The FBI’s Sick Culture of Nondisclosure

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The seventh release of the Twitter files on Monday showed the FBI and intelligence agencies worked at media outlets and social media companies to discredit true information about Hunter Biden’s laptop.  Unfortunately, this story is the latest in a long line of stories showing indisputably that the FBI has developed a sick culture of nondisclosure over time.

I’ve documented this culture in my Freedom of Information Act case against the FBI which is currently in federal court.  The case is more than four years old – still relatively young by FOIA standards – but one of the things I learned recently is that the FBI’s main database – the Sentinel system – is effectively off limits to FOIA researchers.  Sentinel contains millions of documents but can only be searched one word at a time, the FBI told the court in my case.  The FBI does not have the capability to combine search terms to narrow results, or so it claims.  So, if you put in a word like ‘mosque’, you get a million hits and the FBI says it has no duty to wade through a million records to look for anything specific FOIA researchers might be after.  The FBI’s refusal to acquire simple combination search technology makes a mockery of the Freedom of Information Act, as I’ve argued to the court.

My first pleading in the case documented the FBI’s sick culture of nondisclosure going back to Waco, where the FBI hid evidence and destroyed the crime scene so its actions could not be examined.  The sick culture continues to this day, with the FBI initially claiming it had no records regarding Seth Rich only to admit later it had 20,000 pages and his laptop.  In October, the FBI asked for 66 years to release the information, like the murder of Seth Rich was the JFK assassination or something.

The FBI’s sick culture of nondisclosure was transmitted to Twitter when the social media company was under Jack Dorsey.  Twitter employed a dozen former FBI officials in such positions as senior director of product trust.  That’s on top of previous revelations about Twitter deputy general counsel James Baker, a former FBI lawyer who recently got fired by Elon Musk for – you guessed it – hiding information.  There were so many former FBI officials at Twitter they formed their own Slack channel to communicate with each other.

The Twitter files show deep ties and weekly meetings between the FBI and Twitter executives designed to suppress true information in the run-up to the 2020 election.  Some of the information was about the Hunter Biden laptop story, which Twitter went on to censor.  The FBI also pressured Twitter to take down specific accounts to silence bothersome individuals.

The sixth release of the Twitter files, plus supplementary material, shows an FBI making so many demands on Twitter for censorship a Twitter executive was becoming uncomfortable with the arrangement.

But there’s nothing like a little cash to soothe doubts.  We now know the FBI paid Twitter millions of dollars to suppress information and keep it from the public.  It was all carried on through emails and back channel reporting platforms, all of which have now been exposed.

The FBI had 80 agents working on this and says they were just after bad foreign actors and subversive or criminal conduct.  But the Bureau’s words don’t match its actions, starting with the Hunter Biden laptop story.  We need look no further than the seventh release of the Twitter files which shows the FBI worked with Twitter to discredit “factual information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.”  That information was embarrassing to Joe Biden and could conceivably have cost the Big Guy the election.  It was embarrassing to a political favorite and that’s why the FBI wanted it suppressed.

My FOIA case has been pending for more than four years.  The FBI won’t tell me what it’s up to regarding the questions I’ve asked.  But they’re going to have to take subpoenas from the House Republicans more seriously.  The Republicans will be investigating the Bureau’s collaboration with Twitter to suppress information.  There are more files – secret files which the FBI doesn’t want to release – that the Republicans know about and will be demanding.  The Republicans believe the FBI’s claims about foreign actors are just a pretext and a full-blown censorship operation against the American people was underway.  They’ve threatened to use the power of the purse to get answers.  I will be watching closely as the FBI’s sick culture of nondisclosure is held up to the cold light of day.  The FBI is supposed to be working for us and it shouldn’t have to take 66 years – or even four years, as in my case – for it to tell us what it’s up to.  The day of reckoning is coming.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

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RELATED ARTICLE: One Month Before Hunter Biden Laptop Story, Twitter Execs And Journalists War-Gamed An Eerily Similar Scenario

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Analysis of RNC Spending Since 2017 Shows Millions Were Spent on Private Jets, Limousines, Luxury Retreats, Broadway Shows

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This is disgusting. All while the Republican Party loses elections due to a lack of funding and weak ground games for it’s candidates. Ronna McDaniel needs to be removed as RNC Chair ASAP. President Trump never should have endorsed her. The Republican Party leadership is killing the Republican Party, because they are alienating the Trump-base with corruption like this. This is just the latest example.

Breakdown is below.

EXCLUSIVE: Analysis of RNC Spending Since 2017 Shows Millions Were Spent on Private Jets, Limousines, Luxury Retreats, Broadway Shows

By The Right Scoop, Dec 19, 2022

Back in 2010, RNC Chair Michael Steele was heavily criticized and eventually lost his position because donors were angry about what they believed was luxurious spending on private jets, floral arrangements, chauffeur services, and member meetings in expensive tropical locales. Donors were used to frugality from the RNC under the George W. Bush administration, when “Karl Rove would bitch if there were flowers on the tables” and staff holiday parties were catered by Chick-fil-A.

Despite Joe Biden’s economy and three straight cycles of election losses, the RNC’s big-spending days are back with a vengeance.

Perhaps because of these losses both RNC donors and committee members are intensely interested in the committee’s finances, particularly the spending. Late last week, RedState was provided a report dated October 7, 2022 that examined RNC’s 2021-22 spending. It calculated more than $500,000 in private jet expenses, $64,000 at clothing retailers, and $321,000 in floral arrangements.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE BREAKDOWN OF RNC SPENDING BY CATEGORY

To determine how that compared with the rest of Ronna McDaniel’s tenure, RedState examined RNC expenditures from 2017 through 2022. In addition to a review of Federal Elections Commission (FEC) data, RedState spoke with current vendors, state party officials familiar with the workings, former staffers (some from McDaniel’s tenure, and some who worked for prior chairs), and several current RNC members to verify numbers and dates. Most were only willing to discuss the matters on background, and all were promised anonymity to avoid potential retaliation.

AUTHOR

Geller Report Staff

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

TWITTER FILES 7: FBI Was Directly Working As An Asset For The Biden Crime Family

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This is treason. This is an insurrection.

Techno Fog sums up:

More Twitter Files: Intelligence Community Pressure Campaign against Twitter

By Techno Fog

Michael Shellenberger has just published the latest batch of what has come to be known as the Twitter Files. It’s a follow-up to Matt Taibbi’s recent Twitter Files release concerning FBI’s pressure campaign against Twitter to remove content the agency found objectionable.

Today’s release provides more details on the relationship between Twitter and the FBI, the suppression and removal of the Hunter Biden story from Twitter the FBI’s desire for Twitter to confirm a “foreign interference” narrative that didn’t exist, and how the FBI sought user location information for tweets that weren’t remotely criminal.

For a refresher, here are the highlights from the one of the most recent releases from Taibbi, who has done excellent work on this continuing story:

  • The FBI requested take action on what it determined to be misinformation, which included jokes from small Twitter accounts about voting dates.
  • FBI e-mails to Twitter asking for assessment of terms of service violations and “location information” about accounts that allegedly “spread misinformation about the upcoming election.” Some of those accounts were permanently suspended.
  • How the 2016 “Russian election interference” hoax influenced the FBI’s 2020 operations into reviewing American social media posts.

Today’s thread by Shellenberger expands on what we have learned.

Some findings of note:

  • The FBI continued its requests of location and VPN IP data from Twitter users, done without a warrant and without a subpoena: “would Twitter be open to sharing which service provider(s) those VPN IP addresses resolved to?” To its credit, Twitter pushed back on this request.
  • In one case, the FBI requested user data for an account that was critical of BLM and the Democrats. Twitter responded by confirming “the account in question is domestic in origin.”
  • The US intelligence community was pushing Twitter to “share more information” and change its user privacy settings.
  • Approximately 6 weeks before the 2020 election, the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force requested a classified briefing for Twitter general counsel James Baker (who, as you might recall, was involved in the FBI’s “botched” Russian collusion investigation).

Baker, who was recently fired by Elon Musk, will come to be an important player in the Hunter Biden laptop saga, telling his Twitter colleagues the laptop materials were potentially hacked. Interestingly, on the day the Hunter Biden story was published, James Baker would have a telephone call with FBI general counsel Matthew Perry.

“The unnecessary FBI briefing provided the Democrats and liberal media the vehicle to spread their false narrative that our work advanced Russian disinformation.”

Read more.

TWITTER FILES: PART 7

The FBI & the Hunter Biden Laptop

How the FBI & intelligence community discredited factual information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings both after and *before* The New York Post revealed the contents of his laptop on October 14, 2020

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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

FBI Had 80 Agents Monitoring Joke and Satire Accounts To Silence Conservatives

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The FBI had 80 agents monitoring jokes random people made on Twitter but they couldn’t send one to respond to the two tips they got about the guy who would end up committing the deadliest shooting at a high school in American history.

If 80 FBI agents had worked with Twitter to silence Democrats it would have been the biggest news story of the century.

And these goons were so confident they actually forced Elon to buy Twitter when he tried to withdraw. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Twitter Files Part 6: TWITTER, FBI/DHS SUBSIDIARY

By: Mike Taibbi, December 18, 2022:

1. THREAD: The Twitter Files, Part Six TWITTER, THE FBI SUBSIDIARY
2. The #TwitterFiles are revealing more every day about how the government collects, analyzes, and flags your social media content.
3. Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary.
4. Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.
5. Some are mundane, like San Francisco agent Elvis Chan wishing Roth a Happy New Year along with a reminder to attend “our quarterly call next week.” Others are requests for information into Twitter users related to active investigations.
6. But a surprisingly high number are requests by the FBI for Twitter to take action on election misinformation, even involving joke tweets from low-follower accounts.
7. The FBI’s social media-focused task force, known as FTIF, created in the wake of the 2016 election, swelled to 80 agents and corresponded with Twitter to identify alleged foreign influence and election tampering of all kinds.
8. Federal intelligence and law enforcement reach into Twitter included the Department of Homeland Security, which partnered with security contractors and think tanks to pressure Twitter to moderate content.
9. It’s no secret the government analyzes bulk data for all sorts of purposes, everything from tracking terror suspects to making economic forecasts.
10. The #TwitterFiles show something new: agencies like the FBI and DHS regularly sending social media content to Twitter through multiple entry points, pre-flagged for moderation.
11. What stands out is the sheer quantity of reports from the government. Some are aggregated from public hotlines.
12. An unanswered question: do agencies like FBI and DHS do in-house flagging work themselves, or farm it out? “You have to prove to me that inside the fucking government you can do any kind of massive data or AI search,” says one former intelligence officer.
13. “HELLO TWITTER CONTACTS”: The master-canine quality of the FBI’s relationship to Twitter comes through in this 13. November 2022 email, in which “FBI San Francisco is notifying you” it wants action on four accounts.
14.Twitter personnel in that case went on to look for reasons to suspend all four accounts, including @fromMA, whose tweets are almost all jokes (see sample below), including his “civic misinformation” of Nov. 8.
15. Just to show the FBI can be hyper-intrusive in both directions, they also asked Twitter to review a blue-leaning account for a different joke, except here it was even more obvious that @ClaireFosterPHD, who kids a lot, was kidding.
16. “Anyone who cannot discern obvious satire from reality has no place making decisions for others or working for the feds,” said @ClaireFosterPHD, when told about the flagging.
17.Of the six accounts mentioned in the previous two emails, all but two – @ClaireFosterPHD and @fromMA – were suspended.
18.In an internal email from November 5, 2022, the FBI’s National Election Command Post, which compiles and sends on complaints, sent the SF field office a long list of accounts that “may warrant additional action”.
19.Agent Chan passed the list on to his “Twitter folks”.
20.Many of the above accounts were satirical in nature, nearly all (with the exceptions of Baldwin and @RSBNetwork) were relatively low engagement, and some were suspended, most with a generic, “Thanks, Twitter” letter.
21.Many of the above accounts were satirical in nature, nearly all (with the exceptions of Baldwin and @RSBNetwork) were relatively low engagement, and some were suspended, most with a generic, “Thanks, Twitter” letter.
22.When told of the FBI flagging, @lexitollah replied: “My thoughts initially include 1. Seems like prima facie 1A violation 2. Holy cow, me, an account with the reach of an amoeba 3. What else are they looking at?”
23.“I can’t believe the FBI is policing jokes on Twitter. That’s crazy,” said @Tiberius444.
24.In a letter to former Deputy General Counsel (and former top FBI lawyer) Jim Baker on Sep. 16, 2022, legal exec Stacia Cardille outlines results from her “soon to be weekly” meeting with DHS, DOJ, FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Keep reading….

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLE: Newest ‘Twitter Files’ release reveals platform’s ‘constant and pervasive’ dealings with FBI

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

Pennsylvania County to Recount 2020 Election Results in 2023

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The problem is fraudulent ballots.

Also 2023? What happens if the recount shows Trump won? What recourse do we have?

Pennsylvania County to Recount 2020 Election Results in 2023

By: Beth Brelj, The Epoch Times,  December 17, 2022:

Persistent questions from voters and a petition with 5,000 signatures have convinced the Lycoming County Commissioners in Pennsylvania to recount its 2020 election results.

Around the state, loosely organized groups of voters have been asking various counties for recounts from 2020.

“In our county, they approached our commissioners and leveled allegations that there were thousands of uncounted votes in our county based on what I believe are nonsense statistics,” Lycoming County Director of Elections Forrest Lehman told The Epoch Times.

Groups of 20-80 people started attending county meetings asking for the recount. The county showed various information to answer their questions, Lehman said, but voters still wanted a recount and gathered some 5,000 signatures to make that request.

“That’s when county commissioners decided, as the board of elections, that if there are 5,000 people who signed this petition and have this belief, then we need to hand count these ballots in order to restore public trust in the outcomes of our elections,” Lehman said.

The county has about 70,000 registered voters and a population of around 120,000, so to the commissioners, 5,000 is a lot of signatures, he said.

“This is not something we want to do after every election, but we need to do it once, at least, in order to prove once and for all that our voting system counts the votes accurately and that there were not thousands of uncounted votes that were hidden by an algorithm or some other nonsense like that,” Lehman said.

Keep reading…..

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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FBI Had 80 Agents Monitored Joke and Satire Accounts To Silence Conservatives

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

Philadelphia Fed: Job Gains This Year OVERSTATED by 1.1 Million, It Was Only 10K

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In the aggregate, 10,500 net new jobs were added during the period rather than the 1,121,500 jobs estimated by the sum of the states; the U.S. CES estimated net growth of 1,047,000 jobs for the period.

Anyone who believes anything coming out of government agencies is not just gullible, they’re a danger to themselves (and invariably all of us).

Job Gains This Year Overstated by 1.1 Million, Philadelphia Fed Reveals

By Andrew Moran, The Epoch Times, December 16, 2022:

Labor data might have been overcounted by as much as 1.1 million jobs earlier this year, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia revealed in a new quarterly report.

According to the regional central bank’s second-quarter “Early Benchmark Revisions of State Payroll Employment” report (pdf), researchers’ estimated employment changes that occurred between March and June were different in 33 states and the District of Columbia compared to the data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

During this period, Philadelphia Fed researchers found that there were higher adjustments in four states, lower changes in 29 states and the nation’s capital, and lesser revisions in the remaining 17 states. This included a 4.1 percent drop in payroll employment in Delaware and a 1.2 percent decrease in jobs in New Jersey.

As a result, employment gains might have been overcounted by more than 1.1 million.

“In the aggregate, 10,500 net new jobs were added during the period rather than the 1,121,500 jobs estimated by the sum of the states; the U.S. CES [Current Employment Survey] estimated net growth of 1,047,000 jobs for the period,” the report stated.

This also means that payroll jobs were flat in the March-to-June span. In addition, current estimates indicate that employment growth was 2.8 percent in the four months since June.

E.J. Antoni, a research fellow for Regional Economics in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, tells The Epoch Times that this “feels like another pyrrhic victory.”

“The Philly Fed data aligns well with the household survey that shows a flat job market since March, contra the robust growth from the establishment survey,” he said. “The seasonal adjustments to the monthly headline jobs numbers this year from BLS have been abnormally large to the upside. December’s number will have to revised down 30% more than normal to essentially balance out the earlier large upward revisions. Job growth was technically ‘front loaded’ in 2022.”

The Philadelphia Fed explained how its calculations differ from how the BLS crunches the figures.

“The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia has developed early benchmark estimates of monthly state payroll employment on a quarterly basis to predict the subsequent annual benchmark revisions by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Our process enhances the monthly Current Employment Survey (CES) payroll employment data with the more comprehensive Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) payroll employment data. The CES provides a timely estimate of monthly state employment data, but the QCEW follows about five months later with a more complete picture, covering more than 95 percent of all employers. Our methodology was adapted from an approach pioneered by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and modified to accommodate all 50 states and the District of Columbia,” the regional central bank noted in its methodology explainer (pdf).

Will this force the BLS to revise its figures lower in the coming months?
BLS Caught Overcounting

Critics have charged that there is something wrong with the monthly jobs report.

The BLS report is comprised of two chief surveys: establishment (businesses) and household. The former has recorded stronger-than-expected growth for most of 2022, while the latter has been roughly flat. Since March, the divergence has skyrocketed to 2.7 million workers.

The main explanation for this gap is that the BLS allows double counting. This means it will count every extra job a person possesses as another payroll. The household component does not permit this feature.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLE: Lame-Duck Congress Pushes Omnibus Spending Disaster – $ 1.65 TRILLION

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

Is Thomas Sowell one of the most important thinkers of our time?

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‘Maverick’ is an outstanding intellectual biography of this prolific African-American economist.

Fans of Thomas Sowell have been eagerly awaiting the new biography by Jason Riley, with the appetite being whetted by the release of Riley’s one hour documentary on Sowell’s life in January.

This is not a standard biography.

Apart from providing a basic overview of Sowell’s life (his difficult upbringing in the segregated South and in Harlem, his late entry into academic life and meteoric rise as a public commentator), the author’s primary goal is to provide an introduction to Sowell’s voluminous body of work on matters as diverse as economics, education, cultural disparities and political ideology.

Like Sowell, Riley is a conservative African-American writer. A member of The Wall Street Journal editorial board, he is critical of the statist measures (expanded government, racial quotas, etc.) which many leftists advocate, arguing that they hurt blacks instead of helping them.

Four decades Riley’s senior, Sowell has a long track record of making similar arguments. Interestingly though, he initially held very different views.

A Marxist radical from a young age, Sowell overcame the burdens of being a school dropout and worked his way to a Harvard economics degree.

Finding that “smug assumptions were too often treated as substitutes for evidence or logic” among the Harvard elite, Sowell’s years of working within the government bureaucracy gradually led him to believe that it was not helping minorities: as shown by his fellow bureaucrats’ disinterest in evidence demonstrating that the higher minimum wage laws they advocated were increasing unemployment among disadvantaged groups.

One of the highlights of “Maverick” is Riley’s description of Sowell’s difficulties as a teaching professor in the 1960s and 1970s, prior to his appointment as a Senior Fellow in the Hoover Institution in 1980s, after which Sowell was able to concentrate on research and writing.

As someone who had been raised in a poor and uneducated family, Sowell understood the importance of education and was particularly eager to help educate other African-Americans.

Despite receiving offers of teaching positions at more prestigious colleges, Sowell decided to return to his original alma mater, the predominantly black Howard University.

His refusal to accept laziness or declining academic standards among his students caused him problems here and in other colleges at a time when American colleges were at the epicentre of a cultural revolution.

“Curricula were being reworked to accommodate ideological fashions. Race and gender and class were becoming preoccupations in student scholarship and faculty tenure decisions. And the notion that education must be “relevant” to the students – especially to minority students from different backgrounds – was ascendant,” Riley writes, and Sowell found it hard to adapt.

In addition to being something of a cultural anomaly for trying to uphold traditional standards, Sowell also refused to go along with politically correct social policies which he saw were not working.

While teaching at the prestigious Cornell University, Sowell observed that the college’s policy of admitting black students who did not meet their usual academic standards in the name of diversity was resulting in gifted students (who may have thrived elsewhere) struggling in their classes.

Though he appears to have initially been reluctant to engage on questions pertaining to race such as this, Sowell’s insistence on examining the facts and his willingness to criticise progressive ideology earned him the animosity of many in the black establishment.

This was often expressed in vicious ways: when it was rumoured that President Reagan would appoint Sowell to his cabinet, a leading NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) official publicly compared him to the “house n*****s” of the plantation era.

A key criticism which Sowell levelled against so-called “leaders” of black America was their overemphasis on achieving political power (often sought for their own benefit) while members of their community suffered due to the breakdown of the traditional family and the poor-quality public services which those same political leaders were responsible for.

In a number of books on related topics – his titles included Ethnic America, Race and Culture, Conquests and Cultures and Affirmative Action Around the World — Sowell shone a light on how educational and income disparities came to exist between different groups, and how politically successful minorities (like Irish-Americans, who dominated America’s big cities as well as the hierarchy of the Catholic Church) sometimes lagged behind others in material terms while politically marginalised groups like the (Chinese diaspora in southeast Asia or the Jews of America) thrived economically and educationally.

Unsurprisingly, this did not endear him to politicians and activists who owed their positions and incomes to maintaining the view that income disparities were always the result of discrimination, which they of course maintained could only be addressed by political action.

Though Sowell’s courage and insights when it comes to issues of race are more necessary now than ever, his career offered so much more, as Riley makes clear here.

As an economist, Sowell earned the admiration of laymen with valuable and accessible books such as Basic Economics, while winning praise from other leading economists for more advanced materials such as Knowledge and Decisions.

Elsewhere, his informal trilogy about the history of ideas — A Conflict of Visions, The Vision of the Anointed and The Quest for Cosmic Justice – has helped to explain the differences in political psychology between Right and Left.

Sowell’s life has imbued in him a toughness which made him well-suited to the role he has played, one which has come at a cost.

“Sometimes it seems as if I have spent the first half of my life refusing to let white people define me and the second half refusing to let black people define me,” Sowell has reflected. Now in his 90s, he will probably never receive the recognition, which he richly deserves, as one of the world’s great intellectuals.

Throughout this excellent biography, Jason Riley provides an outstanding introduction to a truly great man whose work should continue to inspire us.

This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.

AUTHOR

James Bradshaw

James Bradshaw writes on topics including history, culture, film and literature. More by James Bradshaw

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

Ballot Harvesting: How Democracies Perish

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Judging from so many disputed elections and the resulting court cases, there is ample evidence to doubt the outcomes of the 2020 and 2022 elections. The easiest way to understand the overall strategy of the 2020 election is to read Molly Ball’s general explanation in the February 4, 2021 issue of Time Magazine. An accurate title would be: “How the Progs Harvested, Manipulated, and Cast Enough Votes to Win.” Instead, Molly Ball wrote, “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.” You decide.

The Prog victory in 2020, such as it was, rested on the usual ineptitude of many Secretaries of State, the usual failures of the U.S. Post Office, improvements in “flaps and seals” technology, the pandemic-induced flood of mail-in ballots, thousands of unmonitored ballot boxes, the advent of computer software and sophisticated printers capable of producing virtually undetectable counterfeit ballots, the hacking of some voting systems, and most importantly the money to train and hire an army of foot soldiers to pillage unprotected ballot boxes, to go door-to-door, to go to senior centers and nursing homes with offers to “help” homeowners and senior citizens understand complex ballot issues and — here’s the key — to allow the harvesters to gain physical possession of millions of ballots.

Some Secretaries of State fail to purge their registered voter database of the dead, of convicted felons, and of those who moved to other States. In all mail-in ballot States such as Colorado; the all-too-often incompetent U.S. Post Office is given millions of ballots to deliver to a list of addresses that is approximately over twenty percent in error. Incompetence, however, is not illegal.

But what follows is illegal: Step One: gain physical control over as many ballots as possible. Step Two: Open the envelopes. If they favor your candidate, reseal and cast them. Keep careful track. If surreptitiously possible, alter the “bad” ballots and cast them early. If a ballot cannot be altered safely, “spoil” the ballot in some way so it will be rejected but still accounted for. Thus, the ballot’s location is known but is probably useless to the other side. Or, if nothing else works, put the “bad” ballots in the trash.
Keeping track of the “good” ballots is crucial because if you can superintend the early casting of enough “good” ballots, Election Day is meaningless. But if you are not sure of winning via early voting, a resort to counterfeit ballots might be needed. In the 1948 fashion of “Landslide” Lyndon Johnson, it may be necessary for a number of seemingly misplaced and uncounted ballots to be “found” and added to your totals.

Josef Stalin said,

“The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.”

Change that to: “The people who control the mail-in ballots decide everything.”

Whether one thinks the 2020 election was stolen or the 2022 mid-terms were “modified” or not, clearly ballot control has gotten to be far more important than the candidate who can be a mere Stooge. Nor does it matter if the Stooge spouts utter nonsense; especially, if a co-conspiratorial MSM only mentions such gaffes sotto voce, if at all. Fair warning: If both sides adopt such tactics, representative democracy is dead.

Suggested reading: “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election,” by Molly Ball. Time Magazine, Feb.4, 2021. “How Johnson Won Election He’d Lost,” by Martin Tolchin, New York Times, Feb. 11, 1990.

©2022. William Hamilton. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: DAVID BOSSIE: Ranked-Choice Voting Is Just Another Way Of Letting Elites Tilt The System In Their Favor

Decorated Veteran and FBI Analyst Sues FBI after Being Falsely Accused of Disloyalty to the United States

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Multiple whistleblowers have called it a “purge” of FBI employees holding conservative views’ – Rep. Jim Jordan

Washington, D.C. – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a lawsuit on behalf of FBI analyst Marcus Allen in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina against FBI Director Christopher Wray for violating Allen’s constitutional rights by falsely accusing him of holding “conspiratorial views,” stripping his security clearance, and suspending him from duty without pay (Marcus O. Allen v Christopher Wray (No. 22-cv-4536)).The FBI revoked his security clearance because apparently the FBI believes that any views contrary to its own regarding what occurred on January 6 constitutes disloyalty to the United States.

The new lawsuit details Allen’s outstanding military and FBI service:

Because of his outstanding military service, [Allen] was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal. In 2004, [Allen] was designated the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity Runner-Up for Intelligence NCO of the year. 

[ *** ]

In 2015, [Allen] joined the FBI as a staff operations specialist. Among other tasks, he has provided ad hoc all-source analytical support to the FBI Charlotte Field Office Joint Terrorism Task Force. He has consistently been rated “Exceeds Fully Successful” on his FBI performance evaluations. He received the FBI Charlotte Field Office Employee of the Year Award in 2019.

[Allen] first received a Top Secret security clearance in early 2001.

Despite Allen’s exemplary service, in a January 10, 2022, letter the FBI asserted:

The Security Division has learned you have espoused conspiratorial views both orally and in writing and promoted unreliable information which indicates support for the events of January 6th. These allegations raise sufficient concerns about your allegiance to the United States and your judgment to warrant a suspension of your clearance pending further investigation.

In a February 17, 2022, letter the FBI further notified Allen that he was being placed on administrative leave without pay due to the suspension of his security clearance. 

The lawsuit states: 

[Allen’s] allegiance is to the United States, as he has demonstrated during his years of exemplary military and law enforcement service to his country.

[Allen] was not involved in the events of January 6 and did not support them in any material way.  The FBI has made no allegation or offered any evidence to the contrary.

 [Allen] has expressed no view that could be reasonably interpreted as personally expressing support or sympathy for any unlawful activity that occurred on January 6. 

 The FBI has not identified any specific statements or actions supporting its contention that Plaintiff has done otherwise.   

Judicial Watch contends that the FBI did not give Allen a chance to clear himself, despite his repeated inquiries. In early May 2022, however, the FBI requested that Allen appear for an interview. He promptly complied. The interview request came only days after FBI Director Wray was confronted by members of Congress over concerns that the FBI was weaponizing the security clearance process to target politically conservative employees. Since that time, Allen has received no further word on the status of the FBI’s investigation.    

On June 7, 2022, Rep. Jim Jordan, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Wray regarding the firing of FBI employees, noting that, “Multiple whistleblowers have called it a ‘purge’ of FBI employees holding conservative views.”

The lawsuit alleges several violations of Allen’s First and Fifth Amendment rights and asks that Allen’s security clearance and employment be restored.

“The FBI can’t purge employees based on political smears. Judicial Watch seeks to remind the FBI that it is not above the law with this civil rights lawsuit for Mr. Allen, a decorated Marine veteran and highly regarded FBI employee,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.”

Ruth C. Smith of the Elmore and Smith Law Firm in Asheville, N.C., is assisting with the suit. Allen is being represented in his administrative security clearance case by Sean Bigley and Jeffrey Billett of Bigley Ranish, LLP.   

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

Most Americans Think Inflation Is Still Increasing and Believe Twitter Engaged in Political Censorship

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NEW YORK and CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 16, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Stagwell (NASDAQ: STGW) today released the results of the December Harvard CAPS / Harris Poll, a monthly collaboration between the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard (CAPS) and the Harris Poll and HarrisX.

Joe Biden’s approval rating remains steady at 42% as two-thirds of Americans think inflation is still increasing. Ron DeSantis continues his ascent as the poll shows him defeating Biden in a 2024 matchup for the first time.

Strong majorities of voters think Twitter shadowbanned users and engaged in political censorship during the 2020 election. Seventy percent also want new national laws protecting users from corporate censorship. Download key results from the poll, which includes more on free speech, immigration, and inflation, here.

“Americans continue to show they are looking for new leaders. Ron DeSantis strengthens his grip as the Republican alternative to Donald Trump, and Elon Musk is in some ways the new Trump as the outsider taking on the establishment,” said Mark Penn, Co-Director of the Harvard-CAPS Harris Poll and Stagwell Chairman and CEO. “Americans also want more information: they are buying the Musk argument that there is an information chokehold in this country, whether by Big Tech, government, or mainstream media.”

AMERICANS THINK INFLATION IS INCREASING AND WILL LINGER

  • 66% of voters think inflation is increasing, and 61% of voters think inflation will continue for at least another year.
  • But Americans see economic troubles easing slightly: the percentage of voters who think the economy is heading in the right track and who are optimistic about their lives next year both increased by 3 points.
  • Voters are split on whether Biden’s policies caused inflation.

IT’S NOW A TWO-WAY GOP RACE BETWEEN TRUMP AND DESANTIS

  • Trump is still the GOP frontrunner in an open field: 48% of GOP voters would choose him in a primary, compared to 25% for DeSantis.
  • But in a GOP head-to-head, DeSantis defeats Trump by 4 points if GOP-leaning Independent voters are included; Trump wins the head-to-head by 10 points among only GOP voters.
  • For the first time, the poll shows DeSantis defeating Biden in a 2024 matchup, by 4 points; Trump would also defeat Biden by 5 points.

VOTERS BELIEVE TWITTER ENGAGED IN POLITICAL CENSORSHIP AND ARE ROOTING FOR ELON MUSK

  • Americans believe in the Twitter Files revelations: 64% think Twitter was secretly shadow banning users, and 64% also think Twitter engaged in political censorship during the 2020 election.
  • Americans like Elon Musk: 61% think Musk is trying to clean up Twitter from abuses, and his personal favorability is 8 points above water.
  • The Hunter Biden laptop story continues to generate controversy: 61% of voters think Twitter’s decision to ban tweets about the laptop was based on political bias; but 42%, including a majority of Democrats, believe the laptop is Russian disinformation.
  • 70% of voters, including strong majorities across the political spectrum, support new national laws protecting internet users from corporate censorship.

AMERICANS THINK ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS A SERIOUS ISSUE BUT DON’T KNOW THE NUMBERS

  • Voters are concerned about the effects of Biden’s immigration policies: 67% think they have encouraged illegal immigration, and 57% think they are increasing the flow of drugs and crime.
  • Americans are unfamiliar with the extent of illegal immigration: 64% correctly said the number of illegal border crossings has increased under Biden, but the median voter underestimated that number by a factor of 10 (250-500 thousand vs. 2-3 million).
  • Two-thirds of Americans want Biden to issue stricter policies to reduce the flow of illegal immigrants, when told the actual number of illegal crossings in the last year (over 2.75 million).

The December Harvard CAPS / Harris Poll survey was conducted online within the United States from December 14-15, 2022, among 1,851 registered voters by The Harris Poll and HarrisX. Follow the Harvard CAPS Harris Poll podcast at https://www.markpennpolls.com/ or on iHeart Radio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcast platforms.

About The Harris Poll

The Harris Poll is a global consulting and market research firm that strives to reveal the authentic values of modern society to inspire leaders to create a better tomorrow. It works with clients in three primary areas: building twenty-first-century corporate reputation, crafting brand strategy and performance tracking, and earning organic media through public relations research. One of the longest-running surveys in the U.S., The Harris Poll has tracked public opinion, motivations, and social sentiment since 1963, and is now part of Stagwell, the challenger holding company built to transform marketing.

About the Harvard Center for American Political Studies
The Center for American Political Studies (CAPS) is committed to and fosters the interdisciplinary study of U.S. politics. Governed by a group of political scientists, sociologists, historians, and economists within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, CAPS drives discussion, research, public outreach, and pedagogy about all aspects of U.S. politics. CAPS encourages cutting-edge research using a variety of methodologies, including historical analysis, social surveys, and formal mathematical modeling, and it often cooperates with other Harvard centers to support research training and encourage cross-national research about the United States in comparative and global contexts. More information at https://caps.gov.harvard.edu/.

©Harvard CAPS / Harris Poll. All rights reserved.

6 Republican Lies Behind the ‘Respect for Marriage’ Act

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The recent, lamentable vote over the so-called Respect for Marriage Act revealed a new breed of Republican: The “personally pro-marriage, but” Republican. Like their spiritual forebears, the “personally pro-life, but” Democrats, they strenuously present themselves as people of deep moral conviction, who have equally compelling reasons to lay aside their views and act on other people’s convictions for political reasons. Here are six such explanations offered by Republican senators who supported the Disrespect for Marriage Act, and the reason their rationales fall short.

Cynthia Lummis, Lie #1

The statement: In her official statement on the bill’s passage, Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) invoked America’s Founding Fathers. “Striking a balance that protects fundamental religious beliefs with individual liberties was the intent of our forefathers in the U.S. Constitution and I believe the Respect for Marriage Act reflects this balance,” Lummis said. Lummis, who says she identifies “as a Christian and a conservative,” noted, “While I firmly believe marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman, I respect that others hold different beliefs.”

The lie: The Founding Fathers never intended to “strike a balance” between religious liberty and “individual liberties”; religious liberties are individual liberties. The Bill of Rights made freedom of religion its first freedom: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” says the First Amendment. Congress — and all members from the founding generation to Lummis’s — are legally prohibited from stymying the free exercise of religion.

The Founders considered the right to practice religion, not merely hold it, as fundamental and inviolable. “To restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty,” wrote Thomas Jefferson. James Madison agreed, “The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man: and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.” Even at the dawn of our independence, Samuel Adams said “this happy country” had become the “last asylum” for “the right of private judgment in matters of conscience.”

Yet this bill obliterates that balance, forcing Christian bakers, florists, web designers, and many other professionals to choose between violating their faith or losing their business. As Missouri Attorney General Jay Ashcroft told “Washington Watch” on December 5, the bill represents a “massive step away from how this country was founded, and it will eventually affect every individual who has a deeply held religious faith, regardless of what that faith is.”

And, of course, it is possible to “respect” the views of others without making their views the law of the land.

Cynthia Lummis, Lie #2

The statement: Senator Lummis received plaudits from colleagues on both sides of the aisle for her self-contradictory speech supporting the Respect for Marriage Act. Standing on the Senate floor, Lummis said, “We do well by taking this step, not embracing or validating each other’s devoutly held views, but by the simple act of tolerating them.”

The lie: Tolerance is precisely what the Respect for Marriage Act annihilated. In the unlikely event that justices overturned Obergefell, the states would have regained the right to make their own marriage laws democratically, as they had for 226 years before the ill-conceived ruling. The genius of federalism, enshrined by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, forced states to tolerate other states coming to different policy conclusions. The Respect for Marriage Act replaced the 50 states’ peaceful coexistence with imperious, top-down government decrees designed to silence one side of the debate.

Mitt Romney, Lie #1

The statement: Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) also tried to square his belief in the nuclear family with his vote to redefine the institution. “While I believe in traditional marriage, Obergefell is and has been the law of the land upon which LGBTQ individuals have relied,” Romney said.

The lie: If Congress should “codify” same-sex marriage because same-sex couples have “relied on” Obergefell for seven years, what possible reason can Romney give to oppose “codifying” abortion-on-demand? Roe v. Wade stood for 49 years and affected more than half of all Americans; people who identify as gay make up 4% of the U.S. population, and only 10% of them have ever obtained a marriage license. The notion that women “rely” on the Supreme Court’s diktats echoes another Republican disappointment: Justice Anthony Kennedy, who upheld Roe on specifically those grounds. Kennedy wrote in Casey v. Planned Parenthood (1992), “[M]illions of women continue to rely on the fundamental rights guaranteed in Roe v. Wade.” The same compass-free jurisprudence, from the same justice, undergirds Obergefell v. Hodges. How long until Romney endorses the “Reproductive Freedom for All” Act?

Mitt Romney, Lie #2

The statement: Senator Romney offered a second rationale for his vote to redefine marriage in all 50 states: “While I believe in traditional marriage … [t]his legislation provides certainty to many LGBTQ Americans, and it signals that Congress — and I — esteem and love all of our fellow Americans equally.”

The lie: Normal people don’t ponder whether their leaders “love” them (although GOP base voters could be forgiven for asking if the party elite hate them). National laws are not meant to serve as mash notes; legislation exists to codify policies that accord with reality to further human flourishing. “Our laws actually don’t confer dignity. You and I don’t actually confer dignity. We just acknowledge dignity,” said David Closson, director of the Center for Biblical Worldview at Family Research Council, on the December 9 episode of “Washington Watch.”

Honorable Mentions: Shelley Moore Capito and Dan Sullivan

As the slippery slope continued, Senate Republicans began backtracking from other principles, as well. Senator Shelley Moore Capito of bright red West Virginia did not say she believes in traditional marriage, only that “I appreciate my fellow West Virginians who have reached out to me regarding the sanctity of marriage, and hold sincere beliefs based on strong traditional and religious values.” But Capito and her fellow Republicans (except Susan Collins of Maine) voted for a religious liberty amendment from Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), signaling the underlying legislation did not go far enough to protect people of faith from potentially bankrupting lawsuits. Then these Republicans, including Capito, voted for the unamended bill, anyway, indicating their willingness to see believers persecuted by LGBT activists, which hardly reflects Capito’s appreciation.

Likewise, Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) admitted he had abandoned his constitutionalist/federalist principles in subjecting 50 states to an imperial decree from Washington. He offered this explanation: “While I’ve long held that marriage should be an issue left up to the states, the Supreme Court nationalized the issue in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015. Although I disagreed with Obergefell, I said then I would respect the [c]ourt’s decision and also continue to fight for, respect, and defend the religious liberty of all Americans.”

Sullivan said he opposes national legislation — but since an activist court already nationalized the issue, he voted to expand their ruling and create new threats to religious liberty without giving people of faith a single additional protection.

These are but six lies. The greatest unspoken lie holds that legislators can change the definition of marriage by majority vote on the Supreme Court or in Congress. The eternal truths the Creator established to order the world will continue as certainly as they have endured in endless ages past. The only question is whether sage leaders obey them and enjoy the benefits — or defy them, and cause all of us to reap consequences too plain to be hidden beneath soothing-sounding falsehoods.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Senator Ernst the Latest to Face Blistering Backlash over Marriage

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

VIDEO: President Trump Outlines His Restoring Free Speech Plan—America’s Digital Bill of Rights

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President Donald J. Trump sent a clear message on what his primary focus will be when he is reelected POTUS in 2024.

Watch: Trump vows to dismantle the “censorship cartel” when reelected,

In a December 15, 2022 Forbes article titled Trump Vows To Dismantle ‘Censorship Cartel’ If He’s Re-Elected—An Apparent Nod To Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ Release Sara Dorn reports,

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday promised to upend all forms of social media content moderation if he’s re-elected, in what he framed as a bid to “reclaim the right to free speech” while describing a plan that seems targeted at the previous management of Twitter, whose new owner Elon Musk has become a recent ally to the right.

KEY FACTS

  • In a seven-minute video posted on Truth Social, Trump said if he’s re-elected in 2024, he would “shatter the left-wing censorship regime” by banning any federal agency from “colluding with” businesses, organizations or people who attempt to censor any forms of speech.
  • Trump also said he would order the Justice Department to investigate all forms of censorship and revoke federal funding for nonprofits, colleges and universities that engage in content moderation, including flagging misinformation and disinformation.
  • The former president called on Congress to take immediate action toward executing his planned investigation by issuing “letters of preservation” to the Biden Administration and big tech companies ordering them not to destroy evidence of practices he called censorship.

In promoting his agenda, Trump highlighted “bombshell reports” he said “have confirmed that a sinister group” of “Silicon Valley tyrants,” among others, colluded to “silence the American people,” an apparent nod to Musk’s release of internal Twitter documents that show how the company made content moderation decisions prior to Musk’s ownership.

Read more.

President Donald J. Trump On Free Speech

If we don’t have free speech, then we just don’t have a free country. It’s as simple as that. If this most fundamental right is allowed to perish, then the rest of our rights and liberties will topple. Just like dominos, one by one.

That’s why today, I’m announcing my plan to shatter the left-wing censorship regime and to reclaim the right to free speech for all Americans and reclaim is a very important word in this case because they’ve taken it away.

In recent weeks, bombshell reports have confirmed that a sinister group of deep state bureaucrats, Silicon Valley tyrants, left-wing activists and depraved corporate news media have been conspiring to manipulate and silence the American people. They have collaborated to suppress vital information on everything from elections to public health. The censorship cartel must be dismantled and destroyed and it must happen immediately.

Within hours of my inauguration, I will sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with any organization, business, or person, to censor, limit, categorize, or impede the lawful speech of American citizens. I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as ‘mis-‘ or ‘dis-information’. And I will begin the process of identifying and firing every federal bureaucrat who has engaged in domestic censorship — directly or indirectly… all parties involved in the new online censorship regime, which is absolutely destructive and terrible, and to aggressively prosecute any and all crimes identified…

From now on, digital platforms should only qualify for immunity protection under Section 230, if they meet high standards of neutrality, transparency, fairness and non-discrimination… “When users of big online platforms have their content or accounts removed, throttled, shadowbanned or otherwise restricted, no matter what name they use, they should have the right to be informed that it’s happening, the right to a specific explanation of the reason why and the right to a timely appeal.

The Trump Free Speech Plan for 2024

The “Restoring Free Speech” Plan:

  1. Ban federal agencies from colluding to censor American citizens.
  2. Ban taxpayer dollars from being used to label speech as “mis-” or “disinformation”.
  3. Fire every federal bureaucrat who has engaged in domestic censorship.
  4. Immediately send preservation letters to the Biden administration and Big Tech giants.
  5. Order the DOJ to investigate all parties involved in the online censorship regime and prosecute any and all crimes identified.
  6. Revise Section 230 to drastically curtail big tech platforms’ power to restrict lawful speech.
  7. Stop federal funding for all non-profits and academic programs engaged in censorship.
  8. Suspend federal dollars to any university that has engaged in censorship support activities.
  9. Enact criminal penalties for federal bureaucrats who partner with private entities to violate your Constitutional rights.
  10. Impose a 7-year cooling-off period before former intelligence and national security officials can work at Big Tech platforms.
  11. Pass a Digital Bill of Rights.

President Donald J. Trump has hit the nail on the head. Passing a a Digital Bill of Rights insures that federal bureaucrats stop colluding with big tech to censor Americans.

This is a priority as there is a reason that the First Amendment is first.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

Facebook’s COVID ‘Vaccine’ Fact-Checkers Are Funded by Vaccine Drug Companies

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“This is absolute collusion on the part of vaccine manufacturers having funding the fact checkers on social media.” – Michael Rectenwald

Every time I posted a new study or data analysis regarding the side effects of the Covid vaccine to Facebook, I was banned, for a month.

Every time.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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RELATED VIDEO: Can We REALLY Trust Vaccine Fact-Checkers??!

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

PODCAST: ‘Freedom of Speech is the Foundation of a Free Society and Without it a Tyrant Can Wreak Havoc Unopposed While His Opponents Are Silenced’

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Gateway Pundit posted my interview with Joe Hoft on his radio show. Here are some of the highlights:

“Freedom of Speech is the Foundation of a Free Society and Without it a Tyrant Can Wreak Havoc Unopposed While His Opponents Are Silenced” – Pamela Geller Shares from the Heart on America Today

By Joe Hoft, Gateway Pundit, December 15, 2022:

Pamela Geller was on with Joe Hoft today and discussed the US status quo today.

Pamela and Jim Hoft go way back.  She reminded the listeners today of sitting with Jim at the United Nations in the mid-2000s and never imagining what we would be seeing today.  She knows what it was like as a little girl in New York enjoying freedom.

Pamela was reminded of what she shared a year ago – the foundation of our country is the 1st Amendment but without free and fair elections, it’s all just gibberish.

She continued with that theme today.  Pamela shared:

The people have no say and it is the opposite, the polar opposite of what this country was founded on.  You see they’re acting with impunity.  They’re literally without consequences.  It’s power without accountability…

…We’re living in an upside down world.  It’s really a morally inverted world where good is evil and evil is good.  It harkens back to the Bible.

And of course, the principle of free speech, as Ayn Rand said, is not concerned with the content of a man’s speech.  It doesn’t protect only the good ideas.

Geller discussed Ayn Rand, the author of Atlas Shrugged, calling her arguably America’s most significant political theorist and political philosopher of the past century.

She went on to say the greatest enemy of women is feminism and that transgender people are mocking women.  “We’re living in a terrible age of oppression and censorship.”  America is now moving to doublespeak.

It’s really quite frightening.  Freedom of speech is the foundation of a free society and without it a tyrant can wreak havoc unopposed while his opponents are silenced.  Look, that’s us…Political opinion has been designated now as hate speech.

Listen to the entire interview with one of America’s greatest thinkers today starting at the 9:00 minute mark below.

Keep reading….

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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

SBF’s Political Donations: What Did Democrats and RINOs Know and When Did They Know It?

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U.S. prosecutors in New York charged Democrat super-donor and disgraced crypto CEO Sam Bankman-Fried with making “tens of millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions.”   A magistrate in the Bahamas denied bail on the grounds SBF, as he is known, is a flight risk.  SBF plans to fight extradition from the Bahamas, but fighting extradition is generally a losing proposition.  I know that from handling several extradition hearings myself as a criminal defense attorney.  Expect SBF to be returned to the U.S. to face charges.

There is speculation SBF was arrested so he wouldn’t have to testify before Congress and face questions that would embarrass his political cronies.  In any event, prosecutors say SBF stole billions of dollars from his FTX crypto customers and used it for his personal benefit, to finance his hedge fund, and to make illicit campaign donations.

Some of the donations, the indictment alleges, were made through other people to skirt campaign finance contribution limits for the 2022 midterms and other elections.  These are called ‘straw donations’ and they’re illegal.  “These contributions were disguised to look like they were coming from wealthy co-conspirators, when in fact the contributions were funded by [SBF’s hedge fund] with stolen customer money,” the lead prosecutor said.

The contributions totaled more than $70 million in the last 18 months, mostly going to Democrats and left-leaning groups, making SBF the second largest donor to Democrats after George Soros.  Over $5 million went to the Big Guy, Joe Biden’s campaign.  A Democrat superPAC called Protect Our Future got $27 million to help elect candidates focusing on pandemic prevention.   That group poured $10 million into a Democrat congressional campaign in Oregon, but the candidate lost in the Democrat primary.  Another $7 million went to other Democrat superPACs focusing on congressional races.  SBF personally contributed the individual maximum of $5,800 to Democrat Senator Debbie Stabenow and Republican Senator John Boozman to influence the way they were writing a crypto regulation bill.  Liberal Republicans in Name Only – RINOs – Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine also received the individual maximum from SBF.  My National RINO Hunt Team is especially interested in Collins and Murkowski because they stand in the way of returning the Republican Party to a party of principle again.

Some politicians are returning SBF’s donations – Kirsten Gillibrand, Dick Durbin, and others.  So far, the Big Guy – Joe Biden – hasn’t and deflects questions when asked.

One interesting aside in all this is SBF’s support for something called ‘effective altruism’, a school of philanthropic thought that looks through data for the biggest bang for the buck and focuses on long-term threats to humanity.  This is why SBF gave $27 million to Protect Our Future, mentioned earlier, which supports preparedness for the next pandemic.  Sounds benign, but a big proponent of effective altruism is ethicist Peter Singer who thinks we should kill the elderly who have dementia to reduce their suffering and give parents who can’t take care of their newborns the right to kill them.  Swell guy.  SBF has been called naïve for dabbling in causes he doesn’t really understand.  Learn from SBF’s mistakes and don’t let that happen to you.  Oh, and don’t trust anybody under 30.

But back to the main point for today:

Politicians take money from sketchy people all the time.  The question is what did the Democrats and RINOs who took money from SBF know about him stealing money from his customers and when did they know it – before or after accepting his campaign contributions. I hope we find out.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.