RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/4215/How-Benedict-Pence-Avoid

From the Twitter account of Politico’s Congress reporter, Kyle Cheney, January 7, 2021:

It’s 2:55 a.m. and I just figured out how Pence massaged the rules of the Electoral College counting session to avoid introducing the “rival” slates of Trump electors.

These are the instructions VPs have given out at the start in each of the last 5. Note the difference?

Cheney’s tweet included the following screenshot:    see at site

Cheney follows up in more tweets: 

TLDR: The law specifies that the VP must introduce all “purported” electoral votes. This year, that might’ve included the unserious/mock Trump electors.

But Pence worked with the parliamentarian to interpret it so only electors backed by a state “authority” would be introduced.

Let’s pause here, both to expand upon this stupendous news (Cheney’s snarky editorializing aside) and let it sink in because I am sure this will be brand new to most readers.

https://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/4216/Sidney-Powell-Shreds-Fake-News-Again.aspx

True story. Yesterday, as stories disparaging Sidney Powell’s motion to dismiss Dominion’s $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit began mounting up, all of them seizing on a few words from her lawyers’ brief to the  point that “no reasonable person” would conclude that her publicly discussed findings against Dominion were “statements of fact,” I knew something was wrong with this narrative, obviously. The idea that Sidney Powell would put forward a Dumb Blonde argument to discredit herself in defense of herself was and is ludicrous.

I wasted a few minutes yesterday looking for a piece of journalism that colored outside these crudely drawn party lines and found not a one. Not a one! No surprise but the absence of basic expository journalism clarifies one of the crises we face as a post-democratic society. There is no functioning Fourth Estate, there are only propaganda organs of the regime.

I read most of the 90-page brief myself, which is here, and got my own news. No, Sidney Powell did not say she was just making stuff up. Mouthpiece Media spatchcocked a couple of phrases together and lied about them. 

By the way, as Lin Wood pointed out on his Telegram account, “Dominion’s lawyer, Tom Clare, also represents Bill Gates. Just sayin’.”

See below for responses to the false regime narrative from Sidney Powell and her lawyer, via Powell’s websites sidneypowell.com and Kraken-Wood.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-give-their-iowa-game-away-11616538412?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

“Democrats are using every legal trick in an effort to claw back a House seat. But in the process they may finally awaken Republicans from their political slumber to see what is happening in Iowa. This is a power grab, pure and simple, and Republicans should be shouting about it to everyone in Iowa and beyond.”

Now here’s some lawyering that may turn out to be too clever by half.

Democratic litigator Marc Elias on Monday submitted his latest brief on behalf of defeated congressional candidate Rita Hart. He wants the House of Representatives to overturn the election in Iowa’s 2nd district, which Ms. Hart lost by six votes to GOP Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks. But rather than asserting that if state election law is strictly followed his client would win, Mr. Elias tells House Democrats that they may need to bend the law to reach their desired outcome.

His brief responds to questions from the Committee on House Administration. In the first response, on procedures the committee should use in adjudicating the election challenge, Mr. Elias says “the Committee ‘is certainly not bound to’ follow state law.” The quote is from a 1985 case when the House overturned an Indiana election to seat the Democrat.

That sentence wasn’t a slip. Mr. Elias adds that “when voter intent can be determined but a ballot is not, for one reason or another, in strict conformity with state law,” it should be counted. He urges the Committee to “exercise its discretion to depart from Iowa law, and adopt counting rules that ‘disenfranchise the smallest possible number of voters.’”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-warning-to-pelosi-on-iowa-11616453810?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The eight-seat House Democratic majority has been remarkably disciplined so far in 2021, passing radical legislation on elections and unions with few defections. But the limits of loyalty to Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be tested as the party moves to overturn an Iowa House race and expel from Congress the certified winner.

GOP Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks was certified the winner of Iowa’s 2nd district last year, prevailing by 47 votes in the first count and six votes after a county-by-county recount. The losing candidate, Democrat Rita Hart, points to 22 votes she says should have been counted and asked the House to seat her under the Federal Contested Elections Act—bypassing Iowa’s special court process for election disputes.

At a House Administration hearing this month, where Democrats hold a 6-3 majority, Mrs. Pelosi’s Members were unanimous in tabling Rep. Miller-Meeks’s motion to dismiss the challenge. That’s the first step toward a recommendation to overturn the election.

But as the reality of Mrs. Pelosi’s Iowa bloody-mindedness sets in, vulnerable Members are facing questions. On Monday Politico listed four Democratic Congressmen who have spoken publicly against reversing Iowa’s election in the last week. Another said anonymously that expelling Ms. Miller-Meeks would be “political malpractice. While we would gain one seat, we would lose a lot more next year.”

Ask Republicans, who suffered in the Georgia Senate races from trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In 1938, the last time the House kicked out a sitting Member over election disputes, New Hampshire voters seated him again in the next election. Democrats’ 1985 reversal of an Indiana election succeeded in the short term but invigorated Newt Gingrich’s rise to GOP leader.

Few politicians think about long-term institutional interests anymore, but let’s hope there are enough worried about political blowback to stop Mrs. Pelosi from a power play that would deepen the rancor on Capitol Hill.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/thumonths-after-trump-complaints-some-courts-are-finding-illegalities

Long after former President Donald Trump dropped his legal challenges to the 2020 election, some courts in battleground states are beginning to declare the way widespread absentee ballots were implemented or counted violated state laws.

The latest ruling came this month in Michigan, where the State Court of Claims concluded that Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s instructions on signature verification for absentee ballots violated state law.

Benson had instructed local election clerks a month before the Nov. 3 election to start with a “presumption” that all signatures on absentee ballots were valid and only reject those that had “multiple significant and obvious” inconsistencies. Republicans and one election clerk challenged her instructions in court.

Chief Court of Claims Judge Christopher M. Murray ruled March 9 that the state Legislature did not provide such guidance in its election laws, and therefore Benson needed to promulgate a formal rule – a timely process – before imposing such a requirement. Murray told election clerks they should disregard Benson’s instructions in future elections.

“An agency must utilize formal rule-making procedures when establishing policies that ‘do not merely interpret or explain the statute or rules from which the agency derives its authority,’ but rather ‘establish the substantive standards implementing the program,'” Murray ruled.

“The guidance issued by the Secretary of State on October 6, 2020, with respect to signature-matching standards was issued in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act,” he concluded.

https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2021/03/17/new-data-show-92367-mail-ballots-in-nevada-went-to-wrong-address-n1433120

Hindsight is 20/20, and now numbers from the 2020 election show how Nevada made a mistake rushing to automatic mail ballots. Dirty voter rolls combined with automatic mail made the 2020 election a mess in Nevada.

Concrete post-election data show that 92,367 mail ballots sent out by Clark County election officials came back as undeliverable. They had incorrect or outdated addresses.

That means they were sent where the registered voter did not live. That means someone else could have snatched those misdirected live ballots. That means someone probably did.

This unfortunate number is unwelcome considering President Joe Biden only carried Nevada by 33,596 votes. Clark’s 92,367 bounced ballots demonstrate a real vulnerability with mass mail balloting.

That’s just Clark County where Las Vegas is. The number of ballots that went to the wrong addresses statewide is most certainly much higher.

It is true that these ballots ultimately bounced back uncast. If nothing else, that’s a lot of wasted paper and postage. But how many ballots never came back because there wasn’t yet clear information about the registrants who had died or moved away?

More importantly, sending 92,367 ballots to the wrong places was a gamble our system of electing leaders should not be making.

Remember, last year The Public Interest Legal Foundation, an organization I am affiliated with, documented through video that ballots were mailed and cast from vacant lots, abandoned mines, liquor stores, and casinos in Nevada.

Nobody should want tens of thousands of ballots floating through the mails to destinations unknown. Elections don’t run well when voting is scattered and distant from election officials. The 92,367 bounced ballots demonstrate slack in the system.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2021/03/18/months_later_some_courts_are_finding_

Long after former President Donald Trump dropped his legal challenges to the 2020 election, some courts in battleground states are beginning to declare the way widespread absentee ballots were implemented or counted violated state laws.

The latest ruling came this month in Michigan, where the State Court of Claims concluded that Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s instructions on signature verification for absentee ballots violated state law.

Benson had instructed local election clerks a month before the Nov. 3 election to start with a “presumption” that all signatures on absentee ballots were valid and only reject those that had “multiple significant and obvious” inconsistencies. Republicans and one election clerk challenged her instructions in court.

Chief Court of Claims Judge Christopher M. Murray ruled March 9 that the state Legislature did not provide such guidance in its election laws, and therefore Benson needed to promulgate a formal rule – a timely process – before imposing such a requirement. Murray told election clerks they should disregard Benson’s instructions in future elections.

“An agency must utilize formal rule-making procedures when establishing policies that ‘do not merely interpret or explain the statute or rules from which the agency derives its authority,’ but rather ‘establish the substantive standards implementing the program,'” Murray ruled.

“The guidance issued by the Secretary of State on October 6, 2020, with respect to signature-matching standards was issued in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act,” he concluded.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/17/mike-lindell-announces-countersuits-against-dominion-claims-to-have-amazing-evidence-the-2020-election-was-stolen/

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has announced that he will countersue Dominion Voting Systems with the help of a team of lawyers, including Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz.

The U.S.-based voting machine supplier is suing MyPillow and Lindell for $1.3 billion for defamation, alleging that Trump’s ally spread baseless lies when he accused Dominion of helping to rig the 2020 presidential election.

Dominion is also suing Trump allies Rudolph Giuliani and Sidney Powell in similar civil suits. Meanwhile, several news outlets have retracted claims about Dominion voting machines after receiving legal warnings from the company’s lawyers.

During a conversation with Stephen K. Bannon on his popular “War Room Pandemic” podcast, Monday,  Lindell said that he and his business would be “going after” Dominion in two separate lawsuits of his own. According to the conservative businessman, the voting software company violated RICO law by bullying news outlets that booked him as a guest.

“You’re also going to have My Pillow going after Dominion in a counter-suit,” Lindell, 59, said, explaining that the suits will be about protecting “First Amendment speech.”

“There are two cases. One will be My Pillow, one will be Mike Lindell. They’re both going to be a little bit different because what Dominion did is violate the rights of everyone in this country by using bullying lawsuits and RICO law,” he explained. “Basically what they’re saying to news outlets is, ‘If you let this guy on to talk about Dominion we’re going to sue you!’ That’s racketeering. That goes back to the mafia days.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/03/17/trump-vindicated-as-federal-judge-rules-michigan-secretary-of-state-violated-election-laws-n1433162

A judge in Michigan has vindicated President Trump by ruling that Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, broke state law when she unilaterally changed election rules concerning absentee balloting in the 2020 election. This ruling legitimizes a key claim made by the Trump legal team in its challenges to the 2020 election.

A major change imposed by Benson was loosening the signature verification requirement for absentee ballots. Michigan Court of Claims Chief Judge Christopher Murray ruled that this change violated Michigan Administrative Procedures Act.

The court made the following conclusion:

…nowhere in this state’s election law has the Legislature indicated that signatures are to be presumed valid, nor did the Legislature require that signatures are to be accepted so long as there are any redeeming qualities in the application or return envelope as compared with the signature on file. Policy determinations like the one at issue — which places the thumb on the scale in favor of a signature’s validity — should be made pursuant to properly promulgated rules under the APA or by the Legislature.

Over 3.1 million Michiganders voted by absentee ballot in November. Biden “won” the state by just over 154,000 votes, according to the state-certified results.

“I’m glad the court sees Secretary of State Benson’s attempts at lawmaking for what they are – clear violations of her authority,” said State Rep. Matt Hall, a Republican. “If she wants to make changes like these, she needs to work with the Legislature or properly promulgate them through the laws we have on the books.”