Trump, DeSantis push baseless election conspiracy theories as California counts its votes

It takes a while under the state’s system to tally all the ballots. The president and his pals are filling the vacuum with predictable nonsense.

There were a great many closely watched races in California this week, but those looking for the final results will have to remain patient. As has been true in every recent election cycle in the Golden State, it takes a while under California’s system to get a complete tally of the ballots.

Yet a variety of Republicans are scrambling to fill the vacuum with predictable but baseless conspiracy theories.

On Wednesday night, for example, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, apparently annoyed that newly counted mail-in ballots offered good news to Democratic candidates, wrote via social media, “California keeps dumping votes. Odds are shifting because the vote dumps always seem to go one way. Count until you get the result you want?”

Shortly before 1 a.m. ET, Donald Trump — by some measures, the nation’s pre-eminent election denier and electoral conspiracy theorist — published a related missive to his own platform. “The Dumocrats are at it again!” the president wrote, demonstrating his trademark wit. “They are trying to steal the governor of California primary, and the mayor of Los Angeles, primary, away from two great Republican candidates,” the president wrote in all caps. “Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of MAIL IN BALLOTS.”

Shortly after 1 a.m. ET, he published a follow-up item, not only falsely claiming that there’s “BIG cheating” underway, but also adding that the matter is “under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.” (Whether federal investigators have in fact launched a probe is unclear, and it’s entirely possible that Trump simply made this up.)

Hours earlier, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham told viewers that “many of us believe” that California has “potentially the most corrupt voting system in the western world.” The conservative host went on to call for federal officials to “step in” as the state continues to tally ballots.

Broadly speaking, there are a couple of key elements to this.

The first is that no one in Republican politics has produced any evidence whatsoever to support any of these accusations. On the contrary, we knew in advance of Tuesday’s voting that California would be slow, because it always is. The New York Times reported:

California’s heavy reliance on mail ballots, which require a lot of labor to certify and tabulate, has slowed down its vote counting process for years. But that delay could be compounded this time by the fact that many voters seemed to have waited until the end to submit their ballots, in part because they were unsure of whom to choose in the volatile governor’s race.

To count each mail ballot, election officials must compare a voter’s signature against one on file, open each envelope, pull the ballot out and prepare it for processing. That adds time compared to having voters validate their signatures at a polling place without an envelope.

If critics of the system want to argue that California should come up with a model that expedites the counting process, fine. But for Republicans to throw around baseless accusations of irregularities, without so much as a hint of evidence, is indefensible.

All of which leads us to the other angle of note: Americans should expect to hear a lot more of these false claims in the coming weeks and months.

Indeed, it has become a staple of the Trump-era Republican Party: Ahead of every recent election cycle, prominent GOP voices and conservative media figures have taken a series of steps to undermine public confidence in the nation’s system of voting. It serves as the basis for a radical and unnecessary game: If Democrats win, they say: “See, there was cheating!” And if Republicans win, they say: “We overcame the cheating!”

The bogus claims erode confidence in our democracy. Republicans keep doing it anyway. As vote tallies in California continue to come in and conspiracy theorists continue to peddle nonsense, it’s disheartening to see the corrosive campaign get started again so early.

Trump could still face civil liability for Jan. 6 — but not yet, as he pursues immunity appeal

Trump’s 2024 election win helped him avoid criminal liability for Jan. 6. But civil litigation slowly continues.

Earlier this spring, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., largely denied President Donald Trump’s immunity claim in the long-running civil litigation seeking to hold him accountable for Jan. 6. As Trump appeals the immunity ruling, the judge said Thursday that the litigation against the president will stay on hold pending that appeal.

The latest ruling reaffirms that it will be some time before the courts resolve the series of separate but related civil cases the judge previously called “the last vestiges of litigation concerning the events at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

In handing down his latest order, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, an Obama appointee, noted the litigation involves eight separate cases, six of which name Trump as the only defendant. But in one of the cases that has many other defendants, called Smith v. Trump, which was brought by U.S. Capitol police officers, Mehta declined to halt litigation while Trump appeals. Yet the judge agreed the discovery process can’t go forward against Trump himself in that case while the president pursues his immunity appeal.

Rejecting a total halt to the Smith litigation, Mehta said that would be unfair to the plaintiffs when it comes to any outstanding discovery requests and efforts to collect evidence from third parties. The judge observed that “the events of January 6th are now over five years old” and that there’s “a genuine risk that, with extended delay, witnesses’ memories will fade or witnesses will be unavailable or more difficult to track down. The court cannot say that such prejudice is inevitable, but President Trump has offered no reason to allay the concern.”

The judge conceded the public has an interest in ensuring Trump’s immunity protections “are not trampled upon before final resolution.” But he said the public “also has an interest in seeing this case of national importance move forward.”

In seeking a total pause of all litigation ahead of Mehta’s ruling, Trump’s lawyers said that even taking “non-Presidential discovery” while he appeals would be “illusory.” They said that any meaningful discovery “would seek to prove the same President-focused issues: what President Trump allegedly knew, intended, or encouraged; what others allegedly did alongside him or at his direction; and whether those alleged acts support liability against him (they do not).”

As for Trump’s civil immunity appeal, that could eventually be decided by the Supreme Court that granted him broad criminal immunity in the federal election interference prosecution, which the Justice Department dropped after he won the 2024 election due to its internal policy against prosecuting sitting presidents.

In their civil complaint seeking money damages and other relief, the Smith plaintiffs alleged that Trump and others “deliberately and persistently made and encouraged false claims of election fraud to discredit the outcome of the [2020] election and disingenuously incite outrage among his supporters.” The plaintiffs further alleged that the defendants “encouraged and supported acts of violence, knowing full well that among his supporters were extremist groups and individuals, like PROUD BOYS, who had demonstrated their propensity to the use of violence against those they regarded as critical of TRUMP.”