Category: The Courts

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Corruption Elections Politics The Courts

Zuckerberg Ends Controversial Grants to Election Offices

Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Financial Services Committee on “An Examination of Facebook and Its Impact on the Financial Services and Housing Sectors” in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC on October 23, 2019. (Photo by Nicholas Kamm / AFP) (Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images)
By Matthew Vadum for Epoch Times  April 13, 2022

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who in the 2020 election cycle flooded election offices across the United States with hundreds of millions of dollars in grants, won’t be participating in such grantmaking this year, according to a spokesman.

Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, made $419.5 million in donations to nonprofits—“Zuckerbucks” or “Zuckbucks,” as some have called the money—$350 million of which went to the “Safe Elections” Project of the left-wing Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL). The other $69.5 million went to the Center for Election Innovation and Research. The CTCL reportedly distributed grants to upward of 2,500 election offices.

Zuckerberg spokesman Ben LaBolt, who was previously spokesman for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, said the donations were a one-time deal.

“As Mark and Priscilla made clear previously, their election infrastructure donation to help ensure that Americans could vote during the height of the pandemic was a one-time donation given the unprecedented nature of the crisis,” LaBolt told The New York Times on April 12. “They have no plans to repeat that donation.”

The money was supposed to be used to buy personal protective equipment and new ballot-counting equipment, train poll workers, and expand mail-in voting.

But critics have a less charitable take on what happened. They say the Zuckerbergs helped buy the presidency for presidential candidate Joe Biden by improperly influencing election officials and artificially driving up turnout in Democrat, but not Republican, strongholds across the nation.

Author J.D. Vance, who’s seeking the Republican nod for the Ohio U.S. Senate seat, said on April 12 on the campaign trail that he believed the 2020 presidential election was stolen through fraud. Illegal ballot harvesting and Zuckerberg putting money into Democratic turnout in battleground states were also key in the election, he said.

The donations spawned a series of lawsuits across the country. For example, last month, the Thomas More Society filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Elections Commission claiming that Milwaukee officials were involved in an election bribery scheme for accepting election-assistance money from CTCL, as The Epoch Times reported.

Grants to election administrators created “a two-tiered election system that treated voters differently depending on whether they lived in Democrat or Republican strongholds,” Phill Kline, director of the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society, wrote in a report in late 2020.

“This privatization of elections undermines the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which requires state election plans to be submitted to federal officials and approved, and requires respect for equal protection by making all resources available equally to all voters,” Kline wrote.

Several states, including Florida, subsequently banned private donations to election offices.

In May 2021, Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed the state’s new election integrity law, which, in addition to prohibiting the use of private funds to administer elections, also banned ballot harvesting and mass mailing of ballots, and strengthened voter identification requirements.

“Florida took action this legislative session to increase transparency and strengthen the security of our elections,” DeSantis said at the time, as The Epoch Times reported. “Floridians can rest assured that our state will remain a leader in ballot integrity. Elections should be free and fair, and these changes will ensure this continues to be the case in the Sunshine State.”

Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) President J. Christian Adams, a former U.S. Justice Department civil rights attorney whose group frequently files election integrity lawsuits, said at the time that the Zuckerbergs’ money had a huge influence on the 2020 elections.

“Zuckbucks were the biggest factor, juicing blue areas in 2020,” Adams said around the time Florida cracked down on private money being used in election administration.

“A private citizen should not be allowed to influence how our elections are run. At the Public Interest Legal Foundation, we are proud to have played a role in ensuring that this money will not be spent to influence the Florida elections in 2022.”

CTCL Executive Director Tiana Epps-Johnson said earlier this week that her group is launching a new five-year, $80 million program called the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence to assist election offices across the United States.

Bolt said the Zuckerbergs won’t be involved in the new project.

So why isn’t he in Jail? Answer: $$$$$$$

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Corruption Elections Politics The Courts

Here’s hoping: Durham Asks Court to Compel Production From Clinton Campaign, DNC

FILE - This 2018 portrait released by the U.S. Department of Justice shows Connecticut's U.S. Attorney John Durham. Durham, the federal prosecutor tapped to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation, has been presenting evidence before a grand jury as part of his probe, a person familiar with the matter said Friday, Aug. 13, 2021. (U.S. Department of Justice via AP, File)
https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/john-durham.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200

Crossfire Hurricane

By Zachary Stieber for the Epoch Times April 7, 2022

Special counsel John Durham’s team on April 6 asked a federal judge to force Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and two other parties to hand over documents they claim are protected by attorney–client privilege.

The campaign, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and research and intelligence firm Fusion GPS appear to be withholding documents that aren’t actually protected by the privilege, Durham’s team said in the filing, entered in the case against ex-Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann.

Of the withheld materials, almost all “appear to lack any connection to actual or expected litigation or the provision of legal advice,” prosecutors told U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, an Obama appointee who is overseeing the case.

In fact, of the 1,455 documents being withheld by Fusion GPS, only 18 emails and attachments are said to involve an attorney.

The Clinton campaign, the DNC, and Fusion didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The documents in question are being sought for the upcoming trial of Sussmann, who was charged with lying to the FBI for going to a bureau lawyer in 2016 and falsely stating he didn’t hand over unsubstantiated claims about then-candidate Donald Trump on behalf of a client.

The claims were compiled with funding from the campaign and the DNC by former British spy Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS, which was founded by former reporters.

Sussmann and his lawyers have been pressing the judge to dismiss the case prior to trial, arguing that the lie about not bringing the information on behalf of a client wasn’t material to the information itself.

Attorney–client privilege protects many communications between a client and their lawyer. Disclosure to third parties usually undercuts privilege claims.

In the new filing, Durham’s team pointed out that Fusion GPS co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch penned a book published in 2019, which means even if a valid privilege did once exist, it might have since been waived.

Prosecutors also noted that Fusion GPS operatives regularly communicated with reporters about their work, resulting in several stories before the 2020 election and a spate of others after voters hit the polls.

Further, the Clinton campaign (HFA) and the DNC have claimed privilege over communications sent between Rodney Joffe, whom Sussmann was also representing at the time, and a Fusion operative, “despite the fact that no one from either the DNC or HFA is copied on certain of these communications,” prosecutors said.

The government subpoenaed information from the parties in 2021.

Fusion GPS was paid by the Democratic entities through Perkins Coie, a law firm. The agreement was introduced as an exhibit in the case.

Many if not most of the actions taken by Fusion GPS employees “do not appear to have been a necessary part of, or even related to” Perkins Coie’s legal advice to the campaign and the DNC, Durham’s team said.

Prosecutors want to examine the communications in a private, in-camera setting “in order to resolve these issues and ensure that only legitimately privileged and/or attorney work product-protected communications and testimony be withheld from the otherwise admissible evidence and testimony that is presented to the jury at trial.”

The trial is currently set to start on May 16.

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Corruption Elections Politics The Courts

Judge Tosses Maryland Congressional Map Over ‘Extreme Partisan Gerrymandering’

The Maryland State Capitol Building in Annapolis, Md., in a file image. By Zachary Stieber for Epoch Times  March 26, 2022

A Maryland judge on March 25 threw out a congressional map lawmakers recently enacted, ruling that it was a product of “extreme partisan gerrymandering.”

Anne Arundel County Senior Judge Lynne Battaglia, an appointee of former Democrat Gov. Glendening, found that the map unconstitutionally was aimed at reducing the power of Republican voters because it shifted the only GOP member of Congress representing Maryland, Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), into a different district, where he was likely to lose.

The new map, approved by Democrat state lawmakers in Maryland in late 2021, left Democrats with an estimated advantage in every single one of the eight congressional districts, according to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project.

Further, Sean Trende, an elections analyst tapped by plaintiffs, found through voting simulations that Democrats would likely win all eight districts.

Trende testified in the case that the map was drawn “with an intent to hurt the Republican party’s chances of letting anyone in Congress” and “dilutes and diminishes the ability of Republicans to elect candidates of choice.”

Allan Lichtman, another analyst, told the court that Trende’s analysis was lacking and that he believed the map was actually tilted towards Republicans compared to previous maps, which would lead to the GOP gaining seats in the 2022 midterm elections. But he drew criticism from the judge when he falsely said the map did not pit Harris against Rep. Kewisi Mfume (D-Md.) in Maryland’s Seventh Congressional District—Harris moved to Cambridge after the map was enacted so he could defend the seat he holds—and he acknowledged under cross-examination that Democrats did not lose seats during midterm elections during former President Barack Obama’s time in office.

Battaglia said she found Trende’s testimony and analysis compelling and ruled that the map “is an outlier and product of extreme partisan gerrymandering.”

She ordered the General Assembly to develop a new plan “that is constitutional.”

The ruling came after voters represented by Fair Maps Maryland and Judicial Watch sued over the map.

“Judge Battaglia’s ruling confirms what we have all known for years—Maryland is ground zero for gerrymandering, our districts and political reality reek of it, and there is abundant proof that it is occurring,” Doug Mayer, spokesman for Fair Maps Maryland, said in a statement.

“This key court victory against abusive partisan gerrymandering by Democrats in Maryland could set a national precedent,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Members of the legislature on the General Assembly commission that was in charge of making the map did not respond to requests for comment.

Maryland  Sen. Bill Ferguson and state Del. Adrienne Jones, both Democrats and members of the panel, said in a joint statement after the map was enacted that it “provides cleaner lines and more compact districts while keeping a significant portion of Marylanders in their current districts, ensuring continuity of representation.”

Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, a Democrat, has not decided on whether an appeal will be lodged, his office told The Epoch Times in an email.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican who formed a body that recommended a different map, said the ruling “puts in plain view the partisan, secretive, and rigged process that led to the legislature’s illegal and unconstitutional maps” and called on lawmakers to adopt the map drawn up by the body.

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Corruption Crime Politics The Courts

City Under Siege: Staggering New York Crime Wave Roils Politics, Challenges Left

March 23, 2022 | Judicial Watch

The NYPD’s new anti-gun units hit the streets last week and not a moment too soon. New York City is in the midst of a staggering crime wave.

Over the past weekend, 29 people were shot in 24 separate incidents, the Daily News reported. According to the latest NYPD statistics, major felonies in the city increased 58% in February 2022, in year over year comparisons to February 2021. Murders rose 10%. Felony assaults rose 22%. Rapes increased 35%. Robberies increased 56%. Hate crimes—largely against Jews and Asian-Americans—surged 189%. Crimes in the transit systems—mainly the subways—were up 73%.

New York is a city under siege. Every day brings a new horror story. A child is assaulted in Times Square. A young woman is stabbed to death in her Chinatown apartment. A senior citizen is hacked to death by a wheelchair-bound transgender two-time convicted murderer. A madman smears feces on a woman’s face in a subway station, is released on bail, and arrested again after hurling a dumbbell through a window. A woman is shoved in front of a subway train and killed. Another woman is attacked with a hammer. A teen is shot to death in front of a Brooklyn high school. A baby is shot in the face in the Bronx. A teenage cashier at a Burger King in Manhattan is shot and killed during a robbery. Two police officers are killed by gunfire in Harlem.

At Judicial Watch, we warned for years that New York was slipping toward a crisis of crime and disorder. The reasons were not difficult to discern. Progressive policy makers were denigrating and defunding the police at every opportunity, dismantling successful policing units, decriminalizing quality-of-life crimes, emptying  jails, and launching a disastrous program of bail reform.

Under Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York abandoned the successful policing strategy of enforcing quality-of-life laws. This was the “Broken Windows” theory of policing, a key factor in crime reduction during the mayoral tenure of Rudy Giuliani.

“Broken Windows” is a metaphor for urban decline. The building with an unrepaired broken window soon leads to the other windows being broken and more disorderly conduct. “A neighborhood where minor offenses go unchallenged soon becomes a breeding ground for more serious criminal activity and, ultimately, violence,” write Giuliani police commissioner William Bratton and George Kelling, the father of Broken Windows theory.

New York decriminalized quality-of-life crimes under de Blasio. Public urination, public drinking, littering, and subway turnstile jumping were no longer illegal. Incidents of harassment, menacing, petty theft, public urination and public intoxication began to increase. That distant tremor in the urban air was the sound of windows breaking.

Meanwhile, progressives rammed through the state legislature in Albany a reform package that eliminated bail for a wide range of offenses—from assault, arson and child abuse to manslaughter, robbery and riot—and removed judicial discretion in holding suspects. The reform legislation took effect January 2020. Many more offenders walked. Some of them were poor first-time offenders on minor crimes who simply could not afford bail and deserved to walk; others were violent personalities or career criminals who did not. Crime rates jumped.

The public backlash was swift. In November 2021, New York elected a new mayor, a former police officer who had campaigned on a platform of public safety, Eric Adams. The new mayor’s plans include a refreshed version of the successful but controversial NYPD anti-crime unit, which was disbanded in 2020 in the midst of social justice protests. The new six-person anti-gun units, launched last week, will aggressively tackle gun crime in New York. About 170 police officers have been deployed so far, focusing on high crime areas, with 300 more to follow.

Adams also is advocating for reform of radical bail laws, tougher gun possession charges for youthful offenders, and a crackdown on transit crime with an increased police presence in the subways .

Initially stunned by the Adams electoral victory, New York’s powerful progressive factions have begun to push back hard on the new mayor. Adams’ appeal to Democratic leaders in Albany for bail reform—largely focused on giving judges more discretion to hold potentially violent offenders—was quickly shot down. Progressive politicians in New York argue that there is not a proven connection between the new bail laws and increased crime; conservatives disagree.

Adams, meanwhile, gained an important ally in the bail reform fight: New York Governor Kathy Hochul. The former lieutenant governor took over after Andrew Cuomo resigned. Last week, she sent the state legislature a “confidential” ten-point public safety plan that backed the Adams proposal to give judges more discretion in setting bail. The plan quickly leaked, infuriating the Left. Perhaps not coincidentally, Hochul will be asking the voters for a full term as governor in November.

Back in New York City, the new NYPD anti-gun teams acted quickly, making a first arrest just two hours into the first patrol—an alleged member of the Bloods crime gang with a loaded 9mm handgun. By the end of the first week, the anti-gun units had arrested thirty more suspects and taken ten illegal guns off the streets.

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COVID Drugs Politics The Courts

Federal judge blocks DC law allowing kids to get vaccinated without parental consent

Federal judge blocks DC law allowing kids to get vaccinated without parental consent
© The Associated Press
By Nathaniel Weixel – 03/21/22

A federal judge temporarily blocked the District of Columbia from enforcing a law that would have allowed children to get vaccinated without the knowledge of their parents, ruling the law violated parents’ religious liberties.

The law in question, the Minor Consent for Vaccinations Amendment Act of 2020, allows children as young as 11 years old to be vaccinated so long as a provider deems them capable of informed consent.

The decision, issued Friday, comes as health officials debate the merits of recommending additional COVID-19 booster shots, and as regulators and drug companies continue to analyze clinical evidence for COVID-19 vaccines for children under 5 years old.

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Under the law, children whose parents objected to vaccines on religious grounds would have access to their own medical records, and providers would be allowed to seek reimbursement directly from the insurer without parental knowledge or consent.

The law was initially aimed at allowing teenagers to have access to the HPV vaccine and the meningitis vaccine, as it was passed prior to COVID-19 vaccines becoming available. The law applies only to vaccines that are approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Parents brought two separate lawsuits in July that challenged the law.

One lawsuit, brought by the father of a teenager at a public charter school, alleged that the District created a “pressure-cooker environment, enticing and psychologically manipulating” their child to “defy their parents and take vaccinations against their parents’ wills.”

The father alleged that his child was “medically frail” and developed autoimmunity, alopecia (severe hair loss), asthma, and eczema after receiving vaccines. As a result, he said he is of the sincere religious belief that “he should not inject a foreign substance into his son’s body that may harm him,” and objects to the COVID-19 vaccine as well as all standard childhood vaccines.

The lawsuit did not identify the father’s religion. It was filed by Children’s Health Defense, an organization run by anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

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A second lawsuit was filed by a Maryland resident who said his 16-year-old daughter sought a vaccine in D.C. in order to attend a summer camp, without his knowledge and despite his religious objections.

Judge Trevor McFadden, appointed by former President Trump, ruled that the parents in both cases have standing and showed a likelihood of success on the merits for those claims, because the law requires providers to hide children’s vaccination status from parents who invoke their religious exemption rights but not from other parents.

McFadden ruled the law “targets religious parents” by withholding information available to secular parents who file a medical exemption for their children and said it was preempted by the federal National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

McFadden said he doesn’t anticipate a wide ranging impact from the injunction.

The ruling “will not prevent children from being vaccinated. Nor will it prevent the District from continuing to advertise the importance of vaccines, incentivizing vaccinations, and setting up vaccine clinics in schools. The only impact will be that children will be unable to decide to get vaccinations without their parents’ consent,” he wrote.

This article comes from The sHILL and their support of the narrative can be seen both in the article (passages highlighted)and in their tags: Donald Trump Coronavirus COVID-19 vaccines anti-vaccination

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Child Abuse Corruption Human Traficking The Courts

Federal Judge Orders Joe Biden to Stop Mass Release of Illegal Migrant Children at Border

by Jordan Dixon-Hamilton For Breitbart  

A Texas federal judge on Friday ordered President Joe Biden to stop the mass release of illegal migrant children crossing the southern border into the country.

Judge Mark Pittman’s order prevents Biden from exempting minor migrants from Title 42. Title 42 is an immigration policy implemented by former President Donald Trump that allows U.S. immigration officials to expel immediately migrants who come to the southern border. Title 42 was implemented in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Since the policy’s start in March 2020, the federal government has expelled more than 1.6 million migrants.

Biden previously declined to expel unaccompanied minor children under Title 42. Instead, he allowed the young migrants to enter the country, where they would be placed under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ supervision. From there, they would be placed with sponsors in the United States, who are typically family members.

Pittman wrote:

Here, the President has (arbitrarily) excepted COVID-19 positive unaccompanied alien children from Title 42 procedures—which were purposed with preventing the spread of COVID-19. As a result, border states such as Texas now uniquely bear the brunt of the ramifications. Yet, while policy decisions are beyond judicial review, those agency actions that are “arbitrary, capricious, . . . or otherwise not in accordance with law” will be set aside.

Pittman explained that the “ramifications” Texas deals with include strains on the state’s public school system and medical resources, and increased incarceration.

A record number of more than 122,000 unaccompanied minors arrived at the southern border during the fiscal year 2021.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the decision is a “win for Texas & children—loss for Biden & cartels!”

 

America First Legal, led by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, served as outside counsel for Texas as part of the lawsuit. Miller called the decision “a truly historic victory.”

In a statement, Miller said:

We are honored beyond words to have partnered with Attorney General Ken Paxton and the State of Texas in our landmark lawsuit against the Biden Administration’s egregious decision to except ALL illegal alien minors traveling without adults (UAC) from Title 42—and to have just obtained a preliminary injunction. Biden’s decision to except UAC from Title 42, and instead mass resettle them in the United States, has led to the largest wave of criminal child smuggling in human history–and the flood of illegal alien teens and minors has drained the resources of our schools, hospitals, and communities while creating a new unimpeded recruiting pipeline for MS-13. This preliminary injunction orders the Biden Administration to halt their order categorically excepting unaccompanied alien minors from Title 42 repatriation. This is a truly historic victory, but we have a long, long, long way to go to end the Administration’s crusade to eradicate our sovereignty.

Friday’s decision is Texas’s latest successful effort to prevent Biden from implementing his radical immigration agenda. Texas previously stopped a 100-day deportation moratorium from being enforced last February. Additionally, the state got a federal judge to order Biden to continue Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, where asylum seekers are returned to Mexico to wait for their hearings.

The case is Texas v. Biden, No. 4:21-cv-0579-P in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

 

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Crime Opinion Progressive Racism The Courts

Winning. Former Cop Found Not Guilty of Wanton Endangerment in Raid That Left Breonna Taylor Dead

American Hero found Not Guilty. Photo-GP.

Justice was served. A Kentucky jury on Thursday cleared a former police officer of charges that he endangered neighbors when he fired shots into an apartment during the 2020 drug raid that ended with Breonna Taylor’s death.

The panel of eight men and four women delivered its verdict about three hours after it took the case following closing arguments from prosecution and defense attorneys. Hankison was shaking and visibly relieved after the verdict. Taylor’s sister, Juniyah Palmer, shook her head.

Asked what might have swayed the jury, Attorney Mathews replied, “I think it was absolutely the fact that he was doing his job as a police officer. … The jury felt like you go out and peform your duty and your brother officer gets shot, you got a right to defend yourself. Simple as that. “

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Biden Pandemic Corruption COVID The Courts

Court Denies Biden Administration Attempt to Impose COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate on Navy SEALs

A Navy member gets a COVID-19 vaccine on Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Va., in a file image. (U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Jackson Adkins via The Epoch Times)
By Zachary Stieber for EPOCH TIMES  March 1, 2022

A federal appeals court on Feb. 28 rejected an attempt by President Joe Biden’s administration to partially lift a block on the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for a group of Navy SEALs.

A federal judge in January blocked the mandate’s enforcement for 35 Navy members, many of them SEALs, ruling that while the Navy had provided a process for adjudicating religious exemption applications, “by all accounts, it is theater.”

At the time of the ruling, the Navy had granted zero religious exemptions. As of Feb. 23, it had still granted none.

Nonetheless, officials asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to allow the military to take into account the unvaccinated status of the 35 members when making “deployment, assignment and other operational decisions.” They argued that “forcing the Navy to deploy plaintiffs while they are unvaccinated threatens the success of critical missions and needlessly endangers the health and safety of other service members.”

A three-judge panel on the court rejected the request, noting the discrepancy between how the branch has handled medical and religious exemption requests.

“The Navy has granted hundreds of medical exemptions from vaccination requirements, allowing those service members to seek medical waivers and become deployable. But it has not accommodated any religious objection to any vaccine in seven years, preventing those seeking such accommodations from even being considered for medical waivers,” the panel said.

Judges said there is apparently no template for approving requests, but there is a disapproval template form. And during the process, Navy officials sent memorandums to Vice Admiral John Nowell asking that he disapprove the exemption requests, even those based on “sincerely held religious beliefs.”

The Navy has “has effectively stacked the deck against even those exemptions supported by Plaintiffs’ immediate commanding officers and military chaplains,” emphasizing the futility of pursuing exemptions, the panel said. Further, letting 35 unvaccinated members deploy wouldn’t seriously impede military function because over 5,000 other members are still on duty despite being unvaccinated, they added.

“Defendants have not demonstrated ‘paramount interests’ that justify vaccinating these 35 Plaintiffs against COVID-19 in violation of their religious beliefs,” the ruling stated.

The panel consisted of Judges Edith Jones, a Reagan nominee; Stuart Duncan, a Trump nominee; and Kurt Engelhardt, a Trump nominee.

Mike Berry, director of military affairs for First Liberty Institute, which is representing the plaintiffs, said the group was grateful for the ruling.

“The purge of religious service members is not just devastating to morale, but it harms America’s national security. It’s time for our military to honor its constitutional obligations and grant religious accommodations for service members with sincere religious objections to the vaccine,” Berry said in a statement.

The Navy declined to comment.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, the George W. Bush nominee who entered the injunction, has yet to rule on a motion to widen the preliminary injunction to all Navy members seeking a religious exemption. He received arguments from both parties in February.

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Back Door Power Grab Corruption Elections Politics Reprints from others. The Courts

Biden Administration Urges Court Not to Allow Release of ‘Secret Report’ on Dominion Voting Machines

JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images

Top officials at a U.S. federal cybersecurity agency are urging a judge not to authorize at this time the release of a report that analyzes Dominion Voting Systems equipment in Georgia, arguing doing so could assist hackers trying to “undermine election security.”

WASHINGTON, DC – JUNE 10: Jen Easterly, nominee to be the Director of the Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, testifies during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on June 10, 2021 in Washington, DC. Easterly will be responsible for overseeing the defense of national cyber attacks. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was recently provided an unredacted copy of the report, which was prepared by J. Alex Halderman, director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society.

The report discusses “potential vulnerabilities in Dominion ImageCast X ballot marking devices,” or electronic voting devices, according to the government.

While CISA supports public disclosure of any vulnerabilities and associated mitigation measures with election equipment, allowing the release of the report at this point “increases the risk that malicious actors may be able to exploit any vulnerabilities and threaten election security,” government lawyers said in a Feb. 10 filing in the case.

The case was brought in 2017 by good-government groups and voters who say the lack of paper ballots undermines the voting process.

U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg, an Obama nominee overseeing the case, was urged by CISA to reject attempts to release a redacted version of Halderman’s report for now.

CISA officials want to review the information in the report and help Dominion resolve the vulnerabilities identified before the report is released. They said they weren’t able to provide a date by which they’ll be finished.

Totenberg must weigh the request against the wishes of Georgia Secretary State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican and one of the defendants, who called in late January for the release to happen immediately.

John Poulos, Dominion’s CEO and president, said in a statement released by Raffensperger’s office that Halderman’s review lacked “a holistic approach,” adding that Dominion “supports all efforts to bring real facts and evidence forward to defend the integrity of our machines and the credibility of Georgia’s elections.”

Plaintiffs, including the Coalition for Good Governance, also support the release of the report, David Cross, one of their lawyers, confirmed to The Epoch Times.

The plaintiffs said in a filing before a copy was sent to CISA that the agency should get a copy and begin its evaluation process, but that the evaluation “should not unreasonably delay the public disclosure of the report, which must be promptly disclosed to Georgia state and county election officials, and filed on the public docket, so that public officials can secure the upcoming May primary elections.”

They asked Totenberg to order them to file a redacted version of the report on the docket, which would make it accessible to the public, no later than March 4. Original Here

In other words the “Biden” administration doesn’t want a computer savvy group to prove home the election was tampered with via compromised voting machines.

But they probably don’t need to worry. After all, the Fulton County people who were caught on their own CCTV pulling ballots from under a table and running ballots through the machines multiple times have yet to be prosecuted.

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Corruption Crime How sick is this? Politics The Courts

Law Licenses Suspended for McCloskeys, Who Held Off Protesters Outside Their Home

Mark and Patricia McCloskey leave following a court hearing in St. Louis on Oct. 14, 2020. (Jeff Roberson/AP Photo)Mark and Patricia McCloskey leave following a court hearing in St. Louis on Oct. 14, 2020.

By Matthew Vadum for EPOCH TIMES February 10, 2022

The Missouri Supreme Court has indefinitely suspended the law licenses of a Missouri couple convicted of misdemeanors for holding guns outside of their St. Louis home in 2020, when a group of protesters, including Black Lives Matter activists, demonstrated in their gated community.

Armed homeowners Mark T. and Patricia N. McCloskey stand in front their house as they confront protesters marching to St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson’s house on June 28, 2020. The protesters called for Krewson’s resignation for releasing the names and addresses of residents who suggested defunding the police department. (Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

At the same time, the court stayed the suspension, subject to a year of probation during which the two attorneys—who have become folk heroes among conservatives—must “not engage in conduct that violates the Rules of Professional Conduct.”

For defending their home, Mark and Patricia McCloskey were honored speakers at the 2020 Republican National Convention. Mark McCloskey is currently running for the U.S. Senate as a Republican.

Although the McCloskeys, who were pardoned after their convictions by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, argued that they were justified in holding firearms outside of their home to dissuade the crowd, which they said meant them harm, local prosecutors disagreed.

The case, which involved prosecutorial misconduct, received national media attention.

Kimberly Gardner, a Democrat and St. Louis’s first black chief prosecutor, who has accused local police of racism, was removed from the case in December 2020 by Circuit Judge Thomas Clark II for using the incident in inflammatory campaign fundraising emails that were sent out days before the McCloskeys were charged. Clark ruled that Gardner’s behavior raised “the appearance of impropriety” and jeopardized the defendants’ right to a fair trial, National Public Radio reported.

Leftist financier George Soros, whose philanthropy funded groups that were involved in the violent protests following the 2014 death of black teenager Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson, Missouri, also contributed to Gardner’s campaign through his political organizations as part of a “rogue prosecutors” campaign to elect soft-on-crime district attorneys, Capital Research Center found, according to the Washington Times. Critics say that these radical prosecutors have caused crime rates to escalate in communities across the country.

The Black Lives Matter activists who appeared outside of the McCloskeys’ home were marching to the home of the St. Louis mayor to protest the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, a black man whose death sparked violent protests nationwide. Nine protesters involved in the incident were charged with misdemeanor trespassing, but the charges were later dropped.

The McCloskeys said at the time that their actions “were borne solely of fear and apprehension” at the presence of the mob on a private street.

Under court rules, the fact that Mark and Patricia McCloskey were each convicted of a “misdemeanor offense involving moral turpitude” requires them to be disciplined, Chief Justice Paul C. Wilson wrote in twin orders on Feb. 8.

Moral turpitude is a legal term describing “wicked, deviant behavior constituting an immoral, unethical, or unjust departure from ordinary social standards such that it would shock a community,” according to the Legal Information Institute.

Mark McCloskey entered a guilty plea on June 17, 2021, to a “class A misdemeanor of harassment in the second degree,” Wilson wrote (pdf). He was fined $750. Patricia McCloskey entered a guilty plea on the same day to a “class C misdemeanor of assault in the fourth degree,” the chief justice wrote (pdf). She was fined $2,000.

The couple had originally been charged with felony-level unlawful use of a weapon, although prosecutors reached a plea deal with them to reduce the severity of the charges.

Alan Pratzel, the court’s chief disciplinary officer, previously moved to have their law licenses suspended. He said what the couple did showed “indifference to public safety” and involved “moral turpitude.”

Pratzel acknowledged that the governor’s pardons erased the McCloskeys’ convictions, but said in such cases “the person’s guilt remains,” as The Epoch Times previously reported.

Patricia McCloskey told local media that she was “disappointed the Supreme Court found it appropriate to discipline us.”

“I think what we did was certainly not an act of moral turpitude,” she said.

She noted that they’ll both comply with the probation conditions.

Katabella Roberts contributed to this article.