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2020 Election FRAUD-'They Could Have Killed Me'-Trumped-up Plot Gone Haywire
‘They Could Have Killed Me’: Spycraft, Ballots and a Trumped-Up Plot Gone Haywire
The scene is straight from a discount bin spy novel.
MSN 20 JUN 2024
Michael Flynn (center) leaves a rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., with Geoffrey Flohr
A black SUV arrived at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to collect Sabrina Keliikoa, a QAnon adherent and supervisor at the facility’s FedEx air freight terminal.
Keliikoa was scared out of her wits. She did not want to go.
But late on this Friday night in early December 2020, Keliikoa felt as if she had no choice: A retired Michigan State Police officer nicknamed “Yoda” had just warned that her life was in danger.
Keliikoa called in another employee to finish her shift. She entered the vehicle driven by a Marine Corps veteran who had provided security for American diplomats in Iraq. They arrived at a hotel where the driver checked her in. There, Keliikoa stayed for the next two days. A rotating set of “guards” occupied the adjacent room in shifts.
What Was Happening Here?
As Keliikoa would later testify in legal deposition, a video of which Raw Story recently reviewed, a man entered her hotel room and asked her to write an affidavit about election ballots she’d seen — and considered suspicious — at the FedEx facility shortly after the 2020 election.
The man was part of a secretive team of Donald Trump supporters, operating without legal authority but under the leadership of former Trump national security adviser and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, that aimed to obtain information they believed could be used in lawsuits to change the outcome of the election in Trump’s favor.
More generally, they hoped to undermine public confidence that Joe Biden had won the 2020 election.
Keliikoa described the experience as being “detained” and complained she became a “pawn” of people determined to use her.
“So, I got a phone call that said somebody is coming in from another state with illegal ballots, and they were going to be looking for me, and they were going to try to kill me,” Keliikoa testified.
“And I started crying because this turned into the biggest s---show when it shouldn’t have been.”
The escapade showcases the absurd lengths Flynn and his team went to concoct evidence that Trump had the 2020 presidential election “stolen” from him.
These and other baseless allegations of election fraud would instill fury in Trump’s supporters, who by the thousands attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, while attempting to prevent Congress from certifying the election.
These new revelations about Keliikoa’s ordeal also come at a time when Trump, who is expected to again be the Republican nominee for president, relentlessly claims that the multiple criminal prosecutions against him constitute an effort “to rig the presidential election of 2024.”
And if history is a guide, high-profile Trump surrogates can again be expected to again chase phantom evidence and spin wild tales in service of Trump’s I-can’t-lose approach to campaigning.
‘A Plane FULL of Ballots’
Until now, Keliikoa — the woman who held the information so feverishly sought by Trump’s supporters following the 2020 election — was known only as “the Seattle whistleblower.”
Keliikoa’s deposition, taken in March, fills in details about the “stop the steal” escapade and are being reported for the first time by Raw Story.
The seeds of Keliikoa's ordeal began germinating in November 2020. An array of high-profile Trump supporters had initiated a frenzied effort to collect affidavits that they hoped would bolster claims of election fraud, which pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell detailed in a series of lawsuits.
The goal: overturn the presidential election results in tightly contested states such as Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, and more generally, to undermine confidence in the election.
With his charisma and the respect he commanded as a retired lieutenant general, Michael Flynn, who had briefly served as Trump's national security advisor, quickly emerged as a de facto leader among the group of “stop the steal” operatives surrounding Powell.
The 2020 election was “the greatest fraud that our country has ever experienced in our history,” Flynn told far-right broadcaster Brannon Howse during an interview aired on Nov. 28, 2020. “I’m right in the middle of it right now, and I will tell you that, first of all, the president has clear paths to victory.”
Flynn had reason to feel emboldened. Three days earlier, then-President Trump granted Flynn a full pardon, wiping away his guilty plea to charges of lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
MORE:
TRUMP Attorneys Plead in NEW Indictment
TRUMP legal advisers Jenna Ellis and Boris Epshteyn plead not guilty in Arizona 'fake electors' case
All 18 defendants in the state case have pleaded not guilty to forgery, fraud and conspiracy charges.
MSNRAW 20 JUN 2024
PHOENIX — Jenna Ellis, an attorney for Donald Trump during his 2020 presidential campaign, pleaded not guilty Tuesday in the “fake electors” case in Arizona, where she and 17 other defendants face forgery, fraud and conspiracy charges related to alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
All 18 of those charged have pleaded not guilty in Arizona. Ellis in 2023 pleaded guilty in the Georgia election interference case in which Trump was also charged.
Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn and Jim Lamon, a 2022 Republican Senate candidate, also appeared virtually in court Tuesday for their arraignments in the case, pleading not guilty.
Epshteyn was an attorney and adviser to the 2016 and 2020 Trump campaigns and recently appeared with Trump in court in New York during the former president’s hush money trial. Lamon was on Trump’s slate of potential electors leading into the 2020 election.
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