Impeachment of an Ex-President: Constitutional or Not?

 There's been a lot of discussion about the upcoming Senate trial of former President Donald Trump following his second impeachment. The topics of discussion include whether he actually committed an impeachable offense to the impeachment procedures in the House to whether it's even constitutional to hold a post-impeachment Senate trial for a former president. Most of the people who weigh in on social media against proceeding usually throw around the assertion that the whole process is unconstitutional while unable to point to the part of the Constitution that is being violated. 

Let's start with the Impeachment itself. While it might seem counterintuitive, an impeachable offense, within certain bounds, is what the House of Representatives says it is. The term "high crimes and misdemeanors" is not defined in the Constitution itself, but it's meaning at the time the Constitution was written suggests that it was interpreted broadly and not meant to be tied to any specific laws or ordinances. While "incitement of insurrection" may not be provable in a court of law, it does not need to be. While the recent impeachment may not conform to legal proceedings we have become used to after watching decades of crime procedurals and cop shows, if a majority of the House of Representatives decides that an action by the president is impeachable, then he's impeached. It may not seem right or fair, it might seem to be partisan head hunting, but it does not contravene the Constitution. 

A specific objection that I saw today was that the recent impeachment was unconstitutional because Trump's words that have been construed as incitement to insurrection were protected speech under the First Amendment. This objection ignores the fact that not all speech is protected speech, the cliché "you can't yell 'fire' in a crowded movie theater" is illustrative of this point. One might reasonably argue that Trumps' words didn't constitute an incitement to insurrection, but you can't argue that it was automatically protected speech just because it was speech. Even First Amendment protection from government censorship does not immunize one from the consequences of that speech. 

An objection to proceeding with the Senate trial is that Trump cannot be removed from office as a result of a Senate conviction because he is no longer an occupant of the office. There are two ways that this is argued, one is the practical, the other constitutional. The practical objection is that it's a waste of time, since he's already removed by dint of his term having expired n January 20th. The answer to this objection is that upon conviction Trump can be subject to "disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States". So it's not really a moot point, since there are further consequences beyond removal, which is moot. The Constitutional objection is a bit messier, and not totally clear.

One view is that the impeachment clause of the Constitution lists those people who are subject to impeachment. They are the President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United States (which includes federal judges and cabinet officers) and that an ex-president is not on that list. The contrary view is that nothing in the Constitution prohibits a former president from being impeached or being tried in the Senate after impeachment. There is only one precedent upon which we can refer to: in 1876 Secretary of War William Belknap resigned as the House of Representatives was contemplating impeachment. The House impeached him anyway, and the Senate held a trial, with a majority agreeing that it retained impeachment trial jurisdiction despite the resignation. He was acquitted, with a majority that was less than the two-thirds, voting to convict. A number of Senators that voted to acquit expressed doubt about whether an impeachment of a former official conformed with the Constitution. This precedent has never been applied in the case of a former president. 

So there's nothing that unambiguously permits or prohibits the impeachment or subsequent Senate trial of a former president, despite assertions of unconstitutionality by the Trumpists. Whatever the scholars or those with unwarranted confidence in their knowledge of the Constitution may believe, the trial has been scheduled. 

Unity

Some years ago a was involved in a car accident. Another driver wasn't paying attention and blew through the intersection hitting my car square on the driver's side. As I looked at the vehicle speeding directly at me I was sure I was going to die. My car was totaled, but I walked away from it without a scratch. I was angry at the damage done to my car, but was relived that I was alive and unhurt. The feeling was similar to how I felt on Inauguration Day this year. Not that I thought President Biden was the savior that would fix it all, right all the wrongs and heal all wounds, but that our nation had made it through the last few years - and that we still had a nation. If anyone had any doubts about how unfit for the presidency Trump was, the two and a half months between the election and the inauguration, with his ham-handed attempts to overturn the election and his pardons of corrupt politicians, should have knocked them off the fence. 

Somehow the myth that those who opposed him did so because we were offended by his crude, coarse manner, that he wasn't "presidential", or that he allegedly spoke his mind, was accepted by his most ardent supporters.  In fact, most of what he accomplished was boilerplate Republicanism: lower taxes on the rich, eliminating regulations and lots of anti-immigrant rhetoric. What most of us disliked about Trump was his gleeful stoking of hatred and division, labelling anyone who disagreed with him as anti-American, going so far as to call the mainstream media "The Enemy of the People" and suggesting that his political opponents be locked up. Any hope that we had that he would settle into the job, listen to the advice of "the adults in the room" was squashed pretty quickly. His documented lies reached the tens of thousands. His ignorance, not only of how government worked, but of basic economics was abysmal. His contempt for our allies and solicitousness of our enemies was worrying. His persona was that of a petulant child, when he wasn't acting as the playground bully. He had barely dodged the bullet that was the Mueller Investigation when he attempted to bribe the president of Ukraine in order to start an investigation of Joe Biden and his son Hunter. His incompetence and laziness came to the fore as he ignored the seriousness of the Covid-19 virus that has so far killed 400,000 of us. 

While I probably would have voted for a can of green beans over Trump, Biden, whatever his shortcoming's, is someone who takes the job seriously, has the knowledge and experience needed for the job, and in contrast to his predecessor, sees himself as the president of all Americans, not just those who voted for him. He has the perhaps unlikely dream of our nation being united. 

Let's talk about unity. The reality is that we are a deeply divided nation. A not insignificant minority believes that his election was fraudulently won. There are deep disagreements on just about everything. There is an impeachment trial still pending in the Senate for the former president. The progressive faction of the Democratic Party thinks Biden is just another establishment hack; Trump's core of support think he's a communist. No matter what he does or doesn't do is going to make somebody mad. But unity and governing with eye to making decision's that are best for all Americans isn't about accomplishing the impossible, i.e. making everybody happy. It's about doing what's overall in the nation's best interest, knowing that not everyone agrees on what the best interest is. 

There are two competing realities. One is the old saying "elections have consequences". Not only did Biden garner a healthy majority of the electoral votes, the exact same number that Trump claimed as a landslide in 2016, but unlike Trump, he also received a healthy majority of the total votes cast nationwide. Surely this gives him the right to honor his campaign promises and take whatever unilateral actions that are available to him, even if the Republican Party doesn't like it. The second reality is that his party has only a slim majority in the House of Representatives (221-211, with 3 vacant seats - it takes 218 votes to reach a majority) and a 50-50 tie in the Senate, with several conservative Democrats unlikely to support what the consider any ultra-liberal proposals. These slim majorities will make it all but impossible to get anything done with the cooperation of at least 10 Republican Senators, since the filibuster still exists for legislation, although not for judicial appointments. Mitch McConnell is still the leader of the Republican caucus.

Let's not forget that it was Mitch McConnell who obstructed everything that President Obama attempted accomplish. It was Mitch McConnell who stole a Supreme Court nomination based on the suspect reasoning that a president shouldn't be able to appoint a Supreme Court Justice in his last year in office, a reasoning that he conveniently changed when it was Trump who had the opportunity to nominate a justice during his last month before the election. It was Mitch McConnell who virtually shut down the Senate, except for judicial appointments, refusing to consider any bills sent over from the House of Representatives. I don't envision much legislation getting passed. We're already hearing from politicians like Ted Cruz who think "unity" means that Biden and the Democrats roll over for the Republicans, as if Biden hadn't won the election.

This isn't very optimistic, I know. But it's realistic. There's still a lot that President Biden can do without the cooperation of the Republicans. He can fill judicial vacancies, he can appoint people who support the mission of the cabinet departments, instead of those whose goal was to dismantle them under Trump; he can re-engage us with the international community and strengthen our alliances; he can re-institute environmental protections that were gutted in the last four years. 

He can take the job seriously.

 

Burger Flipping

Now that President-Elect Biden has signaled his support for an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15, the critics of such a move have already been busy with their insulting characterizations of people who make the minimum wage. 

Arguments against the minimum wage increase:

* It's just high school kids working those jobs, they'll graduate and find something better

* If you don't like making minimum wage, find a better job

* It's unskilled labor

* Paramedics make $15/hour (or really, fill in your favorite profession that already makes $15/hour or slightly more) - are you saying "burger flippers" are worth as much as paramedics?

* Companies will go out of business or lay off employees if forced to increase wages

Let's dispense with the economic argument first. Research has shown that increasing wages, counterintuitively, doesn't cause businesses to close or to lay off workers. 

https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/8984-increased-minimum-wage.html#:~:text=Researchers%20say%20raising%20the%20minimum,businesses%20or%20reduce%20job%20opportunities.

Business owners by and large are not philanthropists. They will take whatever action is necessary to maximize profits. If they voluntarily raise wages, it's usually because of outside pressure. Often it because of increased competition for employees due to low unemployment. Your paycheck is based, not on what you need, but on the lowest amount that your employer feels they can get away with paying you. If revenues increase for whatever reason, fewer competitors, lower costs or reduced taxes, most employers will not turn around and increases wages because they don't have to. 

The idea that all or most minimum wage jobs are filled by high school students is also a myth. While it is true that high school kids, if they are working, are working in minimum wage jobs, people from all walks of life are working in low-paying jobs for a variety of reasons. Higher paying positions typically require specific training or education. This may shock people who are college graduates, but not everyone can afford to go to college. Of course there are alternatives, two of my children joined the military. One is a career NCO and the other combined student loans with support from the military to get a college degree and a teaching job. Two of my children have union jobs with decent pay and benefits. Circumstances and decisions made years or decades ago will affect ones ability to find a high paying job. Single parents with young children are often limited in the jobs that they can take. Some people, often through no fault of their own, do not have the education or training that would qualify them for a higher paying career. 

The bigger picture that is often overlooked is that these lower paying, lower status jobs are still necessary. If we want there to be restaurants where we can enjoy a nice dinner in our free time with our discretionary income, someone has to be "flipping the burgers". In virtually any industry there are "front line" workers who do the bulk of the work, who get things done. This is not to say that supervisors and administrators are not necessary, but that there would be nothing to supervise or administrate without those front line workers. In any business that I have ever been in, if every non-manager had called in sick the place would have fallen apart (and I say that having been a manager at most of the businesses where I was employed). A related issue is that in most industries the only way to advance, i.e. to make more money, is to be promoted to management. The problem with this is that management is a skill set that is separate from the underlying business. You may be the best [fill in the blank] but may have no ability to effectively supervise your former peers or manage the business that you are engaged in. But most positions have a maximum wage rate, and once you reach that ceiling, you have one option: become a manager. This paradigm ignores the likelihood that a front line workers with many years of experience will bring more value to the business than a rookie with the same job title. 

The last item that I will address is the comparative value argument. Usually it takes the form of comparing the average compensation of paramedics or teachers to the $15/hour suggested minimum wage and implies that minimum wage workers aren't the equals of paramedics or teachers. This isn't the slam dunk that opponents of a minimum wage increase think it is. It's an argument for increasing the remuneration of teachers and paramedics. And speaking of comparisons, some studies indicate that if the minimum wage kept pace with inflation and productivity increases, it would be $24/hour.

Presidential Election Procedures for Dummies (Really)

So, what's the procedure for electing a president? There's a lot of confusion out there claiming that election procedures in some states are illegal, that state legislatures can override the people's vote or that "massive" fraud took place. 

According to the Constitution and related law (Article II Section 1, The 12th Amendment and the Electoral Count Act of 1887), the states have the authority to set election law within their state. Every state has laws on the books indicating that the person who receives the greatest number of votes will be awarded all of the electoral votes from that state. (Maine and Nebraska are exceptions to the winner-take-all rule). Every state has laws enumerating procedures for contesting the results. These procedures include automatic or requested recounts if the margin of victory is within a certain percentage. 

In every single state (and for the purposes of discussing the presidential election The District of Columbia will be included as a "state") the winner was clear - automatic and requested recounts confirmed the winner with no material change in numbers. 

Usually, at this point, we view everything else that follows as pro forma and consider the election a done deal. 

Unlike every other election in the past 140 years, the loser of the election claimed, despite there being no doubt about the results, that he had actually won and that only cheating, fraud (the massive kind) and dead people voting had robbed him of his victory. The objections came in two broad categories: (1) fraud, and (2) illegal or unconstitutional provisions in state election law. Despite the president (the loser in this case) claiming loudly and continuously that there was fraud on a massive scale, the Attorney General, the head of the Department of Homeland Security's cyber security agency, the U.S. Secretary of State, and governors, state secretaries of state, election commissioners and other local officials in every single state have assured us that there was no election fraud, sometimes with the qualifier "on a scale that would have affected the results". In the few cases where there were specific allegations by Trump or his allies, they have been explained as lack of understanding of ballot counting procedures or drawing conclusions based on incomplete or erroneous data. In fact none of the lawsuits by the Trump campaign or Trump's allies or lawyers have alleged fraud, but have targeted election procedures and laws. Every single lawsuit over election procedures has been dismissed, some due to lack of standing, but most due to lack of evidence. 

The next step in the process is the certification of the election results in each state. Trumpists have claimed that the Constitution gives the state legislatures the authority to select the electors and therefore could overrule the vote if they thought it wasn't valid. They get this from Article II Section 1: "Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors". Of course they ignore the clause "in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct" which gives the legislature the freedom to delegate this to the Secretary of State or an election commission the procedures for appointing electors. As I stated above, every legislature has tied this appointment to whoever received the most votes. At least one local election commission in Michigan, and later the state election board, attempted to block certification, even though their certification was, like virtually every other step, a formality. 

The state certification process follows any challenges or recounts and serve to acknowledge what came before. The states set their own standards for certification, and resolve all disputes internally. The next step occurs when the electors meet in their respective state capitols and cast their votes. This also is a formality. They have no authority under the laws of any state to do anything other than cast a vote for whomever they are pledged to vote for. The casting of electoral votes, unlike everything else in the process, happened without any drama. 

The final step is the delivery of envelopes containing the electoral votes to the Vice President, presiding over a joint session of Congress. If I haven't been absolutely clear about formalities, this step also is usually just a formality. According to the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, the only job of the Vice President is to open the envelopes while clerks tabulate the votes (of course we already know the result) and announce formally the results of the election. However, in the aftermath of a contested election in 1876, a federal election law was passed that added some additional detail to the proceedings. It's a long & confusing law, but the relevant portion gives Members of the House of Representatives the right to object to any state's electoral votes as long as at least one Senator agrees. Once an objection is raised, each chamber debates the objection, then votes to accept or reject that state's electoral votes. This is the law that some Republicans are leaning on for a last stand fight to keep Trump as president. What the Sedition Wing of the Republican Party isn't telling us is that the same law emphasizes that disputes about electors are to be resolved within the states and that the procedure for objection is designed to address a situation where there have been competing slates of electors due to questions about the authority of the officials who signed the states' certifications. 1876_United_States_presidential_election

Republican Representatives and Senators who have committed to objecting to the results in swing states that went for Biden claim that this is necessary due to the "many allegations of fraud". (See above for a discussion of the alleged fraud) While this was going on, a recording of Trump attempting to pressure the Georgia Secretary of State to "find" enough votes to give him victory...by one vote. Surely he has made similar calls to other states. 

Congress meets in two days for the next phase of this attempted coup. I wonder what insanity will follow.

Craziness. Nothing But Craziness

Did you know that just because someone makes an allegation of wrongdoing against someone a police investigation doesn't necessarily take place? If I call the local police department and tell them that you're operating an illicit drug manufacturing factory in your family room, absent any other information, they're probably not going to investigate. They're certainly not going to arrest you based on this allegation. But what if there was "suspicious" goings-on? What if I was at the pharmacy and saw you buy a box of Sudafed? If I noticed that you had a new car? If you looked around furtively as you took your trash out to the curb and objected when I insisted that I open up your trash bags to verify that nothing illegal was going on? Nope. Still no arrest. If for some reason the cops show up and you tell them, you got a huge bonus which enabled you to afford the car and that you had a cold last week, that will be the end of it. Nothing to see here.

This is figuratively what's going on with the accusations of election fraud. Virtually every instance of "suspicious" activity reports, when it isn't an out-and-out partisan attempt to undermine confidence in the electoral system, is the result of people seeing things that they don't understand and jumping to incorrect conclusions. Every single report of suspicious activity has been answered by the appropriate election official and without exception has been explained to be either a lack of understanding of the ballot counting process, an actual error that was caught and corrected already, or something that had nothing to do with the ballot counting or election system. Every single instance of discrepancies between votes cast and the number of registered voters, or any other numerical discrepancy, has turned out to be based on inaccurate information. One such error involved using the population of several Minnesota cities to point out supposed irregularities in Michigan cities. Another pointed to a difference in number of votes reported by the state and an unofficial database which all districts had not uploaded their information into, and where not required to. In areas where it was alleged that vote counting machine algorithms where changing vote totals to favor Biden, an audit and recount of paper ballots showed no such thing. 

Over and above the perceived irregularities, accusations of the creation of large numbers of ballots for Biden in six or seven different states, in hundreds of jurisdictions using dozens of voting methods, with officials overseeing the vote from both major parties, and judges, most of whom were appointed by Trump, adjudicating the lawsuits aimed at overturning the votes of millions of people, if true, would have required a conspiracy so vast that it boggles the mind. 

So vast that it couldn't possibly have held together. 

Despite the insanity required to believe that such a nefarious, yet impossible, scenario took place, Trump is still claiming that he won, and not just that he won, but that it was a landslide, and several supporters are actually planning to attempt to suppress enough electoral votes next week to give Trump a victory that he did not earn.

It's done. 

The votes are counted, the states have certified, the judges, including the Supreme Court, have ruled, the Electoral College has cast their votes (which in a normal year would be a formality). All that is left is one more formality, the opening of the envelopes containing the electoral vote totals by the Vice President, their tabulation and the formal declaration that Biden has been elected president. 

It's done. Shut up & go home.

Now What?

Three huge negotiations were happening simultaneously in Congress. One was what is referred to as the omnibus spending bill. Congress routinely bundles spending authorizations for the myriad government departments, as well as foreign aid and grants to various non governmental agencies into a handful of giant bills. One of these was the Defense Spending Authorization Bill which passed last week but was vetoed by Trump because it did not contain a repeal of "Section 230", which immunizes social media platforms against actions taken by users of their sites and because it did contain an authorization to rename military bases that are named for Confederate generals and politicians. It remains to be seen whether Congress, which passed the bill by enough votes to override a veto, will actually override. 

The second of these (the so-called omnibus bill) was passed just a few days ago. It included a vast laundry list of spending authorizations from the routine to what could be considered "pork" pushed by special interest lobbyists. Most of these items were included in the budget that Trump submitted to Congress, including foreign aid and support for the arts. 

The third set of negotiations was the Covid Relief Bill. Among other things, this bill included a $600 one-time payment to individuals.  There was widespread criticism of this amount as too small. Democrats had initially wanted a larger amount, some factions of the Republican Party wanted no individual payment. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, Trumps liaison with Congressional leadership suggested a compromise amount of $600. The Covid Relief Bill had broad support, as did the omnibus, so they were combined into one bill and were passed with bipartisan support. Trump immediately criticised it. His criticism was that the individual payment should be $2000, not $600 and that the bill should not have included foreign aid or support for the arts, even though his budget called for those expenditures. 

Trump could have weighed in with the $2000 figure at any time during the negotiations, but chose to focus on overturning the election. He only spoke up after the negotiations were over and conflated the items in the omnibus with the relief bill to make it look like foreign governments were being prioritized over working Americans. The Democrats immediately moved to increase the individual payment to $2000, but were blocked by Republicans in the House of Representatives. At the writing of this blog post there is no word on what Trump will do: whether he will sign, veto, or ignore. Whether Congress will vote on the increase (the previous attempt was what was called Unanimous Consent, where a proposal is considered to have passed if no one objects - someone objected). A further complication is that some Republicans want to bundle the foreign aid and support for the arts that Trump attacked with the $2000 relief checks. 

Congress is always going to do things that some (or all) people don't like. Compromises that somehow displease everyone will happen. That's never going to change. What we're seeing now is just chaos for the sake of chaos. A president who is actively trying to overturn the results of an election has abdicated any responsibility for governing, yet manages to gum up the works without any real solution. His idea of negotiation continues to be the bully's way.

Election fraud?

Was there election fraud?

If by 'election fraud' you mean an organized effort to subvert the results of the election, then 'no'. 

The former head of the nation's cyber-security, Christopher Krebs says 'no'. 

Attorney General Bill Barr, who has never missed an opportunity to back up Trump, says 'no'. 

Every governor and every state election official says 'no'. 

Every local election official says 'no'. 

So why does Trump claim that the answer is "yes" and why do his supporters agree? The election fraud claims are a textbook example of circular reasoning. Trump makes an unsupported claim that there was fraud. His supporters, who believe everything he says, point to Trump's claims as evidence that there was fraud. Trump cites concerns by his supporters as evidence that there was fraud. And 'round and 'round it goes. 

The genesis of the belief that the election was stolen is Trump's fragile ego and his longstanding efforts to paint anything he does as an "historic" success. It's evident that while part of him thinks that he really is as great as he claims to be, another part of him works feverishly to undermine any hint that he isn't. It's not arguable that Trump enjoys a huge amount of support, even losing the election, he received the second greatest amount of votes ever, his rallies draw thousands of people, Republican voters uniformly reject primary candidates that he disapproves of. He has, in four short years, turned the Republican Party into the Donald Trump Party. It's easy to see how he could interpret this adulation and sycophancy as unassailable support making him a shoo-in for a second term. But there was part of him that knew he had to hedge his bets. Joe Biden was leading the pre-primary polls last year, and Trump correctly predicted that Biden would be his general election opponent. Trump attempted to hedge his bets by asking the president of Ukraine to open a corruption investigation into Biden and his son Hunter. In 2020 Trump resurrected his belief that the election infrastructure was rife with fraud. In 2016, when most predictions had him losing to Clinton, he made unsupported allegations that election fraud was why it looked like Clinton received 3 million more votes than he had. Leading up to the election he made repeated claims that the system was rigged against him. 

Fast forward to 2020.

Due to the pandemic, many states made it easier to vote early or by mail. Trump, suspecting that people who took the pandemic seriously would be more likely to want to avoid Election Day crowds and vote by mail, began to undermine confidence in voting-by-mail (except in states or districts that were safely Republican) by making wild claims of its unreliability. His supports among elected officials made attempts to make it more difficult to vote early or by mail by going to court to prevent loosened mail-in rules, by reducing the number of early voting locations and putting up roadblocks to usage of drop boxes. Much of this was standard operating procedure for voter suppression by Republicans, with the added element of Trump tweeting about potential voter fraud every damn day. Despite all of this obstruction, a record number of people voted early, including absentee. 

As the election got closer, realizing that the early voters were likely to overwhelmingly be Biden voters, and that mail-in votes in most states would be counted last, Trump began claiming that the results should be final on Election Night, despite the near-certainty that there would still be millions of votes to be counted days, or even weeks after Election Day. Even though, due to there being enough uncounted votes to make the final result impossible to call, Trump declared victory and demanding that the states stop counting votes. Entirely predictably, as the mail-in votes were counted, Biden pulled ahead in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia and retained that lead as the final votes were tabulated.. The other "swing" state, North Carolina, was won by Trump. Some states were closer than others, but Biden's lead was wide enough in all of them that a count was unlikely to change the results. Trump or his surrogates filed suits to stop counting in several of these states and in Pennsylvania to throw out virtually all mail-in votes. 

I hate to use the phrase "let that sink in", but let that sink in - without any evidence that there was a problem with the election system, Trump was attempting to prevent election officials from counting votes. He and his supporters started using the phrase "count all legal votes" without a shred of evidence that any votes were illegal. Reporting the mail-in votes was described as "massive dumps of votes" when it was nothing more nefarious than reporting mail-in vote totals. Due to Republicans in many states preventing election officials from beginning to count mail-in ballots before election day, this was 100% expected. There was nothing suspicious about this. 

A tactic that was in process even on Election Day itself was Republican observers agressivly challenging, in some jurisdictions, every ballot. It's true that Republicans went to court, claiming that their observers were not allowed to observe, or that they were being turned away or thrown out. In Philadelphia they were being kept 10 feet away (as were Democratic observers), Philadelphia election officials subsequently allowed them within 6 feet, which is what local statues called for. The allegation that Republican observers were not allowed to observe was not true anywhere, the few observers who were thrown out were thrown out for being disruptive and ones who were turned away either had no legal right to be there, or allowing them to enter would have exceeded the allowable number of observers. Nothing to see here.

Antrim County Michigan is one of the biggest cogs in the conspiracy theory machine. Early reporting in that reliably Republican county showed a landslide victory by Joe Biden; this got the attention of election officials who discovered, not a ballot tabulation issue by the vote counting machines, but a human error, reporting issue that was quickly corrected. A so-called forensic report by a partisan "expert" made multiple claims of problems with the Dominion voting machines. A hand-count audit verified the correctness of the machine count. Nothing to see here. 

Every other claim: dead people voting, vote totals changed, mail-in votes sent in after the deadline, has been, if not debunked, has been presented without a shred of evidence. Even Trump's lawyers have said, in open court, that their lawsuits are not claiming election fraud. Judge after judge has rejected Trump's claims. Even the Supreme Court, with three of his own appointees, whom he thought would hand him the election. 

In summary, there is no election fraud of any note. Trump has attempted to undermine confidence in the election, he has called for ballot counting to stop while he was ahead and to continue while he was behind, he has made farcical and ridiculous claims without any supporting evidence.

There is no election fraud.

Trump lost.