The misinformation media machine amplifying Trump"s election lies The Guardian’s Lois Beckett and Julia Carrie Wong report: The networks have made their calls, world leaders have begun paying their respects, and even Fox News and Rupert Murdoch’s other media outlets appear to have given up on a second term for Donald Trump. But in a video posted on Facebook on 7 November and viewed more than 16.5m times since, NewsMax host and former Trump administration official Carl Higbie spends three minutes spewing a laundry list of false and debunked claims casting doubt on the outcome of the presidential election. “I believe it’s time to hold the line,” said Higbie, who resigned from his government post over an extensive track record of racist, homophobic and bigoted remarks, to the Trump faithful. “I’m highly skeptical and you should be too.” The video, which has been shared more than 350,000 times on Facebook, is just one star in a constellation of pro-Trump misinformation that is leading millions of Americans to doubt or reject the results of the presidential election. Fully 70% of Republicans believe that the election was not “free and fair”, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted since election day. Among those doubters, large majorities believe two of Trump’s most brazen lies: that mail-in voting leads to fraud and that ballots were tampered with. Trump himself is the largest source of election misinformation; the president has barely addressed the public since Tuesday except to share lies and misinformation about the election. But his message attacking the electoral process is being amplified by a host of rightwing media outlets and pundits who appear to be jockeying to replace Fox News as the outlet of choice for Trumpists – and metastasizing on platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. Since election day, 16 of the top 20 public Facebook posts that include the word “election” feature false or misleading information casting doubt on the election in favor of Trump, according to a Guardian analysis of posts with the most interactions using CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned analytics tool. Of those, 13 are posts by the president’s own page, one is a direct quote from Trump published by Fox News, one is by the rightwing evangelical Christian Franklin Graham, and the last is the Newsmax Higbie video. Donald Trump has set up a retirement GoFundMe. Well, not exactly – he doesn’t call it a retirement GoFundMe, but his “election defense fund”. Those donating may believe that the money will be used towards challenging the election result, but may have missed that their contributions are earmarked for paying off Trump’s re-election debts. It seems to be the latest episode in the Trump team’s comedy of errors. As Trump continues to refuse to acknowledge the election result by baselessly claiming that Biden’s victory was won through voter fraud, he is also calling on his base for help. Donations can be made to two different funds – Trump’s personal fund, and his joint fund with the RNC. “President Trump needs YOU to step up to make sure we have the resources to protect the integrity of the election!” the wording on both funds says, which is featured in a huge pop-up on Trump’s re-election webpage. It continues: “Please contribute ANY AMOUNT IMMEDIATELY to the Official Election Defense Fund and to increase your impact by 1,000%!” It is unclear who matches the donations. But if you scroll down, past the information about the “Left-wing MOB” trying to “undermine our election”, you’ll see some fine print. On Trump’s personal fund, it dictates that of all donations raised, only 50% will go towards a recount effort, and that “50% of each contribution, up to a maximum of $2,800 ($5,000), [will] be designated toward DJTFP’s 2020 general election account for general election debt retirement until such debt is retired”. On his joint fund with the RNC, the donations work as follows: “60% of each contribution first to Save America, up to $5,000/$5,000, then to DJTP’s recount account, up to a maximum of $2,800/$5,000. [And] 40% of each contribution to the RNC’s operating account, up to a maximum of $35,500/$15,000.” This essentially means that depending on the size of your donation, a large portion of any donation won’t go to the “recount” bid but will instead go to the Super Pac sponsoring the bid, and the Republican party. A new poll finds that 79% of Americans believe Joe Biden won the election, including about 60% of Republicans. Even as Donald Trump and campaign seek to challenge the election results with long-shot lawsuits, 72% of US adults believe loser should concede, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,363 adults. About 60% believe there ultimately will be a peaceful transition of power. The survey also found that 83% of Democrats and 59% of Republicans trusted local election officials to “do their job honestly”. False or misleading claims of electoral fraud are going viral on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, even as the platforms continue to implement special measures aimed at reducing the spread of misinformation around the US presidential election. Major social media platforms are nominally cracking down on misinformation, prominently displaying election results or appending warning labels to posts by Donald Trump that seek to undermine the validity of the vote. According to social analytics platforms such as NewsWhip and CrowdTangle, however, claims about voting irregularities have become among the most-shared content on Facebook. The top three posts are all from Donald Trump, according to CrowdTangle: one alleges “Fake Votes” in Nevada, where Trump trails Joe Biden by 36,000 votes; another claims Georgia, where Trump trails by 13,000 votes pending a recount, will be a “big presidential win”; and a third says “a very large number of ballots” will be affected by “threshold identification”, the meaning of which is unclear. The top news stories on Facebook are also dominated by rightwing claims of “irregularities” and “fraud”, CrowdTangle data showed. Three of the top 10 posts are links from Trump to the far-right news site Breitbart, covering attorney general Bill Barr’s inquiry into “voting irregularities” and inquiries in Michigan and Georgia; a fourth is to rightwing site Newsmax, calling Pennsylvania’s situation a “constitutional travesty”. Joining Trump in the top 10 are two posts from Republican media personality Dan Bongino backing the idea that election fraud is to blame for Trump’s loss, and a report from Fox News quoting Trump’s campaign team saying they are “not backing down”. A postal worker whose claims of voting irregularities have been the basis of Republican calls for investigations, admitted he fabricated his allegations, the Washington Post reports: A Pennsylvania postal worker whose claims have been cited by top Republicans as potential evidence of widespread voting irregularities admitted to U.S. Postal Service investigators that he fabricated the allegations, according to three officials briefed on the investigation and a statement from a House congressional committee. Richard Hopkins’s claim that a postmaster in Erie, Pa., instructed postal workers to backdate ballots mailed after Election Day was cited by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) in a letter to the Justice Department calling for a federal investigation. Attorney General William P. Barr subsequently authorized federal prosecutors to open probes into credible allegations of voting irregularities and fraud, a reversal of long-standing Justice Department policy. But on Monday, Hopkins, 32, told investigators from the U.S. Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General that the allegations were not true, and he signed an affidavit recanting his claims, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee tweeted late Tuesday that the “whistleblower completely RECANTED.” This news comes as the Trump campaign continues to insist that the president’s election loss is due to fraud despite a lack of evidence. The lieutenant governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, said he’s offering $1m as a reward for reports of voter fraud, despite a lack of evidence that there is significant fraud, the Texas Tribune reports. Republicans – who have been alleging voter fraud since before the elections - have been having trouble finding proof to back their claims. The Trump campaign has lobbed a series of long-shot lawsuits to discount mail-in votes that are unlikely to change the outcome of the presidential election. Phone lines that the campaign has opened up to collect stories of fraud and inaccuracies have been bombarded by prank calls. In Texas, as my colleague Erum Salam points out, Patrick’s reward is unlikely to produce any evidence: The reasons for the post-election personnel changes ten weeks before the end of Donald Trump’s tenure were unclear, but they came at a time when the president is refusing to accept election defeat. The former defence secretary, Mark Esper, had refused to allow active duty troops to be deployed on US streets during the Black Lives Matter protests over the summer. In his resignation letter, Anderson, the outgoing Pentagon policy chief, also signalled his unease with the direction the Trump White House was taking in the aftermath of the election. “Now, as ever, our long-term success depends on adhering to the US Constitution all public servants swear to support and defend,” he wrote. Democrats raised the alarm over the wave of staff changes at the Pentagon. “It is hard to overstate just how dangerous high-level turnover at the department of defence is during a period of presidential transition,” Adam Smith, the chairman of the House armed services committee said in a statement, adding that the development “should alarm all Americans”. “If this is the beginning of a trend – the President either firing or forcing out national security professionals in order to replace them with people perceived as more loyal to him – then the next 70 days will be precarious at best and downright dangerous at worst.” The top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, Mark Warner said the US had entered “uncharted territory” with Esper’s firing. “There’s never been a time when a senior official like this has been fired during a transition period between one administration to another,” Warner told MSNBC. Extreme Republican partisans have been installed in important roles in the Pentagon, following the summary dismissal of the defense secretary. Democrats immediately demanded explanations for the eleventh-hour personnel changes, and warned that the US was entering dangerous “uncharted territory”, reshuffling key national security roles during a presidential transition. However, defense experts argued there was little the new Trump appointees could do to use their positions to the president’s advantage, given the firm refusal of the uniformed armed services to get involved in domestic politics. Anthony Tata, a retired Army brigadier general, novelist and Fox News commentator who called Barack Obama a “terrorist leader”, has taken control of the Pentagon’s policy department, following the resignation of the acting undersecretary of defense for policy, James Anderson. Tata had been unable to win Senate confirmation for the post after old tweets surfaced in which he expressed virulent Islamophobic views. Meanwhile, Kash Patel, a former Republican congressional aide who played a lead role in a campaign to discredit the investigation into Russian election meddling, has been made chief of staff to the new acting defense secretary, Chris Miller. On the same day, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Vice Admiral Joseph Kernan, a retired Navy Seal, was also reported to have resigned on Tuesday, and was replaced by Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a former aide to Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser who pleaded guilty to perjury. Current and former US Department of Justice (DoJ) officials have reacted with anger and dismay to the latest move in support of Donald Trump by William Barr, the attorney general who has stoked further discord around the president’s refusal to concede electoral defeat by approving federal investigations into voter fraud, despite little evidence of any wrongdoing. Barr’s two-page memo, delivered to the 93 US attorneys across the country on Monday, was immediately condemned by senior figures inside and outside the DoJ. In the most dramatic response, the top DoJ official in charge of voter fraud investigations, Richard Pilger, resigned from his post, telling colleagues he did so because of the “ramifications” of Barr’s move. In a statement, Pilger pointed out that for the past 40 years the justice department had abided by a clear policy of non-intervention in elections, with criminal investigations only carried out after contests were certified and completed. Barr’s memo tears up that rule by giving federal prosecutors the go-ahead to investigate what he called “apparently-credible allegations of irregularities”. His action was specifically aimed at closely fought presidential contests in swing states with prolonged vote counts caused by the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic. Complaints about unsubstantiated irregularities have been received by the justice department from three states: Nevada, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Outside the DoJ, there was widespread unease that Barr has once again mobilized the might of the justice department in a politicized direction. The memo was interpreted as casting doubt on the propriety of the election, which on Saturday was called for Joe Biden following his victory by a clear and growing margin in Pennsylvania. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has drafted “anti-mob” legislation that would expand the state’s Stand Your Ground Law that would allow citizens to shoot anyone they suspect is engaged in looting, the Miami Herald reports. The legislation is a reaction to anti-police brutality, The Herald’s Ana Ceballos and David Ovalle report: “It allows for vigilantes to justify their actions,” said Denise Georges, a former Miami-Dade County prosecutor who had handled Stand Your Ground cases. “It also allows for death to be the punishment for a property crime — and that is cruel and unusual punishment. We cannot live in a lawless society where taking a life is done so casually and recklessly.” The draft legislation put specifics behind DeSantis’ pledge in September to crack down on “violent and disorderly assemblies” after he pointed to “reports of unrest” in other parts of the country after the high-profile death of George Floyd, a Black man killed by a white Minneapolis police officer. The proposal would expand the list of “forcible felonies” under Florida’s self-defense law to justify the use of force against people who engage in criminal mischief that results in the “interruption or impairment” of a business, and looting, which the draft defines as a burglary within 500 feet of a “violent or disorderly assembly.” Trump"s longshot election lawsuits: where do things stand? Sam Levine Since election day, Donald Trump and other Republicans have filed a smattering of lawsuits in battleground states that have provided cover for Trump and other Republicans to say that the election still remains unresolved. Legal experts have noted these suits are meritless, and even if they were successful, would not be enough to overturn the election results. Indeed, judges in several of these lawsuits have already dismissed them, noting the Trump campaign has failed to offer evidence to substantiate allegations of fraud. Here’s where some of the key lawsuits stand: Cheri Bustos, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), just had a call with House Democrats offering insight into what happened on Election Day when House Democrats lost five seats to Republican opponents – a disappoint after Democrats gained the house two years ago. Reporters with sources who were on the call said that Bustos reaffirmed that her team did everything they could do, but were set back from Republicans overperforming in at-risk districts. Bustos said yesterday that she will not run for the chair position again, what is largely seen as an acknowledgment of the party’s chagrin for losing seats to Republicans. I’m signing off and handing the blog over the my Guardian colleague Maanvi Singh. Stay tuned for more live updates. CIA director Gina Haspel had a brief meeting with Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell this afternoon amid rumors that Donald Trump plans to fire her from her position. After Mark Esper, former defense secretary, was fired yesterday after his relationship with the president became tense over the use of active-service troops for Black Lives Matter protests over the summer. Esper reportedly has said he fears Haspel and Christopher Wray, FBI director, will be the next to go. Haspel refused to answer questions from reporters about the rumors of her termination as she was going to and leaving her meeting with McConnell. It is unclear what the subject of the meeting was, but as CNN’s Manu Raju said on Twitter, McConnell is a strong supporter of Haspel, and both share a Kentucky background. North Carolina’s governor Roy Cooper lowered the state’s indoor gathering limit today as cases in the state continue to rise. The new limit has been adjusted to 10 people, down from 25. The limit does not apply to universities or schools. The state saw 2,582 cases yesterday and has over 1,200 people in the hospital with the virus. The state has averaged over 2,000 new cases a day over the last three weeks. Covid has spiked around the country, with new cases topping 130,000 in the US in recent days. Unlike previous waves, cases are no longer rising in regional “hot-spots” but can be found all around the country. Public health experts have long warned that the winter would bring a new rise in cases as people head indoors, where the virus is more likely to spread, as the weather cools. State and local officials have been hesitant to implement the sweeping stay-at-home orders that were seen in the spring over fears of furthering economic declines. The Biden campaign released the names of members of its transition team. The list has around 500 people who will specialize in different government agencies, from the Department of Defense to the US Postal Service. Most of the people on the team are volunteers. The list posted on Biden’s website includes each member’s most recent employer. Many of the larger department teams include former staffers from Obama’s administration. Transition teams can typically coordinate with officials at the agencies they will take over, but that requires an election certification from the White House’s General Services Administration. Because Donald Trump is refusing to concede to the election, members of the transition team cannot contact the agencies they will take over. The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe in Miami reports: It seems that Florida’s improbable new status as an adult in the room, following an unusually orderly and well run election process, may be a little premature. The Sunshine State has reverted to type with the appointment by its Republican governor Ron DeSantis of a conspiracy theory-peddling Uber driver and sports blogger as a senior analyst of Covid-19 data. As the Miami Herald reported Tuesday, Kyle Lamb’s credentials for the $40,000-a-year job in the office of policy and budget are at best questionable. “Fact is, I’m not an ‘expert.’ I’m not a doctor, epidemiologist, virologist or scientist,” the Ohio native admits on his subscription-only podcast Beyond the Fold, whose 43 patrons paying $3 per month have also learned that Lamb considers himself to be a “jack of all trades [and] master of none!” “I have no qualms about being a ‘sports guy’ moonlighting as a Covid-19 analyst,” he writes. Florida is currently experiencing a surge in cases of Covid-19, with the state having surpassed 850,000 cases and 17,200 deaths. Despite this, DeSantis, a keen Donald Trump ally, has discontinued almost all lockdown restrictions across Florida and signed executive orders to thwart local authorities who seek to reimpose them. According to the Herald, Lamb, 40, has stated in frequent posts on Twitter and sports message boards that masks do not prevent the spread of coronavirus, that lockdowns are ineffective, and that he believes Covid-19 could be part of an international “cultural biowar” instigated by China. The process that was followed to recruit Lamb is unclear, but in a tweet four days ago he said he had “accepted an offer to go work for Gov. Ron DeSantis in the Florida state capitol. I will be doing data analysis on several fronts for them including but not limited to Covid-19 research and other projects.” Fred Piccolo, spokesperson for DeSantis, told the Herald in a statement that Lamb had been hired to an “entry level” position” and was “not a Covid-19 hire”. DeSantis’s history with data analysts employed by the state has been rocky. In May, Rebekah Jones, the data scientist who created and maintained Florida’s official Covid-19 database, claimed she was fired for refusing to manipulate figures or censor information. The Associated Press has a useful explainer about the election and how evidence so far shows it was not full of widespread voter fraud. Donald Trump has refused to concede the election, saying that he would have won if it weren’t for “illegal” votes that have been counted. Trump and his campaign have not given any specific evidence of voter fraud to back their claims. Here’s more from the Associated Press: WHAT IS TRUMP CHALLENGING? The Trump campaign has filed more than a dozen lawsuits in at least five states. In Pennsylvania, the campaign has challenged the state Supreme Court ruling allowing election officials to accept mail-in ballots up to three days after the election as long as they were postmarked on Election Day. Trump has also sued over campaign observers allegedly being blocked from witnessing vote tallying in Pennsylvania. And he’s challenged the secretary of state instructing counties that voters whose absentee ballots were rejected could cast a provisional ballot. Trump has won one victory so far: A state court ruled his campaign observers had to be allowed closer to the actual vote counting. That ruling had no impact on the outcome of the race. Four other lawsuits filed by the campaign have been dismissed. Others are pending. On Monday, his campaign sued to force Pennsylvania not to certify the results of the election altogether. The 85-page lawsuit itself contained no evidence of voter fraud, other than a smattering of allegations such as an election worker in Chester County altering “over-voted” ballots by changing votes that had been marked for Trump to another candidate. Top Democratic leaders in the state accused Trump of trying to disenfranchise voters and overturn an election he lost. WHAT ARE TRUMP’S ALLIES SAYING? Trump’s lawyers and campaign staff say the election is not over and that they are investigating claims in several states, though they continue to lack any evidence of widespread fraud that affected the outcome of the race. Top Republicans have supported the president’s efforts to fight the election results in court. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Trump was “100% within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options.” Attorney General William Barr authorized the Justice Department to investigate “clear and apparently-credible allegations of irregularities.” WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? All disputes over the counts in each state must be complete by Dec. 8. Members of the Electoral College vote on Dec. 14. The U.S. House and Senate hold a joint session on Jan. 6, 2021, to count the electoral votes in each state.