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Oracle’s Ellison joined phone call about contesting Trump’s defeat
By Jan Wolfe
Washington: Billionaire chairman and co-founder of Oracle Corp, Larry Ellison, participated shortly after the 2020 US presidential election in a phone call focused on strategies for contesting former president Donald Trump’s defeat, according to an email revealed in a court document.
The November 14, 2020, phone call is the first known instance of a technology industry leader joining Trump allies to strategise about how to contest the election result.
Larry Ellison, of Oracle, is one of the richest people in the world.
The election took place on November 3, 2020. After Biden secured enough electoral votes for victory, a protest called the “March to Save America” was organised by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021, that turned into a violent attack on the US Capitol.
The phone call that Ellison participated in was described in a November 14, 2020, email sent by Catherine Engelbrecht, a conservative activist.
With a net worth of about $US85 billion ($120 billion), the Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranks Ellison as the 11th richest person in the world.
Four people died on January 6, 2021, the day of the riot, and one Capitol police officer died the day after they defended Congress.Credit: AP
Engelbrecht’s email was revealed this week in a court filing submitted by Fair Fight, an organisation founded in 2018 by voting rights activist and Democratic Party politician Stacey Abrams.
Fair Fight filed a lawsuit in late 2020 challenging tactics used by True The Vote, Engelbrecht’s conservative vote-monitoring organisation.
Texas-based True The Vote has promoted false claims of widespread voter fraud.
That lawsuit is still pending.
Former president Donald TrumpCredit: AP
According to Engelbrecht’s email, the phone call Ellison joined included Senator Lindsey Graham and long-time Trump legal adviser Jay Sekulow, among other Trump allies.
An Oracle spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ellison was among the few top technology executives to openly support Trump during the 2020 campaign. The Desert Sun reported that he had hosted a fundraiser for the former president at his Rancho Mirage estate in California.
Ellison has committed $US1 billion in financing to help long-time friend Elon Musk buy Twitter. It is uncertain whether Musk will complete his $US44 billion acquisition of the social media platform.
In a related matter, in seeking to overturn President Biden’s 2020 election victory, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, urged Republican lawmakers in Arizona to choose their own slate of electors (the state-selected delegates who participate in the final confirmation process in a US presidential election).
At the time, Thomas, who is a conservative political activist, argued that results giving Biden a victory in the state were marred by fraud, an unfounded conspiracy theory embraced by Trump and his supporters.
The revelations first published by The Washington Post on Friday show that Thomas was more involved than previously known in efforts to overturn Biden’s victory and keep Trump in office.
In the days after The Associated Press and other news organisations called the presidential election for Biden, Thomas emailed two lawmakers in Arizona to urge them to choose “a clean slate of electors” and “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure”.
The AP obtained the emails under the state’s open records law.
Thomas also had written to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the weeks following the election encouraging him to work to overturn Biden’s victory and keep Trump in office, according to text messages first reported by the Post and CBS News.
Thomas was a staunch Trump supporter who acknowledged she attended the January 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse but left before Trump spoke and his supporters later stormed the Capitol.
She has been critical of the ongoing congressional investigation into the January 6 violence, including signing a letter to House Republicans calling for the expulsion of Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois from the GOP conference for joining the January 6 congressional committee.
Justice Thomas, meanwhile, has taken part in the court’s consideration of lawsuits challenging the election results.
The court turned away every challenge without a hearing, though Thomas was among three conservative justices who said cases from Pennsylvania should be heard.
In February 2021, Thomas called the cases an “ideal opportunity” to address an important question whether state lawmakers or state courts get the last word about the manner in which federal elections are carried out.
Reuters, AP with reporters
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