Andrew Jose for The Western JournalJune 27, 2022 at 3:23pm
A New York State Supreme Court Judge ruled Monday that a New York City law, which would have permitted resident non-U.S. citizens in the city the right to vote, violated state law and the state constitution.
“There is no statutory ability for the City of New York to issue inconsistent laws permitting non-citizens to vote and exceed the authority granted to it by the New York State Constitution,” Staten Island Supreme Court Justice Ralph Porzio wrote in his 13-page ruling, according to the New York Post.
The judge said that the city’s December “Our City, Our Vote” would go against the state’s Election Law and Municipal Home Rule Law. These laws permitted only U.S. citizens above 18 to vote in state and local elections, according to the judge, the New York Post reported.
Because the city’s law went against state constitutional requirements, should the city extend voting rights to its over 800,000 resident aliens, it would first need to hold a referendum, the judge wrote in his ruling, according to the New York Times.
Non-citizen voting in New York is illegal.
In December, the New York City city council approved 33-14 with two abstentions in the measure granting the city’s resident aliens, who comprise 10 percent of its population, the right to vote, according to reporting from the Washington Post.
The law was set to come into effect in the state’s January 2023 elections, according to the Times.
Then former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio doubted the law’s survivability in the face of lawsuits, although he did not veto it.
“I still have a concern about it. Citizenship has an extraordinary value. People work so hard for it,” de Blasio said in December, according to the Associated Press.
Republican New York City city council Minority Leader, Joseph Borelli, was among the plaintiffs challenging the law..
“devalues citizenship”
In December, Borelli said that the law “devalues citizenship, and citizenship is the standard by which the state constitution issues or allows for suffrage in New York state elections at all levels,” the wire service reported.
Borelli welcomed the Monday ruling in a news release.
“Today’s decision validates those of us who can read the plain English words of our State Constitution and State statutes,” Borelli wrote in the news statement shared on his Twitter account.
“Non-citizen voting in New York is illegal,” Borelli wrote.
The law’s proponents told Gothamist that the case’s outcome was not surprising since plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in Staten Island, a Republican-leaning part of the city.
“They went court shopping where they knew that the court would be favorable to them,” New York City Immigration Coalition head Murad Awawdeh told Gothamist.
“We’re gonna keep fighting to ensure that nearly 1 million New Yorkers who are building their families, paying taxes and investing in our communities have a say in their local democracy,” Awawdeh said, according to the Gothamist.
“That is what this comes down to,” Awawdeh added.
Should non citizens be allowed to vote in local elections as long as they don’t vote in state or federal elections?
Amazing how fast these PROFESSIONALLY printed signs showed up. Coincidence?
Goodbye to 50 Years of the Great American Deception
By Rita Joseph For The Western Journal June 24, 2022 at 3:54pm
By overturning Roe, the court has opened the door for the states to restore the universal protection of two of the most basic constitutional rights
What a well-reasoned and long-awaited Supreme Court decision!
A great wrong has been righted.
Reason and the rule of law have triumphed over the fanatical pro-abortion ideology that refuses to recognize our children in the womb as human beings like ourselves.
Restoration of our duty to protect each new life
By overturning Roe, the court has opened the door for the states to restore the universal protection of two of the most basic constitutional rights — the right to life and the “no property in man” principle — found in the 14th and 13th Amendments, respectively.
Every human being, irrespective of age or size, has an equal and inalienable right to go on living. All human beings are to be treated as persons and never as property.
The Supreme Court has now overturned 50 years of the errant ideological theory that removed all protections from these newest and most vulnerable human beings.
What the court calls “Roe’s abuse of judicial authority” has been exposed: “Roe was remarkably loose in its treatment of the constitutional text. It held that the abortion right, which is not mentioned in the Constitution, is part of a right to privacy, which is also not mentioned.”
The court asserts, “Roe found that the Constitution implicitly conferred a right to obtain an abortion, but it failed to ground its decision in text, history, or precedent. It relied on an erroneous historical narrative. … We therefore hold that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.”
Truth conquers illusion.
As in the tale of the emperor’s new clothes, con-men and swindlers back in 1973 pretended to weave abortion “rights” into existence out of nothing — out of “penumbras.” Without solid legal evidence, they refashioned the killing of the unborn as “women’s rights.”
Remember how the emperor’s weavers claimed that their cloth had a wonderful way of becoming invisible to anyone who was unfit for his office or who was unusually stupid? The inventors of abortion rights used the same tactic.
If you didn’t agree with Roe’s faulty arguments, then the fault was in you personally. Anyone who did not go along with their invention was branded as unfit for office or stupid… or misogynist, patriarchal, sexist or racist.
The tactic worked. For too long, too many Americans lacked the courage to challenge error and speak truth to power by denouncing the officially accepted deception.
The weavers of abortion rights have forged a collective denial that any harm is done in choosing to abort these smallest and most vulnerable human beings in our power and under our care.
Two mistakes in Roe
Roe was wrong. The Constitution is not silent on our duties to our progeny. Our children are guaranteed the same blessings of liberty that we claim for ourselves. The blessings of liberty are promised by the Constitution to ourselves and our posterity — not exclusively to ourselves as women.
That natural entitlement bestowed by the Creator is affirmed as the very first right mentioned in the Constitution, together with the right to life and the pursuit of happiness. Once conceived, every human being is fully and seamlessly engaged in a benign, naturally ordered pursuit of happiness.
Should abortion be banned?
Yes: 91% (62 Votes)
No: 9% (6 Votes)
Nor is the Constitution silent on the injustice at the heart of every elective abortion — the toleration of maternal “ownership” and killing rights in regard to an innocent unborn child flourishing in her or his mother’s womb. Under the 13th Amendment, there can be no such ownership and killing rights over any human being — in utero or ex utero.
There is no self-centered liberty in the Constitution.
The Supreme Court warns that “liberty” is a capacious term.
There is no self-centered liberty in the Constitution. From the beginning of the republic, the Constitution set up equal entitlement across the generations, i.e., equal entitlement to the blessings of liberty for both mothers and their offspring.
Mothers can’t say to their children in the womb, “This is all about my enjoyment of the blessings of liberty, and to ensure my enjoyment, you must be denied the same blessings of liberty. You are not at liberty to go on flourishing as nature’s God intended you to do. You are not a unique and invaluable human being. You are my property. This is all about me. This is about my right to choose, my right to commission your killing.”
So wrong for so long…
Exposing delusion
Finally, wonderfully, the great day has come — Roe’s logical fallacy of treating children in their mothers’ wombs as their mothers’ disposable property has been exposed as make-believe. At last, Roe v. Wade has been formally invalidated, its faulty reasoning revealed.
Self-importance and self-deception shaped the emperor’s refusal to accept the truth about the weavers’ deception. His refusal to accept the truth once it had been revealed signified his detachment from reality.
Having been steeped so long in a fable of his own unchallenged power and authority, he refused to make a critical and objective examination of the facts that would have revealed the duplicity of the weavers’ spin job.
Once error is exposed, we can’t unknow the truth.
Once our eyes are opened, we can’t pretend that they are still closed to the truth. There’s no going back to naivety, to feigning ignorance of the terrible injustice unleashed in Roe.
We can’t recreate a suit of clothes from nothing — from what is not in the Constitution and was never in the Constitution.
One small voice — a common-sense voice, an unintimidated voice — has pierced the illusion.
Justice Samuel Alito has shattered the elaborate deception of Roe.
Common sense has prevailed.
Never again will large numbers of us be manipulated into accepting the illusion that it’s morally defensible for any mother to commission her unborn child to be deliberately killed by an abortionist.
Vale, Roe v. Wade. May your evil never be reinstated!
Friday the 13th was Jen Psaki’s last day as the Bagdad Ali of the White House. I want to thank Joel B. Pollak for this list.
Yes some — particularly in the establishment media — have called her the “best ever,” perhaps because the job of explaining Joe Biden’s failures is simply so difficult. Here are some of the most memorable moments of her tenure, for better or for worse:
17. COVID and masks. Despite sanctimonious lectures about pandemic precautions, Psaki somehow managed to contract COVID twice. She also struggled to explain the White House’s double standards on wearing masks on federal property.
16. “Circle back.” Psaki drew mockery from conservatives over her repeated promises from the podium to “circle back” with reporters when she did not know the answer to questions — or perhaps when she knew, but preferred not to answer.
15. Hoaxes. Psaki repeated some — not all — of the famliar liberal hoaxes about Trump, most notably the “bleach” hoax, insisting — despite glaring evidence to the contrary — that he had told Americans to inject bleach to cure COVID (he did not).
14. Defaming Kyle Rittenhouse. In the midst of the Rittenhouse trial, Psaki criticized “vigilantes with assault weapons.” After Rittenhouse was acquitted, she refused to walk back Biden’s false claim that Rittenhouse was a “white supremacist.”
13. War on “misinformation.” Psaki vowed her briefings would fight “misinformation,” and defended — to her last week — the Biden administration’s “disinformation” office. But she herself spread disinformation about Russia, and Hunter Biden.
12. Space Force snub. Psaki appeared to snub the sixth branch of the U.S. armed forces when she mocked a reporter’s query about whether Biden intended to continue Donald Trump’s addition to the military. She later clarified that she supported it.
11. Major dog cover-up. When Biden’s dog, Major, was accused of biting a Secret Service agent, Psaki downplayed the incident. Later, documents suggested that Psaki misled the public about the real threat the dog posed to agency staff.
10. Border denial. Psaki made it clear she did not want reporters to ask about the crisis at the southern border, chastising reporters for “maddening” questions about it. She claimed Biden’s policy was more “moral” and “humane” than Trump’s.
9. Refusing to condemn protests at Supreme Court justices’ homes. It took Psaki days to condemn violence after a draft opinion reversing Roe was leaked, and she actually encouraged the arguably illegal protests outside the homes of justices.
8. Dismissing the idea of free COVID tests. Psaki initially scoffed at the idea of sending free COVID tests to every American as too costly to undertake. A few days later, mid-omicron wave, the administration belatedly began doing so.
7. “Don’t Say Gay’ demagoguery. It was Psaki who started the false — yet effective — claim that Florida had passed a law that literally prohibited people from saying “gay.” The law actually restricts sexual instruction of any kind to K-3 children.
6. Doocy. Among many examples of the Biden administration failing to respect the press, one of the worst was Psaki saying that Fox News made Peter Doocy — one of the few critical voices in the press corps — sound like a “stupid son of a bitch.”
5. Defending inflation. Psaki test-drove several excuses for inflation, first claiming that it was transitory (“inflation is going to come down next year”), then trying to put a positive spin on it as the by-product of an otherwise wonderful economy.
4. Admitting Biden skipped D-Day. Among other clean-up jobs, Psaki had to explain Biden’s unfortunate failure to commemorate the anniversary of D-Day in 2021. She told reporters that the historic occasion was still “close to his heart.”
3. Vacationing while Afghanistan fell. Psaki and many other members of the administration had to be called back from summer vacation when Afghanistan began to fall to the Taliban, a failure that has since defined perceptions of the president.
2. Hunter Biden dodges. Psaki repeatedly (and successfully) dodged questions about Hunter Biden, his laptop, and his connection to his dad’s finances, claiming they were a private matter or the under the purview of the Department of Justice.
1. Baby formula. Psaki’s advice, when asked what parents should do if worried about their babies amid a national shortage of baby formula, was to “call their doctor.” Neither she nor the White House had any solace to offer American families.
One example when Psaki called it right: she did, finally, admit that communism is a “failed ideology,” as Cubans protested in the streets against their oppressive regime. But that, sadly, is all the Biden administration was willing to do to help them.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito delivered a virtual speech at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School on Thursday. This was his first public appearance since a SCOTUS insider leaked the upcoming Roe v. Wade decision to the liberal press.
A SCOTUS insider leaked the decision to far-left media outlet Politico which ran it last week. The leak happened to coincide with the release of the documentary “2000 Mules” that proved the 2020 election was stolen by a network of leftist ballot traffickers in the battleground states.
Alito told the audience on Thursday after being asked about the decision, “The court right now, we had our conference this morning, we’re doing our work. We’re taking new cases, we’re headed toward the end of the term, which is also a frenetic time as we get our opinions out.”
The FBI and law enforcement still have not found the leaker after a two week investigation. It’s funny how bad they are when the culprit is helping the leftist cause.
Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court justice who authored the leaked draft majority opinion showing the court is preparing to strike down landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights, addressed the leak for the first time Thursday.
“This is a subject I told myself I wasn’t going to talk about today regarding, you know — given all the circumstances,” Alito said at an event at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, in response to a question about how the justices were getting along, according to The Washington Post.
“The court right now, we had our conference this morning, we’re doing our work. We’re taking new cases, we’re headed toward the end of the term, which is always a frenetic time as we get our opinions out,” Alito said.
“So that’s where we are,” he continued.
Chief Justice John Roberts told a meeting of lawyers and judges at a judicial conference in Atlanta on May 5 that he hoped “one bad apple” would not change “people’s perception” of the Supreme Court, according to CNN.
But we were told that voter fraud doesn’t exist. One loon in Northern California went as far as saying that in all 50 states that there was one case of voter fraud and it was a Republican.
A Democrat Virginia Board of Supervisors’ member has been indicted on 82 mostly election-related felony charges a Commonwealth Attorney announced May 3.
“The Special Grand Jury indicted Trey Adkins and Sherry Lynn Bailey for several election related offenses,” said Commonwealth Attorney Zack Stoots in a Facebook statement. “Adkins was also indicted for embezzlement of public funds while being in a position of public office.”
“During each election cycle, Mr. Adkins relied on a number of absentee ballot applications and votes,” Clevinger reportedly said. “He personally campaigned to a number of homes in the Knox District and in 2019, took hundreds of ballot applications to residents, filled them out and turned them in to the local Registrar.”
The justices pose for a group photo at the Supreme Court in Washington on April 23, 2021. (Erin Schaff – Pool / Getty Images).
By Abby Liebing for Western Journal May 11, 2022 at 7:48am
Last week, Politico published a leaked draft of a Supreme Court decision, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, on the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case. The draft showed that the court could strike down the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.
Now, as the court is set to meet on Thursday, Politico has published more leaked information — and it is good news for pro-lifers.
The outlet reported Wednesday morning that Alito’s draft opinion is still the only circulated draft in the abortion case and that no votes have changed while the court is waiting for the dissent opinion to emerge.
“[T]here’s no sign that the court is changing course from issuing that ruling,” the report said.
The initial draft majority opinion by Alito said “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Politico reported on May 2.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” the justice wrote. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
However, Politico noted at the time that the court’s votes on the Dobbs v. Jackson case could change.
“Under long-standing court procedures, justices hold preliminary votes on cases shortly after argument and assign a member of the majority to write a draft of the court’s opinion,” it said. “The draft is often amended in consultation with other justices, and in some cases the justices change their votes altogether, creating the possibility that the current alignment on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization could change.”
But the report Wednesday indicated no change in the votes.
Do you think Roe v. Wade will be overturned?
Yes: 97% (66 Votes)
No: 3% (2 Votes)
(From WJ site @ 11 am 5/11/22)
“Justice Samuel Alito’s sweeping and blunt draft majority opinion from February overturning Roe remains the court’s only circulated draft in the pending Mississippi abortion case, POLITICO has learned, and none of the conservative justices who initially sided with Alito have to date switched their votes,” the outlet reported.
“No dissenting draft opinions have circulated from any justice, including the three liberals,” Politico added.
The initial leak led to outrage among pro-abortion activists and joy among pro-lifers over the possibility of the court overturning Roe v. Wade.
But also shocking was that someone inside the Supreme Court would leak such information to the media.
How does Politico know this? Someone inside the Supreme Court continues to leak. Unbelievable! https://t.co/Chr4wz80rz
University of Texas law professor Steve Vladek said these leaks indicate there is turmoil behind the Supreme Court’s closed doors.
“It’s hard to overstate how ugly this means things must be behind the scenes,” Vladeck tweeted.
This appears to be at least the fifth different leak out of #SCOTUS related to Dobbs — after the WSJ editorial page, the original Politico leak, CNN, and the Washington Post. (And I may be missing one.)
It’s hard to overstate how ugly this means things must be behind the scenes. https://t.co/jpJrel5dFH
Even Politico, which has published the leaked information, reported that the Supreme Court is facing a great crisis due to the leaks and the resulting furor, which has included protests targeting justices’ homes.
“This is the most serious assault on the court, perhaps from within, that the Supreme Court’s ever experienced,” one source told the outlet. “It’s an understatement to say they are heavily, heavily burdened by this.”
With the summer break coming, the justices have only about seven more weeks to craft a decision on abortion.
Debunking Fake News.
(Photograph by Erin Schaff/Getty Images.)
Article was originally here.
A viral tweet claims that Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Samuel Alito justified overturning Roe v. Wade in the leaked draft majority opinion because “the US needs a ‘domestic supply of infants.’”
The draft was written by Alito, not Barrett and Alito as the tweet suggests. The section of the opinion from which the quote is pulled is a footnote, with the line not being written by Barrett or Alito, but coming from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention paper on adoption. The line reads: “[N]early 1 million women were seeking to adopt children in 2002 (i.e., they were in demand of a child), whereas the domestic supply of infants relinquished at birth or within the first month of life and available to be adopted had become virtually nonexistent.”
This paper is cited in a paragraph summing up arguments from pro-life Americans, specifically being cited in a sentence noting that a newborn put up for adoption in the United States will likely find a home. The footnote appears in the following section, following the italicized portion (italicization added):
“Americans who believe that abortion should be restricted press countervailing arguments about modern developments. They note that attitudes about the pregnancy of un-married women have changed drastically; that federal and state laws ban discrimination on the basis of pregnancy,42 that leave for pregnancy and childbirth are now guaranteed by law in many cases,43 that the costs of medical care associated with pregnancy are covered by insurance or government assistance44; that States have increasingly adopted ‘safe haven’ laws, which generally allow women to drop off babies anonymously45; and that a woman who puts her newborn up for adoption today has little reason to fear that the baby will not find a suitable home46.”
From the context of the footnote, it’s clear that the CDC quote appeared in the footnote only to highlight the fact that unwanted babies put up for adoption in the United States will likely find a family—not, as the tweet implies, that domestic birth rates need to increase to meet adoption demands. What’s more, the paragraph in which the footnote appears is about the arguments of pro-life Americans, taking place in a summary of the public debate surrounding abortion. Immediately preceding the above paragraph is another summing up the beliefs of pro-abortion Americans, which reads:
“Defenders of Roe and [Casey v. Planned Parenthood] do not claim that any new scientific learning calls for a different answer to the underlying moral question, but they do contend that changes in society require the recognition of a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. Without the availability of abortion, they maintain, people will be inhibited from exercising their freedom to choose the types of relationships they desire, and women will be unable to compete with men in the workplace and in other endeavors.”
Following both summaries, the opinion continues:
“Both sides make important policy arguments, but supporters of Roe and Casey must show that this Court has the authority to weigh those arguments and decide how abortion may be regulated in the States. They have failed to make that showing, and we thus return the power to weigh those arguments to the people and their elected officials.”
Parishioners confronted several pro-abortion protesters in costumes from The Handmaid’s Tale who attempted to disrupt Sunday mass at Our Lady of the Angels, the “mother church” of the L.A. archdiocese.
The Catholic News Agency confirmed the disruption, and reported:
The description of the protesters’ attire provided by the parishioner, Bradford Adkins, resembles costumes worn by members of the pro-abortion group Ruth Sent Us, which threatened to disrupt Catholic Masses on Sunday, Mother’s Day.
As of 10 p.m. EDT on Sunday, the group did not appear to have taken responsibility for the protest in Los Angeles. Representatives of the group did not respond to CNA’s request for comment prior to publication.
…
Ruth Sent Us has taken responsibility for disrupting Catholic churches before, such as at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco in February. During Mass at St. Mary’s, video footage shows protesters walking down the aisle toward the altar wearing red robes and white bonnets or “handmaids” costumes frequently worn by abortion activists. The costumes symbolize enslaved women who are raped and forced to give birth, inspired by Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Attorney Brad Geyer seeks information on unidentified “suspicious actors” at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Brad Geyer/Graphic via The Epoch Times)
By Joseph M. Hanneman May 6, 2022Updated: May 7, 2022
Defense attorneys are seeking to identify and investigate 80 suspicious actors and material witnesses, some of whom allegedly ran an entrapment operation against the Oath Keepers on January 6, 2021, and committed crimes including the removal of security fencing, breaching police lines, attacking officers, and inciting crowds to storm into the Capitol.
In a motion (pdf) and supplement (pdf) filed after 11 p.m. on May 5 in federal court in Washington, attorney Brad Geyer listed 80 people, some of whom he said could be government agents or provocateurs. The people are seen on video operating in a coordinated fashion across the Capitol grounds on January 6, the attorney alleged.
Geyer’s suggestion of an entrapment scheme will resonate with dozens of January 6 defense attorneys, coming shortly after two men were acquitted of an alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). There was a hung jury on charges against two other defendants. The jury in that case was allowed to consider FBI entrapment as a defense.
Geyer, who represents Oath Keepers defendant Kenneth Harrelson, is seeking a court order from U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta compelling federal prosecutors to help identify the individuals and disclose whether they were working for law enforcement or any government agency on January 6. Geyer wrote that the information is exculpatory, which compels the government to produce it. Other Oath Keepers defendants are expected to join in the motion.
The May 5 filing comes on the heels of an April 12 Oath Keepers motion that alleged at least 20 “assets” from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were embedded in the crowds on January 6.
More than a dozen ‘suspicious actors’ flagged by defense attorneys line up on the east steps of the U.S. Capitol, shortly before they pushed past police and climbed to the Columbus Doors on Jan. 6, 2021. (Attorney Brad Geyer/Screenshot via The Epoch Times) According to the new filing, video evidence the defense gained access to only recently shows that some of the 80 people attacked police, other people, and members of the Oath Keepers; entered the Capitol on the west side “with apparent permission or acquiescence of government actors”; opened the Columbus Doors on the east side of the Capitol “from the inside, possibly with even further assistance of government actors”; and deployed “sophisticated crowd-behavior techniques,” orienting themselves between protesters and police.Suspicious actors are seen on video “associating, conferring and traveling with others, engaging in behavior to confuse law enforcement through body masking, facial masking, clothing changes, and disorienting skirmishing behavior,” Geyer wrote.
The suspected people used earpieces, satellite phones, and other communication equipment. “Often it appears that these communications devices do not seem to be affected by capacity restriction or sophisticated jamming that was evident throughout the day,” Geyer wrote.
“If it can be established that these SAs [suspicious actors] were government agents, this could amount to entrapment defense that will dispose of this 7th indictment prior to trial,” the motion said.
“If it can be established that SAs, even without established government agency, from the west or elsewhere, were let into the Capitol and/or were assisted in opening the Columbus Doors from the inside—a reasonable inference from video evidence—a reasonable jury might conclude that one or more SAs had government sponsorship,” Geyer wrote.
Eleven members of the Oath Keepers were charged on January 12 with seditious conspiracy, obstruction of a government proceeding, and other counts. The government alleged the Oathkeepers committed the crimes to prevent the certification of Electoral College votes from the 2020 presidential election.
Two Oath Keepers defendants of the original 11 accepted deals offered by prosecutors and pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and obstruction. Another Oath Keepers member from North Carolina was charged May 4 with the same counts and pleaded guilty on May 5. All three are expected to assist the FBI with its ongoing January 6 investigations.
Geyer suggested the Oath Keepers who entered the Capitol Rotunda through the famous Columbus Doors atop the east stairs were entrapped by suspicious actors who boxed them in and attempted to push them into the Capitol after the doors were opened from the inside.
“Prima facie evidence of an entrapment scheme (very possibly without formal government agency) is becoming impossible to ignore on video,” Geyer wrote.
Video shot by a French television crew, and surveillance footage under court seal raise “significant concerns of informants, influencers, and inciters whose activities are now clearly observable,” said a footnote in the motion.
Suspicious Examples
“The now observable behavior suggests the exact kind of specialized training, coordination, logistical support, timing, and common goals and objectives that the government attributes to the Oath Keepers,” Geyer wrote. “Conduct alleged against the Oath Keepers seems to have been perpetrated by others before the Oath Keepers were brought in front of the Columbus Doors.”
The new video evidence “not only exculpates defendant Harrelson and the Oath Keepers in compelling ways, it also shows a large group of SAs that actually carry out the crimes of which the Oath Keepers are accused and which is the centerpiece of the government’s case,” the motion said.
The many unidentified individuals in the court filing are referred to by the hashtag nicknames assigned by the Sedition Hunters website.
“James Dean Wannabe” stood on a column near the Columbus Doors and led “vicious attacks by SAs on police with chemicals and mace,” Geyer wrote.
As soon as the inner doors to the Rotunda opened, James Dean Wannabe shot inside the door and began violently pulling protesters into the Capitol, the document said. He also helped to trap Oath Keepers member James Dolan into a tight space with a Capitol Police officer, the report alleged. He was later seen on the east steps after changing clothes and removing his hat.
“Lemony Kickit” and “Lemon Zest,” both known for their colorful hats, appeared at the first and second breach points of the day near Ray Epps, the alleged provocateur who was captured on video on January 5 and 6 imploring protesters to go into the Capitol.
Video also showed Lemony Kickit and Lemon Zest pushed at police and breached the police line on the east steps before they moved up the stairs to the Columbus Doors.
Columbus Doors Were Closed
Videos referenced in Geyer’s motion show that the 17-foot-high, 20,000-pound bronze Columbus Doors were closed when the crowd gathered at the bottom of the steps and then breached the police line. When the crowd reached the top, the fortress-like doors were still shut. It’s not clear when, or why, the doors were opened.
That significant revelation backs up arguments made in January by attorney Jonathon Moseley, who told prosecutors his client, Kelly Meggs, could not have breached the doors because they are controlled from inside the Capitol.
“The outer doors cast from solid bronze would require a bazooka, an artillery shell, or C4 military-grade explosives to breach,” Moseley wrote in a letter to federal prosecutors. “That of course did not happen. You would sooner break into a bank vault than to break the bronze outer Columbus Doors.”
The 17-foot-high bronze Columbus Doors at the U.S. Capitol were closed when protesters and suspicious actors pushed past police on the east steps on Jan. 6, 2021. The 20,000-pound doors can only be opened from inside. (Attorney Brad Geyer/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
The towering Columbus Doors that lead into the Rotunda on the east side of the U.S. Capitol are secured by magnetic locks that can only be opened from the inside by using a security code controlled by Capitol Police, Moseley wrote in an eight-page memo in January.
The two inner doors are secured by magnetic locks and cannot be opened from the outside. Twice within an hour on January 6, suspicious actors opened the inner doors from inside the Rotunda, surveillance video shows.
According to Geyer’s filing, a large number of suspicious actors controlled the scene directly in front of the Columbus Doors after the giant doors were opened. They chased away regular protesters with pepper spray and moved other actors into place. The Oath Keepers, each of whom was shadowed by at least one suspicious actor, were positioned and coaxed toward the entrance.
Six to eight suspicious actors attacked police with mace in preparation to breach the entrance, Geyer wrote.
“The dynamic of the crowd makes this almost invisible or fleeting to almost all publicly available camera angles, so most people in the crowd could not have known these chemical assaults occurred and certainly no one could have known who was standing on the steps which is where the Oath Keepers were positioned at exactly this moment.”
The net effect is that the Oath Keepers, who had come up the east stairs, were swept into the Capitol with the group of suspicious actors, the document alleged. The actors attacked police, breached the doors, and led a crowd inside the Rotunda.
Members of the Oath Keepers were flanked and followed into the U.S. Capitol by suspicious actors on Jan. 6, 2021. (Attorney Brad Geyer/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
Some of the video evidence referenced in the court motion was redacted from the document because it is part of the more than 14,000 hours of video under a protective court seal.
The court filing will bring fresh attention to the issue of provocateurs at the U.S. Capitol. Epps, a former Oath Keepers member from Arizona, denies he was working as a government informant on Jan. 5 and 6.
Federal prosecutors announced earlier this year they would disclose more information about Epps, whose photo was removed from the FBI’s Jan. 6 most-wanted list. He has not been arrested or charged, despite urging crowds to enter the Capitol and being present when police lines were breached by protesters.
Some of the suspicious actors on Geyer’s list were also seen in the hallway outside the Speaker’s Lobby where Ashli Babbitt was shot at 2:44 p.m. on Jan. 6. There are a number of other unidentified individuals who stood near Babbitt before she tried to climb out of the hallway and was shot and killed by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd.
Three witnesses to the Babbitt shooting were removed from the FBI’s most-wanted list in April 2021 without explanation. Those men have not been identified or charged.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas dismissed the idea of pressuring the court for desirable outcomes at a judicial conference Friday.
Thomas spoke at the 11th Circuit judicial conference in Atlanta this week, where he discussed the Supreme Court’s leaked draft opinion for the first time. The opinion would overturn Roe v. Wade if made official, sparking panic among Democrats and protests against the court.
“We can’t be an institution that can be bullied into giving you just the outcomes you want. The events from earlier this week are a symptom of that.,” Thomas said, according to reports.
Chief Justice John Roberts agreed with him:
“A leak of this stature is absolutely appalling,” Roberts said. “If the person behind it thinks that it will affect our work, that’s just foolish.”
Immediately after the leak, Democrats attempted to bully the court into ruling in favor of Roe v Wade.
A far-left group doxxed the addresses of Supreme Court Justices who are votes against Roe v Wade – they have protests planned at their houses.
Plus, Democrat Chuck Schumer announced that a vote would be held attempting to make abortion up to birth a federal law.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Thursday announced the Senate will vote on abortion legislation, via the Women’s Health Protection Act, Wednesday.
This legislation “would enshrine abortion on demand and up-to-birth in federal law as well as void all state laws aimed at protecting the lives of the unborn.”
The vote is likely to fail bigly. Democrats need 60 Senate votes to pass the legislation. And polling shows that public opinion may be at odds with Schumer: Democrats have failed to secure a majority consensus among voters to enact abortion legislation, a Wednesday Politico/Morning Consult poll revealed. Only 47 percent support codifying Roe v. Wade. Fifty-three percent of the electorate either oppose abortion legislation or have no opinion.
