Can States Legalize Stealing Federal Elections? Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/11/can-states-legalize-stealing-fe

A question raised by today’s decision out of Pennsylvania. The decision largely rests on the judge’s contention that Pennsylvania’s election law fails to ban all sorts of abuses, including excluding poll watchers and illegal ballots, and federal courts have nothing to say about this. Now, obviously, the decision would look very differently if the shoe were on the other foot, in no small part because the Democrats can always claim disproportionate impact on minority voters. Some of the cases this time around by Republicans have emphasized minority plaintiffs, but realistically speaking this particular gambit is copyrighted by the plantation party.

Obviously this was a step in larger strategy, but the problem is very real. Consider Bush v. Gore. Having to invoke equal protection in federal court cases involving federal elections is absurd. It’s also a very weak reed for protecting the integrity of a political system from abuses both blatant and subtle.

The Pennsylvania argument is that the state can perpetrate its choice of abuses that federal courts shouldn’t be able to remedy (and this is while the Democrats insist on the need to continue monitoring the voting setups of southern states), the complainants have to prove standing, damages, and a remedy that is equivalent to the damages. In other words, you can’t challenge the actual election unless you have enough plaintiffs to change the results. That’s not something that a campaign can realistically come up with a few weeks after the election when the difference is high enough.

If states illegally making up election law on the fly is treated as a state issue, and it can’t move forward within the state because, as in Pennsylvania, its judiciary is hopelessly partisan and corrupt, and federal judges refuse to touch it because it’s a state issue, then our political system is little better than a banana republic.

Leftists Fomented Attempts To Have State Electors Vote Against Trump In 2016 By Jordan Davidson

https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/27/leftists-fomented-attempts-to-have-state-electors-vote-against-trump-in-2016/

In 2016, leftists and the mainstream media lobbied for people to protest President Donald Trump’s election by having state electors vote against him.

Among those who called for electors to potentially vote against their state’s popular vote numbers included corporate media journalists and contributors such as Chris Hayes, EJ Dionne, Paul Krugman, Peter Beinart, activists, Harvard professors, former Democrat staffers, and other elites, all of whom openly expressed their disdain for a Trump presidency.

Journalist Michael Tracey documented the now-hypocritical takes from media gatekeepers in 2016 on Twitter and in a Medium post. Their reasons ranged from Trump was incapable and under-qualified for the job all the way up to simply accusing him of being an illegitimate president.

Some took it even further than snarky tweets, writing op-eds for The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and other publications arguing for similar outcomes which were quickly amplified by other typical liberal media counterparts such as MSNBC’s Joy Reid and the New York Times’ Jonathan Weisman.

Carter Page Sues DOJ, FBI, James Comey, And Others Behind Crossfire Hurricane FISA Abuse By Margot Cleveland

https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/27/carter-page-sues-doj-fbi-james-comey-and-others-behind-crossfire-hurricane-fisa-abuse/

In an eight-count complaint filed Friday in the D.C. District Court, Carter Page seeks damages of no less than $75 million from the U.S. government, the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, and individuals responsible for obtaining four illegal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act orders against Page.

Page’s 59-page complaint lists as defendants a veritable “Who’s Who” of the SpyGate scandal, including former FBI Director James Comey, Assistant Director Andrew McCabe, and the disgraced team of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Also singled out were Kevin Clinessmith, who earlier this year pleaded guilty to falsifying an email to hide Page’s past service as a source to the CIA, and FBI Agents Joe Pientka, Stephen Somma, and Brian Auten, with additional defendants identified merely as John Doe 1 – 10 and Jane Doe 1 – 10.

­The first four counts of his complaint allege claims under FISA, with one count seeking damages for each of the four FISA court orders the defendants obtained against Page. FISA provides a private right of action to allow “an aggrieved person. . . who has been subjected to an electronic surveillance or about whom information obtained by electronic surveillance of such person has been disclosed,” to sue those responsible.

In addition to stating a civil claim for damages under FISA, Page’s attorneys note in the complaint that FISA makes it a criminal offense to illegally “engage in electronic surveillance under color of law.”  While only the government can prosecute a criminal violation of FISA, the allegation is a stark reminder that other than Clinesmith, no criminal cases have resulted from the illegal targeting of Page and the Trump campaign—at least not yet.

Page’s fifth cause of action alleges a claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act which provides that the United States is liable for civil wrongs “in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances.” In other words, Page can sue the government and its agents for wrongful conduct, just as he could a private person.

This count seeks damages for the individual defendants who “committed an abuse of process because they acted with an ulterior motive in using the FISA warrant process to accomplish an end unintended and not permitted by law, to wit, to spy on the Trump presidential campaign by unlawfully invading the privacy of Dr. Page without probable cause.” And yes, contrary to the corporate media’s continued denial, the Obama-Biden Administration intended to, and did, spy on the Trump campaign, including by obtaining the illegal FISA orders to surveil Page.

Showdown in Gettysburg 2020 by Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2020/11/27/showdown-in-gettysburg-2020/

Pennsylvania Republicans showed a level of courage and patriotism woefully lacking in the establishment GOP, which is ready to dispatch Donald Trump and move on with a Biden presidency.

“This is not the United States of America, what happened.”

President Trump, in what might be considered an uncharacteristic understatement, made that remark via cell phone to a Pennsylvania State Senate committee hearing the day before Thanksgiving. The president was referring to emerging evidence that election workers in the Keystone State successfully manipulated hundreds of thousands of ballots to ensure Joe Biden won the state’s 20 electoral votes.

Each day, the public is realizing that the most cherished vestige of America’s disintegrating democracy—the quadrennial national election to choose the next president—has been hijacked by Banana Republic-type thugs. Rules are ignored or simply made up as we go to install the chosen leader. Low-level guerilla operatives dependent on the publicly funded largess of the ruling junta openly and shamelessly flout the law; judges who are in on the fix give their legal imprimatur while state-run media silences any criticism.

This is the sort of stuff American election watchers once condemned as undemocratic. Jimmy Carter, who dedicated his post-presidency to monitoring elections around the world, issued a congratulatory statement to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris just four days after Election Day, presumably uninterested in widespread reports of ballot dumps and wildly changing vote counts in swing states. Last week, the Carter Center noted several “inconsistencies” in Georgia’s election audit, including concerns about the chain of custody and unsupervised ballots, but nonetheless deemed the process “successful.”

What a farce.

Help is on the way to understand Sidney Powell’s Michigan lawsuit By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/help_is_on_the_way_to_understand_sidney_powells_michigan_lawsuit.html

Sidney Powell’s Michigan lawsuit is shorter than the Georgia lawsuit she filed (although I suspect that has do to, in part, with a smaller font and different formatting choices). Nevertheless, it’s every bit as complex, because while Michigan had the same overarching forms of fraud (fraud revolving around paper ballots and their counting and voting machine fraud), the supporting facts are different. Enter Doug Ross, who has a real knack for creating uncomplicated infographics that clearly explain complicated materials.

If you haven’t already seen it, I reproduced here Doug’s infographic about the complaint Sidney Powell filed in Georgia. It’s a lot easier to understand what he did than it is to understand the complaint. As is the case with all complaints, that document is larded with confusing, and often repetitive, language that plaintiffs must include for procedural reasons.

Because Georgia is in the news owing to the all-important runoff for Senate candidates, a lot of people missed the fact that, at the same time she filed the complaint in Georgia, Powell also filed a lawsuit in Michigan. At a fundamental level, the complaint is the same as that in Georgia. That is, both charge that the two states violated voting laws, engaged in massive ballot fraud, and engaged in computer voting machine fraud.

Each state has its unique factual wrinkles. In Michigan, Democrats were extraordinarily aggressive when it came to barring Republicans from observing the mail-in ballot vote counting. Meanwhile, in Georgia, Democrats pretended that the vote-counting venue had suffered a dramatic pipe burst, and locked out observers, only to continue counting.

These unique factual wrinkles matter at an evidentiary level. The complaints have different eyewitnesses and different expert witnesses. If you’ve read the Georgia complaint, that’s not the same as having read the Michigan complaint.

The ‘smartest man in the room’ has joined Sidney Powell’s team By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/the_smartest_man_in_the_room_has_joined_sidney_powells_team.html

In her Georgia complaint, Sidney Powell included the Declaration of Navid Keshavarz-Nia, an expert witness who stated under oath that there was massive computer fraud in the 2020 election, all of it intended to secure a victory for Joe Biden. Dr. Kershavarz-Nia’s name may not mean a lot to you, but it’s one of the weightiest names in the world when it comes to sniffing out cybersecurity problems.

We know how important Dr. Kershavarz-Nia is because, just two-and-a-half months ago, the New York Times ran one of its Sunday long-form articles about a massive, multi-million dollar fraud that a talented grifter ran against the American intelligence and military communities. Dr. Kershavarz-Nia is one of the few people who comes off looking good:

Navid Keshavarz-Nia, those who worked with him said, “was always the smartest person in the room.” In doing cybersecurity and technical counterintelligence work for the C.I.A., N.S.A. and F.B.I., he had spent decades connecting top-secret dots. After several months of working with Mr. Courtney, he began connecting those dots too. He did not like where they led.

Dr. Kershavarz-Nia not only has an innate intelligence, but he’s also got extraordinary academic and practical skills in cyber fraud detection and analysis. The reason we know about his qualifications is that it takes seven paragraphs for him to list them in the Declaration he signed to support the Georgia complaint.

His qualifications include a BA, MA, and Ph.D. in various areas of Electrical and Computer Engineering. In addition, “I have advanced trained from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), DHS office of Intelligence & Analysis (I&A) and Massachusetts Institution of Technology (MIT).”

British Royalty and Why You Shouldn’t Trust TV By Michael Curtis

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/british_royalty_and_why_you_shouldnt_trust_tv.html

At a moment when Britain is disquieted by scandal about Prince Andrew, disgraced for his friendship with the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein; the ongoing drama of Megxit, the withdrawal of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle from royal duties; and the rift between the two royal brothers, William and Harry, the British TV soap opera, ten episodes of The Crown, season 4, has appeared to provide alleged entertainment of the doings of the British Royal Family.

Because it is lavishly produced, well written, carefully acted, and cleverly invented, it is easy to accept The Crown as an accurate representation of a twenty-year period in British history.  However, no one should be confused.  It is not a documentary of the life and behavior of Queen Elizabeth II, members of the Royal Family and associates, in the stately homes of Buckingham Palace, Windsor, and Balmoral, and the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.  Rather, it is a psychodrama written with what can generously be termed artistic license about the actions and motivations of the leading figures.

Some of the invented incidents in The Crown can be noted.  Discussions concerning Lord Mountbatten and Prince Charles, or the supposed political dialogue between Queen Elizabeth II and Michael Fagan, who infiltrated Buckingham Palace and spoke to the queen in her bedroom, or the tension with Margaret Thatcher because of personal concerns about the safety of her son and public concerns over the Falklands war, are not accurate representations of history.  In particular, all of the remarks of Elizabeth, who bestrides the series as a colossus, are invented.

Judge: Republicans Will Likely Win Pennsylvania Election Lawsuit By Ivan Pentchoukov

https://www.theepochtimes.com/judge-republicans-will-likely-win-pennsylvania-election-lawsuit_3596477.html

The judge who ordered Pennsylvania to not certify the results of the 2020 election wrote in an opinion on Friday that the Republicans who filed the related lawsuit will likely win the case.

Pennsylvania Commonwealth Judge Patricia McCullough made the assessment as part of an opinion explaining her rationale for blocking Pennsylvania’s election certification.

A group of Republican lawmakers and candidates sued the Keystone State earlier this week, arguing that the state legislature’s mail-in voting law—Act 77—violated the commonwealth’s constitution.

“Petitioners appear to have established a likelihood to succeed on the merits because petitioners have asserted the Constitution does not provide a mechanism for the legislature to allow for expansion of absentee voting without a constitutional amendment,” McCullough wrote.

When ruling on an emergency injunction, judges have to consider whether the party which requested the injunction is likely to win the case or “succeed on the merits.” McCullough opined that the “petitioners appear to have a viable claim that the mail-in ballot procedures set forth in Act 77 contravene” the plain language of the provision of the Pennsylvania Constitution which deals with absentee voting.

Pennsylvania said that it had certified the results of the election for president and vice president on Nov. 24 while the court was reviewing briefings from both parties. In response, the plaintiffs filed a request for an emergency injunction, arguing that that state need not have acted so fast.

Joe Biden’s national security picks are great news — for China

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/joe-bidens-national-security-picks-are-great-news-for-china

President-elect Joe Biden has been quick to shape his national security team. Jake Sullivan will serve as national security adviser, Antony Blinken is to be nominated for Secretary of State, Avril Haines will be the director of national intelligence, and John Kerry will take on the role of a Cabinet-level climate czar.

These selections give us confidence (if that’s the right word) of three things. First, that Biden will desperately try to return America to the disastrous Iran nuclear deal. Second, that the European Union will be happy. Third, that Xi Jinping, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, is feeling pretty good right now.

The contrast between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Kerry is one of night and day. Where Pompeo has prioritized retraining China’s aggressive tendencies worldwide and its undermining of American interests, Kerry’s record of standing up for our interests, especially against our rivals and enemies, is flaccid. He spent his time as secretary of state proclaiming the virtues of positive engagement with Beijing. And his willingness to give Iran everything it wanted in the 2015 nuclear deal should make China optimistic that he’ll be generous in the coming climate negotiations.

Climate change activists should share our concerns because China’s climate strategy is a disingenuous absurdity. It is building hundreds of new, heavily polluting coal plants each year, while simultaneously pledging to be carbon-neutral by 2060. It is highly unlikely that Kerry will force China to agree to having its promised emission cuts independently verified. (Remember that the inspection regime built into the Iran deal contained loopholes big enough to drive an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps tank through.) He’s far more likely to commit America to economically damaging emission cuts without getting other nations to do the same.

Concerns about Kerry go considerably beyond how he’ll manage climate policy.

JUSTICE FOR COL. (ret.)LAWRENCE FRANKLIN….MUST READ

http://A Call for Late Justice for Col. Larry Franklin

Last month, in a small town in West Virginia, a 74-year-old husband and his invalid wife were hospitalized for several days after eating rotten food the husband fished out of a dumpster.

For the past decade and a half, former Pentagon intelligence analyst and operative Col. (retired) Lawrence (Larry) Franklin and his wife Patricia have lived in utter destitution. During his 35 years of service, Col. Franklin was celebrated as a brilliant, fearless intelligence officer by his colleagues and bosses at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), in the U.S. Air Force and in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Now, the aging hero who saved countless U.S. servicemen lives in war zones is a broken man. Col. Franklin subsists on the meager wages he earns from washing dishes, cleaning septic tanks and parking cars, while also taking care of his invalid wife.

Col. Franklin’s fall from grace is a tale that cries out for justice.

In 2003, Col. Franklin, a survivor of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, was working as the Iran desk officer in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld needed constant information on Iran: namely, its efforts to undermine the U.S. war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, its sprawling terror networks and its burgeoning nuclear weapons program.

In the framework of his duties, Col. Franklin was authorized to share intelligence with U.S. allies, including Israel. He had a long-standing, warm relationship with Israeli military and intelligence officers dating back to his tenure as Air Force Defense Attaché in Israel during the 1990s. Col. Franklin also had close contacts with officials who worked on Iran-related issues for the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC.