabbi currently living in England.
Thank you for reading the above, and if you feel inclined as I did to pass it along to others, please do so. It only takes a few minutes.
Memories of the righteous should live on
—
S. Michael Plaut, Ph.D.
5246 SW 24th Dr, Gainesville FL 32608-3969
Home: 352-371-1301
Cell: 410-303-4136
About to enter a rabbit hole….bub bye bub bye