Category: Back Door Power Grab

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Biden Cartel Commentary Corruption Crime Elections Faked news January 6 Links from other news sources. Media Woke MSM Reprints from others. The Courts The Law

The Georgia Indictment Was Triggered by Fake News.

The look of desperation.Joe Raedle / Getty

The Georgia Indictment Was Triggered by Fake News.

The indictment against President Donald Trump and 18 lawyers, aides, and supporters has been widely criticized, but even many of the critics have missed the most important flaw: the fact that the entire grand jury investigation began with a bit of fake news.

The fake news was reporting that Trump had told Georgia officials, by telephone, to fabricate votes.

In early January 2020, for example, Trump was reported to have told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the votes he needed to win.

Actually, what Trump said was: “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state” (emphasis added).

Trump was not giving an order. He was talking about his own feelings. And as Scott Adams noted this week, Trump was speaking in the context of believing he had already won the state. He believed the proof was out there; he didn’t need to make anything up.

As George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley has noted: “While others have portrayed the statement as a raw call for fabricating the votes, it seems more likely that Trump was swatting back claims that there was no value to a statewide recount by pointing out that he wouldn’t have to find a statistically high number of votes to change the outcome of the election. It is telling that many politicians and pundits refuse to even acknowledge that obvious alternate meaning.”

The term “find” is also used colloquially, and often, in the context of counting votes. Political analysts on television routinely say that a candidate needs to “find” votes in one area or another, having already been cast, as results are reported by local precincts.

A week later, there was a mistaken report in the Washington Post on Jan. 9, 2021, that Trump had urged a Georgia election investigator, later named as Frances Watson, to “find the fraud.” The original headline was: “‘Find the fraud’: Trump pressured a Georgia elections investigator in a separate call legal experts say could amount to obstruction.”

The Post later had to issue a correction: “Trump did not tell the investigator to ‘find the fraud’ or say she would be ‘a national hero’ if she did so. Instead, Trump urged the investigator to scrutinize ballots in Fulton County, Ga., asserting she would find ‘dishonesty’ there.” But the inaccurate version of the Post‘s original story was repeated throughout the mainstream media before the correction was made.

That does not mean Trump’s conduct was praiseworthy. But there was nothing in his conversations — properly reported, at least — to suggest that he had done anything illegal, especially given that he knew lawyers and skeptical officials were listening to him.

Nevertheless, these reports were partly what prompted Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to launch her investigation, starting with a “special grand jury” and leading to the current indictment.

CNN recently reported that the conversation with Brad Raffensperger were what “kicked off the local district attorney’s investigation.” That conversation, and others, were reported — and misquoted — in a highly partisan context, when Democrats were looking for any way to punish Trump and his supporters.

In Trump’s second impeachment trial, for example, which centered on the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021, the Democrats’ House impeachment managers presented the fake “find the fraud” quote as if it were real, effectively falsifying evidence in the Senate.

It was not the first time fake news had factored into an impeachment.

Trump’s first impeachment was prompted by misleading, second-hand, anonymous media reports about his telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The transcript, which Trump declassified and released, showed that there had been no “quid pro quo” for an investigation into (accurate, it turns out) suspicions of Joe Biden’s role in Ukraine. But Democrats stuck with the fake news, even making up a fake transcript.

The pattern in both cases was the same: incriminating media reports, based on leaks that likely came from anti-Trump sources, triggered an investigation that had too much political momentum to be stopped once the contrary, first-hand evidence emerged.

Another fake news story that helped launch an investigation was the claim that Trump asked Russia to hack into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails. Trump joked about Russia finding Clinton’s emails during a press conference in July 2017. His critics claimed that his rather obvious attempt at humor was, in fact, an invitation to a geopolitical rival to commit espionage.

That prompted then-CIA director John Brennan to start a counter-intelligence investigation into the Trump campaign. That investigation fed the “Russia collusion” hoax, which became an attempt to undo the results of the 2016 election. No major figure — not Clinton, nor her lawyers, nor the officials responsible for pushing the lie — was indicted, though Special Counsel John H. Durham convicted an FBI lawyer of falsifying an email (and lost two other cases, likely, in part, because of jury nullification).

It is unclear whether the “special grand jury” in Georgia heard about the calls to Raffensperger and Watson, though it reportedly heard recordings of another call, with Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives David Ralston.

All three calls are referred to in the indictment approved by a formal, subsequent grand jury on Monday. But the indictment does not cite the falsely reported quotes from those calls, or even an accurate version of Trump’s statement to Raffensperger, which launched Willis’s investigation.

That is because the actual quotes from those calls are, arguably, exculpatory, just like the Ukraine transcript. But it is too late.

Once again, the partisan media, amplifying the political prejudices of anti-Trump officials, has brought the country to the brink.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Biden Cartel Commentary Corruption History Links from other news sources. Media Woke MSM Opinion Politics Progressive Racism Reprints from others. The Courts The Law

Inside the progressive war on the Supreme Court The longer the spasm of investigative reporting goes on, the more desperate it sounds.I

War on the Conservative Justices. Spectrum Photo.

Inside the progressive war on the Supreme Court. The longer the spasm of investigative reporting goes on, the more desperate it sounds.

In the basement of a Washington, DC restaurant, 200 ticket-purchasing fans have gathered to witness the live recording of a multifaceted conversation about the villainy and corruption of the Supreme Court, and one justice in particular. It only seems appropriate to order the shrimp and grits: it costs $19.99 and comes with a white-wine tomato sauce. This may seem rather hifalutin, but it also comes in a glass mason jar that references tired hipster kitsch — perfectly suitable for a live podcast hosted by Slate.

Shrimp and grits are the uptown incarnation of staples from the Carolina Lowcountry, where the Gullah Geechee people, who live on the Sea Islands along the coast of the Carolinas and Georgia, would catch small creek shrimp in their bare hands to eat themselves or sell on the streets of the cities and towns. Grits, from ground dried corn, have a more troublesome history: they were distributed by slaveholders as part of slaves’ food allowances. Historical records show Carolina slave children would get one pint of grits a day for most of the year, with salt.

Clarence Thomas’s mother tongue was not English, but Gullah — a lilting language that sounds like music, a mysterious linguistic cocktail of English, Creole and West African. (Experts disagree on its exact origin.) Thomas was born in 1948 in Pin Point, Georgia, the second child of Leola Williams. His father abandoned them when he was two. When he was six, his younger brother accidentally burned down the shack they lived in, and they were both sent to be raised by his grandfather in Savannah.

This is the origin story of today’s most hated Supreme Court justice, if you poll the Slate audience. It is also the main focus for a well-funded, well-organized Democratic campaign to put the Supreme Court under siege — not just in the press, but in the public too. And many on the left seem to like it that way. If you can’t transform the judiciary through the process of government, transform it by making it a job people are afraid to take.

 

 

In March 2020 Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer stood surrounded by protesters and pointed at the Supreme Court Building, bellowing: “I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Since then, the last of the three branches of government with respect for norms has indeed been at the center of a whirlwind — even as Democrats repeatedly claim to be the stalwart defenders of democracy, norms, the Constitution and the rule of law.

When the draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — the most significant culture-war decision in a generation — was leaked, the justices’ families and children were mapped and targeted, and their homes picketed illegally without any reaction from Merrick Garland at the Department of Justice. A twenty-six-year-old man even traveled across the country intending to murder Brett Kavanaugh and his family. He showed up on the justice’s suburban street with a Glock-17 and a plethora of tools — zip ties, duct tape, a tactical knife, pepper spray, a crowbar and padded boots for stealth. With last-minute misgivings, he called 911 and told the operator he had traveled from California “to kill a specific United States Supreme Court justice.” His online messages showed he had wanted to kill as many as three; he had conducted internet searches for “most effective place to stab someone,” “assassin skills,” “assassin equipment” and “assassinations.” He was arrested and indicted — he pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. (Authorities still claim to have no idea who leaked the opinion.)

In the opening episode of a podcast series focused on Clarence Thomas, Slate host Joel Anderson begins with his own peaceful version of a home confrontation. In “America’s Blackest Child,” he knocks on the screened-porch door of a modest single-story white house on a Savannah street. The ninety-four-year-old Leola Williams, happy to oblige a visitor, welcomes Anderson inside, where he discovers the shocking scene you would expect from any proud Southern mother: pictures of her family, including her son Clarence, covering the walls.

Anderson sounds awkward in the podcast audio from Mrs. Williams’s home, as if he knows he’s crossed a line. But he showed no such qualms when he appeared on television with MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan to promote the episode, instead expressing surprise there was no security to stop him outside the house. “If they had had a chance to tell me to not come, they probably would have, but when you show up it’s hard to turn someone away from your front door,” he said. The MSNBC segment is mostly devoted to accusing Thomas of being a hypocrite for his anticipated ruling against affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc v. Harvard. (Thomas joined the 6-3 majority in the decision announced on June 29.) Speculating on his likely vote, Hasan described it as an example of a minority “pulling up the drawbridge after themselves.” Asked why Thomas would choose to become a member of the “radical right,” Anderson had the answer: “He wanted to make money.”

Money is central to the story the left wants to tell about Thomas and the Supreme Court more generally. As is this little white house in Savannah. A ProPublica investigation revealed this spring that billionaire conservative Harlan Crow bought the property from Thomas and his family several years ago.

 

The relationship between Thomas and Crow, a major Republican donor the justice and his wife Virginia say is a close friend they’ve known for years, has been the primary focus of ProPublica’s “Friends of the Court” series, which seeks to pin all manner of ethical lapses and alleged inappropriate and illegal behavior on conservative justices.

ProPublica’s work has been the centerpiece of a flood of reporting across multiple media outlets focusing on what is being framed as a Supreme Court irrevocably compromised by relationships with well-heeled benefactors. The original series is a slog of filings and reports interspersed with vacation photos dug up from corners of the internet and quotes from various ethics experts — who also are of the left — denouncing the dire nature of a corrupt court.

At first glance, many of these stories look pretty bad. They paint a picture of lifetime-appointed justices palling around with powerful billionaires who shepherd them on fishing trips and to hunting lodges, take them on vacations to exotic locales and contribute indirectly or directly to supporting their legacies. It’s not a pretty picture. Yet even slightly closer inspection reveals that there are enormous reasons to take the breathless reporting with a pinch of salt.

The best example yet of the absurdly disproportionate reporting came in an over-the-top piece by Stephanie Kirchgaessner of the Guardian. The article revealed that seven Washington attorneys had used Venmo to send Christmas party money to a top aide of Thomas’s. Noticeably absent from the hair-on-fire “conflict of interest!” piece were the amounts in question, which turned out, according to one of the payers, to be $20 for an annual “lunch buffet consisting of hot dogs, hamburgers and chicken tenders” held for Thomas’s former clerks. Scandalous!

Then there’s the travel. The Judicial Conference, the administrative body which sets the rules for things such as travel disclosures, requires justices to report where they go, when they went and the nature of expenses, but not total costs. They are not required to disclose “any food, lodging or entertainment received as ‘personal hospitality of any individual.’” The rules further define the scope of hospitality: “hospitality extended for a non-business purpose by one, not a corporation or organization… on property or facilities owned by [a] person.”

The argument that the loophole should be smaller might be valid, but the rules are what they are. Demanding justices retroactively report something they weren’t required to report at the time is absurd — ex post facto rulemaking, if you will — and implying they were doing something untoward by following the rules as written is disingenuous. And it’s clear enough that justices of many stripes have long proceeded by the ethics rules as they stand.

 

 

The New York Times acknowledged in their editorial on the issue that “Justice Stephen Breyer took at least 225 subsidized trips from 2004 to 2018, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, including trips to Europe, Japan, India and Hawaii… Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg got a private tour of Israel in 2018 that was paid for by an Israeli billionaire, Morris Kahn, who has had business before the court.” And OpenSecrets reported that the top two trip-getters in 2021 and 2022 were tied, with Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Elena Kagan both at eight. So yes, both sides do it.

In fact, the single most overlooked story in recent years may relate to the Notorious RBG. According to the Washington Free Beacon, a $1 million prize given to her by the left-leaning globalist Berggruen Institute raised eyebrows (the Judicial Conference limits honoraria to $2,000), but RBG said she would instead donate the amount to a variety of charities. Only later did it become clear that she had wanted the list of recipients to remain hidden, and Berggruen complied on its requisite Form 990 — preventing the public from knowing if any of the recipients had business before the court.

Republican senator Mike Lee raised the issue in a July Judiciary Committee hearing on a court-targeting bill backed by Democratic senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Dick Durbin. “This might have some very significant ramifications if she was still serving on the court,” Lee said. “We don’t yet know exactly what was done with that, whether she carried out the apparent intention of the stated purpose of intent at the outset to donate it to charity.”

As for that house in Georgia: Crow’s spokesman has said he ultimately wants to turn Thomas’s childhood home into a museum, “telling the story of our nation’s second black Supreme Court justice.” Thomas’s share of the sale was a third of $133,000, and it’s still not entirely clear if he even reported it incorrectly, though he reportedly intends to amend it as necessary.

The longer this spasm of investigative reporting goes on, the more desperate it sounds. The Washington Post devoted a 3,300-word hit piece on the effort spearheaded by the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo to honor Thomas on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his appointment. The public relations campaign was designed to push back against a fictionalized HBO glorification of Anita Hill, who testified against Thomas during his confirmation hearings, and included the promotion of a documentary, Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words.

The Post paints this entirely typical PR campaign in dark, secretive terms, even drilling down to investigate a “Justice Thomas Fan Account” which posted clips and quotes from the justice. “The account’s posts about the justice generated nearly 21,000 impressions,” the Post reports — a laughably small amount, no offense to the earnest creator.

The Post has yet to conduct a similar deep dive into the promotional campaign around the 2018 documentary RBG, which was acquired and distributed by Participant Media, a production company with an explicitly leftist activist mission founded by Canadian billionaire and former eBay president Jeff Skoll, who has given millions to leftist causes. Nor have they shown any interest in investigating the promotion and creation of the 2018 dramatic film, On the Basis of Sex, based on a script by Ginsburg’s nephew, and starring Felicity Jones and Armie Hammer (though the Post’s Style section did publish a meet-cute piece titled “That time Ruth Bader Ginsburg checked out Armie Hammer,” doing their part to promote the film’s Washington premiere). Participant Media also produced this laudatory fictionalized biopic for roughly $20 million, though it’s unclear if that amount also paid for the movie’s promotional pop rap “Here Comes the Change” performed by Ke$ha, with official artwork by Shepard Fairey, or the Jonas Åkerlund-directed music video, which as of this writing has 818,000 views on YouTube — tragically, the fewest of any Ke$ha music video.

 

 

Stepping back from all of this, what we see is a series of breathless reports designed to inflate perceptions of bias without the facts necessary to establish anything of the sort. At most, justices may have to refile forms or clarify their reporting to the ethics body. Due to a change in policy by the Judicial Conference this spring, they’ll also have to report when they fly on a private jet — something they didn’t have to do before. But if that’s all you think it takes to buy a Supreme Court justice, imagine what Hunter Biden could get you for $5 million.

“All these breathless ‘investigations’ amount to nothingburger concern-trolling of justices whose opinions progressive activists don’t like,” said Ilya Shapiro, director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and author of Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court. “The left simply can’t stand that a majority of the Supreme Court is finally, after decades of hand-waving, interpreting the Constitution based on what it says instead of nebulous conceptions of social justice.”

At the Slate podcast taping, Anderson’s first guest of the night was Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse, of course — his Democratic colleague, Illinois senator Dick Durbin, was supposed to be there too, but he came down with Covid. Anderson’s first question jumped right to the point: given all the horrible things now established about Clarence Thomas, he asked: “So Senator Whitehouse, do you think he should resign?”

“In all decency, he should,” Whitehouse said, to applause. “But there’s just no world in which that happens that I can foresee. He’s just that determined to stay there and make his points and exercise his resentments.”

The senator, infamous for his membership in an all-white Rhode Island beach club, is promoting his book, The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court, describing “an evil spiral back and forth” bent on the “court capture” of the judiciary.

“I told my caucus, the Senate caucus, that we have a problem with the Supreme Court: it’s now a political organization, we have to treat it as such. And I basically got booed back into my chair,” Whitehouse said. “I got told ‘oh, no, no, the Supreme Court relies on public confidence, we can’t possibly do that.’ So I realized I had to do my homework. And that’s where… the book and all of that came from. Prove your case, write your prosecution memo.”

In Whitehouse’s frame, an “omertà” of secretive groups funded by malevolent billionaires — whom he tags as fossil-fuel interests bent on preventing bipartisan climate-change policy — are operating the court like shabby robed puppets.

“We don’t know all of that yet,” Whitehouse said. “I think we’re going to find out a lot more.” Invited to make the case for his latest piece of legislation targeting all of this (is this a Slate podcast or a Democratic activism group?), Whitehouse calls it “one of the silver linings of this set of really sickening revelations about the Supreme Court.”

 

 

“This is a multi-front battle,” Whitehouse said. “Moving the legislation forward, I think we’ll hit tipping points as the behavior of the Supreme Court justices becomes more well known, as further revelations come. We’re preparing for that moment.”

There’s little subtlety in Whitehouse’s comments to a friendly DC crowd about the degree to which the activity swirling around the Supreme Court is an ideological information operation. Democratic politicians have all the reason in the world to promote the effort to do so: the biggest funders of their partisan priorities are all paying for it.

Of the justices targeted in the recent spate of hit pieces, Samuel Alito has been the most aggressive in pushing back. He wrote a prebuttal op-ed in the Wall Street Journal after ProPublica sent him a series of questions inquiring about a fishing trip he took as a guest of right-leaning billionaire Paul Singer. Alito’s response was thorough and ruthless, detailing the skewed and inaccurate framing of the piece and prompting ProPublica’s story to be redrafted, with an explainer for the “Unprecedented Wall Street Journal Pre-buttal.”

If leaking Alito’s opinion in Dobbs was supposed to have cowed the justice, it clearly hasn’t. “Those of us who were thought to be in the majority, thought to have approved my draft opinion, were really targets of assassination,” he told the Journal in April. “It was rational for people to believe that they might be able to stop the decision in Dobbs by killing one of us.” The experience prompted the justice to be more confrontational. If he were a meme, one former clerk joked, Alito would be Michael Jordan in The Last Dance: “And I took that personally.”

Whitehouse and his fellow leftists would do anything to alter the conservative course the court has taken in recent years — even radical steps like court-packing. In the fall of 2019, along with four other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Whitehouse sent a brief to the court on a New York gun rights case. “The Supreme Court is not well, and the people know it,” they warned. “Perhaps the court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured.’”

For Whitehouse and those who would blow up the Supreme Court, dark money spent to this end is the good kind, and the activist groups and the journalists they push to echo their priorities are the noble pursuers of truth. The Judicial Crisis Network is a conspiracy, but progressive organizations like Fix the Court and Demand Justice are pure crusaders. The conservative Federalist Society is evil, but the leftist American Constitution Society is good. What this effort seeks to establish is a mutually justifying feedback loop. Democratic senators level severe allegations, activists parcel fever swamp stories to the press who then report on it, allowing the senators to point to these reports as legitimizing what was claimed in the first place.

Assisting in this effort are multiple billionaire-funded advocacy groups, bent on echoing the case for extreme measures to transform the court. They include Fix the Court, a spinoff from the New Venture Fund, managed by for-profit company Arabella Advisors, the center of the left’s dark money network — it spent over $1 billion in liberal efforts in 2020. Demand Justice, another Soros-backed group, was more explicitly focused on the push to pack the court — its board includes Elie Mystal, an MSNBC commentator who is most famous for calling the Constitution “trash.”

“While Whitehouse is championing supposed ‘ethics reform’ at the Supreme Court, he himself has sponsored environmental legislation pushed by the Ocean Conservancy, a group that has paid his wife as a consultant and policy advisor for years,” JCN president Carrie Severino said. “This isn’t about ethics for Whitehouse, but rather increasing the number of tools the left has at its disposal to intimidate the conservative members of the court.”

The central role of ProPublica should not escape notice. It was founded and continues to be funded by the Sandler family of San Francisco, who sold their bank Golden West to Wachovia right before its ludicrously profitable collection of dubious adjustable-rate mortgages played a central role in the 2008 financial crisis. Their family foundation is a huge backer of leftist causes, including the Center for American Progress, Human Rights Watch and Earthjustice.

Today ProPublica is also backed by a who’s-who of partisan Democratic billionaire donors, including George Soros, Pierre Omidyar, Laurene Powell Jobs, Donald Sussman and, until it was compelled to return the first tranche of a $5 million donation, notorious crypto bro Sam Bankman-Fried. All this billionaire largesse helps ProPublica pay top dollar for staff — its editor in chief currently makes more than $100,000 more each year than a justice of the Supreme Court.

For some reason, these billionaires don’t raise the hackles of Sheldon Whitehouse or Joel Anderson, or lots of others who are likely to tune into a multipart Slate podcast framing Clarence Thomas as a man who sold out black people for white money. Or, as one of the night’s other guests proclaimed of Thomas’s long ago divorce, “trading the black doll for the white doll.” There are hoots, laughs and murmurs in response.

At the opening of the show, Anderson led off with an odd extended monologue focused on Thomas’s high-school sports prowess, interspersed with audio from interviews with multiple figures from his past, most of whom spoke in praise of his arm strength with a football and gift for quick passing on the basketball court. The audience laughed when they are told he tried out for the Holy Cross football team but that he struggled taking hits; Anderson closes by expressing skepticism that the 5’8” Clarence could ever dunk. The audience claps.

They clap to confirm each other in their viewpoints. To remind each other that anger at the Supreme Court, over abortion or affirmative action or everything else, isn’t a mark of Democratic impotence or foolish mismanagement of the filibuster or RBG’s refusal to retire under Obama, you see — it’s those evil fossil-fuel billionaires like Harlan Crow who are to blame. Because as the good Senator Whitehouse, a son and grandson of ambassadors and bishops, assured them at the podcast party, it’s Thomas who is a creature of “resentments.” It’s the skinny Gullah kid who ran through the Lowcountry scrub, the place where his ancestors ate their pint of grits and the creek shrimp they could catch, boiled in the brackish salt water for flavor. That kid is the one who took the wrong lesson from the American experience, who wants to pull up the drawbridge behind him. You see, you understand. He’s the resentful one. We can all agree about that.

There is no apparent awareness that the persecution of Thomas is rooted in their resentments: not of his rulings as such, but the fact that he survived the full force of their apparatus, that his origin story is his survival. They have to destroy him because he exists: because the force of the counterexample shows them to be impotent, shows there is another path. It is a species of derangement. As a threat, Clarence Thomas is literally existential. Of course Clarence Thomas can dunk. He’s been dunking on these folks for years. All they can do is podcast about it.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s September 2023 World edition. 

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Commentary Corruption Elections Links from other news sources. Reprints from others. The Courts The Law

Abrams: Georgia case against Trump riddled with conflicts.

Good Bad, and the Ugly. David Walter Banks/The Washington Post/Brandon Bell/Getty Images

 

  • Abrams: Georgia case against Trump riddled with conflicts.
  • Former President Trump is facing 13 new charges in Georgia
  • The charges stem from alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election
  • Abrams: Fulton County DA Fani Willis has overtly politicized the case

Updated: 

(NewsNation) — Last week, I called for something which I knew was highly controversial. I said that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should drop her case against former President Donald Trump after federal officials indicted him for basically the same conduct. Not because she doesn’t have a case — Willis certainly has the legal ability and right to move forward — but I argued it simply wasn’t the right thing to do.

I stand by what I said now that Willis and her office have officially indicted Trump and 18 other codefendants in a 41-count indictment, 13 of which are against Trump himself. It’s a wide-ranging racketeering case alleging Trump and his allies conspired to reject the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

Now, my comments were never related to the others, just the former president. Let me be clear, this indictment reminds us of the absurd lengths that Trump and his team went to try to overturn the actual results of the election.

Trump, of course, denies the charges and has set his own news conference for next week. He says he will present “a large, complex, detailed but irrefutable report on the presidential election fraud which took place in Georgia” which he says will lead to a “complete exoneration” of him.

We shall see. But there are two main reasons that remain as to why Willis shouldn’t be doing this.

No. 1: The federal case makes the Georgia case against Trump duplicative and unnecessary. No. 2: Willis’ case is riddled with conflicts and political considerations that will be easy for the Trump team to exploit.

Willis bringing this case is just bad for everyone, and I mean everyone.

The more important issue is that the federal indictment makes Willis’ case unnecessary. It goes into depth on the Georgia allegations and both indictments highlight similar quotes.

Do we need another case brought on basically the same set of facts?

Jack Smith goes state by state in the federal indictment, very meticulously addressing conduct. So, now are prosecutors in other states going to bring cases against Trump, too? Now, that is different from charging the actual fake electors as Michigan and now Georgia have done.

The biggest argument I hear again and again is that if Trump is reelected, he couldn’t make state charges go away, only federal. That’s true, but that is not a reason for a prosecutor to act and there is no way the state trial is going to happen any time soon.

And if Trump wins the 2024 election, the U.S. Supreme Court barely let Bill Clinton get sued while in office; they will not let a state prosecutor try the sitting president of the United States in a criminal case.

That could be why Willis has pledged to do the impossible, which is to get this case to trial within the next six months. She currently has a gang-related RICO case that is still in its eighth month of jury selection.

But, even the DOJ itself has a policy seeking to limit multiple prosecutions. It says: “The purpose of this policy is to protect persons charged with criminal conduct from the burdens associated with multiple prosecutions and punishments for substantially the same act(s) or transaction(s), to promote efficient utilization of department resources, and to promote coordination and cooperation between federal and state prosecutors.”

The reverse should be true, as well. But, it’s not just that. It’s also Willis’ conduct before Monday night.

She has given more than three dozen media interviews on the investigation. Even the judge overseeing the grand jury said she is “on national media almost nightly talking about the investigation.”

In many of those interviews, she repeatedly kept hinting at the outcome of the case. In the end, it was certainly not a question of if the indictment would come, but when.

Her explanations for why it’s taken two and a half years to get here have made little sense.

“The right to have your vote protected is a serious one and so, you know, I’ve told people many times I’m not going to be rushed. We are doing what is needed for justice,” Willis said in one interview.

That can’t be true. With the special counsel, the delay is more easily understood. Attorney General Merrick Garland likely wasn’t going to bring charges against Trump for trying to overturn the election. Even after the Jan. 6 committee’s criminal referrals, it sure didn’t seem the attorney general was going to act on it, much to the frustration of liberals.

Then, the documents case landed on his lap with the former president seemingly trying to prevent the DOJ from getting back highly sensitive government documents stored at Mar-A-Lago.. At that point, Garland apparently feels he has to deal with it and eventually he appoints a special counsel who then essentially takes it where he wants. That explains that delay.

Jack Smith has only been investigating since November of last year, but what could possibly have taken Willis this long? It took her a year to even request a special purpose grand jury. Why? And that “special purpose” grand jury was just advisory. They heard evidence for eight months and then clearly recommended indictments in February. We know that because the foreperson, just like Willis, sort of hinted at it in an interview.

“We definitely heard a lot about former President Trump and we definitely discussed him a lot in the room. And I’ll say that when this list comes out, there are no major plot twists waiting for you,” the foreperson said.

It all felt like a game. Meanwhile, Willis has also regularly appeared to express her own personal opinions that what Trump did was illegal. After all, the key legal question is: Did he have corrupt intent?

Willis has long made it clear that in Trump’s call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, where he asked the secretary of state to “find” 11,780 votes, that he had that corrupt intent, even before the indictment ever came down.

“You look at facts to see did they really have intent? Did they know what they were doing? Detailed facts become important, like asking for a specific number and going back and investigating and understanding that number is one more than the number that is needed. It lets you know someone had a clear mind that they knew what they were doing,” Willis said in a 2021 interview.

So, if you know that, why has it taken two and a half years? Yes, the RICO case she’s now charging is sweeping and has moving parts that took time. But it still just feels like she has been milking this.

That’s not all. She has also overtly politicized it. Last July, less than two weeks after Willis subpoenaed South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, she used her campaign Twitter account to tweet out a cartoon.

The cartoon showed her fishing Graham out of a swamp with what appears to be a depiction of Trump saying: “I know you’ll do the right thing for the swamp, Lindsey.” All the while, her campaign was using the account to solicit donations.

Can you imagine if that was a Republican prosecutor seemingly exploiting the subpoena of a progressive liberal Democrat to solicit campaign donations? There would be no end to the mainstream media’s hysteria.

But this wasn’t the only time Willis and her surrogates referenced the Trump investigation to solicit followers, tweets and donations for her campaign. And that doesn’t even address the actual documented conflict of interest she had.

Willis subpoenaed alleged fake elector Burt Jones, a Republican state senator who at the time of the subpoena was running for lieutenant governor. Willis then hosted a fundraiser for Jones’ political opponent.

Jones went on to win the election, but Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney could not believe the actions of Willis. In a hearing, he called what she did a “what are you thinking?” moment.

Look, Willis is too far in politically to let this go. I understand that. I also get the arguments about accountability, pardons and state vs. federal cases.

But, I think the right thing to do would have been to let the feds handle a case that is about conduct by the president of the United States while he was president.

And to those who desperately want to see Trump locked up and believe that any prosecution of him is a noble one, well you may come to regret this case. Already Monday, there was the release of what appeared to be a draft indictment of Trump hours before the official indictment was handed up.

The DA’s office called the document “fictitious” but in fact, the charges listed on it turned out to be identical to the final indictment. They weren’t the final charges, but it was a huge blunder and one Willis wasn’t even willing to address.

“No, I can’t tell you anything about what you refer to. What I can tell you is that we had a grand jury here in Fulton County. They deliberated until almost 8 o’clock, if not right after 8 o’clock. An indictment was returned and it was true billed. And you now have an indictment. I am not an expert on clerk’s duties or even administrative duties so I wouldn’t know how to work that system and so I’m not going to speculate,” Willis said.

Except, it immediately gave the Trump team a legitimate argument. I am betting this case will end up giving Trump and his supporters many more legitimate arguments to make about the unfairness the prosecutor and the process.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author, and not of NewsNation.

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Child Abuse Corruption Education Links from other news sources. Reprints from others.

See you in court. Fairfax County School District claims a boy can be a girl and a girl can be a boy. Let’s all play and pee together.

The new policies entail requiring school activities to be separated by sex and that student participation will be restricted to the sex that was assigned to the individual at birth as opposed to their gender identity. (iStock)

See you in court. Fairfax County School District claims a boy can be a girl and a girl can be a boy. Let’s all play and pee together. Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) Superintendent Michelle Reid on Tuesday announced that the district will defy Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s new guidance on bathrooms, sports, and pronouns.

In September 2022, the Virginia Department of Education updated its 2021 Model Policies for the Treatment of Transgender Students in Virginia’s Public Schools, noting that the guidelines under the previous administration “disregarded the rights of parents and ignored other legal and constitutional principles that significantly impact how schools educate students, including transgender students.”

The new policies also stated that the previous guidelines “promoted a specific viewpoint aimed at achieving cultural and social transformation in schools.”

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Corruption Leftist Virtue(!) Medicine MSM Reprints from others.

Here We Go AGAIN: YouTube Announces New Policies To Target ‘Medical Misinformation’

YouTube is taking immediate action to expand its “medical misinformation” censorship policies, according to a blog post by the popular video platform on Tuesday.

YouTube is streamlining its existing policy to three distinct categories in anticipation of a more long-term suppression of medical information authorities disagree with, according to the announcement. A significant portion of YouTube’s announcement focuses on how it will now censor certain cancer-related content.

“Starting today and ramping up in the coming weeks, we will begin removing content that promotes cancer treatments proven to be harmful or ineffective, or content that discourages viewers from seeking professional medical treatment,” the announcement states.

https://twitter.com/GoogleHealth/status/1691469072171479040?s=20

YouTube acknowledges the evolving nature of medical knowledge and information in its announcement.

However, “our goal is to ensure that when it comes to areas of well-studied scientific consensus, YouTube is not a platform for distributing information that could harm people,” its announcement states.

The three categories of “medical misinformation” will be Prevention, Treatment and Denial, according to the announcement. They state that YouTube will remove content that “contradicts health authority guidance.”

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is suing YouTube and its parent company, Google, for allegedly violating his free speech, according to a complaint filed Aug. 2. YouTube has removed Kennedy’s videos because of its “vaccine misinformation” policies on multiple occasions, according to the complaint.

Since “YouTube does not allow people to say anything ‘that contradicts local health authorities’ (LHA) or the World Health Organization’s (WHO) medical information about COVID-19,’” this means the government sets the medical censorship guidelines, Kennedy’s lawsuit alleges.

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Corruption Economy Food Government Overreach How sick is this? Links from other news sources. Opinion Politics Reprints from others.

Ice Cream Truck Owners Revolt Against Democrats’ Ridiculous Crack Down.

Here we go again. Photo illustration of Joe Biden holding ice cream | via Imagine Art

Ice Cream Truck Owners Revolt Against Democrats’ Ridiculous Crack Down.

Ice cream truck owners aren’t happy with Democrats in New York City who propose a new policy that would force truck owners to ditch their fuel-powered generators and use “climate-friendly alternatives.”

The eco-friendly proposal has been slammed as “ridiculous.” Truck owners warn it will have a devastating impact on their companies.

Appearing on Fox News, Ice Cream Emergency owner Ed Lachterman said, “You can’t even have solar in a home if you have trees that are too tall. How are you going to drive around the city and have a solar-powered truck in the concrete jungle?” Lachterman asked. (POLL: Is Joe Biden Fit to be President? Results Are In…)

“It’s just ridiculous. You’re going to have product costs going through the roof trying to convert something is crazy, and if you go battery, I’ll need something twice as long to hold the batteries to run it,” he added.

“We’d probably have to raise our prices,” Lachterman’s wife Carol said.

“This guy is trying to put a law based on his agenda without thinking of anything, without thinking of the consequences, and that’s not what you’re in office to do,” Lachterman said.

“You’re there to help your constituents and to say, ‘Oh, well, we’re going to just start banning things,’ all they’re going to do is put people out of work, make the economy worse and just really destroy everything that we’re trying to build up.”

“Brooklyn Councilman Lincoln Restler introduced the proposal last week that would force ice cream trucks to ditch their fuel-powered generators for more climate-friendly alternatives over the course of the next three years,” the report said. (Trending: Disney Just Pulled A Bud Light…)

“Ice cream truck operators would be forced to rely on solar-powered or electric-powered machines, which could cost companies thousands, according to the New York Post,” the report added.

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has created new rules that would require pizzerias with coal and wooden-fire ovens installed prior to 2016 to cut carbon emissions by 75%.

“They’re trying to go after your gasoline water heaters, your gas stoves… The sad thing is it’s an attack on the hospitality industry, which is one of the biggest employers in New York City,” Lachterman said. “New York is not going to have to worry about businesses because everyone’s going to move out. You can’t operate under these conditions.”

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Biden Cartel Corruption Crime Links from other news sources.

Judge Releases Hunter Biden Plea Deal. Now that’s news.

Judge Releases Hunter Biden Plea Deal. The judge who bitch slapped Hunter has released the full transcript of the under the table deal the government did with Hunter. We have this from Newsmax.

Noreika also released the diversion agreement, which included that the U.S. agreed to “not criminally prosecute Biden, outside of the terms of this Agreement, or any federal crimes encompassed by the attached Statement of Facts (Attachment A) and the Statement of Facts attached as Exhibit 1 to the Memorandum of Plea Agreement filed this same day.”

The Republican heads of three House committees on Monday announced in a letter they will investigate the circumstances surrounding Biden’s failed plea deal, the New York Post reported.

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Biden Cartel Corruption Links from other news sources. Politics Reprints from others.

The rest of the story. Democrat congresswoman lashes out at Biden over ‘shameful’ Space Command decision: ‘I expected more’.

Politics over selection. Fox Photo.

The rest of the story. Democrat congresswoman lashes out at Biden over ‘shameful’ Space Command decision: ‘I expected more’. The Space Command HQ was to be moved to Alabama. In a survey of locations, the present location was picked fifth.

“Huntsville finished first in both the Air Force’s Evaluation Phase and Selection. The GAO did the survey to see what location would be the best. Was it political? Three red states with four locations scored higher than Colorado.

Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., released a statement late Monday sharply attacking Biden over the decision, calling it “shameful” and accusing him of bowing “to the whims of politics over merit.”

“This Administration’s decision to keep Space Command in Colorado bows to the whims of politics over merit. Huntsville’s merits won this selection process fair and square,” Sewell said. “In three separate reports, Huntsville reigned victorious, whereas Colorado did not come in second or even third.”

“This reversal is as shameful as it is disappointing. I expected more from the Biden Administration. A decision of this magnitude should not be about red states versus blue states, but rather what is best for our national security. To be clear, the Alabama Congressional Delegation stands united in opposition to this decision,” she added.

https://twitter.com/RepTerriSewell/status/1686157201461633024?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1686157201461633024%7Ctwgr%5E0db6e8b3495be27413da8d3778a6f9bd033afed9%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.foxnews.com%2Fpolitics%2Fdemocrat-congresswoman-lashes-out-biden-shameful-space-command-decision-expected-more

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Gun Control Leftist Virtue(!) Reprints from others. WOKE

Social Credit System: Coming to a bank near you?

UK Banks Take the Lead in Establishing Personal Social Credit System, Critics Charge

Barclays Bank Fleet Street branch in London, England, on Feb. 16, 2010. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Original Epoch Times article

Large money-center banks appear to be in the vanguard of a movement to build a system of personal social credit scores.

This week, British bank Barclays became the latest to be accused of shutting the accounts of its customers for political or religious reasons. This followed revelations in April that Coutts, a private bank owned by British Bank NatWest, was alleged to have closed the accounts and publicized personal information of conservative politician Nigel Farage, one of the foremost Brexit advocates and a supporter of the policies of former U.S. President Donald Trump.

And British banks are not alone. Many say that America’s largest banks are in lockstep with UK banks in establishing political and social criteria for their customers and punishing those who don’t comply.

“Sadly, what we’re seeing now with NatWest and Barclays isn’t surprising,” Justin Haskins, director at the Heartland Institute, told The Epoch Times. “There is a mountain of evidence that shows many of America’s largest and most powerful banks are discriminating against customers because of their ideological, social, cultural, religious, or political views.”

“Through various environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies and frameworks, banks regularly choose to screen out customers who are deemed ‘reputational risks’ or considered part of industries disfavored by elites and their powerful institutions,” Mr. Haskins said.

UK Ministers Find Fault With Discriminating Banks

In contrast to the United States, where regulators have taken no action, UK ministers have stepped in to defend their citizens against political discrimination.

“Andrew Griffith, the economic secretary of the UK, met with some of the major banks recently and got them all to commit to a principle of non-discrimination, based on lawful expression,” Michael Ross, counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), told The Epoch Times.

In addition, laws are currently in works to ban UK banks from discriminating against customers on a political or religious basis.

UK Treasury Minister Baroness Penn stated last week: “I think the point that we can all agree on is that the right to lawful freedom of speech is fundamental. And where that has seemed to be brought into question through the provision of services, we have cause to worry.”

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly stated that the closure of Mr. Farage’s accounts was “wrong on so many levels.”

“This completely undermines the trust we have in our banking and financial systems,” Mr. Cleverly said. “We are better than this.”

UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman posted to Twitter on July 19: “The Coutts scandal exposes the sinister nature of much of the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion industry. Apparently anyone who wants to control our borders & stop the boats can be branded ‘xenophobic’ & have their bank account closed in the name of ‘inclusivity.’”

A photograph taken on July 28, 2023 shows the headquarters of the private bank Coutts, in London.(Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS/AFP via Getty Images)

As part of the new UK regulations, banks that close customer accounts will be required to give a reason, and customers will have the right to appeal the bank’s decision. Banks who continue to discriminate may lose their licenses.

Meanwhile, British banks themselves appear to be turning against these policies, or at least of the unfavorable publicity they are now facing as a result.

On July 26, NatWest Chief Executive Alison Rose resigned after Mr. Farage’s allegations were substantiated and it was revealed that she had discussed Mr. Farage’s details with BBC news. Ms. Rose stated that she was guilty of a “serious error of judgment.”

On Thursday, Peter Flavel, CEO of Coutts, also resigned, saying he took “ultimate responsibility” for the closure of Mr. Farage’s bank accounts. The UK government data watchdog has promised an investigation, sending a letter to banks to remind them that customers’ personal information should be kept private.

John Edwards, the UK’s information commissioner, said: “The banking duty of confidentiality is over a hundred years old, and it is clear that it would not permit the discussion of a customer’s personal information with the media.

“We trust banks with our money and with our personal information,” Mr. Edwards stated. “Any suggestion that this trust has been betrayed will be concerning for a bank’s customers, and for regulators like myself.”

US Banks Also Discriminate, Experts Say

JPMorgan Chase, America’s largest bank, has also faced allegations of political and religious discrimination.

“We’re already seeing this happening in the U.S.,” ADF’s Mr. Ross said.

“Before this, there was obviously Sam Brownback and the National Committee for Religious Freedom,” he said, referring to accounts allegedly closed by JPMorgan Chase. “Chase also canceled Defense of Liberty a couple years ago, retired General Michael Flynn, the Family Council—all of them are designated either high risk or reputational risk.”

In May, longtime JPMorgan Chase shareholder David Bahnsen brought a shareholder action against the bank, claiming that it had closed the accounts of a religious organization established by former senator and U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback for political reasons.

While the action ultimately failed to gain majority support from shareholders, Mr. Bahnsen stated, “One thing I am certain of is that the next time a bank manager decides to close an account for somebody like Ambassador Brownback, they’re going to think twice about doing it. This was covered far and wide by both the left wing press and the right wing press, and I do not believe it looked good upon JPMorgan.”

In November 2021, WePay, a payment services company owned by JPMorgan Chase, abruptly canceled services they were providing for Defense of Liberty, a conservative organization, for an event featuring Donald Trump Jr. WePay said at the time that they would not serve anyone who promotes “hate, violence, racial intolerance, terrorism, the financial exploitation of a crime.”

This prompted Missouri Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick to threaten to halt state business with the bank.

In July 2021, Family Council faced a similar denial of service.

“Although Family Council generally tries to avoid doing business with companies like Chase, at 10:29 am on July 7, 2021, our office received a terse email from our credit card processor—a company owned by J.P. Morgan Chase—saying, ‘Unfortunately, we can no longer support your business.’ At 10:30 AM they terminated our account, and we could no longer accept donations,” Family Council stated.

“For nearly two years we had used this company to process donations that our supporters made to Family Council and the Education Alliance via our websites. If you gave by credit or debit card, this company handled the transaction. Without a processor, it’s impossible for a nonprofit to accept donations online.”

On March 23, financial officers from 14 states wrote a letter to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon expressing their “concern that the bank is engaged in what appears to be politically motivated de-banking of certain industries, individuals and groups.”

“A large number of our pension funds are direct shareholders of Chase, and as stewards of our states’ investment dollars, we are concerned that the company’s recent pattern of apparent politically motivated de-banking constitutes a breach of its fiduciary duty,” they stated. “Under the law, you and the other officers of the company must act to maximize profit and must not subordinate the company’s long-term financial well-being to extraneous personal or political ends.”

And on May 2, 19 State attorneys general wrote a letter to Mr. Dimon stating: “It is clear that JPMorgan Chase & Co. has persistently discriminated against certain customers due to their religious or political affiliation.

“This discrimination is unacceptable,” the AGs wrote. “Chase must stop such behavior and align its business practices with the anti-discrimination policies that Chase proclaims.”

Discrimination Could Spread Beyond Politics

Some say they are concerned that bank discrimination could spread beyond political and religious views to a broader social credit system that might also include things like environmental behavior and gun control.

“There is every reason to believe that current discriminatory practices in banking could soon expand to personal CO2 emissions or gun purchases,” Mr. Haskins said.

“Banks and other financial institutions have already started to discriminate with gun companies, either through higher fees or rates or by refusing to do business entirely, and every large bank in the United States, from Bank of America to Citi and Wells Fargo, have said they have started the process of phasing out CO2 emissions from their entire business model, including lending and banking services,” he said. “This will take a few decades to complete, but if these banks go through with their plans, individuals and companies that rely on fossil fuels—almost everyone today—will be greatly affected.”

“The policies they use to do this are very expansive policies, like ‘reputational risk’ or ‘politically exposed person,’” Mr. Ross said. “There’s not really a limiting principle there, and so we can certainly see it aimed at any sort of political opponent or anyone who has views that activists or even government actors think are unpopular.”

“We’ve been carefully monitoring Chase, which de-banked General Flynn and de-banked other conservatives, then last fall de-banked Ambassador Brownback’s organization,” Scott Shepard, a director at the National Center for Public Policy Research, told The Epoch Times.

“We’ve seen similar behavior at Bank of America, along with Bank of America sharing private information about the transactions of customers without warrants.”

“And just this last week, they de-banked a couple of doctors who are out talking about the inefficacy of [COVID-19] vaccines, that they won’t stop transmission, that they won’t make takers immune, etc., and the bank still hasn’t explained why,” Mr. Shepard said. “We’ve seen similar behavior at Bank of America, along with Bank of America sharing private information about the transactions of customers without warrants. And last week, we found out that that happens all the time; [FBI Director] Chris Wray says so.”

At a Congressional hearing on July 12, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) asked Mr. Wray: “George Hill, former FBI supervisory intelligence analyst in the Boston field office, told us that Bank of America, with no legal process, gave to the FBI gun purchase records with no geographical boundaries for anybody that was a Bank of America customer. Is that true?”

To which Mr. Wray replied: “A number of business community partners all the time, including financial institutions, share information with us about possible criminal activity, and my understanding is that that’s fully lawful.”

Some have argued that, as private companies, banks are free to do business with whichever customers they choose. However, this position has been challenged on the grounds that financial services are critical to the ability of people and organizations to be able to function in modern society.

“Banks in particular receive a ton of bailouts and public benefits from the government and from taxpayers here,” Mr. Ross said. “They do this so that they can serve the public.”

“So when they turn around and start weaponizing these financial services to cut off people with views they don’t like, they’re breaking the public trust,” he noted.

“The American banks that seem to be leading these de-banking and discrimination policies are the too-big-to-fail banks,” Mr. Shepard said. “If you’re backstopped by American taxpayers, you get to keep your profits but we cover your losses—you may not discriminate against the viewpoint of any American.”

The Epoch Times requested comments from JPMorgan Chase, NatWest, and Barclays for this article but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

Minor edits for punctuation and emphasis — TPR

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Biden Cartel Corruption Crime Facebook Faked news How sick is this? Links from other news sources. Politics Reprints from others.

The Most Embarrassing “Facebook Files” Revelation? The Press, Exposed as Censors.

The Most Embarrassing "Facebook Files" Revelation? The Press, Exposed as Censors. Racket News Photo

The Most Embarrassing “Facebook Files” Revelation? The Press, Exposed as Censors.

The “Facebook Files” show the press is part of the censhorship establishment, but that’s not the worst part
MATT TAIBB

The most embarrassing revelation of the “Facebook Files” released by House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan yesterday (described in more detail here) involves the news media:

In one damning email, an unnamed Facebook executive wrote to Mark Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandberg:

We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the White House and the press, to remove more Covid-19 vaccine discouraging content.

We see repeatedly in internal communications not only in the email above, but in the Twitter Files, in the exhibits of the Missouri v Biden lawsuit, and even in the Freedom of Information request results beginning to trickle in here at Racket, that the news media has for some time been working in concert with civil society organizations, government, and tech platforms, as part of the censorship apparatus.

In the summer of 2021, the White House and Joe Biden were in the middle of a major factual faceplant. They were not only telling people the Covid-19 vaccine was a sure bet — “You’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations” is how Biden put it — but that those who questioned its efficacy were “killing people.” But the shot didn’t work as advertised. It didn’t prevent contraction or transmission, something Biden himself continued to be wrong about as late as December of that year.

If you go back and give a careful read to corporate media content from that time describing the administration’s war against “disinformation,” you’ll see outlets were themselves not confident the vaccine worked. Take the New York Times effort from July 16th, 2021, “They’re Killing People: Biden Denounces Social Media for Virus Disinformation.” You can see the Times tiptoeing around what they meant, when they used the word “disinformation.” In this and other pieces they used phrases like, “the spread of anti-vaccine misinformation,” “how to track misinformation,” “the prevalence of misinformation,” even “Biden’s forceful statement capped weeks of anger in the White House over the dissemination of vaccine disinformation,” but they repeatedly hesitated to say what the misinformation was.

Any editor will tell you this language is a giveaway. Journalists wrote expansively about “disinformation,” but rarely got into specifics. They knew that they couldn’t state with certainty that the vaccine worked, that there weren’t side effects, etc., yet still denounced people who asked those questions. This is because they agreed with the concept of “malinformation,” i.e. there are things that may be true factually, but which may produce political results considered adverse. “Hestiancy” was one such bugbear. Note the language from the unnamed Facebook executive above, which describes the press lashing out “Covid-19 vaccine discouraging content,” not “disinformation.”

This is total corruption of the news. We’re supposed to be in the business of questioning officials, even if the questions are unpopular. That’s our entire role! If we don’t do that, we serve no purpose, maybe even a negative purpose. Moreover, think of the implications. News outlets wail about “disinformation” when they’re aware the public has tuned them out. When people don’t listen to reporters, it’s usually because they suck. You can do the math, as to why the current crop embraces censorship. A more embarrassing outcome for our business would be hard to imagine.