A Pennsylvania state judge ruled that an election worker cannot sue former President Trump over statements he made sowing doubt in the 2020 election results while in office, finding the statements are protected by presidential immunity.
Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas Judge Michael Erdos said Trump’s immunity covered a tweet he issued and comments he made remotely from the White House during a Pennsylvania state Senate committee hearing in November 2020. The statements, made without evidence, claimed fraud in Pennsylvania’s election tabulations.
“Other legal proceedings may examine the propriety of his statements and actions while he was the President and whether, as the plaintiffs in this and other cases contend, it was this conduct which served as the actual threat to our democracy,” Erdos ruled. “But this case is not the proper place to do so. Here, Trump is entitled to Presidential immunity.”
James Savage, a Pennsylvania voting machine supervisor in the 2020 election, filed two lawsuits — which have since been consolidated — alleging that Trump, Rudy Giuliani, two poll watchers and others conspired to defame him. Savage says their statements led him to receive death threats and suffer two heart attacks.
Erdos ruled Trump has immunity for the tweet and the remarks at the state Senate hearing because both statements were made while he was serving as president. But the lawsuit also contains claims over a letter Trump wrote to the House Jan. 6 committee last October, which Trump is not immune from as it was written after leaving office.
Erdos ruled the two earlier statements were part of Trump’s official duties, as he was speaking to the public on matters of public concern.
“Here, then-President Trump’s Gettysburg remarks and his tweet were public,” Erdos wrote. “Moreover, the topic of these statements—claims from third parties and the President himself about irregularities in the Presidential election which on their face called into question the integrity of the election and whether now-President Joseph Biden had been duly elected—was undoubtedly a matter of great public concern.”
Trump potentially faces a looming indictment in the Justice Department’s probe of the transfer of power following the 2020 election and the lead up to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Trump’s unfounded claims of mass electoral fraud are also the subject of several other civil lawsuits, which remain tied up in other courts and for which he has similarly asserted immunity.
“We are pleased with the Court’s decision to honor the long-standing principle of Presidential Immunity,” Trump legal spokeswoman Alina Habba said in a statement.
“Today, the Court made it clear that it is well within the President’s discretion to address the integrity of our election without fear of liability,” Habba continued. “We expect that the rest of Mr. Savage’s claims will similarly be disposed of as they are without merit.”
An election worker verifies a ballot on a screen inside the Maricopa County Recorders Office, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2022, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Matt York)
A practice used by some, if not all, Arizona counties to verify signatures on early ballots may be illegal.
And that could result in election officials across the state have to change their procedures – and potentially result in more signatures on ballot envelopes being questioned.
Yavapai County Superior Court Judge John Napper, said state law is “clear and unambiguous” that election officials must compare the signatures on the envelopes with the voter’s actual registration record. And that, he said, consists only of the document signed when a person first registered along with subsequent changes for things like altering party affiliation.
And what that means, the judge said, is it is illegal for county election officials to instead use other documents to determine if the signature on that ballot envelope is correct and should be accepted.
John Napper
Napper’s conclusion is not the last word.
Strictly speaking, he only rejected efforts by Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to have the lawsuit by two groups challenging the process thrown out. Napper has not issued a final order.
“We look forward to the issue being litigated,” said Paul Smith-Leonard, spokesman for Fontes.
But the judge, in his ruling, made it clear that he is not buying arguments by the secretary of state that the rules in the Elections Procedures Manual allowing the comparison of signatures against other documents – the practice now widely in use – complies with what state law clearly requires.
And Kory Langhofer, who represents those challenging the practice, said Napper’s refusal to dismiss the case means “there’s nothing left to fight about.”
Central to the fight is a section of law which requires the county recorder, on receiving early ballots, to “compare the signatures thereon with the signature of the elector on the elector’s registration record.”
Langhofer, in his court filing, acknowledged that there is nothing in state law that explicitly defines what is a “registration record.”
But he argued that “most naturally” means the state or federal documents by which someone signs up to vote and provides certain other information. And what it also includes, Langhofer said, are updated state or federal forms.
Only thing is, he said, is the most recent version of the Elections Procedures Manual, prepared by the Secretary of State’s Office, says county recorders “should also consult additional known signatures from other official election documents in the voter’s registration record, such as signature rosters or early ballot request forms.”
In some cases, Langhofer said, counties are using signatures on early ballot envelopes from prior elections for their comparisons.
Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cazares-Kelly doesn’t go that far. But she said her office relies on much more than the voter registration record.
It starts, she said, with the fact that some people register to vote when they get a driver’s license. But those licenses, she noted, can be good for up to 45 years.
“As everybody should know, signatures vary by time and place and how much time you have,” Cazares-Kelly said. “You will change your signature a number of times throughout your life, going from adolescent to full adulthood.”
And she said even her own signature changes given having to sign “a hundred documents a day.”
So other documents can be helpful.
“We receive other notifications from the voters,” Cazares-Kelly said.
“Every single time we receive something in writing, it goes into their voter file,” she continued. “So every single thing that has a signature on it, it is another indication, another touch point, another opportunity to update what those signatures look like.
Cochise County Recorder David Stevens said his office also relies on signatures on other correspondence it has received from a voter. He also said that ballot signatures can be compared with those on file with the Motor Vehicle Division.
Fontes, in asking Napper to dismiss the lawsuit, argued that other documents listed as acceptable in the Elections Procedures Manual are within the definition of a “registration record.” And if the judge wasn’t buying that, Fontes said that phrase is ambiguous, meaning that the manual can interpret it as part of his duties.
Napper was having none of that.
“The language of the statute is clear and unambiguous,” the judge wrote. “The common meaning of ‘registration’ in the English language is to sign up to participate in an activity.”
And Napper derided the idea that other documents submitted by a voter fit that definition.
“No English speaker would linguistically confuse the acting of signing up to participate in an event with the act of participating in the event,” the judge wrote.
“Registering to attend law school is not the same as attending class,” he continued. “Registering to vote is not the same as voting.”
Nor was Napper impressed by the claim that the phrase “registration record” is ambiguous, allowing the secretary of state some latitude to interpret it.
“Pursuant to the statute, the recorder is to compare the signature on the envelope with the voter’s prior registration,” he said, quoting from the law. “If they match, then the vote is counted.”
The judge also noted there is a procedure in state law that allows county election officials, if they question whether a signature on a ballot matches the official record, to contact the voter. That allows the voter to verify that it is his or her signature and offer an explanation that could be related to age, illness or injury.
Langhofer represents the Arizona Free Enterprise Club. It has backed various measures to impose new identification requirements on voters while opposing efforts to restore the state’s permanent early voting list.
Also suing is an organization called Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections. It bills itself as opposing laws changes in election laws that seek to give one group a partisan advantage and enforcing “constitutional standards against voting laws and procedures that threaten or dilute the right of qualified citizens to vote.”
Reuters says that that founders of RITE, formed last year, include former U.S. Attorney General William Barr, Karl Rove who was a top adviser to former President George W. Bush, and hotelier Steve Wynn.
Mostly White Progressive Supremacists rioting. Again. GP Photo
Visits: 24
Over 60 Lions of Liberalism ( Antifa ) arrested in Georgia riots. Leftists always love a good riot. It never fails. Build something good, and they will come. Bringing their violent acts with them.
Well we see that they have been rioting the past year or so trying to shit down a police training center. Allegedly the government has stepped in. Over 60 Antifa militants have been indicted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act over the Atlanta “Cop City” riots and attacks on officers.
I see one of the rioters works for a noted hate group. Tom Jurgens, appears to be a staff attorney for a far-left extremist organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Was Jeffrey Epstein involved in a plot to tie the 2016 Trump campaign to Russia?
A disturbing new report in the Wall Street Journal reveals that LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman introduced Trump’s inner circle to Jeffrey Epstein, who then introduced them to a ‘top Russian diplomat.’
As a reminder, Hoffman;
Bankrolled an online disinformation hoax against Roy Moore, conducted by a former Obama administration official – who also created the “Hamilton 68” propaganda website purporting to track Russian bots. Hoffman later apologized when caught.
Bankrolled Trump rape accuser E. Jean Carroll.
Gave $600,000 to a legal defense fund for Fusion GPS – the opposition research firm that prepared documents for the infamous ‘Trump Tower’ setup meeting with Don. Jr. and facilitated the Hillary Clinton-funded Steele Dossier.
Was a major Hillary Clinton supporter during the 2016 US election.
According to the Journal, Hoffman emailed people in Trump’s orbit to introduce them to Epstein, who then invited one of them – Peter Thiel – to meet with Russia’s ambassador to the UN!
In March 2014, fellow billionaire and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, a major donor to Democrats, emailed Thiel to introduce Epstein and arrange a meeting at Thiel’s San Francisco home.
“Meet one of the guys who invented derivatives, Jeffrey Epstein?” Hoffman wrote, echoing an inaccurate claim Epstein sometimes made. Hoffman wrote that Epstein was “mostly fun, very interesting guy, you may find him perverse, but very smart on biology, computation, macro econ.”
Hoffman said he regrets all his interactions with Epstein and that he made the introduction to help fundraise for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Epstein scheduled lunches with venture capitalist Peter Thiel and real-estate investor Thomas Barrack in 2016, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. At the time, both were high-profile financial backers of Trump’s campaign.
Epstein invited Thiel and Barrack to separate meetings with Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations. Churkin, who died of an apparent heart attack in early 2017, had at least eight meetings scheduled with Epstein between 2015 and Churkin’s death, the documents show. -WSJ
So, Epstein – pal to the Democrats and a prolific pedophile, had extensive dealings with a Russian diplomat that he tried to connect with Trump’s inner circle?
The report also notes that “The documents, which include thousands of pages of emails and schedules from 2013 to 2017, don’t make reference to any meetings or conversations between Trump and Epstein,” and “don’t specify Epstein’s purpose in scheduling meetings with Trump’s associates or the Russian ambassador.”
Notably, these Epstein-Russia meetings happened when the Russiagate hoax was in full swing with the FBI’s involvement.
Yet, according to Thiel, the October 2016 meeting with Epstein and Churkin featured “nothing memorable.”
“I was rather naive,” Thiel told the outlet, “and I didn’t think enough about what Epstein’s agenda might have been.”
Meanwhile, a Trump campaign spokesman said: “None of these people were Trump campaign officials, and in fact President Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago.”
As the Journal further notes:
Epstein met with and donated to Democrats more often than Republicans, according to the documents and campaign donation records. The Journal has reported that his schedules included meeting several people who had served in the Clinton and Obama administrations. In his townhouse, Epstein hung a painting that depicted Bill Clinton wearing a blue dress and red heels.
In 2019, a spokesman for Bill Clinton said the former president had cut off ties more than a decade before and didn’t know about Epstein’s alleged crimes. The spokesman said then that Bill Clinton took four flights on Epstein’s plane and once visited the townhouse, each time with his Secret Service team and for reasons related to the Clinton Foundation’s work. The spokesman declined to comment for this article.
Public records show Epstein donated to Hillary Clinton’s 2000 campaign for the Senate, and tax records indicate he donated $25,000 in 2006 to what is now the Clinton family’s global philanthropic foundation. A spokeswoman for Hillary Clinton declined to comment.
After his conviction, Epstein maintained connections with some former members of Bill Clinton’s cabinet, including Lawrence Summers, who served as Treasury secretary, and Bill Richardson, who served as energy secretary. He also met with Clinton alumni leaving the Obama administration, including Ruemmler and the current head of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns.
This begs the question, was Epstein just another prong in the Democrats’ attempts to tie Trump to Russia in 2016?
No wonder they don’t want Epstein’s appt book open to the public! — TPR
At first blush, the question posed in my title sounds overwrought, and will no doubt seem tendentious to some. Perhaps it is a little. But let’s think about it. Are there areas of human endeavor that would be more advanced without the resource-sucking, brain-draining, attention-diverting impacts of leftism? I think so.
First, consider the sheer monetary costs associated with leftism: big government, high taxes, redistribution from more to less productive and efficient endeavors, and so on. I have read estimates that human society would be 40 percent wealthier without this ongoing drain.* What could be done if all those extra resources remained in private hands?
Second, we have the regulatory costs. How much further along would human progress be without regulatory burdens and compliance costs? How many things weren’t invented because the barriers to entry were too high? How many startups ran afoul of Hillary Clinton’s “I can’t worry about every under-capitalized business” attitude?
Third, there is the brain-drain. The left killed between 100 and 240 million people in the 20th century alone (no one knows for sure how many). What brilliant minds were lost? What might they have done? What discoveries might their children have made, and their children’s children? We’ll never know.
Similarly, there are about 40 million abortions worldwide every year, and while that’s not the exclusive province of the left…it mostly is. Setting aside how you feel on the political issue of abortion, that is 40 million more minds and contributions that will never be. Every year.
Then there is the diversion of brilliant minds to pointless agenda items of the left, like trying to convince humanity that the next eco-pocalypse is right around the corner. Billions of dollars and thousands of minds are now being dumped into just one thing: the watermelon scheme of climate change. That money and those minds could be working to push a thousand different boundaries…any one of which might produce the next big advance. But scientists are human—they go where the money is, and the money is in climate change. Apologies to our ancestors who thought we’d be living in cities on the moon by now.
And it’s not just the geniuses—those diversions impact all of us. Think of all the energy we are putting into political fights: chasing nonexistent bugbears conjured up by the media, arguing online, defending ourselves from the predations of government, and otherwise wasting energy on politics and manufactured “causes.” How much more productive could each of us be with that precious time? The right shares responsibility for some of this diversion too…just not as much.
Diseases never cured. Boundaries never broken. How much further along would our space exploration be? How about longevity research?
We’ll never know.
Obviously I am engaged in counterfactual speculation here. I am sure people on the left will object, or even come up with counter-scenarios. I think they’d be wrong. We know their ideology has sky-high costs in treasure. We know it has cost us in blood, with its bottomless predilection for democide. We know how much time they spend trying to convince us of things that are not true. We’ll never know just how much all this has retarded human progress. I suspect it may be more than we realize.
If only she listened.
Credit: Blendon Township Police Department
Visits: 48
Yes, Virginia it was a good shoot. You don’t drive forward towards the Police Officer. Sadly, a mother of two and pregnant for some reason would not listen to numerous requests from the police officer.
The policeman was notified by a store employee that a woman had committed a theft. What the officer didn’t know was that the person had put back the stolen items. How could they?
The woman then puts the car in gear and hits the accelerator. The police officer directly in front of the vehicle is hit and staggers for several feet. He fires and the rest is history.
WATCH: This former police chief breaks down what happened.
Fani ignoring the Constitution. New Civil Rights Movement website photo.
Visits: 44
How crazy is this? Fani says defendants have no Constitutional rights. Fani Willis stated that based on Georgia law, asking for a speedy trial or separation from the other defendants causes this.
“Defendants cannot now argue that they are entitled to the State’s discovery responses ten (10) days in advance of trial.”
“Defendants cannot now argue that they are entitled to notice of the State’s similar transaction evidence ten (10) days in advance of trial.”
“Defendants cannot now complain that they received less than seven (7) days notice of the trial date in this case.”
Lmfao! This isn’t true! It’s not how the law works.
But this really is a mask off moment.
Fulton County DA threatens to violate the rights of the defendants because she’s not prepared for trial. https://t.co/xTYtgcykHR
Testimony this week in federal court by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger reportedly contradicted claims that former President Donald Trump insisted he violate his oath of office by fabricating enough votes to win the state.
As Breitbart News has long noted, the media have misrepresented the January 2021 phone call between Trump and Raffensperger, quoting Trump as telling Raffensperger that he should “find” the votes necessary for him to win. In fact, Trump said “I just want to find” the votes, referring to his own state of mind. Moreover, the context was that Trump believed he actually had won the state of Georgia, and the votes simply had not been properly counted yet.
Raffensperger took the stand in a federal court in the Northern District of Georgia as part of a hearing on a motion by former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who is one of Trump’s 18 co-defendants in the criminal case in Fulton County, Georgia. Meadows argued that the case should be removed to federal court, because he was just working for the president, and therefore cannot be tried in state court under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.
Meadows stunned many observers by testifying in his own defense. Raffensperger was subpoenaed to testify by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. According to George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley, Raffensperger testified that the call, while “extraordinary,” was a “settlement negotiation” in the context of an argument over whether to pursue another recount of votes — not a demand to make up new votes.
The call was misrepresented by the [Washington] Post and the transcript later showed that Trump was not simply demanding that votes be added to the count but rather asking for another recount or continued investigation. Again, I disagreed with that position but the words about the finding of 11,780 votes was in reference to what he was seeking in a continued investigation. Critics were enraged by the suggestion that Trump was making the case for a recount as opposed to just demanding the addition of votes to the tally or fraudulent findings.
Raffensperger described the call in the same terms. He correctly described the call as “extraordinary” in a president personally seeking such an investigation, particularly after the completion of the earlier recount. That is manifestly true. However, he also acknowledged that this was a “settlement negotiation.”
So what was the subject of the settlement talks? Another recount or further investigation. The very thing that critics this week were apoplectic about in the coverage. That does not mean that Trump had grounds for the demand. Trump’s participation in the call was extraordinary and his demands were equally so. However, the reference to the vote deficit in demanding continued investigation was a predictable argument in such a settlement negotiation. As I previously stated, I have covered such challenges for years as a legal analyst for CBS, NBC, BBC, and Fox. Unsupported legal claims may be sanctionable in court, but they have not been treated as crimes.
If Meadows succeeds in his bid to have the case removed to federal court, other defendants will do the same, and may ague that the charges should be dismissed because of the Supremacy Clause and on other grounds. However, Raffebsperger’s testimony could also be used to dismiss at least some of the Fulton County indictments, particularly regarding “Solicitation of Violation of Oath by Public Officer,” in reference to the phone call with Raffensperger.
Judge’s order in Mark Meadows case “could be very bad news” for Fani Willis.
By Areeba Shah.
U.S. District Court Judge Steve Jones on Tuesday ordered Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and former president Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows to offer opinions on a key matter essential to addressing Meadows’s argument that his Georgia prosecution should be tried in federal court.
Jones asked both parties to provide their views on whether “a finding that at least one (but not all) of the overt acts charged occurred under the color of Meadow’s office [would] be sufficient for federal removal of a criminal prosecution under [the federal removal statute].”
When Meadows took the stand on Tuesday, he argued he was acting in his capacity as Trump’s top White House aide when he reached out to Georgia officials following the 2020 elections. Fulton County prosecutors, on the other hand, asserted that Meadows’ actions went well beyond the responsibilities of his federal position.
Meadows was charged in Willis’ sprawling racketeering indictment, which accuses him and 17 others of conspiring to subvert the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.
In court documents, his legal team has already revealed their plans to seek the dismissal of the charges from a federal judge if the case is transferred to federal court, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Even if a judge doesn’t dismiss the charges, the shift to federal court would provide Meadows with a broader and potentially more conservative pool of jurors and bar cameras from entering the courtroom.
The pivotal point of contention for the removal hinges mainly on whether Meadows can prove that he was indicted for actions he carried out in his capacity as a federal official.
Clark Cunningham, professor of law at Georgia State University, also weighed in on X, formerly Twitter, arguing that this order “could be very bad news” for Willis.
“If I were the DA, I would ask grand jury for a superseding indictment that removes the name of Mark Meadows from Acts 5, 6, 7, and 19 of Count 1 (but continuing the allegations as to Donald Trump),” he wrote.
The first three alleged overt acts by Meadows (Acts 5, 6 and 7) are not necessary to establish his liability under RICO, but keeping them in the indictment now runs an “enormous risk” for the DA of losing the removal issue, in light of Judge Jones’ order, since these overt acts come closest to meeting the test for federal officer removal, he added.
Cunningham explained that Acts 5 and 7 involve White House meetings between Trump and state legislators, for which Meadows made “plausible claims” on the witness stand that his role was limited to what the Chief of Staff typically does. Act 6 alleges only that Meadows asked a member of Congress from Pennsylvania for the phone numbers of the leaders of the state legislature in Pennsylvania, again saying this was a typical task for a chief of staff.
“Act 19 alleges that Trump & Meadows met together with another White House staffer, John McEntee and asked him to prepare a memo for a strategy to disrupt the January 6 session of Congress,” Cunningham wrote. “Meadows testified firmly that Act 19 did not describe anything he had done and it is not worth continuing to try and prosecute Meadows for Act 19.”
Jones ordered that Willis and attorneys for Meadows file their briefs by 5 p.m. on Thursday.
The National Archives and Records Administration acknowledged it has about 5,400 emails that potentially show President Joe Biden hid behind phony names while vice president, the agency confirms.
Getty Images
Visits: 17
National Archives Has 5,400 Biden Emails With Pseudonyms.
By Jeffrey Rodack
The National Archives and Records Administration acknowledged it has about 5,400 emails that potentially show President Joe Biden hid behind phony names while vice president, the New York Post is reporting.
The existence of the records was confirmed by the NARA and came in response to a June 2022 Freedom of Information Act request by the Southeastern Legal Foundation.
Specifically, the SLF, a nonprofit constitutional legal group, requested emails relating to the accounts of Robin Ware, Robert L. Peters, and JRB Ware — pseudonyms Joe Biden was known to use in the White House during his time as vice president under Barack Obama, the Post said.
The legal foundation sued the NARA for the release of the records on Monday. The group claims the records could show Joe Biden may have provided government information to his son, Hunter Biden.
Kimberly Hermann, SLF general counsel, said in a statement: “All too often, public officials abuse their power by using it for their personal or political benefit. When they do, many seek to hide it. The only way to preserve governmental integrity is for NARA to release Joe Biden’s nearly 5,400 emails to SLF and thus the public. The American public deserves to know what is in them.”
Stephannie Oriabure, director of NARA’s archival operations division, wrote the SLF on June 24, 2022, saying: “We have performed a search of our collection for vice presidential records related to your [June 9, 2022] request and have identified approximately 5,138 email messages, 25 electronic files and 200 pages of potentially responsive records that must be processed in order to respond to your request,” according to the lawsuit.
The SLF said none of the emails or documents have been turned over to the group.
On Aug. 17, Rep. James Comer, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chair, demanded that NARA release records from Joe Biden’s years as vice president from times that overlapped with the activities of his son’s activities in Ukraine, particularly emails that were signed with the pseudonyms “Robert Peters,” “Robin Ware,” and “JRB Ware.”
Comer, R-Ky., in a letter to NARA Archivist Colleen Shogan, also requested that all unredacted documents and communications in which Hunter Biden, Eric Schwerin, or Devon Archer are copied; and for all drafts of a speech Joe Biden delivered to the Ukrainian Rada, or parliament, in December 2015.
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