The Election Heist

by Kenneth R. Timmerman

  “So, Hugh-boy. I see you got an over sixty-percent re-elect. So what was all that frettin’ about?”

  “Take nothing for granted, sir.”

  “No, that’s right. I guess those Jews of yours came through.”

  “They did, Mr. Leader. I spent a lot of time with the rabbis.”

  Antly leaned back in his chair seeming to ponder this, his patrician blond curls and ruddy cheeks going to grey. McKenzie did his best to tamp down his rage. For some reason, Antly seemed to take pleasure in humiliating him. He wasn’t going to fall for it.

  “We’ve got ourselves a bit of a sit-iation down in Florida,” the Majority Leader went on, gazing out toward the Washington Monument. “The way it’s lookin’, we could have four more years of Trump.”

  “We’ve got to impeach. Go to the mat this time. Tie him in knots. Draw it out.”

  “And we will. And that’s why I called you in here, Hugh-boy. I’ve got an important task for you.”

  Antly explained that the party was concerned with the losses they had suffered in the 2018 pick-up districts, most of which Trump now had won back. The Ukraine impeachment ploy had backfired and now their majority was razor-thin. His job over the next two years was to rebuild their majority. He wanted to know if McKenzie was on board with that.

  “Of course, I am. Everything depends on us keeping the House.”

  “So I want you to run the D-Triple-C in the upcoming cycle.”

  Inwardly, McKenzie groaned. Running the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, was the most thankless job on Capitol Hill. It meant spending every afternoon at DNC headquarters dialing for dollars—and not even for his own campaign, but for others! He wouldn’t get stuck in a cubicle; that was for the plebs. But even in a corner office, it was a dreary task. And then, there was all the travel. He’d have to do events with backbenchers all across the country, smile and kiss the snot-nosed brats. It was two more years of campaigning.

  “Do I have any options, sir?”

  “Well, of course you do, Hugh-boy. Why, the last time you were in here you were whinin’ about losin’ your election. What’s that I hear about some kid from the election office doing jail time for monkeyin’ with the votin’ machines?”

  “I saw that.”

  “I’m sure you did. He wasn’t one of yours, was he? Naughty!”

  Antly didn’t have to strong-arm his members; it wasn’t his style. All he needed to get their cooperation was to dangle just the hint of unpleasantness and let their imagination do all the rest. With McKenzie, it worked like a charm.

  “He wasn’t one of mine. And you’re right. The D-Triple-C is going to be tremendously important this cycle. I’d be honored to be named chair.”

  “So, we got a deal,” Antly said.

  “We’ve got a deal.”

  As they rode back on the subway to his office, McKenzie turned to Willie.

  “Gus knows something. That’s why I had to take the D-Triple-C.”

  “What do you mean?

  “If we want to bury this, that’s the deal.”

  62

  NYPD Patrol Officer Ronald Caruso, who headed the security detail at Trump Tower that Saturday night, didn’t see it coming. He’d been drinking hot soup with Tony Ferrara, his colleague from the 18th precinct, close to the main doors at the north side of the building, well out of the cold winds whipping down Fifth Avenue. Another pair of officers stood close to the Gucci display case on the south side. Jersey barriers formed a wall between them and the street, while the sidewalk south of the building was completely blocked off by metal barriers at East 56th street.

  When the president visited Trump Tower, the iconic building he had called home until he moved to the White House in 2017, the Secret Service took charge and the NYPD blocked off the building’s entryway with garbage trucks to prevent car bombs. But the president and his family were at Mar-a-Lago for the weekend, in expectation that the Florida recount would soon be called, so Caruso and his team were alone.

  Caruso was blowing on his soup as he looked across the street and to the south, where a crowd of protestors had gathered demanding that Florida “Certify Now” and that Trump “Concede Now.” They were noisy, as they usually were. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  As it turned out, the real threat came from the north, to his right.

  Shortly after 10:15 PM, Caruso heard a dull, thudding noise and knew immediately what it was: baseball bats against bullet-proof glass. He tossed his soup and ran out onto the main sidewalk and saw a gang of black-hoodied thugs swinging their bats and crowbars and pipe wrenches against the Gucci shop front and blew his whistle. No one backed off, and more of the thugs surged forward, so he retreated back to the main entrance of Trump Tower and keyed his walkie-talkie.

  “Dispatch, this is Officer Caruso at Trump Tower. We’ve got a serious 407 and I mean like, serious and building. We need backup ASAP.”

  “Caruso, you’ve got a 407, copy, and you are requesting backup.”

  “Yeah. And fast. This is, like, Antifa thugs, not your garden variety leftie Trump-hating sign-holders.”

  “Stand-by, Caruso, I’m putting you through to the deputy commissioner.”

  “The deputy commissioner?” Caruso muttered. Why do I need that piece of left-wing unsanitary refuse?

  The voice he had heard so many times on television came onto his walkie-talkie. “Caruso? This is the deputy commissioner. You are to stand down.”

  Caruso wanted to say unspeakable things.

  “Not possible, sir,” he said finally. “We are requesting backup.”

  “Stand down, Caruso. Do you hear me?”

  “Not easy, Commissioner. Can you hear me?”

  He keyed the walkie-talkie so this piece of political jerky could hear the utter chaos around him: screaming kids, cops with billy clubs, the crowd across the street, and everybody shouting.

  “Stand down,” the commissioner said again.

  “Not possible, sir.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “There’s no place to stand, sir. We’re surrounded and they are swinging baseball bats and pipe wrenches. It looks like there are around two hundred of them, sir.”

  “Well, talk to them.”

  “Huh?”

  “Talk to them. That’s what the good cops are supposed to do.”

  Caruso heard it coming and held open his walkie-talkie so the deputy commissioner could hear it as well. After failing to smash the Gucci shop front with their baseball bats, a group of the hooded thugs grabbed a metal barricade, charged it into the glass and broke through with a crash.

  “Hear that, Commissioner? How do you talk to that?”

  “Do not use your weapons, Caruso. That’s a direct order.”

  “10-1. 10-1. Can’t hear you, Commissioner.”

  “Repeat: Do not use your weapons, Caruso. De-escalate. The Mayor has ordered no backup for Trump Tower. The President has changed his official residence to Florida? Let Florida protect him now.”

  “Oh, I get it. 10-4, Commissioner. No backup. And we are to disarm against baseball bats. Is that what you plan to say at our funerals? They obeyed orders and—”

  Just then there was a louder crash as the hooded thugs swarmed around Caruso and broke through the bulletproof glass of another window. Caruso keyed off, pulled out his sidearm and fired two shots into the air.

  “Form a cordon!” he shouted to his officers.

  They fell back toward him in front of the main entry to Trump Tower, facing off with what appeared to be disciplined rows of Antifa thugs. The front rank held their baseball bats and pipe wrenches high, ready to swing. Those behind them held their weapons lower down, but Caruso could see them at the ready.

  “Back off or we shoot!” he shouted.

  An hour later, the president tweeted:
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  @realDonaldTrump: Shame @MayorNYC. No backup for brave NYPD officers vs Antifa thugs. 2 officers down, 200 thugs on the rampage. My condolences to the families of Officers Ronald Caruso and Tony Ferrara. This should never have happened.

  63

  Judge Andres Delgado could think of many places he would rather be than in his courtroom on a Sunday morning at 8:00 AM. He could be preparing pancakes for his wife and their three children. He could be helping her to get them dressed for church. Or they could be wild and irresponsible and be packing lunch boxes for a fishing expedition on his boat in Panacea in the Gulf of Mexico. Instead, he was in Tallahassee at the appeals court building on Drayton Drive, playing the adult to a bunch of white shoe lawyers from Washington, DC.

  “Remind me, Mr. Myers, why we are here on a Sunday morning?”

  Myers, the chief attorney for the woman who, for the past ten days, had been treated by almost the entire nation as the president-elect, coughed.

  “Your honor,” he began. “We are here to request that you stop this unwarranted and out-of-control recount and certify the election night results.”

  Delgado knew that, of course. He also knew that Myers knew exactly how he would respond, and what the president’s attorneys would say. This was just Kabuki Theater, made for the television cameras that now stained the walls of his courtroom.

  “Your honor, if I may,” said Josh Ridley. He was the chief litigator for the president. “We would like to join in the request of the plaintiffs and co-respondents. In part, at least.”

  Well that was novel, Delgado thought. Maybe this wouldn’t be a wasted hour after all.

  “You may proceed, counselor,” he said.

  Ridley argued that the president agreed it was time to certify the vote. There was no need to hold up the results, which were now clear from the recount, for the sake of 10,000 out-stacked ballots in a single county, Miami-Dade.

  “You can’t certify this so-called recount without counting all the votes,” Myers objected. “If the state is to certify, they must certify the complete results, and the only complete results are from election night.”

  “Counselor, we’ve been through that six ways to Sunday. You lost that argument several days ago.”

  “The statutory deadline for counting the votes expires in less than one hour,” Myers said. “If all the votes haven’t been counted by that time, then the state must certify the election night results.”

  Delgado let his exasperation show. “This is like déjà vu all over again, counselor. I’ve already ruled to accept the recount on a county by county basis.”

  “You are talking about disenfranchising 10,000 voters,” Myers objected.

  “If we follow Mr. Myers’s lead, we’re actually talking about disenfranchising 370,000 voters whose votes weren’t counted on election night,” Ridley said.

  “The Court agrees with Mr. Ridley,” Delgado said. “In this case, the good of the many outweighs the good of the few.”

  “We are willing to make a concession, your honor,” Ridley said.

  “Really?”

  “For the sake of comity, the president is willing to concede every one of the out-stacked votes to Governor Tomlinson, even though in all likelihood half of them or nearly half will be judged for him.”

  “Mr. Myers?” Delgado said.

  “Isn’t it ironic that the president is willing to disregard the will of thousands of voters if the end result comes out in his favor? So, Mr. Ridley, you are arguing that the ends justify the means?”

  Ridley threw up his hands and turned in exasperation toward Ivo Silander, the president’s personal attorney, who was observing the argument from the lawyer’s box.

  “Mr. Myers, I’ll tell you what,” Delgado said. “Under the Florida election law, I have the authority in exceptional circumstances to grant the boards of elections such time as they need to complete the vote count. I rule that your obstructive behavior and arguments constitute such exceptional circumstances, and grant the Miami-Dade board of elections such time as they need, without limit, for the unique and specific purpose of determining the status of these 10,000 out-stacked votes, at which time, Miami-Dade will certify their results. Mr. Ridley, any objection?”

  “No, your honor.”

  “Now both of you, get back in your sand box and finish this up.”

  64

  At noon the following Tuesday, the fourteenth day after the election, the Florida state canvassing board certified the election results, declaring that the state of Florida had gone for Donald Trump by 230,000 votes, or 2.5 percent. As it turned out, the Miami-Dade and Palm Beach County recount numbers differed less than other counties from the election night results, and that was what brought the overall percentage lower than Governor Norton had initially projected. Still, this meant Donald Trump was re-elected president of the United States with exactly 270 electoral votes to 268 for his Democrat opponent.

  “She’ll be back,” the Crocodile said to Nelson Aguilar as they watched the final press conference in Aguilar’s radio station office. “Like I said to ya. You keep your powder dry and live to fight another day.”

  Aguilar had vacated the campaign headquarters over the weekend and planned to find new tenants that week. But he was still perplexed by the apparent results of his election.

  “What about Gordon and what he found? He says we actually won.”

  “Maybe. But nobody’s going to believe ya. You’re going to sound like one more sour grapes Roy Moore. What a self-righteous piece of work he turned out to be.”

  Something was nagging him. He couldn’t quite put a finger on it. Something in the Crocodile’s tone.

  “Ken, did you know about this?” he asked finally.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That they were going to flip the results, just like they did in Florida?”

  “Why would I know that?”

  “You tell me. You seemed awfully chummy there at the end with McKenzie.”

  “I don’t know what you’re insinuating there, boss. Tell me I misheard.”

  “You didn’t,” Aguilar said, his tone hardening. “How come every time we seemed to have an opportunity to expose the vote switch, you always argued against it?”

  “Whoa, boss. Now that’s not fair!”

  “How come when I wanted to pull out all the stops to get Gordon released from jail, you counseled me to back off, not to be seen actively supporting him in public?”

  “That was for your own protection, boss.”

  The Crocodile started to sweat. He never sweats, Aguilar thought.

  “Even Gail is saying I should file a complaint. How come you have pushed back on that relentlessly?”

  “I’m just thinking about your image, boss. But if you want to file a complaint now that the results have been certified, be my guest. I’m going back to the Hill.”

  “Who are you going to work for, Ken? McKenzie?”

  “That is over the line, boss. I think you are going to regret that.”

  Aguilar didn’t answer. He watched the Crocodile gather up his leather portfolio, tuck it under his arm, and scurry out the door.

  It was a shame to part on such terms. It was un-Christian, but in his heart he knew he was right.

  65

  The story by Fox News congressional correspondent, Jack Riley, went virtually unnoticed when it aired that evening. The nation’s attention was on the official announcement of President Trump’s re-election, with the talking heads dissecting it for hours on end. So when Riley interviewed Gail Copeland, a pro-bono elections attorney from Frederick, Maryland, about the landslide re-election of Democrat congressman Hugh McKenzie, it seemed like filler.

  “Mr. Aguilar, the Republican challenger whom I represent, is still considering his options, Jack, but I am fairly convinced he will be filing an official
complaint to the state board of elections.”

  She went on to explain that the campaign had learned that a state elections official had conducted a risk-limiting audit of one of the precincts in Montgomery County where her candidate had lost in a landslide—officially. “But when he brought in a ballot-counting computer from another county, the results turned out to be completely upside-down and my candidate won.”

  “You filed a recount petition at the time, but it was denied,” Riley said.

  “That’s correct. Since that decision, we have discovered additional information that is extremely troubling and that could reveal what actually happened down in Florida, Jack. We learned that corrupt files sent by the manufacturer, Dominant Technologies, directly to the Montgomery County IT department infected their tabulators with an algorithm that switched votes from Mr. Aguilar to our opponent, Congressman McKenzie.”

  “Are you accusing the McKenzie campaign of fraud?”

  “I’m not saying that, Jack. But what I can say is that our campaign has learned how those so-called patch files were sent and who sent them. And we have taken that information to the attorney general. Because we believe the same person or entities used the same type of scheme to infect the tabulators in Florida.”

  The next morning, the Washington Times reported on its local pages that an IT tech known to have worked for the Democratic National Committee, Navid Chaudhry, 31, had been struck and killed by an apparent hit-and-run shortly after leaving his office at 9th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue SE the night before. Witnesses said they saw a Cadillac Escalade with North Carolina plates stop after the collision and a tall, dark-skinned man get out from the passenger’s side. Because he was wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a trench coat, it was impossible to identify him. Two passersby saw him stoop to the victim, put a gloved hand to his throat, apparently to check his pulse, and then get back in the car and drive off.

  President Trump saw the Fox News piece with Gail Copeland and immediately dialed his attorney general, who confirmed the outlines of the story. He tweeted out: