We can't memory hole the Election Day bomb threats
Healthy democracies don't normalize this stuff.
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Though it’s largely already been forgotten, 2024 was not a completely peaceful election. Anonymous terrorists, probably working for Russia, sent bomb threats to numerous majority Black and Native American polling places in battleground states in an effort to disrupt voting and aid the Trump campaign.
The threats were widely reported on Election Day itself. However, in the aftermath of Trump’s narrow but definitive win, there has been little discussion of these egregious, deliberate attacks on democracy in general, and on the voting rights of Black and Native American people in particular. Analysts have instead focused on whether the Democrats and Kamala Harris should have run further to the left or further to the right or further in some other direction.
The bomb threats did not change the election outcome, so it’s perhaps understandable that they have not been a focus of the collective, apparently endless post-election autopsy. But the lack of interest in an egregious assault on American democracy is a mistake. The attacks demonstrate how fragile our democracy is. And they provide a blueprint for the MAGA regime to tamper in elections in the future.
The fact that incoming president Donald Trump can and probably would try to block investigations into Russia’s involvement — and into the Trump campaign’s potential involvement as well — is chilling. If we want to prevent attacks like this in the future, it’s important not to instantly memory hole the attack that just happened.
A coordinated attack on democracy, and on Democrats
The hoax bomb threats on Election Day were sent to polling locations in the swing states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona. The FBI said that many of the threats “appear[ed] to originate from Russian email domains.”
None of the threats were credible, and no bombs were found. However, the threats did cause disruptions in Georgia, where five polling places were evacuated. Hours were extended at those locations to ensure all voters could cast their ballots.
Republican Brad Raffensberger, the Georgia Secretary of State best known for refusing to aid Trump in his coup attempt in 2020, argued that Russia was attempting to undermine faith in the US system of government.
The Russians are “up to mischief it seems,” he said. “They don’t want us to have a smooth, fair and accurate election.”
This is probably true, as far as it goes. But it seems important to note that the bomb threats weren’t just randomly distributed attempts to undermine the electoral process. Like threats of violence in the 2020 election, they were intended specifically to target and discourage Democratic voters in key swing states.
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Polls heading into November 5 indicated the election would be extremely close, so whoever was behind the threats had good reason to believe that even minor disruptions in Democratic leaning areas could tip the balance and hand Trump a win in a tight race. In the event, Trump’s win was large enough, and the disruptions small enough, that they didn’t change the outcome. But the pattern of interference nonetheless makes it clear which side was being targeted.
Fulton County, Georgia, a Democratic stronghold with a 43.7 percent plurality of Black voters, received 32 bomb threats by email and phone. Neighboring DeKalb county (53.7 percent Black) was also targeted for threats. Police had to sweep six polling locations.
Similarly, bomb threats in Pennsylvania were directed at polling locations in Democratic majority city Philadelphia. In Wisconsin, Madison was targeted; in Michigan, Detroit.
In Arizona, polling locations on the lands of the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe were both threatened. Native voters tend to favor Democrats (as they did this year, despite some misleading early exit polls).
Russia helps Trump because Trump helps Russia
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Putin would attempt to help Trump. Russian election interference globally has been designed to advance the far right and boost candidates friendly to Russia’s authoritarian leader Vladimir Putin.
Putin has been doling out money to boost and buy the allegiance of far right candidates across Europe, focusing especially on getting Europe to abandon Ukraine, which Russia invaded in 2022. His interference in Romania’s recent election on behalf of far right candidate Calin Georgescu was so egregious that the Romanian Constitutional Court invalidated the election results.
And of course Putin interfered in the 2016 presidential election, waging a sweeping electoral interference campaign. Russian intelligence hacked the Democratic National Committee network, stealing and releasing private emails, which drove news cycles throughout the campaign and boosted Trump, who won the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote. (Trump continues to deny there was any election interference, because of course he does.)
According to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which was launched after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey amid a probe of his campaign’s connections with the Kremlin, Russia attempted to hack the DNC shortly after Trump publicly urged Putin to expose and disseminate Hillary Clinton’s emails.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press,” Trump said, live on television.
A Senate investigation found numerous links between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016. And Putin tried again to help Trump (unsuccessfully) in 2020. In return, Trump has consistently and successfully undermined support for Ukraine within the GOP while legitimizing Putin as a global player.
Trump’s link to Russia were not fully investigated or prosecuted after 2016 because Trump, with the power of the presidency behind him, did everything he could to delegitimize and block the investigation in ways that may well have constituted obstruction of justice. He was aided in that by a Republican Party dead set against any suggestion that the 2016 election victory that allowed them to stack the Supreme Court and cut taxes for billionaires was in any way compromised.
Bill Barr, Trump’s attorney general (who has subsequently become a Trump critic), downplayed and mischaracterized Mueller’s report about Russian interference, creating a narrative that helped the right to dismiss the findings. Supposedly moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins refused to even consider impeachment on the basis of Trump’s links to Russia.
This is, to put it mildly, an ominous precedent for investigation of, and accountability for, Russian bomb threats during 2024. Raffenberger (again, a Trump critic) wouldn’t even acknowledge that the threats were intended to help Trump.
Given Trump’s history of soliciting election interference and the ties between Trump and Russia in 2016, there certainly should be an investigation of whether Trump’s campaign knew about the threats beforehand, or was involved in coordinating them. We know that billionaire Elon Musk, a key Trump advisor, has been in contact with Putin for the past two years. Trump himself has notably refused to deny that he has been in touch with Putin since he left office, saying that if he had spoken to the Russian president, it would be “a good thing.”
There would certainly, then, be reason to ask some questions of Trump and his henchmen. But Trump won. The Trump DOJ under his AG nominee Pam Bondi almost certainly won’t investigate Trump. And disheartened Democrats are unlikely to push the issue.
Voters knew that Trump staged a coup attempt; they knew that he has praised Putin and benefited from election interference in 2016. They didn’t care enough to deny him the presidency. What’s the point of looking into this ugly effort to undermine democracy when the public shrugged at all Trump’s earlier efforts?
Yes, it matters
The despair is certainly understandable. But if our democracy is going to survive, it does seem important to investigate and push back against potentially violent efforts to disenfranchise voters. Yet, Democrats have largely stopped talking about the Russian election threats, and have not called for investigations.
It’s especially important to recognize and fight back against this kind of Russian interference because it so perfectly, and grotesquely, mimics and advances previous rightwing efforts to disenfranchise marginalized people who dare to vote disproportionately against Republicans.
The GOP in recent years has increasingly returned to updated Jim Crow tactics to rob Black people, and other marginalized people, of their votes. In Florida, after a referendum granted formerly incarcerated people the right to vote, state Republicans instituted restrictions forcing them to pay a range of fees before they were eligible to cast ballots — effectively reimposing a poll tax.
As in the Jim Crow era, the GOP has innovated ways to put barriers in the way of minority voters while pretending to be color blind — as for instance in the national GOP strategy of closing polling places in metro areas like Atlanta, or outlawing ballot collection services that are crucial for Native American voters on reservations.
Another Jim Crow-era tactic for preventing Black people from voting was violence; Black people who tried to vote in the South were threatened and worse. The bomb threats in Black and Native American communities are an echo of that tradition of outright authoritarian, proto-fascist violence, coordinated by collaboration between the state and rightwing militias like the KKK.
We don’t want the authoritarian American past to be a blueprint for an authoritarian American future. But if the media, Democrats, and the public just shrug as Black and Native American voters are targeted and threatened, we should expect the threats, and the violence, to get worse.
Putin, Trump, and Republicans have learned that potentially violent election interference targeting Democratic voters is fine as long as you win. If they aren’t made to pay some sort of price, why wouldn’t they do it again?
That’s it for today
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Thanks for reading, and happy holidays.
This is need to know stuff that doesn't get out due to widespread self censorship in the press. It is alarming that this has been throttled. But with alarms blaring everywhere, what's one more in the cacophony. This is essential reporting. Thank you.
This message today was among the best and most informative that I have read from Public Notice. Thanks. Trump's efforts, supported by Russia, has succeeded in disenfranchising voters and our country is only weeks away to the loss of our democracy.
1. If Trump says there will be no more elections once he is re-elected - then BELIEVE HIM. (The Hill, July 29, 2024) This will be a jaw-dropping revelation for those who voted for this man, as well as an immeasurable colossus step toward a dictatorship. In Russia, the President is legally elected for a six year term. Putin has been in office for about 25 years and will not leave the Presidency. The DUMA - which acts out of fear just like the U.S. Congress - has voted Putin into office until 2034.
2. Roughly half the population in the United States voted for Donald Trump. In doing so, they have unleashed a sociopath leadership that will mimic the government currently found in Russia under Putin - a ruthless dictatorship based on fascism. In the very near future, those who disagree with Trump may be arrested. Donald Trump is now attempting to imprison Liz Cheney and others who sat on the January 6th Committee to investigate his crimes. This is no different between Putin imprisoning Alexei Navalny in Russia - who eventually was murdered while in a Russian Penal Colony in Siberia.
3. Today in the U.S., Christmas is more about Santa Claus and presents than religion and Christ. There is a long list of commercial items that Trump sells - including a Bible with his name on it. This is sacrilegious against God, profane, and blasphemous. Yet there are Christians in the United States this holiday season that will buy his "made in China" Trump Bible. They might as well be "spitting" on a Cross, or drawing pictures in the Qur'an!
4. Now Trump is talking about invading Canada, Panama, and even Greenland. This type of "loose talk of war" and mental derangement is comparative to Vladimir Putin’s illegal annexing and conquering of Ukraine's land, the destruction of Ukraine’s infrasstructure, and the murder of thousands upon thousands of innocent people. If Trump attacks these independent countries, they will fight back - just like Ukraine. This means war and the death of Americans soldiers and civilians and destruction of U.S. land and cities.
5. When Trump won this election, he not only disposed of his many criminal charges in the U.S., but also ransomed his life - and that of his family - from imminent danger. Trump is still valuable to Vladimir Putin - but he is playing a dangerous game with a man who has a genocidal appetite identical to Hitler and Stalin. Trump thinks of himself as one of the "pack", but he is not. He has been purchased and/or bribed by Russia. Both "Vanity FairP and "Business Insider" have published articles about the $100 Million dollar loan the Trump Organization received from Russian banks (all under Putin's control) - at a time when U.S. banks refused to loan him money due to his six bankruptcies.
6. Brad Raffensperger proved that the bomb threats in Fulton County, Georgia voting locations came from Russian hackers and this shows beyond doubt that Trump has an intimate relationship with Russia. This solely should scare every voting American, but it doesn't. We live in a country where "45 million adults in the US are functionally illiterate. 50% of adults in the US can't read a book written at an 8th-grade level, 75% of Americans who receive food stamps perform at the lowest two levels of literacy, 43% of adults with the lowest literacy skills live in poverty, and about 21% of American adults are considered functionally illiterate." (AI Overview, Feb 25, 2024) In comparison, "With a power ranking score of 91, Russia attains a position as one of the five countries with the best educational system in the world. (www.americancouncils.org).
I lived and worked in Russia and the surrounding area for about twenty years. My youngest two children attended Russia public schools when they were 12 and 14 years old. I can personally attest to their impressive and awe-inspiring teaching methodologies. If a child does not do their homework, it is the parents who are called to school and reprimanded and scolded.
Rooted in Lenin-Marxist thought, the rhetorical vehicle for spreading ideas, thoughts, and propaganda goes way, way back to the Communist Manifesto. Hitler used the same communication mechanisms to brainwash Germans so in a short period of time he converted a country of followers into mass murderers, and he killed off or imprisoned those who did not agree with him.
In the U.S., Trump uses the slogan "Make America Great Again". It is the exact same type of rhetorical, stylistic and convincing message found in Russia under Stalin and Putin or in Germany under Hitler. Trump "plants the seeds" and watch them grow in the minds of his many brainwashed followers.
The truth - or law - no longer matters to these adherent partisans - it is what Trump says and wants. Trump has seduced half the American public, just like dictators before him whose reign is based on a disinformation and propaganda ecosystem which elevates malicious content and creates an illusion of credibility.
"Project 2025" in the U.S., "The Foundations of Geopolitics" in Russia, and the book called "Mein Kampf" written by Hitler in Germany 100 years ago are all interchangeable - they impose the will of one man over the will of the people.
It is no longer a matter of "if our democracy survives" as you stated. Khrushchev said in 1956 "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you." Putin was raised during Khrushchev's time, and now he is the President (Dictator) of Russia. He has stated "his goals include the destruction of the U.S. democracy from within - without firing a shot." (Newsweek, May 18, 2017)
HE IS SUCCEEDING.
Elizabeth Graham, www.democrazy2020.org
Substack: "From Democracy to Democrazy"