PODCAST: DisRespect for Marriage Act and Superintendent Indicted over Handling of Sexual Assaults

GUESTS AND TOPICS

JUDGE PHIL GINN

Judge Phil Ginn was appointed president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in April 2021 after a distinguished career as both a lawyer and a judge. He holds a B.A. from Appalachian State University, a J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Doctor of Ministry from Southern Evangelical Seminary. Prior to his appointment as SES president, Judge Ginn served as SES Chairman of the Board of Trustees.

TOPIC: Respect for Marriage Act

TINA RAMIREZ

Tina Ramirez is a Virginia mom and Candidate for the Virginia Senate. She is the Founder & President of Hardwired Global which is an international non-profit organization that works for human rights around the world. She lives in Chesterfield, Virginia with her daughter, Abigail.

TOPIC: Superintendent indicted over handling of sexual assaults…

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Federal Prosecutors Indict Sam Bankman-Fried On Eight Counts Of Fraud

Federal prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York indicted disgraced former crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried on eight counts of fraud Tuesday, according to a copy of the unsealed indictment.

The charges brought against Bankman-Fried include conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers, wire fraud on lenders, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to the indictment. Bankman-Fried was also charged with violating campaign finance laws by conspiring to make illegal contributions to political candidates and joint fundraising committees, among others, the indictment shows.

From at least 2019 through approximately Nov. 2022, Bankman-Fried “agreed with others to defraud customers of FTX.com by misappropriating those customers’ deposits and using those deposits to pay expenses and debts of Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried’s proprietary crypto hedge fund, and to make investments,” according to the indictment.

The indictment echoes a Nov. 2 report by crypto site CoinDesk alleging FTX and Alameda Research misused customer funds, which began the collapse of FTX and Bankman-Fried’s crypto fortune. FTX was Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange, and Alameda Research was his crypto trading firm.

Likewise, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Bankman-Fried of a scheme to defraud billions from FTX investors beginning in May 2019.

According to the SEC lawsuit, “Bankman-Fried was orchestrating a massive, years-long fraud, diverting billions of dollars of the trading platform’s customer funds for his own personal benefit and to help grow his crypto empire.”

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) brought similar charges against Bankman-Fried, alleging he violated the Commodity Exchange Act and misused customer funds, CNBC reported.

Bankman-Fried and other FTX executives also took hundreds of millions of dollars in poorly-documented ‘loans’ from Alameda that they used to purchase luxury real estate and property, make political donations, and for other unauthorized uses,” the CFTC alleged in its filing. 

FTX filed for bankruptcy Nov.11 after appointing bankruptcy executive John J. Ray III as CEO following Bankman-Fried’s resignation from the company. Ray is testifying in front of the House Financial Services Committee about the collapse of FTX.

Bankman-Fried was arrested Monday in the Bahamas after prosecutors filed criminal charges against him, according to The New York Times (NYT). It is unclear when he will be extradited to the U.S., a process that can take weeks or longer, the NYT reported.

Bankman-Fried’s lawyer Mark Cohen told The Wall Street Journal the former “is reviewing the charges with his legal team and considering all of his legal options.”

His net worth peaked at $26.5 billion and was estimated to be $17.2 billion in September. Bankman-Fried told Axios on Nov.29 he had $100,000 remaining in his bank account when he last looked.

This is a developing story and will be updated as further details emerge. 

AUTHOR

JAMES LYNCH

Reporter.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘House Of Cards’: SEC Lawsuit Alleges Bankman-Fried’s Multibillion-Dollar Fraud On FTX Began ‘From The Start’

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

COVID Rush, Gold Rush

Title 42 COVID restrictions at the border are expected to end next Wednesday and it’s shaping up to be a disaster.   Up to 14,000 illegal aliens a day are expected to rush the border.  This is on top of a record number of apprehensions and known gotaways at the border in November – over 300,000 combined.

Numbers alone don’t tell the whole story.  The burden on the border states is so great, they’re taking action on their own.  Arizona’s lame-duck Republican Governor is building a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border with shipping containers.  Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared an invasion and sent National Guard troops and armored personnel carriers to the border in anticipation of COVID restrictions being lifted.  The troops have experienced 267 suspicious or violent events, including gunfire from across the border and physical assaults.

Meanwhile, the number of illegal border-crossers on the terrorist watchlist is skyrocketing.  Nine were caught in October alone, a faster pace than the 98 caught in the fiscal year before that, and up exponentially from the 14 apprehended in the previous fiscal year.  A Muslim-only transit shelter opened across the border from San Diego, recently.  The shelter operator screens occupants a bit for ties to terrorism and has rejected two.  The operator is willing to provide more information to U.S. authorities, but they’ve never called.  The operator also says the shelter’s vetting is incomplete and it’s certainly possible for terrorists to slip through.

Biden’s border policies are raising other national security concerns, as well.  The air marshals warn that diverting them to border ground duties increases the likelihood of another 9/11 attack.  There was an attempt to breach a cockpit, recently, but the Biden administration isn’t answering the phone on this one, either.

That’s because the Biden administration has the pedal to the metal to pack the country with as many illegal aliens as possible before somebody puts a stop to it.  I’ve told you in previous commentaries about dozens of Biden administration policies opening the border and today I add some more.

ICE agents are being told to limit their arrests to illegal aliens with Class A felonies like murder to free up detention bed space for the anticipated influx of new arrivals when COVID restrictions end.  But the number of criminal alien arrests was already down, 71 percent from a comparable period under Trump.  Removals are down by two-thirds under Biden policy.   To add insult to injury, our government is lying to us.  The ICE website says there are 266 illegal aliens who have been released into the U.S. interior without any electronic monitoring through ankle bracelets or cell phones.  But an ICE document distributed at an event last month shows the number is not 266; it’s almost 50,000.

The fallout from Biden’s border policies continues to mount.  An HHS whistleblower said the government is promoting sex trafficking, threatening alien children with deportation if they don’t comply.  The whistleblower also said the government’s child sponsor program is so bad many alien children are being forced into indentured servitude.

The only explanation we’ve ever gotten out of Biden administration officials for all this insanity is that they want to open the borders to increase diversity in the country.   That would be pretty stupid, but recent stories make you wonder if it’s not just all about the money.  There are at least 30 nominally private organizations involved in processing illegal aliens, taxpayer-funded government contractors with friends in high places and a revolving door between government agencies and their executive suites.  Contracts can run into the billions of dollars.  Hunter Biden had an 8 percent stake in a digital banking and remittances platform for illegal aliens.  Which begs the question: did 10 percent go to the Big Guy?  Is the Big Guy selling his office?  Is the Big Guy above lining his own pockets, the fate of the country be damned?  The Biden administration has never adequately explained why it’s opening the border, so I will assume the worst.  Somebody should take a closer look at the money that’s being made in all this.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

Visit The Daily Skirmish and Watch Eagle Headline News – 7:30am ET Weekdays

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Court Permanently Blocks Biden Administration’s Transgender Mandate

A reprieve from the most depraved regime since Caligula……

As one commenter points out, “This mandate is from 2016 in the Obama ACA. So it took 6+ years and countless harm to children and young adults for the courts fix this abhorrent mandate. This is an Obama-Biden sick perverse action.”

Court Permanently Blocks Biden Administration’s Transgender Mandate

By: The Epoch Times, December 10, 2022:

A federal appeals court has permanently blocked the Biden administration’s bid to force doctors and insurers to perform or pay for gender-transition procedures even if they object on grounds of conscience and medical judgment, with the court basing its decision on constitutional protections of religious freedom.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit issued a unanimous ruling (pdf) on Dec. 9 blocking the controversial U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) transgender mandate.

Issued in 2016, the mandate interpreted the Affordable Care Act in a way that required doctors to perform gender-transition procedures on any patient, including children, even if the doctor was convinced the procedure could harm the patient.

Controversial Mandate

The mandate also required the vast majority of private insurance companies and many employers to cover the costs of gender-transition therapy or face penalties.

The HHS’s own panel of medical experts acknowledged that gender-transition procedures can be harmful and in many cases not medically justified, with HHS determining that Medicare and Medicaid should not be forced to cover such procedures.

Research has shown that gender-transition procedures carry significant risk for children, including loss of bone density, heart disease, and cancer.

‘Do No Harm’

Religious organizations and states sued to block the mandate, with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the North Dakota Attorney General’s office representing some of the groups.

“The federal government has no business forcing doctors to violate their consciences or perform controversial procedures that could permanently harm their patients,” Luke Goodrich, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, said in a statement.

“This is a common-sense ruling that protects patients, aligns with best medical practice, and ensures doctors can follow their Hippocratic Oath to ‘do no harm,’” he added.

Becket filed the lawsuit in 2016 on behalf of a coalition of Catholic hospitals, a Catholic university, and Catholic nuns who run health clinics for the poor.

A federal district court blocked the mandate from taking effect, leading the Biden administration to appeal the case to the 8th Circuit, which in its Dec. 8 ruling concluded that the lower court “correctly held that ‘intrusion upon the Catholic Plaintiff’s exercise of religion’” justified a permanent injunction.

The Biden administration has 90 days to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court or 45 days to ask the 8th Circuit court to rehear the case.

There was no immediate reaction from the White House to the ruling.

Goodrich said in a call with reporters that he doubts the “Biden administration will pursue either of these avenues.”

The case is Religious Sisters of Mercy v. Becerra, case No. 21-1890.

Keep reading…..

AUTHOR

RELATED ARTICLE: VIDEO: The “Merchant of Death” We Traded Loves America More Than Brittney Griner Does

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

AZ Whistleblower: Chain Of Custody For OVER 298,942 Maricopa County Ballots Delivered To Runbeck On Election Day Did Not Exist

Arizona Employees Allowed To Add Family Members’ Ballots Without Any Documentation.


The question remains, is there not one honest judge in Arizona?

Read the whole complaint:

HUGE: Runbeck Whistleblower Reveals That Chain Of Custody For OVER 298,942 Maricopa County Ballots Delivered To Runbeck On Election Day Did Not Exist, Employees Allowed To Add Family Members’ Ballots Without Any Documentation

By Jordan Conradson, The Gateway Pundit, December 10, 2022:

Never in US history has there been so much evidence compiled of a fraudulent election taking place.

The brave attorneys representing Kari Lake are HEROES who deserve a Medal of Freedom.

Read the full complaint below:

Kari Lake Files Election Challenge in Arizona Court

“Maricopa County election officials engaged in numerous breaches of Arizona election law in their handling and custody of ballots, making it impossible to conclude that the vote tallies reported by Maricopa County accurately reflect the votes cast by Arizona voters,” contends the lawsuit.

Kari Lake’s team of expert attorneys have gathered evidence from signed witness testimony, Runbeck whistleblowers, and Maricopa County whistleblowers to craft a 70-page lawsuit against Maricopa County and Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.

Included in the complaint is a shocking claim by a Runbeck employee that nearly 300,000 ballots were delivered to Runbeck on Election Day with no chain of custody documentation.

Maricopa County is the only jurisdiction in the country that picks up completed ballots at USPS Processing Distribution Center but doesn’t bring them back to the election department or tabulation center. Instead, Maricopa County picks up mail-in ballots and takes them directly to its print vendor Runbeck Election Services, which is headquartered in Phoenix.

The Gateway Pundit has reported on Runbeck’s services in Maricopa County. The County has still not provided all chain of custody documents from Runbeck and USPS for the 2020 election.

The scanning of ballot envelopes takes place behind closed doors and apparently with no documentation.

According to Kari Lake’s lawsuit contesting the 2022 election, a Runbeck employee stated that “Runbeck received 298,942 ballots on Election Day, which includes the EV ballots. The required chain of custody for these ballots does not exist.”

Maricopa County also asked Runbeck how many ballots were received on election night, demonstrating that they did not even know how many ballots were in Runbeck’s custody.

[…]

The Runbeck employee also revealed that 9,530 duplicate ballots were transported without any chain of custody documentation. “They were simply handed over to the delivery driver,” states the lawsuit.

Additionally, Employees of Runbeck were allowed to add their own ballots and family members’ ballots to the batches without chain of custody documentation.

All of these ballots were illegally cast and counted.

The complaint states, “There is no way to know whether 50 ballots or 50,000 ballots were unlawfully added into the election in this way. The Runbeck facility is not a legal ballot drop off site… Given this blatant violation of Arizona law, there is no way to tell the number of ballots that were illegally injected into the 2022 election.”

From Kari Lake’s historic lawsuit:

Illegal Ballot Handling and Chain of Custody Failures with Respect To Over 300,000 Ballots Make The Outcome of the Election Uncertain

Maricopa County election officials engaged in numerous breaches of Arizona election law in their handling and custody of ballots, making it impossible to conclude that the vote tallies reported by Maricopa County accurately reflect the votes cast by Arizona voters.

Arizona law requires that “[t]he county recorder or other officer in charge of elections shall maintain records that record the chain of custody for all election equipment and ballots during early voting through the completion of provisional voting tabulation.” Stat. § 16-621(E) (emphasis added). See also Arizona Elections Procedures Manual 61-61.

A proper chain of custody is not ministerial. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission instructs that “Chain of custody is essential to a transparent and trustworthy election.”[1] “Chain of custody documents provide evidence that can be used to authenticate election results, corroborate post-election tabulation audits, and demonstrate that election outcomes can be trusted.” at 3.

R.S. § 16-452(C) states, “A person who violates any rule adopted pursuant to this section is guilty of a class 2 misdemeanor.” This criminal penalty underscores the Arizona state legislature’s recognition of the critical nature of expressly following chain of custody requirements with respect to ballots. See also A.R.S. § 16-1016(7), (8).

The Arizona Elections Procedure Manual, pages 61-62, establishes required procedures for secure ballot retrieval and chain of custody for all drop box ballots. The requirements include that each county must confirm receipt of the retrieved ballots by signing the retrieval form and indicating the date and time of receipt on the form. The retrieval form must be attached to the outside of the transport container or maintained in a way that ensures the form is traceable to the respective ballot container. Significantly, when the secure transport container is opened by the county recorder, “the number of ballots inside the container shall be counted and noted on the retrieval form.”

Maricopa County election officials received two categories of early voting ballots on Election Day, EV ballots received at ballot drop-off sites and mail-in ballots returned through the U.S. Postal Service. Maricopa County delivered these ballots to Runbeck to obtain electronic images of the signatures on the ballots. After scanning, the ballots were eventually transferred back to the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center.

Maricopa County failed to maintain and document the required secure chain of custody for hundreds of thousands of ballots, in violation of Arizona law, including as described below, for over 298,942 ballots delivered to Runbeck on Election Day.

A Runbeck employee observed that Maricopa County election workers delivered Early-Vote (“EV”) ballots retrieved from ballot drop boxes and mail-in ballots from the Postal Service, neither of which were accompanied by any of the required chain of custody paperwork which, among other things, would document the number of ballots received from ballot drop boxes. According to the employee, Runbeck received 298,942 ballots on Election Day which includes the EV ballots. The required chain of custody for these ballots does not exist. Indeed, two days later, on November 10, 2022, the employee observed that Maricopa County had to ask Runbeck how many ballots Runbeck had received on election night, demonstrating that Maricopa County itself did not know how many EV ballots had been retrieved from ballot drop boxes on Election Day in violation of Arizona law.[2]

The Runbeck employee’s testimony is confirmed by Maricopa County’s response to a public records request for chain of custody forms. Early Voting Ballot Transport Statements were produced by Maricopa County on December 6, 2022, in response to a public records request by Lake. Maricopa County produced 1149 of these documents dated October 12th through November 7th but not a single document from Election Day drop box ballot retrievals. The official canvass report indicated that Maricopa County received over 292,000 EV ballots (not including provisional and ballots picked up by the U.S. Postal Service) dropped off on Election Day. However, Maricopa County did not produce chain of custody documents for these reported Election Day drop box ballots.

The fact that no required chain of custody documentation exists for these 298,942 ballots (as well as others) is further confirmed by the sworn testimony of a credentialed election observer at MCTEC on Election Day. That observer testified she observed the trucks and vehicles delivering ballots and memory cards from the Vote Centers and ballot drop boxes. She observed the delivery of the transport containers of ballots retrieved from drop boxes on Election Night. The witness observed the receipt and processing of the ballot transport containers. She saw MCTEC workers cut the plastic security seals off of the ballot transport containers and let them fall to the floor without any attempt to record seal numbers. When the transport containers were opened, the ballots inside the containers were not counted and therefore no numbers were recorded on retrieval forms.  She observed the transport containers of early voting ballots delivered without any required documentation or paperwork on the outside of the containers. No Early Voting Ballot Transport Statements were utilized. She observed early ballot envelopes being removed by workers from opened containers without any attempt to count them or document them as required by Arizona law. She observed packages of misfed/misread ballots collected and moved around with no discernable process to track or account for the ballots. She observed temporary employees moving unsecured metal carts full of ballots without any security or monitoring.[3]

Keep reading…..

AUTHOR

RELATED ARTICLE: Twitter Files Part 4: Platform Changed Policy Specifically To Ban ‘Trump Alone’ “Election Squad” Tasked With Rigging Election

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

RYAN WALTERS: We Are Fighting Back Against The Left’s Radical Education Agenda In Oklahoma. Here’s How…

Despite Republicans securing a narrow majority in the House, Democrats have managed to maintain control of the Senate. To make matters worse, Joe Biden still sits in the White House where he can cram his radical education agenda down American parents’ throats across the country.

The tide is turning.

Oklahoma’s parents said “enough is enough,” and helped me crush my Democratic opposition in order to stop the left from indoctrinating our children in the classroom. I intend to take the fight to the left as the State Superintendent for Education.

The election night results speak for themselves. My Democratic opponent lost the race by a large margin. If that doesn’t say Oklahomans want a change, I don’t really know what does. Our state wants to send a message to Biden and his left-wing allies: “Oklahoma won’t go woke!”

Conservative states are fighting back against the radical Biden agenda and ensure that students receive an education that ensures students know American history without indoctrination, maximizes parental empowerment and provides transparency so that taxpayers can hold bureaucrats responsible for every dollar spent by our schools.

We are stopping Critical Race Theory from being taught, stopping access to obscene pornography in our schools, and ending the tenure of radicalism and indoctrination of our kids because the left is waging a civil war in the our classrooms. No child should be told that they are racist.

Kids should graduate knowing how our country was founded and what those foundational elements are because it opens their future to be actively involved long-term.

Increase teacher pay so we get highly qualified teachers who know how to teach. Fifty-one percent of every dollar in Oklahoma goes to administrative costs. Oklahoma has invested more than $1 billion in recurring revenue for schools in the last 10 years.

That money has failed to reach the classroom and we must reverse that trend.

Decrease the bureaucracy by eliminating duplication and social-emotional learning that is the backbone of indoctrination. By holding administrators accountable we can return classroom teaching back to the basic fundamental needs that teach kids skill sets that prepare them for the workforce.

Every dollar should follow the kids. Parents should direct where their kids go to school. No exceptions. Empowering parents with choices and decisions is the only way to move Oklahoma from being bottom in education to leading the country in reform.

Radical change is the only way to move forward. We will not allow our kids to be collateral damage in this fight and we will not let the status quo be the standard for Oklahoma’s future.

The left has pushed for the most radical agenda we’ve ever seen.

We are fighting back, we will improve our kids’ education, and we will win this war.

Ryan Walters is the secretary of Education for Oklahoma. He is currently running for State Superintendent. 

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

AUTHOR

RYAN WALTERS

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: JAMES PINKERTON: As BlackRock Becomes BlueRock, A RedRock Is Coming

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Kari Lake Files Election Challenge in Arizona Court

“We have put forward evidence that unquestionably shows that this election was stolen with illegal votes and likely fraudulent votes.” — Attorney Kurt Olsen.


Kari Lake files election challenge in Arizona court

The former conservative media personality warned throughout her gubernatorial bid that the state’s election system was mired in voter fraud.

By Ben Whedon, Just The News, December 9, 2022 – 10:01pm

Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake on Friday announced that she had filed an election challenge, alleging that the total number of illegal votes was greater than her opponent’s margin of victory.

Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs was certified as the winner of the state’s gubernatorial contest earlier this month. State law requires that election results be first certified before a candidate may file a challenge.

Lake announced the suit via Twitter in the Maricopa County Superior Court with a screenshot of the filing being placed at the court’s petition drop off location.

In the filing, Lake asserts that “[t]he number of illegal votes cast in Arizona’s general election on November 8, 2022 far exceeds the 17,117 vote margin.”

She further contends that “thousands of Republican voters were disenfranchised as a result of Maricopa County election officials’ misconduct in connection with the widespread tabulator or printer failures at 59% of the 223 vote centers in Maricopa County.”

Lake’s claims echo those of Arizona Republican Attorney General candidate Abe Hamadeh, who filed a separate challenge on similar grounds Friday afternoon. Hamadeh’s race was much closer, with his Democratic opponent leading by a mere 511 votes, the closest statewide race in Arizona history. A recount is in progress in that race.

The former conservative media personality has long asserted that the state’s election system is mired in voter fraud and that it had handed the 2020 presidential contest to President Joe Biden.

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

White Supremacist Plots to Blow Up Texas High School! No, Wait…

The U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs said it again in a report it published in November, “The Rising Threat of Domestic Terrorism”:

“National security agencies now identify domestic terrorism as the most persistent and lethal terrorist threat to the homeland. This increase in domestic terror attacks has been predominantly perpetrated by white supremacist and anti-government extremist individuals and groups.”

Conspicuously lacking from this oft-repeated claim are actual white supremacist terrorists, but a recent case in Texas may help: a man who is most certainly not black or Hispanic plotted to blow up a high school in Amarillo. There’s just one catch: in a bracing little reminder of the actual terror threats that the Left’s propaganda and fantasies have obscured, he’s a Muslim, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Iran.

Amarillo’s KVII reported Thursday that Erfan Salmanzadeh, 33, pleaded guilty on Monday to “use and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.” The “use” part of that stems from a July 2021 incident that brought Salmanzadeh to the attention of police. KVII noted Tuesday that Salmanzadeh “recorded multiple videos in which he referenced the high school.” In one of these videos, which Salmanzadeh recorded on July 22, 2021, he was “standing in his backyard speaking in a mixture of English and Farsi, said he was going to blow up Tascosa High School,” a public high school in Amarillo.

“We are going to blast the school,” Salmanzadeh, a Tascosa High School graduate, declared. What did he mean by “we”? The police have not said anything about that, and there is no hint in the available reports as to who his accomplices were, or if he even really had any. “We are going to hit Tascosa,” Salmanzadeh continued. “Look at these.” He then “pointed the camera at a nail bomb filled with shrapnel, a suicide vest filled with pipes labeled as explosives, a suitcase filled with containers labeled as explosives, and a backpack filled with bottles labeled as explosives.”

Four days after that, “a neighbor reported hearing a loud explosion at 3613 Lenwood Drive. The caller said they [sic; I don’t care what your gender studies prof told you, kids. People aren’t plural. The caller was a he or a she] heard a similar noise a few weeks earlier but did not report it.” When police responded to the call, they found a “large crater” in Salmanzadeh’s backyard that “appeared to have been created by an explosion.”

Salmanzadeh, however, attempted to explain the hole and the explosion away. He told the cops that he had been “popping small firecrackers” in his backyard, as well as “hitting them with a hammer.” And the hole? “He also said he was digging holes in the backyard with a shovel.”

Well, that would certainly explain it. But “when police walked through the house with Salmanzadeh’s father, Salmanzadeh admitted to police that he blew up his Xbox in his backyard using triacetone triperoxide (TATP). He said he placed a PVC pipe filled with TATP inside the Xbox to see how much damage it would cause. According to an APD bomb technician, TATP is a homemade explosive that is ‘extremely unstable and reacts violently to friction and shock.’ He admitted flushing a ‘gallon sized jar of TATP down the toilet’ after police arrived that morning.”

Salmanzadeh also admitted that he had “placed a suicide vest, nail bomb and the Xbox in a dumpster in the alley behind his home.” It was true: “Police found the suicide vest, nail bomb and Xbox in dumpsters in the alley.” The vest was suitably stylish: it was “brown with blue suspender straps and had several sewn pockets filled with red cylindrical-shaped tubes. The word ‘Dynamite’ appeared to be handwritten in black ink on some of’ the tubes. The nail bomb was a ‘cylindrical-shaped device with several red cylinders inside of it. Several rows of nails and BBs were taped around the nail bomb as shrapnel.’”

Police then searched this Nobel laureate’s home and found two PVC pipes; one had “what appeared to be a Christmas light glued to the side of it and with the end of the wires stripped bare”; the other featured “a piece of duct tape, with the word ‘Explosive’ written on it.” Both of these pipes “appeared to have an explosive filler.” They also found other material that is “often used in the creation of improvised explosive devices, such as equipment and precursor chemicals.” Videos showed Salmanzadeh “testing an explosive powder in his backyard.” He also had “journals that contained notes and formulas related to the production of explosives.”

He also had a plane ticket for July 28, 2021, on which date he “planned to fly to California” so as to “avoid being arrested ‘after any bombing or attack.’”

It was good of law enforcement authorities to discover Salmanzadeh’s plot even though he isn’t one of the white supremacist terrorists they spend the bulk of their time trying to find (or create). But how many more like him will succeed in their plots because our counterterror apparatus is hopelessly corrupt and politicized?

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘Slippery Slope’: Internal Docs Show Just One Twitter Employee Raising ‘Serious’ Free-Speech Concerns Over Trump Ban

  • In the immediate aftermath of Jan. 6, a junior staffer at Twitter was the only employee that appeared to express “serious” concerns about the effect that banning then-President Donald Trump might have on users’ speech, according to author Michael Shellenberger Friday, citing internal documents provided by CEO Elon Musk.
  • The unnamed staffer’s comments stood in contrast to other employees, who, according to former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth, were not “happy” with Twitter’s position on Trump following the riots, Shellenberger reported.
  • “This now appears to be a fiat by an online platform CEO with a global presence that can gatekeep speech for the entire world – which seems unsustainable,” the staffer wrote, Shellenberger reported.

As Twitter executives sought a justification to ban then-President Donald Trump in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots, only one employee appears to have expressed “serious” concerns about the potential impact the move might have on users’ speech, author Michael Shellenberger tweeted Friday, citing internal Twitter documents provided by new CEO Elon Musk.

The employee, a junior staffer, posted a message in a lower-level channel on the company’s internal Slack messaging system, questioning the “one off” nature of the decision, which did not appear to match with Twitter’s public policies, according to Shellenberger. Twitter employees usually considered moderation decisions to be “one off” events when they were made at the discretion of Twitter employees, as opposed to following a particular policy, Shellenberger reported.

“This might be an unpopular opinion but one off ad hoc decisions like this that don’t appear rooted in policy are [in my opinion] a slippery slope and reflect an alternatively equally dictatorial problem,” the unnamed staffer wrote, according to Shellenberger. “This now appears to be a fiat by an online platform CEO with a global presence that can gatekeep speech for the entire world – which seems unsustainable.”

Roughly 40 minutes after the junior staffer posted their initial concerns, they sent a follow-up message, citing an article by The Washington Post’s Will Oremus, then a writer for tech publication OneZero, which noted that Facebook’s decision to indefinitely ban Trump “lacks a clear basis in any of Facebook’s previously stated policies, highlights for the millionth time that the dominant platforms are quite literally making up the rules of online speech as they go along,” Shellenberger reported.

“My concern is specifically surrounding the unarticulated logic of the decision by FB,” the staffer wrote, according to Shellenberger. “That space fills with the idea (conspiracy theory?) that all … internet moguls … sit around like kings casually deciding what people can and cannot see.”

While Twitter employees debated the decision to ban Trump, then-CEO Jack Dorsey was on vacation in French Polynesia, ultimately delegating a significant amount of the company’s actions during the crisis to former head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth and former head of Legal, Policy and Trust Vijaya Gadde, Shellenberger reported. Dorsey sent staffers an email on Jan. 7 telling employees that the company needs to maintain consistent moderation policies, according to Shellenberger. (RELATED: Twitter’s Chief Censor Met Weekly With US Intelligence Officials While Trump Was In Office, Internal Comms Reveal)

“Jack’s emails have been _fine_… but ultimately, I think people want to hear from Vijaya, or Del, or someone closer to the specifics of this who can reassure them that the people who care about this are thinking deeply about these problems and aren’t happy with where we are,” Roth messaged an unidentified employee, according to Shellenberger. “A few engineers have reached out to me directly about it, and I’m chatting with them… but it’s so clear that they just want to know that _someone_ is doing something about this, and it’s not that we’re ignoring the issues here.”

The unnamed employee responded, arguing that some employees might not understand that “while it seems obvious and simple that we ‘should’ [permanently ban] his personal account,” the company would have to wrangle with the possibility of banning Trump’s official government account as well, a decision that required “thinking things through,” Shellenberger reported.

While the company had faced pressure to block or ban Trump in the past, it typically resisted those calls; the company’s Public Policy team posted a tweet in 2018 which argued banning world leaders for “controversial Tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate,” and would limit discussion of that leader without meaningfully silencing them, Shellenberger reported.

Twitter did not immediately respond to request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

AUTHOR

JOHN HUGH DEMASTRI

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: CAUGHT IN LIES: Latest Twitter Files Release Reveals Feds and Twitter Both Caught Lying, Hiding Evidence in Major Lawsuit; Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt Calls Them Onto the Carpet

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Lawsuit Depositions and Twitter Files Tell the Tale

There’s an old saying: Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want reported on the front page of the newspaper.  So many stunning revelations have been reported in the last couple days from the release of the Twitter files and the Missouri versus Biden Big Tech censorship case, there’s no room on the front page left.

An FBI agent testified in a deposition in the censorship case that FBI headquarters put its “stamp of approval” on requests to social media companies to block specific information before the 2020 elections.  Requests would get routed through FBI field offices around the country, federal prosecutors, FBI and Justice Department lawyers, and FBI headquarters before being sent to the agent’s “command post” in San Francisco for action.  The agent further testified social media platforms frequently complied with FBI requests to take down posts.

A State Department official testified during his deposition that the State Department has been funding online fact checkers.  He named the Poynter Institute which operates Politifact, a notoriously left-wing fact checker.  You might recall Facebook admitted in a lawsuit these so-called ‘fact checkers’ are really just “opinion”, left-wing opinion your State Department is only too happy to pay for.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk released a first set of files showing how former Twitter executives decided to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story three weeks before the 2020 presidential election. Twitter suppressed the story under its policy against “hacked” information, but there was no evidence the information was hacked.

In a second set of files released just yesterday, it was revealed the platform used several means to silence conservatives, including blacklists and shadow-banning, techniques which former Twitter executives had denied using and dismissed as conspiracy theory.  The targets included a well-known opponent of the Covid lockdowns and two conservative radio talk show hosts.  As one Twitter engineer put it, “we control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do.”  Twitter was taking down posts or limiting visibility as many as 200 times a day.

The head of the team was Jeff Carlton, a former U.S. Naval Intelligence officer who had previously worked for the FBI counterintelligence division and CIA.  I told you earlier this week Twitter’s deputy general counsel who had advised the company to block the Hunter Biden laptop story had previously worked for the FBI.  Elon Musk fired counsel James Baker this week for suppressing information and for giving an “unconvincing” explanation for why he reviewed the new Twitter files before they were published.

So we have more than just proof of concerted action between the Biden administration and Twitter executives to support the theory Twitter had become an extension of the government to suppress speech.  We have a revolving door that placed former intelligence agency and FBI officials inside Twitter at critical junctures, adding weight to the case Twitter had become a state actor.  Personnel is policy, as they say.

The Missouri Attorney General – now Senator-elect Eric Schmitt who brought the censorship case said:

This is a story of the federal government with all of its vast power and authority colluding with some of the biggest companies in the history of the world to censor Americans to put their thumb on the scale for what’s out there that people can actually read about before an election. It ought to scare the bejesus out of every American, I don’t care about your political stripe.

They suppressed speech and silenced conservatives, but they got caught.  Moral of the Story:  If you can’t do the time on the front page of the newspaper, don’t do the crime.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

Visit The Daily Skirmish and Watch Eagle Headline News – 7:30am ET Weekdays

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Twittergate and the Plot Against Free Speech

What happens when Twitter stops suppressing speech for the government.


EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Twitter Had Secret ‘Blacklists’ That Suppressed Stanford Doctor, Top Conservatives, Docs Show

  • Twitter maintained secret “blacklists” that included several prominent conservative voices and a Stanford professor of health policy, limiting the spread of their content, according to journalist Bari Weiss.
  • While Twitter kept a record of some of this activity, the most sensitive, politically charged actions were typically kept off-the-books by high-ranking members of Twitter’s staff, Weiss reported.
  • “Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels,” a senior Twitter employee told Weiss. “It’s a very powerful tool.” 

Twitter kept secret “blacklists” that included a doctor at Stanford and several prominent conservative voices that suppressed their ability to be found or heard on the social media platform, according to journalist Bari Weiss, founder and editor of The Free Press and former Wall Street Journal and New York Times columnist, who launched the second chapter in Elon Musk’s so-called “Twitter Files” Thursday evening.

Weiss tweeted what appeared to be a photo of Stanford University’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy, with his account being prominently marked as being under a “Trends Blacklist.” Bhattacharya was secretly blacklisted because he “argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children,” and was thus unable to trend on the platform, according to Weiss.

In addition to Bhattacharya, Twitter placed Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk under a “Do Not Amplify” notice, while right wing talk radio personality Dan Bongino, who has appeared on Alex Jones’ InfoWars, was placed under a “Search Blacklist,” according to Weiss. The practice of limiting the access or reach of users’ content, commonly referred to as “shadow banning,” is something that Twitter has denied doing in the past, and is referred to internally as “Visibility Filtering” or “VF,” Weiss reported.

“Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels,” a senior Twitter employee reportedly told Weiss. “It’s a very powerful tool.”

Twitter operated two teams that managed visibility filtering, with the lower-level team — known as the “Strategic Response Team — Global Escalation Team” — handling roughly 200 routine and recorded cases per day, Weiss reported. However, a second group, known as “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support,” handled high-profile, politically sensitive accounts, making no record of their decisions, one Twitter employee told Weiss.

The second group included former Head of Legal, Policy and Trust Vijaya Gadde, former Global Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth, as well as then-CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, Weiss reported.

“Think high follower account, controversial,” the twitter employee told Weiss. The employee noted that when this group was involved, “there would be no ticket or anything.”

The company’s internal slack messages showed that Roth was interested in using “deamplification” and “remediations” in order to slow the spread of viral content that the team considered to be misinformation, according to Weiss.

“We got [CEO Jack Dorsey] on board with implementing this for civic integrity in the near term, but we’re going to need to make a more robust case to get this into our repertoire of policy remediations – especially for other policy domains,” said Roth in a message to the company’s Health, Misinformation, Privacy and Identity research team, according to Weiss. “So I’d love research’s POV on that.”

After Twitter suffered a steep decline in advertising revenue following Musk’s takeover in late October, the company’s new CEO committed to fighting hateful content by reducing its visibility on the platform, in a Nov. 9 call with advertisers.

Weiss’ thread arrived six days after Matt Taibbi, contributing editor at Rolling Stone, launched “Part One” of Musk’s Twitter Files, focusing primarily on the mechanisms by which various high-level executives at twitter coordinated to suppress the spread of a New York Post article detailing a laptop owned by Hunter Biden.

Musk had initially tweeted on Dec. 2 that the second installment of the files would be released on Dec. 3, a date that he then pushed back “another day or so,” before going silent on the issue.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

AUTHOR

JOHN HUGH DEMASTRI

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Musk Releases Details On How Twitter Censored The Hunter Biden Laptop Story

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Soros D.A.s Forge Initiative: Help Criminal Illegals, Prosecute Americans

Breitbart News reports that District Attorneys across the United States who received financial backing from leftwing billionaire financier George Soros are forging a new criminal justice initiative that would treat criminal illegal aliens differently from Americans when prosecuting them for crimes.

Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón, for example, has issued a policy that requires county prosecutors to weigh so-called “immigration consequences” for illegal aliens accused of crimes to ensure that they are not put on the radar of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and, thus, arrested for deportation.

The initiative to treat illegal aliens differently from their American citizen counterparts in the criminal justice system has become a fixture of DAs backed by Soros in their campaigns.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner — who raked in $1.7 million from Soros-linked groups — has imposed a similar policy that seeks discretion for illegal aliens charged with crimes to help them evade deportation by ICE agents.

Other DAs funded by Soros, including Cook County’s Kimberly Foxx and Contra Costa’s Diana Becton, have implemented nearly identical policies.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, also financially backed by a Soros-linked group, imposed a prosecutorial lenience policy for illegal aliens on day one after taking office, writing in a letter to staff, “The Office will seek dispositions that avoid immigration consequences for all misdemeanors, and all felonies for which non-carceral outcomes are the presumptive outcome.”

Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt, financially backed by a Soros-linked group in 2020, also announced so-called prosecutorial “reforms” in October to seek to charge illegal aliens with crimes that will not necessarily get them deported from the U.S.

George Soros and his pro-crime minions are enemies of the people.


George Soros

376 Known Connections

On July 13, 2020, OSF, in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and its allies, pledged to donate $220 million into initiatives designed to help “build power in Black communities, promote bold new anti-racist policies in U.S. cities, and help first-time activists stay engaged.” The pledge earmarked $150 million in five-year grants for black-led “racial justice” organizations, and $70 million for a range of initiatives such as helping city governments reform policing and criminal justice by implementing a new approach to public safety that includes “moving beyond the culture of criminalization and incarceration.” “This is the time for urgent and bold action to address racial injustice in America,” said OSF deputy chair Alex Soros, George Soros’s son. “These investments will empower proven leaders in the Black community to reimagine policing, end mass incarceration, and eliminate the barriers to opportunity that have been the source of inequity for too long.” Tom Perriello, executive director of Open Society-U.S., said: “The success of this movement, the largest in U.S. history, will be measured over years, not weeks, and we cannot say that Black lives matter and not make a multi-year commitment to a strategy set by and centering Black leaders and organizations who changed America’s sense of what is possible.”

To learn more about George Soros, click here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Leaks From J6 Prisoner: They Are Being Ziptied, Sexually Assaulted In The Middle Of Night

“The treatment I have endured since my arrest has shaken my faith in humanity…..”


This will sicken you, break your heart, and incite you to act – I pray.

J6 Political Hostage Jon Mellis Speaks Out – Jan 6 Detainees Have Been Sexually Assaulted and ‘Ziptied In the Middle Of The Night’ – Coming Up on Two Years of Isolation and Abuse

By Alicia Powe, GTP, December 1, 2022:

J6 political prisoner Jonathan Mellis warns he and other J6 defendants in the “Patriot Pod” of the DC Gulag are being tortured by “racist, hateful, and abusive correctional officers,” sexually assaulted and treated like animals for being Trump supporters.

Mellis described the abuse in a letter to The Gateway Pundit and is pleading for help from the American people.

“The treatment I have endured since my arrest has shaken my faith in humanity,” wrote the 34,-year-old who was apprehended nearly two years ago in a pre-dawn FBI raid while visiting his parents at their home.

“I was arrested on February 16, 2021, as if I were an Al Qaeda terrorist. I have not seen my family’s faces in almost 2 years. My father, Gennaro Mellis, died a few months after my arrest. I was denied bond back then and still today,” he continued “I hope you can forgive me for reaching out for assistance. I am struggling.”

The last time Mellis saw his father, he was being hauled away by FBI agents in a pre-dawn raid.

“My father was a decorated Vietnam War hero. He was a retired US Army Major, and also retired from the Navy. The last time I ever saw my father I was in handcuffs in front of his house surrounded by dozens of militarized FBI agents. My father was my best friend. My father knew my character and stood by me until his death on May 17, 2021,” he explained. “Unfortunately, my widowed mother is being forced by circumstance to sell the home our family grew up in. It looks like I will never get to see the inside of the home my father raised me in.”

Mellis has spent a year in solitary confinement and 35 days in “the hole,” a “worst version of solitary confinement with chains.”

“The DC Gulag is a special kind of hell,” wrote Mellis, who resided in Williamsburg, Virginia prior to his arrest. “We J6ers have been housed in our own unit together called the Patriot Pod. “

“There have been many instances where one or several of our brothers have been beaten, maced, or even sexually assaulted by our jailers. One of us was zip-tied in the middle of the night in his cell and severely beaten,” the letter states. “One of us was maced for not wearing his mask. One of us was sexually assaulted while he was strip-searched on his way back from his lawyer.

For nearly a year of my incarceration, I have been subjected to solitary confinement. This means 23 hours or 22 hours every day in my cell. I got 1 or 2 hours a day outside of my cell to shower and make a phone call. I was taken out of this pod randomly one day and placed in the hole, which is a worse version of solitary confinement with chains, for 35 days with no due process or explanation.”

In Dec. 2021, a US Marshals Service conducted an inspection of the DC jail and Patriot Pod and found “systemic failures” including jail employees withholding food and water from inmates as punishment and turning off the water in their cells.

“Human waste and raw sewage overflowed in toilets and there was rampant drug use, according to the inspection,” NBC Washington reports.

According to the Marshal’s statement inspection determined the conditions of the main jail facility conditions “do not meet the minimum standards of confinement as prescribed by the Federal Performance-Based Detention Standards.” As a result, approximately 400 inmates in federal custody were transferred from the DC jail to federal prison.

“The DC Gulag is a nasty building unfit for human habitation,” Mellis wrote. “It is infested with black mold, rats, and toilets that do not flush. The drinking water from the sinks is frequently brown and stinks like rotten eggs. We are not given proper cleaning chemicals and this is how we live. We rely on ourselves to keep our spirits up because we do not have access to visitation or even video visits.”

Correctional officers retaliated against the J6 defendants for complaining about the filthy conditions after the failed inspection by spiking their food cleaning products, Mellis claims. 

“Our entire pod’s food has even been poisoned with cleaning chemicals after court rulings against this jail because of how we are treated or when our complaints resulted in the US Marshalls inspecting this jail,” he explained. “This jail failed the inspection resulting in hundreds of Federal inmates being transferred out of here. This jail lost a lot of money because of this. Simply put, this jail hurts us and hates us.”

On January 6, four people were killed by police officers including Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt.  The officer who killed Babbitt, Lt. Michael Byrd, was exonerated from criminal charges and provided special housing by the federal government.

[….]

Democrats and the anti-Trump entire corporate press demonize the men and women who protested the fraud-ridden 2020 presidential election as “insurrectionists” who arbitrated an attack comparable to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. The Department of Homeland Security warns Americans who claim  the election was fraudulent and the believe that Trump can be reinstated pose a national security threat.

But most of the J6 political prisoners, a majority of who are veterans, are “good men” and “just family men,” Mellis said in a phone call from jail.

Keep reading….

AUTHOR

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Integrity Florida’s “Ghost Candidate” Report

TALLAHASSEE, FL – Today, Integrity Florida is releasing a new research report examining the use of so-called “ghost candidates” in Florida elections.  More specifically the report examines how ghost candidates are used to manipulate and meddle in those elections.

The report, titled “Ghost Candidates”: How They Manipulate (and sometimes steal) Florida Elections, details how ghost candidates have been used to manipulate elections for more than 20 years. Ghost candidates have been used in elections since the year 2000 to “close” primary elections that should be open to all voters, regardless of party affiliation.

Most recently, ghost candidates were used to siphon votes in three state Senate races in 2020. In one of those races, the ghost candidate clearly changed the outcome.

“Politics is a blood sport,” said Ben Wilcox, Integrity Florida Research Director. “But using ghost candidates to meddle in those three Senate elections crossed the legal and moral line.”

The report finds that in the race for Senate District 37, incumbent Democratic Senator José Javier Rodríguez lost to his Republican challenger by just over 30 votes. A ghost candidate with the same last name who did not campaign yet was the beneficiary of a dark money advertising, received over 6,000 votes. Clearly, the ghost candidate in the race received a significant number of votes, indicating that the candidate successfully siphoned votes away from the incumbent, causing him to lose the election.

The report also details how Florida’s largest utility company, Florida Power and Light (FPL), provided “dark money” funding for the ghost candidate scheme in the Senate District 37 race and, along with its Alabama-based political consulting firm Matrix, was actively involved in the strategic planning to carry out the scheme. The report adds Integrity Florida’s voice to others calling on the Department of Justice to investigate FPL’s involvement in the ghost candidate scheme.

“This company, Florida Power and Light, is not acting like a good corporate citizen,” said Wilcox. “In what I think is a cynical take on democracy, Florida Power and Light thinks it’s a good political strategy to try to mislead and confuse voters. It’s really a crime against democracy.”

The Integrity Florida report offers a series of key findings and policy options for consideration:

Key Findings Include:

  • So called “ghost candidates” have a more than 20-year history in Florida, but in the 2020 election cycle the use of three ghost candidates to siphon votes in three state senate races crossed the legal line to become a criminal form of voter fraud. 
  • Florida’s largest utility company Florida Power and Light (FPL) provided “dark money” funding for the ghost candidate scheme and, along with its Alabama-based political consulting firm Matrix, was actively involved in the strategic planning to carry out the scheme.
  • The ghost candidate scheme worked as intended in at least one 2020 race for Senate District 37, where the incumbent Democratic Senator lost to his Republican challenger by a little over 30 votes. The ghost candidate in the race, with the same last name as the Democratic candidate, received over 6,000 votes, many of which were clearly siphoned due to misinformation and voter confusion. The ghost candidate did no campaigning for the seat but was the beneficiary of ads run by an outside political committee promoting the ghost candidate as a “progressive.”
  • In August of 2022, long-time Tampa Democratic Congresswoman Kathy Castor called on the Department of Justice to investigate Florida Power and Light’s use of “dark money” to manipulate elections in Florida. While it’s not clear whether such an investigation is taking place, Integrity Florida believes a DOJ investigation into FPL’s involvement in the ghost candidate scheme is justified.
  • While the term “ghost candidate” was first applied to the candidates in the three 2020 state Senate races, there have been similar “spoiler” candidates in state and local races going back to the 2000 election. Write-in candidates exploit a loophole in a requirement in the Florida constitution that primary elections be open to all voters if the primary will decide the winner of the race.

Policy Options to Consider:

To read the report Click HERE.


©Integrity Florida. All rights reserved.