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President Of Left-Wing Group Behind Trump’s Colorado Ballot Removal Visited Biden White House Multiple Times

The CEO of the left-wing legal group behind former President Donald Trump’s removal from the Colorado ballot went to the Biden White House multiple times last year, visitor logs show.

Noah Bookbinder, president and CEO of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), visited the White House twice in 2023, visitor logs from January to September 2023 indicate.

He first visited on Jan. 6, 2023, the two-year anniversary of the 2021 Capitol riot, to watch Biden award the Presidential Citizens Medal to law enforcement officers who responded to the unrest, a CREW spokesperson told the Caller. The visitor logs appear to confirm Bookbinder’s attendance at the event.

Bookbinder began working for the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in March 2022 as part of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC), according to his bio on the DHS website. His name no longer appears on the HSAC membership list.

Bookbinder appeared at the White House a second time in March for a presentation by the HSAC’s Openness and Transparency DHS Subcommittee, the CREW spokesperson said. White House visitor logs indicate that Bookbinder was also among a group of individuals who met with Commerce Department official Maya James.

Bookbinder did not discuss the Trump ballot case with Biden officials during either visit, the spokesperson added.

Records of White House visits from October to December 2023 have yet to be released. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

CREW orchestrated the legal challenge to Trump’s ballot eligibility in Colorado, culminating in a 4-3 state supreme court ruling in December disqualifying Trump from the Republican primary ballot. The left-wing organization fundraised off the Colorado decision immediately after it was announced.

Colorado’s supreme court ruling is based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment disqualifying individuals from holding office if they have engaged in insurrection. Democratic Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows made similar arguments when she issued a ruling later in December that barred Trump from the state’s primary ballot.

Trump is the clear frontrunner to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, according to the RealClearPolitics state and national polling averages.

The former president has not been charged with or convicted of insurrection.

Trump and the Colorado Republican Party have appealed the Colorado decision to the U.S. Supreme Court and has appealed Bellows’ ruling.

Trump remains on the Colorado primary ballot while the legal challenge proceeds.

AUTHOR

JAMES LYNCH

Investigative reporter. James Lynch can be reached on Twitter @jameslynch32.

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

Left-Wing Activists Who Orchestrated Trump Ballot Removal Called For Clarence Thomas To Resign

The left-wing legal organization that facilitated former President Donald Trump’s removal from the Colorado Republican primary ballot has called for conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the group responsible for the lawsuit that got Trump kicked off the Colorado ballot, argues that Thomas should resign and face investigations by Congress and the Department of Justice (DOJ) based on stories by left-wing outlet ProPublica about gifts he received from billionaire Harlan Crow. 

“Your conduct has likely violated civil and criminal laws and has created the impression that access to and influence over Supreme Court justices is for sale,” CREW President and CEO Noah Bookbinder wrote in a May 9, 2023, letter to Thomas. “While we appreciate your many years of public service, your conduct has left you with only one way to continue faithfully serving our democracy. For the sake of our judiciary and the sake of people’s faith in its legitimacy, you must resign.”

CREW has written similar letters to House and Senate Judiciary Committees calling for investigations into Clarence Thomas and his wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas. In addition, CREW has filed a civil and criminal complaint urging the DOJ and Chief Justice John Roberts to investigate Thomas.

ProPublica and CREW share common left-wing donors, such as the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Marisla Foundation and George Soros-backed Foundation to Promote Open Society, the Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported. ProPublica has also cited legal ethics experts with past donations to Democrats and left-wing activist groups.

Thomas filed an updated financial disclosure in August to comply with updated Judicial Conference ethics rules. The attorneys who prepared the disclosure said it refuted accusations of ethics violations generated by the ProPublica reports.

Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled 4-3 on Tuesday to disqualify Trump from the state’s GOP primary ballot under the 14th Amendment for his alleged role in the Jan. 6th, 2021, Capitol riot. Trump has not been criminally charged or convicted for fomenting an insurrection.

CREW was previously overseen by Democratic party operative David Brock, who made the organization part of his $40 million effort to fight the Trump administration, Politico reported.

Bookbinder donated repeatedly to former President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign when he worked in the Senate, Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show. He is currently a member of the Biden Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) tasked with advising DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on a range of issues.

Colorado’s ruling is on hold until Jan. 4 as the Supreme Court reviews the decision. In the meantime, CREW is using the decision to solicit donations on Democratic party fundraising platform ActBlue.

“Unsurprisingly, the all-Democrat appointed Colorado Supreme Court has ruled against President Trump, supporting a Soros-funded, left-wing group’s scheme to interfere in an election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden by removing President Trump’s name from the ballot and eliminating the rights of Colorado voters to vote for the candidate of their choice,” said Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung in a statement.

“The Colorado Supreme Court issued a completely flawed decision tonight and we will swiftly file an appeal to the United States Supreme Court and a concurrent request for a stay of this deeply undemocratic decision. We have full confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court will quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these unAmerican lawsuits,” Cheung continued.

AUTHOR

JAMES LYNCH

Investigative reporter. James Lynch can be reached on Twitter @jameslynch32.

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

There’s A Direct Line Between Joe Biden’s Deep State And Trump Getting Removed From Colorado’s Ballot

The left-wing legal organization behind Colorado’s decision to remove former President Donald Trump from its Republican primary ballot has a direct link to the Biden administration.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) President and CEO Noah Bookbinder is a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) tasked with giving real-time advice to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the DHS website says. 

CREW brought the Colorado case against Trump and celebrated the Colorado Supreme Court’s 4-3 ruling to keep Trump off the state’s GOP primary ballot.

“Our Constitution clearly states that those who violate their oath by attacking our democracy are barred from serving in government. It has been an honor to represent the petitioners, and we look forward to ensuring that this vitally important ruling stands,” Bookbinder said in a press release.

Bookbinder is a former trial attorney for the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) public integrity section and former chief counsel for criminal justice for the Senate Judiciary Committee. He repeatedly donated to former President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign during his tenure with the Senate, Federal Elections Commission (FEC) records show.

The DHS appointed Bookbinder and 32 other new members to HSAC in March 2022 ahead of the council’s first meeting under Secretary Mayorkas.

“Together, we will ensure that the Department is best positioned to meet the challenges we confront today, foresee and be ready for the challenges of tomorrow, capitalize on the power of technological innovation, and serve our country by living up to our highest ideals. Our Department is privileged to benefit from the experience, vision, and creativity of these incredibly accomplished individuals,” Mayorkas said in a March 2022 press release.

HSAC has met numerous times and produced reports for Secretary Mayorkas on issues ranging from “disinformation” to supply chains and innovation. Mayorkas convened the council’s fourth in-person meeting in September 2023 and Bookbinder attended the meeting, which focused primarily on artificial intelligence, meeting minutes show.

HSAC met multiple times in summer of 2022 to discuss the preliminary and final versions of the “disinformation” report written by the Disinformation Best Practices and Safeguards Subcommittee. One of the preliminary proposals adopted by the council was dissolving the Disinformation Governance Board after widespread criticism of “disinformation” czar Nina Jankowicz and false statements she made online(RELATED: Biden’s Former ‘Disinfo’ Czar Registers As Foreign Agent)

Bookbinder attended an August 2022 meeting about the final disinformation report and questioned a section on how the DHS can be more transparent with its “disinformation” operations.

READ THE MEETING MINUTES:

“I just had one clarifying question. Clearly, a couple of the issues that are discussed in the report, particularly disinformation around the election and disinformation around COVID, are issues where information and disinformation has become highly politicized. And because of that, I think efforts to correspond to disinformation has been attacked as perhaps political,” Bookbinder said, according to the HSAC meeting minutes.

“It was my sense that the recommendation five under transparency was really intended in part to inoculate the department against accusations that correcting disinformation was political. But I just wanted to clarify if that was a part of the intent of that particular set of recommendations,” he added.

Jamie Gorelick, “disinformation” subcommittee chair responded to Bookbinder by pointing him to the final report’s lengthy appendix full of term definitions and graphics on how to correct supposedly inaccurate information.

The appendix contains a list of insights from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a DHS subdivision central to the department’s efforts to censor speech online ahead of the 2020 election. Then-President Donald Trump was among those targeted by CISA and its third-party affiliates when they pressured social media platforms to censor election-related speech, according to a report by the House Judiciary Committee.

Bookbinder worked on a report produced by the Openness and Transparency DHS Subcommittee report in March 2o23 with recommendations for how DHS can become more transparent without compromising its law enforcement mission.

The report suggests increasing funding for transparency initiatives and using a combination of training and data to make the department more accountable to the public.

Specific policy recommendations in the report address the DHS’ ability to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) records requests and additional monitoring of facilities used to detain illegal immigrants.

The southern border reportedly saw a record high of over 12,600 encounters Monday as border patrol agents struggle to process record amounts of border crossings.

DHS and CREW did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.

AUTHOR

JAMES LYNCH

Investigative reporter. James Lynch can be reached on Twitter @jameslynch32.

RELATED ARTICLE: Immigration Courts Add A Whopping One Million Cases To Backlog As Border Crisis Worsens

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

Iran fires upon, seizes U.S. commercial ship, U.S. “monitoring” the situation

“Even though the Strait of Hormuz is in Iranian territorial waters, ‘innocent passage’ is applied — ships are authorized to pass through the body of water assuming they abide by all the rules of the sea — because it is an internationally recognized shipping lane.” By firing upon the ship, then, the Iranians are clearly signaling that they hold Barack Obama in contempt, and know that there is no limit to how far they can push him. They took the measure of John Kerry at Lausanne, won their spectacular nuclear concessions from the Obama regime, and now they’re going to rub his face in their aggressiveness, knowing that he will do nothing in response.

Act of war, followed by spinelessness: “Iran seizes commercial ship, U.S. forces respond,” by Jim Sciutto and Jamie Crawford, CNN, April 28, 2015:

(CNN)Iran Revolutionary Guard patrol boats fired shots at a commercial cargo ship and then intercepted the vessel, the M/V Maersk Tigris, which was crossing the Strait of Hormuz Tuesday morning, according to a senior U.S. military official.

Despite reports in some media, there are no Americans on board, the official said.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said it was “inappropriate” for the Iranians to fire the warning shot. The U.S. Navy has dispatched one maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft to observe and monitor the situation, Warren told reporters.

The ship, a Marshall Islands-flagged vessel, was transiting the Strait into the Persian Gulf on an internationally recognized maritime route when the the Iranian military contacted the vessel and directed the ship master to “divert further into Iranian waters,” according to Warren.

“The master was contacted and directed to proceed further into Iranian territorial waters. He declined and one of the IRGCN craft fired shots across the bridge of the Maersk Tigris,” said Warren, referring to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy. “The master complied with the Iranian demand and proceeded into Iranian waters in the vicinity of Larak Island.”

After the shots were fired, the Tigris issued a distress call which was picked up by U.S. forces in the area and the USS Farragut was ordered to head towards the incident. The closest U.S. warship was 60 miles from the incident. The Pentagon thinks about 30 individuals are on board.

The U.S. Navy has also sent aircraft to monitor its status.

According to the shipping company, which is in contact with the U.S. military, the Iranian military has boarded the ship.

Even though the Strait of Hormuz is in Iranian territorial waters, “innocent passage” is applied — ships are authorized to pass through the body of water assuming they abide by all the rules of the sea — because it is an internationally recognized shipping lane.

Warren said it was “to be determined” what the USS Farragut will do when it reached the vicinity of the incident….

Probably apologize.

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