Recent Appearances...

Warning: Undefined array key "rbname" in /data/rantburg.com/www/rantburg/pgrecentorg.php on line 14
Hello !
Recent Appearances...

Home Front: Politix

Trump unleashes AG Pam Bondi on law firms to combat 'baseless' civil litigation against president

2025-03-23

[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] President Donald Trump has threatened new actions against lawyers and law firms that bring immigration lawsuits and other cases against the government that he deems to be unethical.

Trump said in a memorandum to US Attorney General Pam Bondi that lawyers were helping to fuel 'rampant fraud and meritless claims' in the immigration system.

He directed the Justice Department to seek sanctions against attorneys for professional misconduct.

The order also took aim at law firms that sue the administration in what Trump, a Republican, called 'baseless partisan' lawsuits.

He asked Bondi to refer such firms to the White House to be stripped of security clearances, and for federal contracts they worked on to be terminated.

Legal advocacy groups sounded the alarm on Saturday following Trump's directive.

Ben Wizner, a senior lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the commands sought to 'chill and intimidate' lawyers who challenge the president's agenda.

Trump has separately mounted attacks on law firms over their internal diversity policies and their ties to his political adversaries.

'Courts have been the only institution so far that have stood up to Trump's onslaught,' Wizner said. 'Courts can't play that role without lawyers bringing cases in front of them.'

The ACLU is involved in litigation against the administration over immigrant deportations, including the expulsion of alleged Venezuelan gang members.

The Trump administration has been hit with more than 100 lawsuits challenging White House actions on immigration, transgender rights and other issues since the start of the president's second term.

Legal advocacy groups, along with at least 12 major law firms, have brought many of the cases.

A White House spokesperson, Taylor Rogers, said 'President Trump is delivering on his promise to ensure the judicial system is no longer weaponized against the American people.'

The memorandum specifically directs Bondi to assess lawyers and firms that have brought cases against the government over the past eight years.

Law firm Keker, Van Nest & Peters, which is working with the ACLU in an immigrant rights case against the administration, said in a statement that it was 'inexcusable and despicable' for Trump to attack lawyers based on their clients or legal work opposing the federal government.

Representatives from other prominent law firms that are representing clients in cases against Trump's administration, including Hogan Lovells, Jenner & Block, Perkins Coie and WilmerHale, have not yet commented.

Trump issued executive orders this month against law firms Perkins Coie and Paul Weiss, suspending their lawyers' security clearances and restricting their access to government buildings, officials and federal contracting work.

The president also last month suspended security clearances of lawyers at Covington & Burling, in each case citing the firms' past work for his political or legal opponents.

The Keker firm on Saturday called on law firms to sign a joint court brief supporting a lawsuit by Perkins Coie challenging the executive order against it.

Paul Weiss on Thursday struck a deal with Trump to rescind the executive order against it, pledging to donate the equivalent of $40 million in free legal work to support some of the administration's causes such as support for veterans and combating antisemitism.

Lawyers are bound by professional ethics rules that require them to investigate allegations before filing lawsuits and not deceive the courts.

Imposing disciplinary sanctions on lawyers who violate such rules falls on the court system, not federal prosecutors, though prosecutors can charge lawyers with criminal misconduct.

Lawyers at some companies and law firms skewered Paul Weiss online for capitulating to Trump.

Marc Elias, a former Perkins Coie partner and a top lawyer for Democrats, assailed the Paul Weiss agreement in a social media calling it 'a stain on the firm, every one of its partners, and the entire legal profession.'

In an internal email to its lawyers, Paul Weiss Chairman Brad Karp defended the agreement, saying it was in line with the firm's principles, including a commitment to remaining politically independent.

The firm, with more than 1,000 lawyers, major financial and technology industry clients and longstanding Democratic Party ties, would be free to focus on its client work now that the executive order had been rescinded, Karp said.

Karp's email included a copy of the agreement with Trump that said the firm would hire and promote lawyers based on merit.

The agreement circulated by Trump on Thursday had additional language, saying the firm agreed it 'will not adopt, use, or pursue any DEI policies.'

Legal experts said Trump's orders against Paul Weiss and another big firm, Perkins Coie, marked an unprecedented attack on their ability to do business.

The order against Perkins Coie was 'life-threatening' to the firm, its lawyer said last week in that firm's ongoing lawsuit against the administration.

Numerous lawyers, including some with links to Paul Weiss, took to social media to criticize the deal.

Molly Coleman, a former Paul Weiss summer associate and current executive director of the People's Parity Project, called the move 'unbelievably shameful' and said Paul Weiss had 'failed to find the courage the moment requires.'

'Embarrassed to be associated with this firm today,' a lawyer who previously worked at Paul Weiss, Cindy Chang, wrote in a LinkedIn comment that was later deleted.

Paul Weiss may be dealt a setback in recruiting young lawyers because of its apparent retreat from diversity commitments that have spread through law firms in recent years, and are now under attack from Trump, some lawyers said.

'This is a generation that expects to see diversity and inclusion in the workplace,' said Nikia Gray, executive director of the National Association for Law Placement.

Some lawyers aligned with Trump faced professional discipline over claims that they violated legal ethics rules in challenging Democrat Joe Biden's 2020 presidential election win over Trump.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who later was an attorney for Trump, was disbarred in New York and in the District of Columbia over baseless claims he made alleging the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Lawyers for Civil Rights, a legal advocacy group suing the administration over deportations, called the sanctions threat hypocritical saying Trump and his allies 'have repeatedly thumbed their noses at the rule of law.'

Link

-Short Attention Span Theater-

OMG video: State Farm boss secretly filmed making bombshell comments about [CA] wildfire victims

2025-03-12

[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] A top State Farm executive has been fired after being caught on hidden camera making stunning and callous remarks about LA wildfire victims while revealing explosive claims about secret corporate maneuvers to raise rates on vulnerable policyholders.

Haden Kirkpatrick, State Farm's Vice President for Innovation and Venture Capital, was secretly recorded admitting the company 'kind of' orchestrated a massive rate hike for California homeowners reeling from the devastation of January's deadly fires.

The undercover video - published by O'Keefe Media Group - sees Kirkpatrick making cynical and cold-hearted statements about victims of the recent infernos that killed 29 people, destroyed over 12,000 homes, and scorched 57,000 acres in Los Angeles County alone.

In the bombshell footage, Kirkpatrick dismissed the suffering of victims and criticized Californians for building homes in fire-prone regions.

'People want to build in areas where they want to have, like, natural areas around them for their ego. But it's also a f***ing desert. And so, it dries out as a tinderbox.

'Areas like where the Palisades are, there should never be houses built in the first place,' Kirkpatrick added without an ounce of sympathy for the thousands who lost everything.

But the footage went further still as Kirkpatrick admitted that wildfires such as those which tore through Pacific Palisades and Altadena, are entirely predictable to insiders and that State Farm is actively maneuvering to escape financial exposure to such disasters.

'Climate change is pushing these seasons. If you're an insurance professional, it's predictable,' he said.

Video of the conversation at the link.

Link

Government Corruption

Special Counsel Jack Smith Releases Report on Trump's 2020 Election Interference

2025-01-14

[TIME] WASHINGTON — Special counsel Jack Smith said his team "stood up for the rule of law" as it investigated President-elect Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, writing in a much-anticipated report released Tuesday that he stands fully behind his decision to bring criminal charges he believes would have resulted in a conviction had voters not returned Trump to the White House.

"The throughline of all of Mr. Trump’s criminal efforts was deceit—knowingly false claims of election fraud—and the evidence shows that Mr. Trump used these lies as a weapon to defeat a federal government function foundational to the United States’ democratic process," the report states.

The report, arriving just days before Trump is to return to office on Jan. 20, focuses fresh attention on his frantic but failed effort to cling to power in 2020. With the prosecution foreclosed thanks to Trump’s election victory, the document is expected to be the final Justice Department chronicle of a dark chapter in American history that threatened to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, a bedrock of democracy for centuries, and complements already released indictments and reports.

Trump responded early Tuesday with a post on his Truth Social platform, claiming he was "totally innocent" and calling Smith "a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election." He added, "THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN!!!"

Link

Government Corruption

Rudy Giuliani found in contempt of court — again — for defaming Georgia election workers

2025-01-13

[NYPost] For the second time this week, a judge has found Rudy Giuliani in contempt of court in a case involving two Georgia election workers he baselessly claimed committed election fraud in 2020.

Washington, DC, federal Judge Beryl Howell

…appointed by Barack Obama, who shocked the world by joking with President Trump at Jimmy Carter’s funeral…

sided with lawyers for Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman,

…the ladies were observed on surveillance video in Fulton County’s State Farm Arena, where they were engaged as vote tabulators for the 2020 election. After the supervisor announced that the count was shut down for the night, Ms Freeman and her daughter, and Ms Moss and another worker pulled extra boxes of ballots from under the table where they’d been secreted, then repeatedly scanned the stacks of ballots into an election computer. That sounds like a basis for claiming election fraud to me…

finding that Giuliani violated the judge’s "unambiguous" prior ruling barring the former New York City Mayor from continuing to defame the two women, according to reporting by The Hill.

The ruling is indeed unambiguous. However, telling the truth cannot be defamation.

On Monday, a Manhattan federal judge similarly held Giuliani in contempt of court, on the grounds that he was trying to "run out the clock" to avoid paying Freeman and Moss a $148 million defamation verdict they won in 2023.

Did he appeal the verdict? What’s the status of that?

Howell chided Giuliani — President-elect Donald Trump

...Perhaps no man has ever had as much fun being president of the US...
’s one-time personal lawyer who was once regarded as "America’s Mayor" — for using his fame to tarnish the duo with "fabricated lies."

"You’re the most famous person in this courtroom right now, you’ve got a bigger audience, you’ve got a bigger public following than anyone in this courtroom," the judge said.

"I really hoped we were done," the judge said.

No doubt.

Earlier, Michael Gottlieb, a lawyer for Moss and Freeman, told Howell they didn’t want to be back in court but said his clients just want "Mr. Giuliani to stop defaming them," according to a report by NBC News.

He requested that Giuliani be fined $20,000 for every time he continued to defame the women even after Howell ordered an agreement promising he wouldn’t do so anymore.

Gottlieb specifically requested that the fines come from money that has been deemed off-limits — including an IRA account.

Giuliani’s lawyer, Eden Quainton, claimed a $20,000 fine per violation would be "excessive."

At one point, Giuliani took the witness stand explaining that he had roughly $163,000 in a 401k account, $100,000 in one IRA account and $1.1 million in another — all of which he claimed should be exempt.

"I claim they’re exempt, and you’re trying to take them from me," Giuliani testified.

Giuliani allegedly violated the agreement in November on a streaming show repeating claims that the two women committed election fraud against Trump during the 2020 presidential election, but Quainton argued his client had kept his promise for months prior to the slip-up.

An easy way to keep the controversy in the public eye.

Howell shot down the argument.

"Because he was good for a few months, we ought to excuse any bad behavior after that?" she asked.

There’s a solid argument that it’s the judge, defence team, and defendants who are the miscreants.

Quainton also claimed that Giuliani couldn’t have said the comments on his show with malice — a legal standard used in defamation cases — because he actually believes to be true what he’s saying about the women.

Howell was alarmed by the argument suggesting Giuliani would never cease making the claims against the women.

"He’s never going to stop because he thinks he’s right?" Howell said. "That’s chilling."

Ted Goodman, Giuliani’s political advisor, claimed Giuliani wasn’t able to sufficiently defend himself in the original defamation suit.

"This contempt ruling is designed to prevent Mayor Giuliani from exercising his constitutional rights," Goodman said.

Manhattan federal Judge Lewis Liman on Monday held Giuliani in contempt for twice blowing off deadlines and failing to turn over critical information ahead of a Jan. 16 trial in the case about whether his Florida home and his cherished Yankees World Series rings should be relinquished to Ross and Freeman to help pay down his debt to them.

"The defendant willfully violated a clear and unambiguous order of the court," Liman said, also blasting Giuliani’s testimony Monday as "self-serving."

The surveillance video:

WATCH: Footage of State Farm Arena in #Atlanta shows that after poll monitors and media were told counting was done, four workers stayed behind to count #ballots, at times pulling out suitcases containing ballots from underneath desks.

Watch full video: https://t.co/EHnM5HZFWj pic.twitter.com/xuT8Svgxbr
— The Epoch Times (@EpochTimes) December 3, 2020

Link

Government Corruption

Paradise Lost - The burning of L.A. is not just a natural disaster. It's a man-made catastrophe.

2025-01-10

[Free Press] The first job of the government is to keep people safe. Failing that, its job is to show that someone is in charge when crisis erupts. On 9/11, there was nothing then—Mayor Rudy Giuliani could do to keep the World Trade Center from falling. Yet he became, in that long-ago era, the most popular person in America by staying on the scene and leading at his city’s moment of greatest danger.

That brings us to the fires in Los Angeles—the most devastating in the history of the city, with a reported 27,000 acres burned and the fires mostly uncontained. There, authorities have failed not only at protecting its residents but at inspiring confidence that they had the situation in hand.

We start with Mayor Karen Bass. As the Palisades fire began to consume wide swaths of America’s second-largest city, she was in Ghana to watch the inauguration of that country’s new president.

Bass left Los Angeles on Saturday—two days after the National Weather Service warned that strong winds and "extreme fire weather conditions" would soon threaten the city. On Sunday, the NWS announced a fire weather watch. By Monday, the warnings had become much more urgent, with the NWS tweeting in all-caps that "A LIFE-THREATENING, DESTRUCTIVE, Widespread Windstorm" would hit L.A. imminently.

Link

-Lurid Crime Tales-

Behold the Hundreds of Crimes for Which Hunter Biden Just Got Pardoned

2024-12-03

[PJM] To no one's surprise—go stand in a corner if you were—Joe Biden went back on his "word as a Biden" and pardoned the family bagman, his 54-year-old son Hunter, for crimes he committed from 2014-2024. That ten-year retrospective pardon covers a lot of crimes, many of which we'll go through below. The pardon is breathtaking in its scope. Usually, someone serves some time for a crime, and then a president commutes a sentence and pardons the person for the reasons they're in the slammer. Not so here. Far from it. Hunter hasn't been sentenced yet. He likely wouldn't have done prison time. But there's an entire universe of crimes on Hunter Biden's laptop that he committed for the family business, the product of which was access to and favors from Joe Biden. As former federal prosecutor and former congressman Trey Gowdy asked Sunday night: Who's the pardon for, Hunter or Joe? The answer is both.

In 2023, remember, Hunter's attorneys on his tax evasion and gun crime cases were negotiating a plea deal and presented a Delaware judge a deal that included immunity for any future crime he may commit. Had she granted that motion, we might be looking at a man who could have committed murder in the middle of 5th Avenue next year and never suffered the consequences.

The Report on the Hunter Biden Laptop, from which I've been culling information for stories for our VIP readers, used cyber experts and law enforcement to verify it was his and used the 200 gigabytes of information to recreate Hunter's legal and illegal business arrangements, tax crimes, and his drug and hooker-filled sessions. If you have a problem with the latter kind of activity, do yourself a favor and please don't look at the laptop. It's X-rated.

Salacious stuff aside, entries from Hunter's forgotten laptop—he'd lost three in 2019 and lost his phone 57 times, according to the Report—showed that the Biden family bagman had entries, mostly emails, that went back to 2009.

It's important to mention here that the FBI sat on the existence of Hunter's laptop for one year and silently watched 51 intelligence community people claim that whatever the New York Post was reporting looked like Russian disinformation before the 2020 election. The FBI information operation included leaking stories claiming that Rudy Giuliani, a former Southern District of New York federal prosecutor and mayor of New York, was a Russian stooge because he talked about information on the laptop. For the record, Giuliani, ever the law-and-order guy, was instrumental in getting the laptop into the FBI's hands. Unfortunately for Giuliani, he was a Trump supporter and therefore needed to be squashed...
RTWT

Link

Home Front: Politix

We Can All Thank Don, Jr.

2024-11-17

[AmericanThinker] This November 28th, when America counts its blessings, the top of my list will be Donald J. Trump, Jr. He is really the guy who made the success of 2024 possible.

If you think back to 2016, the whole Trump effort, it was not just unlikely, it was ridiculous. The campaign consisted mostly of Donald Trump
...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party...
’s stream-of-consciousness Tweets and phone calls to various talk shows. Volunteers from around the country organized their own events for him because there was no real traditional campaign organization. Some went very well. Others, not so much, like the March 2016 rally at the University of Illinois, reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown
...home of Al Capone, the Chicago Black Sox, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel...
. Smack in the middle of one of America’s premier left-wing neighborhoods, it turned into an ANTIFA-style riot.

When he got to the White House, President Trump was immediately handicapped by poor organization and some awful hires. Most Trump people came in one of three flavors -- loyal but incompetent, like Mike Flynn. The just plain incompetent, like Coats and Sessions. And worst of all, the incompetent and outright perfidious, like Generals Kelly, Mattis, and McMaster.

Most of that last category seems to be people Ivanka and Jared wanted.

Unsurprisingly, this team of scrubs was no match for the D.C. Swamp. Much of the anger and frustration of Trump and his supporters on Jan 6, 2021, was fueled by the realization of just how badly they were served by people who were supposed to be on their side.

If you are somebody like Rudy Giuliani, tirelessly working with President Trump to save the country, and you see him get impeached for properly trying to investigate the Biden bribery scandals or have the Deep State run a game to falsely impugn the Hunter Biden laptop, or worst of all, see the Deep State’s outrageous Russiagate scandal, which was cooked up by Crooked Hillary Clinton
...former first lady, former secretary of state, former presidential candidate, Conqueror of Benghazi, Heroine of Tuzla, formerly described by her supporters as the smartest woman in the world, usually described by the rest of us as The Thing That Wouldn't Go Away. Politix is not one of her talents, but it's something she keeps trying to do...
's people. Then yes, you may even start to think the voting machines in Georgia could be rigged.

After the disappointing 2022 midterms, most people (including me) gave Donald Trump no chance. DeSantis even passed by him in the betting odds.

Behind the scenes, however, it was Don who started to bring some order to the chaos of Trump world. Until then, he had been the second banana in the family behind Ivanka and Jared. But they were bored with the whole political scene after 2020 and moved on. Especially after Jared got Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
to bail him out of his high-rise real estate disaster.

Don (and his brother Eric) had spent most of the first Trump term in New York, ably running the Trump business, even as they had to meet a make-or-break deadline to refinance their holdings. Then, it was finally Don’s turn to help assist his father’s political operation and did he ever.

Don began by hiring Susie Wiles to run the national campaign. Wiles got her start with Jack Kemp, then worked for Ronald Reagan all eight years. She has a marvelous record of running campaigns. When she became available after a falling out with Ron DeSantis, she was welcomed into the 2020 campaign and then tapped to run the whole 2024 effort. This was a great move. She has a whole ecosystem of competent people around her, and she got Trump organized and focused on the issues.

The unprecedented lawfare attack by the Biden administration in 2023 was met calmly and became a rallying point for people who had seen enough of the Democrats

...every time you hear the phrase white people, white supremacy, white anything but paint, you're listening to a Democrat. Ask him/her/it to reimagine something for you; they do that a lot, though not well. They can hear a dog whistle a mile or two away. They invented the spoils system and Tammany Hall, and inspired the addition of the word (Thomas) Nasty to the English language. They want to stop continental drift and repeal the law of unintended side effects...
’ dirty tricks.

Don was also the talent scout, bringing in fresh new faces who could make a difference. He was the one who got Ronna McDaniel ousted from the RNC and brought in Charlie Kirk to implement more modern election tactics. Whereas in 2020, President Trump decried early voting; in 2024, Don was convinced those were now the rules and we had to outdo the Democrats.

It was Don who befriended JD Vance, seeing he was a budding star and had his father endorse him in a crowded Senate primary. Don also lobbied for him as VP pick, which proved an inspired choice, as he connected with younger voters.

Remember, it was Jared and Ivanka who kept attaching President Trump to ridiculous celebrities like Kanye West and the Kardashians. While it was Don who built a network of serious people to help the country, like Peter Theil.

The first days of the Trump transition are now going like the last days of the Trump campaign -- focused, efficient, and smooth. I suspect that’s in large measure due again to Don and he is likely the one recommending all the solid cabinet picks.

Thanks to Donald J. Trump, Jr., I think Trump 47 is going to be a far more successful experience than Trump 45.

Link

-Short Attention Span Theater-

Hunter Biden will undergo a seven-hour psychological evaluation

2024-09-27

[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] … to prove he was 'emotionally damaged' by disgraced Overstock CEO's Iran claim

Eh? When was he sober long enough to feel anything, let alone be damaged?

Hunter Biden is set to undergo a psychological evaluation lasting up to seven hours next month, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal.

The thorough mental examination is part of his defamation lawsuit against former Overstock chief executive Patrick Byrne, 61.

In a joint filing with Byrne's lawyers on September 17, Hunter agreed to a battery of psychological tests to help establish whether he was emotionally damaged by Byrne's claims of corruption against him.

Hunter, 54, sued the ex-CEO in Los Angeles federal court last year, claiming Byrne falsely accused him of soliciting a bribe from Iran.
Before his pocket lawyer quit.
Byrne posted to his then-290,000 followers on social media site X claiming Hunter contacted the Iranian government offering to have his father Joe Biden 'unfreeze' $8 billion of their funds in exchange for an $800 million bribe.

'These defamatory statements by Byrne are not merely false and not merely malicious — they are completely outrageous,' Hunter's November 2023 complaint said, adding the allegations were 'complete nonsense'.

Byrne is a Trump supporter who pushed the conspiracy theory that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election, as well as negative claims about Covid-19 vaccines.

Hunter's attorneys said instead of retracting his bribery claims when he was told they were false, Byrne 'doubled down' and republished them.

A September 17 filing in the case declared Hunter was 'seeking emotional distress damages in connection with his claim for defamation', and agreed to the examination to prove it.

Hunter's mental exam is set for October 11, and will be conducted by Dr. Nathan Lavid in Long Beach, California.

'The parties hereby agree that the defense may conduct a single mental examination of plaintiff,' the joint legal notice read.

'No one will accompany plaintiff into the examination room. The examination will be limited to seven hours of face to face interview time and psychological testing.'

Lavid will use 'diagnostic tests, including but not limited to a clinical interview of plaintiff and a testing period during which Dr. Lavid will administer a variety of standardized written tests,' according to the filing.

Byrne stepped down as chief executive of the retail company Overstock in 2019 after the share price dropped when he started making cryptic comments about the 'deep state'.

He also admitted in a letter to investors in August that year that he had a romance with Maria Butina, a Russian agent subsequently jailed for illegal influence peddling.

Hunter's suit against Byrne is one of several civil actions the First Son is still embroiled in, after receiving two guilty verdicts in the federal gun and tax crimes cases he faced this year.

He is suing the IRS for allegedly improperly releasing his personal data – though whistleblowers who ran the agency's criminal probe into the tax cheat First Son said they made disclosures to Congress through proper legal channels.

Hunter has also sued Trump's former attorney Rudy Giuliani and former White House staffer Garrett Ziegler for allegedly hacking his data by handling his abandoned laptop.

But he could be fighting his lawsuits from prison in just a few months' time, as his sentencing hearings loom in December.

He is set to be sentenced for his gun crimes in Delaware on December 4, and for his tax crimes in Los Angeles on December 16 – for which he faces a maximum penalty of 17 years incarceration.

His father has promised that he will not pardon him or commute his sentences.

Link

Government Corruption

Steal The Vote V9.564: fake overseas ballots

2024-09-10

[GP] WAKE UP, REPUBLICANS!... Democrats Are Openly Stealing the 2024 Election with Fraudulent Overseas Ballots

The Gateway Pundit reported extensively on this 2020 voter fraud scheme in numerous battleground states.

One method Democrats used to steal the election was with overseas ballots. We saw evidence of this in several battleground states.

During an Arizona Senate session in February2022, the discussion turned to the UOCAVA voters — these are voters covered under the Uniform Overseas Civilian Absentee Voting Act. These are the men and women who are serving their country in the military and send in a mail-in vote from where they are stationed outside the country. These ballots also include US citizens residing in countries outside the United States.

The act officially covers:

members of the United States Uniformed Services and merchant marine;

their family members; and

United States citizens residing outside the United States.

During the Arizona hearing, Paul Harris, a Maricopa resident and veteran in corporate executive management, spoke to the committee. Harris was a manager during the audit of the Maricopa County audit of the 2020 election ballots.

Paul Harris was tasked with overseeing the UOCAVA ballots during the audit. He described his experience.

Paul Harris: The UOCAVA is the Uniform Overseas Civilian Absentee Voting Act ballot. That ballot is sent out to men and women who work overseas and the people who work overseas to get a chance to work in the election. This is what a ballot looks like that goes out, an 11 1/2 X 19 ballot. When I opened up a box of ballots this is what a ballot looks like that’s a UOCAVA ballot. You know what that is? It’s an 8 1/2 X 11 sheet of copy paper.

Paul Harris continued: “Did you all know that our ballots come back like this from our overseas people? Did any of you know thia? It is such a sham that I had people everyday at my table taking pictures of these ballots that were scanned down. It took my team three complete days to count all of the UOCAVA ballots. You know why? Because in 2016 the numbers were apparently 1,600 UOCAVA ballots that came back in the most significant election in our lifetime. In 2020 the numbers were close to 9,600 ballots that came back. And I will tell you as an eye-witness, 95%… all went towards one candidate. And in a state where a candidate won by 10,000 votes that is 8,000 new votes during an election where people were brought home because there was a pandemic… No chain of custody. There’s nothing to identify where this piece of paper came from.

This testimony by Paul Harris is very similar to what we witnessed in Michigan and Georgia.

We reported on this extensively at The Gateway Pundit.

The Gateway Pundit recorded testimony in three battleground states of this happening.

But there’s more…

Back in 2020 election worker and witness Kathleen Alby (sp?) testified at the November 2020 Arizona Senate Hyatt hearing for Rudy Giuliani.

She said baskets of “military faxes” in Pima County were converted to actual ballots at stations with just one person.

The cubicles only had one chair, no observers. She said hundreds (probably thousands) of these ballots had no chain of custody. She and other election workers could not get questions answered regarding this shady process.

AZ State Senator: “Were there a lot of those duplicates (military ballots)?”

Ms. Alby: “Yes. Thousands of them. At one point that’s all that they were processing were the faxed ones.”

Ms. Alby later described the thousands of ballots faxed in from overseas or wherever they were coming from.

Ms. Alby: “I complained about the chain of custody of all of these faxes because there were so many, and I questioned that. Because I wasn’t sure, I mean, I could be in Michigan and I could fax something to Pima County. It could be rerouted anywhere, through any fax. And how do I know it didn’t come from Afghanistan? “

Again, this appears to be a highly coordinated tactic used by the left in several battleground states.

We saw it in Michigan. We saw it in Georgia.

Fast forward to 2024. Democrats announced they are pushing their UOCAVA election fraud into overdrive.

The Gateway Pundit’s Patty McMurray reported on the Democrats’ UOCAVA fake voter scam last week.

In the 2000 presidential election, a mere 629 votes separated the race between George W. Bush and Al Gore in Florida. When the absentee overseas votes finally arrived, George W. Bush was able to take the 537-vote lead from Al Gore and win the presidency.

Democrats paid attention.

Are Democrats really interested in attracting more overseas voters, or is it the flawed voter registration system they use that could be a game-changer in our upcoming election if properly utilized by unscrupulous election officials?

On August 12, 2024, the DNC released a memo announcing it would spend six figures to collect up to 9 million Democratic votes from overseas.

Link

Home Front: Politix

Ammerica's Mayor disbarred following criminal indictments

2024-07-03

[NYPOST] Embattled former Mayor Rudy Giuliani – a former prosecutor known for his work in taking down the mob in the Big Apple – can no longer practice law in New York, an appeals court ruled Tuesday.

“Rudolph William Giuliani, is disbarred from the practice of law, effective immediately, and until the further order of this Court, and his name stricken from the roll of attorneys and counselors-at-law in the State of New York,” the First Department appeals court wrote in a decision released Tuesday.

Link

Government Corruption

Do the Plotters of the ‘51 Intel Experts' Coup Deserve Prison?

2024-06-17

[American Thinker] People of a certain age will remember the name "Donald Segretti." In the 1972 re-election campaign of President Richard Nixon, this youthful campaign aide made the phrase "dirty tricks" part of the American political lexicon. Segretti’s mischief included sending embarrassing letters under the names of Nixon’s political rivals. Although his dirty tricks had little or no effect on the election’s outcome, Segretti served four and a half months in prison.

With Segretti’s four and a half months as a baseline, the 51-plus dirty tricksters who conspired successfully to get Joe Biden elected president in 2020 would seem to deserve no less. Confident to a fault about the Democrat control of the media, 51 intel officials signed on to the most flagrant disinformation campaign in anyone’s memory. "I think there needs to be an investigation into every single one of them," said Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.), and that investigation deserves a special counsel.

More deserving of prison time than the 51 were the Biden apparatchiks who set the plot in motion. On October 14, 2020, when they saw the New York Post headline "Smoking-Gun Email Reveals How Hunter Biden Introduced Ukrainian Businessman to VP Dad," they were ready to roll. They had known since December 2019 that this story might drop. That was when Mac Isaac alerted the FBI to a laptop Hunter Biden had abandoned at his computer repair shop in Delaware.

Fearing that the story might break at any time, operatives within the FBI reached out to Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms well before the 2020 election and warned them of a potential Russian pre-election "hack and dump" operation. If done with ill intent, these operatives deserve prison time as well.

On the day the Post story broke, representatives from the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force met with Facebook execs. As would later be confirmed at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing, the FBI knew that the laptop was, in fact, Hunter Biden’s.

Facebook founder — and future un-indicted co-conspirator — Mark Zuckerberg did not need to have his arm twisted. He and his wife, Priscilla Chan, had already invested $300 million, in CNN’s words, toward "enhancing access to voting in the United States." CNN failed to add that the Zuckerbucks enhanced access almost exclusively in Democrat districts.

With a little prodding from the FBI, Facebook promptly "deamplified" the Post story, dramatically reducing its circulation. On the same day the story broke, the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force also leaned on Twitter. The Twitter people needed little persuasion — some 98 percent of their political donations went to Democrats. They were all in for Biden, and Twitter blocked not only the Post story, but also the Post itself.

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing, former disgraced FBI general counsel-turned Twitter exec James Baker was asked about his role in silencing the Post. To virtually every salient question regarding the laptop, Baker pleaded — in vintage Watergate fashion — memory loss.

"You were entrusted with the highest level of power at Twitter, but when you were faced with the New York Post story, instead of allowing people to judge the information for themselves, you rushed to find a reason why the American people shouldn’t see it," said committee chair James Comer. "You did this because you were terrified of Joe Biden not winning the election in 2020."

A May 10, 2023 report by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government filled in the details. The plot was hatched on October 17, 2020, when Biden campaign adviser — now secretary of state — Antony Blinken contacted Michael Morell. Morell had served as acting director of the CIA under Obama. At Blinken’s request, Morell began assembling the draft of a statement that would dismiss this epic October surprise as more of the same old Russian disinformation. At the very least, Blinken should resign immediately.

Morell had a motive. He was in the running for the post of CIA director. Needing a Biden win to secure it, Morell went to work lining up co-conspirators. "Thereafter," reads the subcommittee report, "Morell contacted several former intelligence officials to help write the statement, solicit cosigners, and help with media outreach." On October 19, Morell emailed Nick Shapiro, his former deputy chief of staff, asking him to place the statement in major publications.

"On background," Shapiro was to tell reporters that Morell, in talking to Russian intel experts, "was struck by the fact that all of them thought Russia is involved here." In truth, Morell had talked to no Russian intel experts before organizing the draft.

Politico bit first, running a story on October 19 under the bold headline "Hunter Biden Story Is Russian Disinfo, Dozens of Former Intel Officials Say." As Morell testified to the House subcommittee, one major purpose of the statement was "to help Vice President Biden in the debate."

In an October 19, 2020 email, Morell told former CIA director John Brennan he wanted to "give the [Biden] campaign, particularly during the debate on Thursday, a talking point to push back on Trump on this issue."

During the October 23 debate, when Trump played the laptop card, Biden countered with the Russia card as planned. "Look, there are fifty former National Intelligence folks who said that what this, he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan," said a well rehearsed Biden. "They have said that this has all the characteristics — four — five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him, his, and his good friend Rudy Giuliani."

In an estimate more conservative than many, Trump pollster John McLaughlin found that 4.6 percent of Biden voters would not have voted for Biden if they had known about the contents of Hunter’s laptop. Even if those people had simply not voted, their absence at the polls would have handed several swing states to Trump.

Kept purposefully in the dark, too many Americans chose to believe Biden and his co-conspirators. "On November 3, 2020, the American people went to the polls to elect the president of the United States with the false impression that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation," the House subcommittee concluded three years too late. "The American people cannot get back the 2020 election."

They cannot get the election back, but they can get justice. If prison seems an extreme remedy for the conspirators, it pays to remember that 40 government officials were indicted or imprisoned for Watergate.

Link

Government Corruption

Trump attorneys file to disqualify Fani Willis from election fraud case despite prosecutor stepping aside

2024-03-19

[NY Post] Former President Donald Trump’s defense team filed a motion on Monday seeking to dismiss and disqualify embattled Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis from the Georgia election fraud case.

Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead attorney in the case, asked the court to immediately remove Willis. The filing comes days after the judge overseeing the case ruled she could stay on as long as special prosecutor Nathan Wade stepped aside, following the revelation of their romantic relationship.

Sadow claims in his motion that action does not go far enough and is asking to appeal the decision.

“President Trump and seven defendants have jointly filed a motion requesting the Court to grant a certificate of immediate review of its order denying dismissal of the case and disqualification of Fulton County DA Willis,” Sadow said in a statement.

Alongisde Trump, seven of the 14 remaining defendants joined the motion: Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Robert Cheeley, Michael Roman, David Shafer, Harrison Floyd and Cathleen Latham.

“The motion further notes that the Court found Georgia case law lacks controlling precedent for the standard for disqualification of a prosecuting attorney for forensic misconduct. For these reasons among others, the Court’s Order is ripe for pretrial appellate review,” Sadow concluded.

The attorneys’ filing came after Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee gave Wade and Willis their ultimatum on Friday in a much anticipated ruling over the racketeering case.

Wade stepped down hours later, allowing Willis to stay on.

Link

Warning: Undefined property: stdClass::$T in /data/rantburg.com/www/rantburg/pgrecentorg.php on line 132
-12 More