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On Sunday, it seemed as the New Year was reaching back into 2020’s bag of horrors. The Washington Post reported:

President Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that election experts said raised legal questions.

The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk.”

Georgia’s Secretary of State refused to accommodate the President’s corrupt demands. This week, a joint session of Congress will convene to formally count the electoral votes from the 2020 election. A large number of House Republicans and small number of Republican Senators indicated that they will raise objections, which will prolong the affair. Some have demanded the appointment of a special commission to audit the vote. That commission is unnecessary, as the courts have already thoroughly vetted the issues raised by President Trump’s campaign and its allies. The proposed commission is really a Trojan Horse aimed at conferring legitimacy on the claims the courts have found baseless and a further attack on the legitimacy of the electoral outcome.

With the President having already resorted to extreme and unprecedented demands in a desperate bid to overturn the voters’ rejection of a second term, it is an open question as to whether his efforts will continue even after Congress formally concludes its role in counting the electoral votes.

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