Free Republic

…While Swift has made no presidential endorsements, the story sparked ire among right-wing figures, who are now spreading baseless claims about the pop star being a “psyop” — psychological operation — meant to draw voters to the Democratic Party. Some Republican figures, such as Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, warned that a Swift endorsement of Biden could result in a “tsunami” that “will be very difficult to thwart.” Meanwhile, conservative pundits on Fox News, One America Network and Newsmax spent a lot of airtime discussing Swift this week. Staring directly into the camera on Monday, Fox News host Jeanine...

After winking at QAnon for years, Donald Trump is overtly embracing the baseless conspiracy theory, even as the number of frightening real-world events linked to it grows. On Tuesday, using his Truth Social platform, the Republican former president reposted an image of himself wearing a Q lapel pin overlaid with the words “The Storm is Coming.” In QAnon lore, the “storm” refers to Trump’s final victory, when supposedly he will regain power and his opponents will be tried, and potentially executed, on live television. As Trump contemplates another run for the presidency and has become increasingly assertive in the Republican...

YouTube confirmed on Friday that it had removed a video uploaded by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot for violating the platform’s election integrity policy. The video in question was a clip of a hearing that the committee conducted and posted to the video platform on Tuesday, The New York Times reported. Part of the video showed the former president baselessly claiming on Fox Business that “We had glitches where they moved thousands of votes from my account to Biden’s account,” according to the newspaper. The clip also reportedly included some testimony from former Attorney...

Rudy Giuliani was hit with an ethics charge by the Washington, D.C., Office of Disciplinary Counsel on Friday over his promotion of baseless claims about fraud in the 2020 presidential election before a federal court in Pennsylvania, jeopardizing his ability to practice law in the city. The D.C. Bar’s disciplinary arm said that he had violated the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct by bringing a proceeding and asserting “issues therein without a non-frivolous basis in law and fact for doing so” and engaging “in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice,” according to the filing. The complaint said that Giuliani...

A group of North Carolina voters told state officials on Monday that they want Republican congressman Madison Cawthorn to be disqualified as a congressional candidate, citing his involvement in the 6 January attack on the Capitol. Cawthorn questioned the outcome of the presidential election during the “Save America Rally” before the Capitol riot later that day that resulted in five deaths. At the rally, Cawthorn made baseless claims that the election had been stolen from Donald Trump, and has been accused of firing up the crowd, many of whom went on to storm the Capitol. Lawyers filed the candidacy challenge...

One-time White House national security advisor Michael Flynn, former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany and former President Trump’s personal assistant Nicholas Luna have been granted a delay in their depositions with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. A committee aide confirmed to The Hill that all three have been granted short postponements as they continue to “engage” with the committee. McEnany was scheduled to appear before the committee last Friday. Her subpoenas focused on false statements she made promoting baseless claims of voter fraud.

(CNN) - Arizona's Senate held a Thursday briefing on the ongoing Republican-initiated "audit" of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, where Joe Biden outperformed Donald Trump by enough of a margin to win the state. The review is being conducted by Cyber Ninjas, a cybersecurity firm that has no experience in election auditing. And the company's chief executive officer, Doug Logan, made some Thursday claims that were immediately called into question by the county and independent experts. Logan said that door-to-door questioning of Maricopa County voters is the "one way" the auditors could determine whether what they are seeing in...

These steps, experts say, could prod more people to abandon the scourge of hoaxes and lies. Last month, millions of Americans watched as President Biden took the oath of office and, in a high-minded Inaugural Address, called for a new era of American unity. But plenty of other Americans weren’t paying attention to Mr. Biden’s speech. They were too busy watching YouTube videos alleging that the inauguration was a prerecorded hoax that had been filmed on a Hollywood soundstage. Or they were melting down in QAnon group chats, trying to figure out why former President Donald J. Trump wasn’t interrupting...

Twitter banned My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell from the platform after he used his account to spread baseless claims about fraud in the presidential election. Twitter said Tuesday that it permanently suspended Lindell — a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump — because of his “repeated violations” of the company’s civic integrity policy, which it implemented last fall to clamp down on misinformation. Twitter didn’t say which of Lindell’s posts pushed it over the edge. But he had used his personal account and My Pillow’s corporate account in recent months to post and share bogus rumors about widespread election...

“The electoral system in the United States is archaic, it does not meet modern democratic standards, creating opportunities for numerous violations, and the American media have become an instrument of political struggle,” Zakharova told Russian news agencies. ... Russian President Vladimir Putin himself on November 22 said there were “problems in the US electoral system” following the US presidential vote, which Trump has repeatedly and baselessly alleged was rigged. ... Meanwhile, commenting on the Capitol riots, Konstantin Kosachyov, the chair of the Russian upper house’s foreign affairs committee, said in a post on Facebook on Thursday: “The losing side has...

Cleta Mitchell, the conservative lawyer that can be heard interjecting in the now infamous call between President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, resigned from her role as partner at the Washington office of law firm Foley & Lardner on Tuesday, the Washington Post reports. Mitchell, who advised Trump during his Saturday phone call with Raffensperger in an effort to overturn the presidential election, could be heard multiple times during the call helping the president as he made baseless claims regarding the election and demanding that the secretary of state release election data. “So what are we going...

Dominion Voting Systems plans to sue attorney Sidney Powell "imminently" for defamation, and it's continuing to explore similar suits against President Trump and others, company founder and CEO John Poulos told the Axios Re:Cap podcast on Monday. ... Between the lines: Dominion, which makes the voting machines used in Georgia and elsewhere, has been the subject of baseless accusations of malfeasance during last November's elections. Dominion says that the rhetorical barrage has led to death threats against its employees, including one who remains unable to return to his home.