HMMMMM: The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.

As President Trump refused to concede, the response was not mass action but crickets. When media organizations called the race for Joe Biden on Nov. 7, jubilation broke out instead, as people thronged cities across the U.S. to celebrate the democratic process that resulted in Trump’s ouster.

A second odd thing happened amid Trump’s attempts to reverse the result: corporate America turned on him. Hundreds of major business leaders, many of whom had backed Trump’s candidacy and supported his policies, called on him to concede. To the President, something felt amiss. “It was all very, very strange,” Trump said on Dec. 2. “Within days after the election, we witnessed an orchestrated effort to anoint the winner, even while many key states were still being counted.”

In a way, Trump was right.

There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.

Time’s article is going to anger a lot of Trump voters, giving them plenty of evidence that the system was rigged against them — and possibly firing the opening salvo of the 2024 presidential campaign.

UPDATE: From Ace of Spades:

OUT: The election wasn’t rigged.

IN: The election was rigged, but in a good, smart, upper-middle-class Wine Aunt way.

Any questions?

Well, yes, lots of them:Time Claims a Secret Cabal Manipulated the 2020 Election to Stop Trump, and People Have Questions.

(Updated and bumped.)

The grassroots effort underway to gather enough signed petitions to put a measure to recall Governor Gavin Newsom on the California state ballot is almost sure to succeed. With more than a month until the Mar. 17 deadline, the group needs 1.497 million signatures and currently has gathered over 1.4 million. 

UncoverDC spoke with Randy Economy, Senior Advisor for the RecallGavin2020.com campaign. Economy, who is upbeat and full of energy, has advised more than 300 political campaigns, working with Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians. He explained that the hands-on campaign is inspiring, and he is proud to be part of a mission that is making history in CA. According to Economy, the movement will succeed because all of Newsom’s failed policies are coming to light.

Already unhappy with Newsom’s failure to address the state’s homeless population and his support of sanctuary city policies and water rationing, when the coronavirus fear hit, Californians were expecting clear guidance from Newsom, who gave daily, sometimes hourly, press conferences that pre-empted every station in the state, telling residents to “stay home for a month and the virus will go away.” Now, almost a year later, the virus is still dictating daily life, and millions of jobs are gone. 

Economy explained that the hardest hit by Newsom and his failed policies are the small mom and pop business owners, like the little restaurant in East LA, South San Francisco, or Oakland, who have lost everything. Businesses and schools have been closed for almost a year. And now, with hospital mismanagement and a botched COVID-19 vaccine rollout, the movement has spread beyond conservatives and continues to gain momentum. 

Under the state’s constitution, the people have the power to take the government into their own hands when needed, and that is what they are doing. Economy said there is not one specific reason for the need to recall Newsom. In fact, the “Reasons to Recall” section of the website lists over 60 reasons. Calling the campaign a “rags to riches” story that needs to be told, he said, “there is not one reason, there are dozens and dozens, and it is not political. CA is a ‘hot mess,’ and this is a real one-and-only kind of opportunity to hit the reset button and get this fixed. Not by political operatives or slick politicians, but by the volunteer groups on this campaign.”  

Fueled by regular Californians, the recall campaign is straightforward and fully transparent. Economy described it as “old school politics with no voting machines” to add any uncertainty. People go to the website, download the petition, print it out, sign it, get neighbors to sign too, and mail it back in. Fifty-eight different county registrars up and down the state serve as election officials. Every petition goes to a third-party vendor before being turned in to the registrars to ensure accuracy and validity. Economy said their current signature count is correct and noted that the CA Secretary of State’s website lists the count significantly lower, which isn’t surprising given that it is a government-run site. 

When asked about Nathan Fletcher’s recent comments saying the Californian citizens leading the recall effort “are linked in association with neo-Nazi, with white supremacists, with right-wing militia groups,” Economy chuckled and said he must be “drinking his own bathwater.” He described Fletcher, who issued a resolution declaring racism as a public health crisis in San Diego, as out of touch with what is happening in the state.

As previously reported by UncoverDC, Newsom recently declared that restaurants in California were allowed to re-open. Many questioned whether the governor’s decision was an attempt to slow down the recall campaign. Economy believes that is the case, noting that Newsom advisors Jim DeBoo and Dee Dee Myers most likely told him to reverse course and make the decision. Myers and DeBoo joined Newsom’s team in December as he entered the second half of his term amid a brutal stretch of the pandemic and as he tried to overcome recent political stumbles.

Since 1911, there have been 55 attempts to recall a sitting California governor. This recall is the fifth in a series of six recall petitions filed against Newsom. If supporters turn in enough valid signatures to trigger a recall election, the additional procedural steps dictate that the election will occur within four to six months. With election fraud on the minds of many Americans across the country, it is inspiring that the people of California, amidst a “Gavin Newsom lockdown,” are taking matters into their own hands, going door to door, putting up tables, chairs, and pop-up tents, and exercising their constitutional right to assure their voices are heard.

The post Goal Within Reach: Efforts To Recall CA Gov. Gavin Newsom Speed Ahead appeared first on UncoverDC.

74-year-old Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) is the longest-serving woman in Congress. She says she feels alienated from the party she has represented since 1983. The Toledo born Polish-American, daughter of a union organizer, said in an interview on Tuesday with the Hill that many Democrats in the D.C. elite cannot relate to her mostly blue-collar constituents.

We in Ohio know the true value of hard work and manufacturing. Today’s executive order is all about supporting the workers, families, and small businesses that anchor our communities and economy. #BuyAmerican #MadeInAmerica https://t.co/ZzjOI44WJz

— Marcy Kaptur (@RepMarcyKaptur) January 25, 2021

During the interview, she shared the story of a recent conversation she had with a colleague in which she lamented the economic woes of the industrial Mid-West. The colleague’s response was to tell her that people should “just leave.” 

“They just can’t understand,” she told The Hill. “They can’t understand a family that sticks together because that’s what they have. Their loved ones are what they have, their little town, their home, as humble as it is—that’s what they have. Respect it. It was so insensitive.”

Kaptur represents Ohio’s Ninth District, which includes Toledo. According to her biography on her official congressional website, her family ran a local grocery store, and “her mother later served on the original organizing committee of a trade union at the Champion Spark Plug factory in Toledo.” Having attended the University of Wisconsin (1968) and later completing a Master’s degree in urban planning at the University of Michigan, she was the first in her family to graduate from college. She also pursued doctoral studies at MIT in urban planning development finance in 1981. She is the “first woman to Chair the influential House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, which she considers an honor given the Ninth District stretches much of the southern Lake Erie coastline.” 

She fears that her party is increasingly dominated by the “Democratic coastal elite.” A local Toledo paper called The Blade quotes her as saying that the median income for Democrats in blue districts in her state is higher than those in red ones.

“Normally, in the era in which I was raised, Democrats represented those who have less and Republicans represent those who have more. But when you look at the chart it’s like, oh, what am I looking at here?” she said. “This is an economic challenge and it’s been before us for a long time, and we have to muscle up to it.” She added, “In the top 25 in the country, in terms of median household income, there’s only one Republican district.”

She points to a chart showing the median household income for all 436 congressional districts shown below:

Kaptur feels that she is a minority in her party now. Democrats disproportionately represent the top half of congressional districts in terms of median income and economic influence. The bottom half mostly chooses Republicans. Her district is 418 out of 436. Five of the seven richest districts are in the San Francisco Bay area—which includes Silicon Valley.

Now the congresswoman struggles to secure a voice for everyday people with kitchen-table issues. In the interview, she avoided criticism of the more progressive voices in her party. However, she was clear about her opinion about the balkanization of the party and its effect on the lives of many Americans. She thinks that dividing into factions only serves to dilute what she sees as Congress’s real work—people’s ability to provide for their families.

“I think that economics can bind us. I think that when we divide up into too many subgroups, we lose the overarching theme,” she said. “We have so many caucuses in the conference, it is hard to go to every meeting.”

Kaptur endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016, but, in general, her focus is a more moderate one, focused on “bread and butter” issues that face average Americans. She wants her colleagues to show greater interest in the economic challenges that face people in the heartland.

An excerpt from an August 2019 Washington Post feature article written about Kaptur seems to capture a woman who is sincerely dedicated to her constituents,

“…the people who know Kaptur say that her commitment to the powerless in her district is what endears her to her constituents. ‘She’s beautiful. She doesn’t act like she’s above anybody,’ Tyler says. Her staff sees it, too. ‘She takes a very personal approach to every aspect of the role,’ says Jenny Perrino, 35, Kaptur’s deputy chief of staff in Washington. ‘She fights for the underdog consistently … making them feel like she represents them just as much as the CEO that may come into the office.’ Colleagues recognize the same doggedness. In an email, Pelosi praised Kaptur as ‘a constant, unwavering voice for America’s heartland’.”

Her initiatives have often sought to bridge public and private interests to achieve a goal. She says it’s what representatives in congress should be doing consistently. “It’s like raising a family,” she says. “It takes disciplined endurance, and that’s not newsworthy.” 

When asked by the Washington Post about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, her response was indicative of a woman who might be seen as old-fashioned. She seems to be singularly focused on the value of hard work and a steadfast commitment to her community’s values. Concerning AOC, she said,

“She’s very energetic. It’s exciting to get elected and it’s exciting to get all this notoriety. But in the end, you have to turn your ideas into laws, and that takes a lot of work,” she said. “Maybe there’s another way. Maybe [the new members will] win the lottery, and they’ll be able to do whatever they want. But for people of ordinary means, the answer is to persevere and to immerse yourself in the subject matter of your district and how that relates to others in the country.”

The post Toledo Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur: A Stranger In Her Own Party appeared first on UncoverDC.

You’re going to want to read this list of Republicans who punish people for using free speech.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been removed from her assignments for the House Education and Budget Committee.

The House decided in a 230-199 vote that Rep. Greene should be removed from her position as a committee member.

What was unexpected though is that 11 Republicans sided with the Democrats in the vote.

JUST IN: The House of Representatives approved a resolution removing GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from her assignments to the House Education and Budget committees.

The vote was 230-199, with 11 Republicans joining Democrats to pass the resolution. https://t.co/2SNTyr3gBv

— NPR Politics (@nprpolitics) February 4, 2021

BREAKING: House votes to remove GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from committee assignments, with 11 Republicans joining Democrats to support the measure https://t.co/QfoBLFsl2R pic.twitter.com/GiKHH4YLKG

— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 4, 2021

Here’s a list of the 11 Republicans who decided to kick Greene from her Committee duties for using free speech:

 

• Fred Upton (Michigan)

 

• Christ Smith (New Jersey)

 

• Maria Salazar (Florida)

 

• Nicole Malliotakis (New York)

 

• Adam Kinzinger (Illinois)

 

• Young Kim (California)

 

• John Katko (New York)

 

• Chris Jacobs (New York)

 

• Carlos Gimenez (Florida)

 

• Brian Fitzpatrick (Pennsylvania)

 

• Mario Díaz-Balart (Florida)

These are the 11 House Republicans who voted to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from committees:

Mario Díaz-Balart
Brian Fitzpatrick
Carlos Gimenez
Chris Jacobs
John Katko
Young Kim
Adam Kinzinger
Nicole Malliotakis
Maria Salazaar
Chris Smith
Fred Upton

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) February 5, 2021

Fox News covered the story and released these details:

House Democrats took the unprecedented step of removing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., from her two committee assignments for espousing violence and conspiracy theories on social media before she was elected to Congress in November.

The 230-199 vote was bipartisan, with 11 Republicans joining with all Democrats to oust Greene from the Committee on Education and Labor and the House Budget Committee. House Republicans appointed Greene to both panels last month after the freshman rep was sworn into Congress.

Democrats said they were forced to take action to uphold the standards of decency in Congress because Republicans refused to penalize Greene for her history of incendiary remarks.

House votes to remove Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from committees. https://t.co/GuqKGwEspF

— KSAN News (@ksannews) February 5, 2021

The post Here’s A List Of The 11 Republicans Who Voted To Remove Greene From House Committees appeared first on We Love Trump.

Flynn and Sidney left DC to their own worlds for a few days, but I was staying around in DC for the next several days. Before Mike left we had a conversation. I use this opportunity to share a bit more about Mike Flynn.

I knew from people who had worked in the field what Flynn had done to make himself an enemy of the Swamp. When he arrived in Iraq, materials gained in raids were being bundled up in bags, shipped back to Virgina to be “exploited” and analyzed and, a month or two later, useful information sent back to the troops on the front lines. Flynn sees the world like an entrepreneur, and set about to redesign the process, so that exploitation and analysis was done on-base in Iraq, the loop condensed into 18 hours, so that the next night when people went out raiding, they already had the benefit of insights gained from the previous night’s work. Eventually the loop was so tightened that a raid early in the evening in one location was generating materials that were studied through the night, and informing raids that were still being conducted at dawn. People I knew and trusted in the field were telling me that this guy Flynn had his admirers, but he had detractors as well, primarily those comfortable with the ol’ boy approach, disgruntled at the way he was shaking things up and bringing modern ideas into the Intelligence Community’s comfortable way of doing things. As his career progressed Flynn’s divisiveness to the Establishment became legendary, but in my experience, men and women I knew who seemed like bright, chipper, mission-oriented federal employees spoke well of Flynn, and the Mediocrities were the ones who seemed to hate him.

But being with Mike Flynn all those weeks, I learned things about him that were new to me. For example, Mike 61, was a lifelong Democrat, in an Irish Catholic south-of-Boston north-of Providence Jack Kennedy kind of way (not in a modern Lefty, “Let’s shred the Constitution!” kind of way). He is a deep reader of the Constitution, and is one of the few people I know (besides myself) who cites The Federalist Papers by number in conversation. When discussing America’s modern wars, he sounded almost Chomskyan, telling me that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should have ended 15 years ago, but so many hundreds of billions and (eventually) trillions of dollars got flowing to the corporations that supported the wars, and the firms benefiting from that flow of funds had grown so fat, and hired so many lobbyists, that they fought in DC to keep the wars going so that the spigot would stay turned on. We joked to each other that the war was just “another Washington, DC self-licking ice cream cone.”

In other words, “capture”. As happens with my from time to time, I meet someone from a completely different background who has come to recognize the issue that underlies so many of our problems as a nation. That problem is that powerful elites have captured the decision-making cycles of our government, and turned it towards their private ends. The fact that from our different backgrounds and different lifetimes of experience, we had arrived at the same fundamental analysis of what is wrong with our country, told me that I my new trail-buddy was the right guy.

And again, we had a number of conversations along the lines of, “General, what the fuck are we doing here?”

I was to be alone in DC over Christmas, but the day before Christmas I got a call from someone in Trump-orbit. The caller told me that I should get down to Florida, to somewhere near Mar-o-Lago, and it was being arranged that I could have another short meeting with Trump, maybe as little as 10 minutes. Because I was by then thoroughly convinced he was not listening to sound people and was missing the Big Picture in some ways, I seized the invitation, and went from DC to Florida to a hotel just a few miles away from Mar-a-Lago. I checked in, and awaited contact.

Soon I received a call from a reasonably well-known person who is publicly associated with Trump, although I do not know how tight they actually are. With him on the call was a colleague of his, and they were telling me to get over to Mar-a-Lago and ask for “Eileen” (name changed to protect the innocent). I asked for her last name, and was told, “Just get there and ask for Eileen.” I asked for Eileen’s position, or even what area she worked in. I was told, “Just get to Mar-a-Lago as soon as you can, and ask for Eileen.” I replied that I really do not like working that way, that I wanted to know more before I went. Again the reply was adamantly, “Get over to Mar-a-Lago, go to the gate, and ask for Eileen. It has all been arranged.”

With trepidation I got dressed in my best yoga clothes (my others having been sent out for a rare cleaning) to set out for Mar-a-Lago. I called an Uber, and the ride was e a tinny, beat-up Toyota Corolla of some years’ vintage.

When I arrived at the gates of Mar-a-Lago I sent the Corolla on its way. When I approached the Secret Service detail and told them that I was there to see, “Eileen,” the federal agents all looked at each other and shrugged. “Eileen who?” They asked. “I don’t know,” I told them, “I was just told to ask for Eileen.” They again looked at each other with a raised eye. “OK, but Eileen who?” I replied, “I am to have some kind of short meeting with the President, and I was called and told to get here and ask for ‘Eileen’.” Again, they said, “Well whose Eileen?” Again I had to tell them I did not know. The conversation spiraled downhill from there, through no fault of the Secret Service agents. I perhaps did not help the situation when I, noticing that one of the female agents had a light Chinese accent, in an attempt to calm the situation and establish some rapport, began rapping with her in Mandarin. We spoke for a few minutes but it only seemed to increase the nervousness of the other agents. Around that time I began to think it would probably be best simply to disengage and get away, and try to work things out by telephone, but the agents did not seem to like that idea.

Eventually the supervising agent came over. He was one of those fellows whom one meets and knows immediately he is not a guy with whom to screw in any way. Still proper but with a fair bit of aggression, he said, “Back up. Start again. We want to know your story. Who are you and what are you doing here?”

Not knowing where to start, I began this way: “20 years ago I started a company called Overstock.com, my name is -.” He interrupted with a snort, “Yeah right you’re Patrick Byrne.” Suddenly I got it: the shitty Toyota Corolla, my yoga clothes, the Chinese…. I showed my license, and this time it all clicked. And it clicked for me, too, how the activities of Flynn, Sidney and I were drawing attention. I was not fully appreciating until then how much attention there was on what we were doing, but it made sense.

In any case, the Secret Service agents remained cordial, nodded to me, and several said, “Thanks for what you are doing,” as they permitted me to walk off the property, cross a bridge, and get another Uber.

I hung out an additional few days, waiting for things to be cleared up. They never were. But over those days, I was there on the periphery of the Mar-a-Largo crowd and the hundreds of Republican Pooh-Bah families that were down together for the holidays occupying most of the surrounding hotels. Swimming as I was on the periphery of the Republican Party bigwigs and its movers-and-shakers, I got a sense for the gestalt of it all. There were some terrific young people, intellectuals who could have deep conversations about ideas as well as events. There was a woman of my age or slightly older, a retired executive from a Fortune 50 company, who was exceedingly strong, capable, and intelligent. Then as far as I could tell, the rest were riff-raff. Rich riff-raff, no doubt: shiny-car riff-raff, loud and obnoxious riff-raff, self-centered riff-raff, dilettantes and poseurs and grifters of one variety or another, with Plastic Fantastic wives and husbands and doily children wining publicly about whatever subject or thing they felt deprived. People for the most part I would not be inclined to piss on if they were on fire. What I did not see were believers, people who had vision…. or a plan.

The day before New Year’s Eve I got a call from Our Man in Georgia. We already knew that in Fulton County (in which Atlanta rests) there was a County Election operation operating out of what was called, “the English Street warehouse”. An Antifa-looking woman had accepted $500 to infiltrate the warehouse, take a bunch of photos, and seize blank ballots from different stacks. Those ballots could be tested forensically.

I lined up two federally-certified forensic document examiners (old-timers in the field) who were willing to work New Year’s Day, and got to Georgia on New Year’s Eve.

In Georgia, I stayed at the home of some people who were involved in this effort. That is when I first met Jovan Pulitzer (though there had been communication for weeks between my cyber-colleagues and Jovan). Also present was a senior corporate security expert, the man who had found the situation in a counting operation in Savannah, Georgia: a tabulating machine turned out to have a wireless card in it, on the wall there was a Smart Thermostat, and that thermostat had connected wirelessly to the counting machine. Further research had confirmed that someone from China Telecom had come through the Internet onto the Smart Thermostat in order to connect to the machine. The cybersecurity expert spent the rest of the evening telling us about the shocking vulnerabilities in the election machines, their tendency to run on Operating System software that was 10-15 years old, and in general, how the technology was Swiss Cheese. We sat up past midnight discussing vulnerabilities.

At 3 AM on New Year’s Day I received a text from General Flynn. He was still up working as well. He sent me photos that were then flashing around social media: down in Mar-a-Lago, Rudy and others from the entourage had rung in the New Year with a bang. Photos of Rudy, Don Jr., and Kimberly Gilfoyle drinking champagne, dancing, and Partying Like It’s 1999 were circulating through social media.

Again, Flynn and I shared a moment of exasperated silence.

On New Year’s Day I was in the laboratory of the federally certified forensic document examiner, and one of his colleagues who had driven through the night to be there. They were quiet, professional, and I left them to their work. After an hour they reported: two of the ballots were printed in one print shop, the other was printed in a different print shop using different paper, different ink, and a different printing method. It being unlikely that the county had ordered its ballots from two different print shops, this was indicative that at least one of the ballots was a counterfeit.

Our Man in Georgia had the warehouse in Atlanta under observation. Bums with telephoto lenses were filming. The Georgia Senate had demanded to inspect the contents of that warehouse on English Street. Hours later, rented Enterprise vans pulled up to the warehouse, and pallets of ballots were moved out.

The next day, a shredding company in a neighboring county got a phone call to pick up an assignment to shred. The truck pulled up, and loaded approximately 3,000 pounds of ballots. It has been confirmed to me that the order was paid for by someone with a credit card from “Dominion Voting”. The shredding truck pulled away. Through a mechanism I will not explain, that shredding truck was intercepted, its work stopped, and ultimately 10,000 pounds of shredded material was dumped out on the floor of a local police station, so there would be a chain-of-evidence. Roughly 3,000 pounds of the shredded material was the ballots (the other 7,000 was from prior customers). The shredding that had been order by the Dominion Voting employee had not been normal shredding (turning things into long strips); it had not been the special shredding (turning the material into confetti); it had been the super-duper military-grade shredding, where the ballots had been shredded then crushed down to spitballs.

An Atlanta DHS agent arrived and took command. A discovery was made: some of the shredded ballots had not been completely shredded. In fact, a few had stuck to the walls of the bin, and were whole. Also found, I was told, were receipts and shipping labels from the outside of the boxes that held the ballots: these receipts and shipping labels were from a Chinese print shop in the south of China. The DHS agent acquired all of these (and that particular agent is one with an expertise in matters Chinese, I am told).

Call that moment, “T = 0”. Based on the continuous reports I was receiving from Atlanta, here is how the next two days unfolded:

• T + 6 hours: Rudy Giuliani was informed of what was going on;
• T + 12 hours: Mark Meadows was informed of what was going on
• T + 18 hours: FBI arrived on the scene to take over. DHS resisted.
• T + 24 hours: I received a message that the DHS agent in question was uncomfortable with the political pressure he was receiving. If I understood correctly, he was saying that Mark Meadows himself (Chief of Staff of the White House) had called him and told him to back off the investigation. It was not clear to me whether I was receiving the message just as a bystander, or the DHS agent was deliberately causing that message to come to me, in the incorrect hope I could do something about it (e.g., get it to the President).
• T + 36 hours: The FBI took control of the operation. They instructed the shredding company to come back, pick up the 10,000 pounds of material, complete the shredding, then continue with their normal procedures. That meant the shredded material was mixed with water and acid, melted, then reconstituted as recycled paper.

Various aspects of the story I told above are documented in photos and film.

Meanwhile, I had returned to DC. I was still trying to get another 10 minutes with Trump. I wanted to repeat to him again that if he waited until he lost on January 6 and then tried the plan that we had been proposing, it would be sore loserism. But we still had a few days left, and if he pulled the trigger, we could have an answer regarding those Problematic 6 counties. We could have it done before January 6, so that the Senate might make an informed choice, or buy us an extra week to do more work, or or or…

At this point I will insert one important sub-story. In those days of swimming around with people who were in various proximities to the President, I was told something by someone very much in Trump’s inner circle. What I was told was this: Melania had been warned by a government official that if Trump served another term he would be JFK’ed. It may even have been someone in the Secret Service itself, in a “We will not be able to protect him” sense. The threat included another family member as well, per the telling. I find it hard to believe that anyone in the Secret Service itself would ever say that, but the source of the information to me had otherwise been blemishless, and the claim was that whoever (perhaps Secret Service, perhaps someone else) had said this to Melania, it was someone from whom such a claim would be taken seriously. Melania was begging Donald not to fight, and simply to concede and get out of Washington with his family.

Flynn and I were together again in DC, watching the approaching January 6 date like frustrated hawks. I had done several interviews and even a public speech or two where I had insisted that, “We do not go violent, we are better than the other guys, if we go violent we lose.” I thought it was too obvious to dwell on.

I learned that I had been invited to speak on the morning of January 6, on the South Lawn, by the Women for Trump who had organized the rally. I prepared a talk to hit two points: how our system of consent of the governed relies on elections that are free, fair, and transparent (which our November election was not). Secondly, we do not use violence.

I was torn between two ways of making the point about non-violence:

• Telling a story from Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead regarding non-violence (which I have written up on Deep Capture as:  Jerry Garcia on Confrontation & “The Main Asshole”).
• Telling a story I told about Moldova. I had been there a few years earlier, and a barman had told me of the 2009 election. Election fraud had caused a pro-Putin man to be elected, but the people knew it and had risen up in protests. Putin had sent hundreds of men to drift into the capital of Chisinau, and they had a mission: every time there was a protest, these Putin-guys had infiltrated it with a goal of turning it violent, getting them not just to protest in front of government buildings, but to charge them, break windows, occupy them. The Moldovans had been too smart for the trick: they knew Putin understood that both sides were playing for an audience, the middle class of Moldova, and if the protesters were able to be provoked into actually storming government buildings it would turn off the middle class and they would lose the support of the masses. The Moldovans had stayed disciplined, refused to let themselves be led astray like that… and eventually the government had succumbed, a new, fair election was held, and the Putin crony lost big. I wrote that story up as well: “A Message to Militias Across America Regarding the Goon-Left and Agents Provocateurs [Not the Lingerie]”.

I was not sure which story I would use on the White House lawn. On the 5^th, I decided that the crowd might not know who Jerry Garcia was, so I decided to write that story up online and tweet it out a couple times to the throngs who were arriving in DC, and rehearsed a concise explanation of the Moldova story to use on the morning of January 6 when I spoke.

Mike Flynn was going to be speaking too, we were informed, and Mike and I spoke about what we were going to say, what the crowd needed to hear. We recognized it as a unique historical opportunity: we would have perhaps 30 minutes to explain to the world the irregularities that had disrupted the election, and most likely had changed its outcome. We prepared to meet that challenge. We understood that some of the people with whom we had been working, the cyber-ninjas and scientists and such, were also preparing concise explanations, but the choice of who among them was going to be speaking was being handled by the organizers.

Mike Flynn and I thought that the morning of January 6 was going to run like this: there would be some speeches on the South Lawn of the White House. He would give a talk as “The People’s General” setting the moment in its historical context. I would talk about the fundamental significance of elections that were free, fair, and transparent, and then tell my Moldova story. Then we would switch to 2-3 of these cyber-ninjas and scientists, who would each talk for 5-10 minutes, explaining the irregularities that should trouble the conscience of citizens. I knew from experience that any one of them could speak for 5-10 minutes and cause any thinking person begin to have grave doubts about the November 2020 election, but I figured that with three of them speaking, 80% of the viewers around the world would understand why Election 2020 results had to be seriously discounted.

I got a phone call that evening from one of the scientists I expected to speak. He wanted to let me know that he was not coming to DC because he had learned that his speaking slot had been cancelled. I was perplexed, because this scientists was extremely soft-spoken and professorial, and I thought he would be convincing to anyone who listened with an open mind. I wondered whom they had found who could do a better job than he of convincing millions of viewers that they should be deeply skeptical of what happened during the week of November 3.

On the morning of January 6, Flynn and I and a dozen others walked over to the south side of the White House.  We were surprised that no special arrangements had been made for us, and we had to fight our way through the throngs. We were both given speakers’ badges, seated in a special section up front…. then learned that our speaking slots had been cancelled. We were perplexed, to put it mildly, wondering whom they could get that would possibly explain the situation as well as we could…

The show started, and soon Flynn and I were sinking into our seats in despair. One of Trump’s children got up and sang “Happy Birthday” to a girlfriend, or boyfriend. Rudy got up and spoke about Joe Frazier voting, again. Another lawyer got up and spoke. Don Jr. got up and with his chest puffed out, strode the stage talking about how the Republican brand was now the Trump brand, or the Trump brand was now the Republican brand, or something about branding. Around that time, Flynn and I caught eyes and shared looks of horror: it turned out later we were both asking if the other wanted to leave, but misunderstood each other. It was so bad that someone with some sense among the organizers had a change of heart, and came running over to ask General Flynn if he would take the stage: he refused. The shenanigans went on for an hour, then Trump appeared and spoke, much as he would at any campaign event or pep rally. In fact, the whole thing was more or less a “I was robbed” pep rally: no real effort was made to explain to the crowd, to the Senators who would begin voting in an hour, to the Americans watching at home, to the world that counts on America to be the leader of free, fair, and transparent elections, what went wrong with the November 2020 election, and why we believed there were deep irregularities demanding investigation. No significant effort at all.

Instead, it was a pep rally. That’s it. An “I was robbed” Trump pep rally.

The moment we could make a break from the front, Flynn and I and everyone with us made a dash for the exit. Flynn could barely contain his fury as we shared impressions: this had been the one last chance to explain the situation to the whole world, and instead Trump had used it as a pep rally. “He just does not get it,” we repeated to each other as we stormed through the crowd back towards the hotel. “He does not get that it is not about him. He put on a fucking pep rally. He does not understand that this is not about him,” we repeated over and over in anger and despair. In 15 minutes we were back at the hotel, both packing our bags, both sick to our stomachs, and did not leave to join the throngs moving towards the Capitol.

Next: Chapter 5: Agitation & Chaos (January 6 – 20)

  The House approved a resolution Thursday that removes Marjorie Taylor Greene from her assigned committees.   The final vote tally was 230-199 and 11 Republicans voted in support of the resolution: Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, John Katko of New York, Nicole Malliotakis of New York, Fred Upton of Michigan, […]

XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT! Canadian Olympic Committee Warns Athletes Not to Criticize China.

Related: Canadian quarantine hotel owned by Chinese Communist Party company.

The post What’s Brave Done For My Privacy Lately? Episode #7: Ephemeral Site Storage appeared first on Brave Browser.

Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, has publicly confirmed that he has taken the orange pill. 

Last week, he added “#Bitcoin” to his Twitter description and set Bitcoin Twitter off on an eruption of good vibes. Now, he has publicly voiced his support for Bitcoin on audio chat app Clubhouse. Late last night, Musk joined a Clubhouse led by the team at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz to discuss all things of interest. He discussed the probability of a manned Mars mission, how his team has monkeys playing video games via Neuralink and, most importantly, made a public endorsement of Bitcoin. 

He shared a story about how a friend of his had a Bitcoin-themed cake made and fed him a piece of it in 2013. 

“I think Bitcoin is a good thing,” he said. “I am a supporter of Bitcoin. I am late to the party but a supporter. I think Bitcoin is on the verge of getting broad acceptance by conventional finance people.”

Asie from his glowing words for Bitcoin, Musk held no punches back in welcoming Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev to the Clubhouse chat, calling him “Vlad The Stock Impaler.” Andreessen Horowitz is an investor in both Clubhouse and Robinhood and it would stand to reason that it wants to facilitate some redemption for Robinhood among its users following the company’s recent actions in the r/wallstreetbets saga. 

Ultimately, many Bitcoiners saw this endorsement from Musk as a coup for BTC. It also served as another great example that everything is recorded and scrutinized, even chats on Clubhouse.

The post Elon Musk: “I Am A Supporter Of Bitcoin” appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

On the evening of Friday, December 18, Sidney Powell, Mike Flynn, a sharp female attorney on Sydney’s team (whom I will call “Alyssa”), and myself decided to call an SUV and get driven to the entrance that serves the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is on the grounds of (and connects to) the White House.  We had a vague plan regarding how we were going to get through all the rings of Police, Secret Service, and Marines: Sidney and Mike were the center of global attention, and we were going to try to use that to bullshit our way past them all and get to the Oval Office. Beyond that, we’d be playing it by ear (I did say the plan was “vague”). There was a fine young NSC staffer whom I had gotten to know who, a real mensch, and I called him and left a message that I was accepting the open offer he had extended to drop by his office anytime, and was coming over … right then. At 6:15 PM. Another excellent staffer went to work on a parallel course. Not knowing if they would play ball, we may have been less than clear about our intentions.

We were dropped off a block from the security gate, and walked through the light snow falling in the darkness. We got to the first security booth, and Sidney and Mike approached to talk. The Police and Secret Service saw it was General Flynn (“The People’s General”), and stiffened to attention. My staffer buddy came out from inside, and when he saw Flynn and Sidney he froze and looked at me with raised eyebrows. I gestured that we were all together, and he looked shocked for a moment….. then did the right thing, strode over to the guard, flashed his ID, and asked him to let us all in. With muted relief the guards quickly said, “Take care, General” and we were through the first layer. For the second layer my staffer-buddy and one of his fine colleagues joined us as walked into the inner ring entrance, and spoke for us: again, when they saw Mike the guards again all stiffened to attention, then briskly and professionally processed us all through as quickly as they could. They were silent and asked no questions, apparently guessing we might not have good answers if they did.

I was the last one through, and as they handed my ID back to me one leaned in and said quietly and intimately, “Thank you Mr. Byrne.” I was surprised, and it was the first time I understood that in the constellation of Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell, there was a faint little star of my own.

We were ushered inside to an office, to use as Base Camp.

If I recall correctly, we were in Base Camp for about 30 minutes before making a move for the office of another staffer, another young and principled person, with an office closer to the Oval Office. Camp 2.

Once there, Mike Flynn made contact with someone with whom he had worked in his brief stint as National Security Advisor, someone with an office that could serve as Camp 3, from which would come the final assault on the summit (the Oval Office).  “Hey yes it’s Mike, how you’ve been? ….. Oh my Gosh, so great to hear your voice too….. Yeah yeah, it was unbelievable…. Where am I? Oh actually I’m in the White House! Yeah, just came by to see … See me? Sure well how about I just swing by… sure sure see you in  a moment.”

We launched for Camp 3. And sure enough, when we got there, as Mike Flynn stood talking to his former colleague, Sidney and I had a 20 foot line of site into the empty Oval Office……

After a few minutes, through a private door on the far side, Donald Trump walked into the Oval Office. He was dressed in a sharply creased blue suit and tie, still, at 7:30 PM. He came through and glanced out the doorway to where Sidney Powell and I were already walking towards him, greeting him like he was expecting us. President Trump’s eyes knitted in puzzlement but he recognized us, and after a moment he beckoned us in. Within seconds General Flynn, Sydney Powell, and I were all sitting in the Oval Office with President Donald J. Trump, with the door shut behind us.

So that happened. Really.

The President sat across the Resolute desk and made small chat with Mike, asked him how he’d been. It had been almost four years since they had seen each other (when Flynn had left the White House, weeks into Trump’s first term). He asked after Sidney as well. I gave and received no more than a nod, letting Mike and Sidney take the lead. As I have noted publicly, the first thing I noticed about him was how measured, gracious, and even soft-spoken Trump seemed to be, so unlike the character that has beamed at us for years through the media.

Eventually he glanced at me again, raised an eyebrow, and gave a small chuckle. Apparently he knew about me, as I thought my be the case. He said something quietly, civil and kind.  I said, “Thank you Mr. President…” He cocked his head quizzically and said something softly about knowing that I had not voted for him, and had said a number of critical things of him. I let him know the truth, that I had said some harsh things before the 2016 election, but while he was President my estimation of him had grown, and that in any case none of it was relevant, that I was there because I was confident the election had been hacked.  I told him, “We think there is a much shorter route through all of this than your team is pursuing,” I closed saying, “But Sir, entrepreneur to entrepreneur, I feel I must mention something. As you may know, I have been swimming around the outside of your administration for a couple months now, and I must tell you, I do not think you are being well-served by many people in the White House. I can bring in young staffers who will tell you that some of your senior leadership don’t want you to win. They want you to concede.”

The President raised his eyebrows at my frankness.  Then, like a man who knew the answer, he asked quietly, “Why?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, “but I hear people are getting signals that if they’re good boys and get you out the door, there will be jobs waiting for them. But if they don’t, they won’t be getting offers from the right law firms, they won’t be getting invitations from the right country clubs, they won’t be getting invited to the socialite parties on Manhattan…” Trump grimaced, and we moved on.

Sidney and Mike began walking the President through things from our perspective. In brief: there was a quick way to resolve this national crisis because he had power to act in ways he was not understanding. Under an Executive Order that he had signed in 2018, and another Executive Order that President Obama had signed in 2015, he could “find” that there was adequate evidence of foreign interference with the election, and while doing so would give him authority to do a number of big things, all he had to do was one small thing: direct a federal force (we suggested US Marshall Service + National Guard) to go to the six counties in question (the Problematic 6), and re-count (on livestream TV) the paper ballots that were held as fail-safe back-up. It would only take a few days. Even more conclusive would be if they imaged the hard-drives and those images could be examined forensically (which would make the project last no more than a week, as we had already cracked the Antrim County machines and knew precisely what to do going forward). In either case, if there was no mischief found, then President Trump would concede the election. But if (as we suspected) evidence of hundreds of thousands of improper votes was found in each of the six counties in question, then he would have a wide variety of options. He might have those six states re-counted. Or he might have 50 states recounted on livestream TV by federal forces, and America would finally have its answer to, “How much election fraud does our nation suffer?” Or he might skip that and have the National Guard re-run the elections in those six states. We pointed out that, it being December 18, if he signed the paperwork we had brought with us, we could have the first stage (recounting the Problematic 6 counties) finished before Christmas. And even if the result was hinky enough it demanded a rerun of the election in those states, it could be done before January 20, so that the January 20 Constitutional deadline would not be disrupted. The more time that he let slide by, the more compressed things would become. If he waited to see what the January 6 outcome was, however, and then decided to follow a plan such as ours, it would engender accusations of “sore-loserism”, so he had to act quickly. The alternative was an election that 47% of Americans doubted, which would not be good for the country.

“You know Pat,” he said to me (the only people who call me “Pat” are either friends from childhood, or men from a background like my own family’s), “you know…” He caught my eye and gave a little snort of humor. “You know, I could leave here and my life would be really …. fine. I could be with my family, my friends, I could be playing golf …” We looked at each other and shared a moment as may occur only with CEO’s and other “leaders”: people think our lives are glamorous, but in many ways they are unpleasant. I had a little flashback: the first time I was running a firm, a 24-person manufacturer of industrial torch tips in New Hampshire, I went on a sales trip to Europe. Some great colleagues (engineers) and I spent a couple weeks of crawling around on plasma machines in a shipyard in Spain, a crane manufacturer in Belgium, knocking on factory doors in Hamburg, then attending a gigantic conference in Essen so we could walk around getting business cards and grabbing people to sit with us for a bagel to hear a sales pitch because we could not afford our own booth, but we needed a big order so we could make payroll the next quarter.  After a few weeks of it we were home to New Hampshire, being received by colleagues like we were jet-setting royalty. “Oh Spain! How was Spain? Belgium! Germany!… Gosh I always wanted to travel, what was it like?”  That’s when I realized that people do not understand how being in such leadership positions is generally not nearly as fun as people think, dreaming of taking it easy, of being able to take a walk without worrying about the (in my case at the time dozens, in Trump’s case, hundreds of millions) of people depending upon you.  I understood why Trump was chuckling, and I nodded and chuckled along with him. I got just what he was hinting: he was thinking that from a personal (74 year old’s) standpoint, leaving the White House and going to Florida and golfing had a real appeal. “So Pat, on January 20 I could walk to Marine One and climb aboard and go have a really good life….” He continued, talking softly to me, directly. “But this? Knowing I was cheated, that they rigged this election? How can I just walk away from that?”

Other than that, of that first 30 minutes we had alone with the President, most of the conversation was among the President, Mike, and Sidney, so I had a lot of time to watch and study President Trump, and I was surprised on many fronts. When he questioned Sidney’s legal reasoning that he had the power to do such a thing, she pulled out the Executive Order he had signed in 2018 and described one from Obama in 2015: Trump took the E.O. and scanned it quickly, then began asking pertinent questions from it. The same with the finding that he would need to sign: he asked questions of both Sidney (regarding legalities) and Mike (regarding substance), who discussed with him the kinds of information regarding foreign interference covered in the last chapter. Throughout what I saw was a sharp executive mind, taking in information quickly and calculating decision-trees. It takes a lot to impress me that quickly, but what I saw was a sharp mind in action. It surprised me how I had seen no mention of it in four years.

Finally, Trump stopped and scanned the three of us, and asked simply. “So what are you saying?” Thinking of the difference between the highly organized and disciplined approach I had experienced with Flynn and Sidney, versus the college sophomore bull-session approach of the Campaign and Rudy-World, I spoke up again: “Mr. President, I think you should appoint Sidney Powell your Special Counsel on these election matters and make General Flynn your Field Marshall over the whole effort. I know Rudy’s your lawyer and friend, and he can have a great role in this. Rudy should be personally advising you, and we don’t want to do anything to embarrass him. But it needs to be Sidney taking point legally on this. And if you really want to win, make General Flynn here the Field Marshall. If you do I put your chances at around 50-75%. You should see how he well he has this planned, it would run like clockwork…”

The President shook me off, saying, “No no, it’s got to be Rudy.”

After some time (20-30 minutes), three lawyers appeared together. They did not introduce themselves, and stood huddling in the back of the Oval Office, listening. In addition, Mark Meadows and someone else joined us by speaker phone. Eventually the lawyers in the back began muttering things to make their displeasure and disagreement evident. Finally President Trump said something indicating this was new to him, wondering why no one had shown him this route through the impasse. I said again, “Sir, again, CEO to CEO, you are not being served well by those around you in the White House. I’ve gotten to know staffers in your White House, and they tell me they are being told that leadership here is telling them to get you to concede.”

Trump started to say something to Mike and Sidney, but he stopped himself and turned back towards me. “Who?” He asked angrily, “Who wants me to concede?”

I was taken aback by his anger, because I thought what I was telling him was common knowledge. I thought it was generally understood that about half the White House was in on the program of getting him to concede, for that was the estimate I was repeatedly told. “Sir, I am surprised you’re surprised…. In your White House leadership is telling junior staff this everywhere. I am told that this fellow Pat Cipollone [indicating the lawyers behind me as I spoke, not knowing which was Cipollone] has been telling people since November 4, ‘Just help us get the President to concede.’ And for the last couple of weeks, Mark Meadows has been telling staff, ‘Help get the President into transition mode.’”

Trump turned to White House General Counsel Pat Cipollone, who began sputtering. “Mr. President, you know how hard I work, you know how many hours I have been putting in…” Both of which were mealy-mouthed, and neither of which was a direct denial, as was obvious to everyone in the room.  Trump faced him, his face darkening in anger.

“Sir,” I continued, “in 30 minutes I can have a number of staffers from within your White House  here to tell you that those are quotes from Pat Cipollone and Mark Meadows. This guy is lying to you through his teeth. They want you to lose.”

Trump turned, knowing I was correct. He indicated one of the other lawyers, said, “Did you know that this is his last day? He has a job starting Monday at a law firm up the street, getting paid 10 times what I can pay him here.” He continued wistfully, “Pat, can you imagine what I could have gotten done here, if I had not been fighting my own people?”

Cipollone and the other two lawyers scurried out the back door of the Oval Office. I heard them stay out in the ante room, caucusing. Meanwhile, the President, Sidney, Mike, Alyssa, and myself continued for a while walking through more of the details, reviewing some of what we had said earlier. At some point Allyssa, that quiet but razor-sharp female lawyer assisting Sidney, took over for a few points, and concisely explained aspects of the executive order, always clarifying with great precision whatever needed to be clarified.

After 10 minutes the three lawyers walked back into the room and stood, this time not in the back, but abreast and to the left of we four visitors: Alyssa, myself, Mike, and Sidney, sitting in chairs in a half-moon in front of the Resolute desk. Mike continued taking operational questions that arose, while Sidney and Alyssa handled the legal questions that arose. The three male lawyers edged closer to the front, and then as though as some hidden signal, they all started being bitches.

First was some comment about it not being right to use the National Guard. “The optics are terrible, Mr. President,” said one. “It would have to be the DHS.”  I liked the National Guard idea because we needed to reestablish trust of the American people in the electoral process, and the US institution with the most trust is the one where people dress in military uniforms. Yet the National Guard is local, they are all around us, our colleagues at work, our “Citizen Soldiers”. But perhaps in a sign of flexibility, Flynn and Sidney allowed as how one could use the DHS instead of the National Guard.

“The press would tear your apart,” predicted Pat Cipollone at one turn in the conversation. Sidney said what Mike and I were both thinking: The press is going to tear him apart? Really? What are they doing now?

At some point Cipollone objected, “Never in American history has there been this kind of a challenge to an election!” Flynn responded, “Never in American history has there been a situation like this, with counting being shut down for hours, foreigners connecting to our equipment, …..”

“He does not have the authority to do this!” Cipollone thundered eventually. Sidney rejoined, “Of course he does,” citing EO 13848 (and something else signed by Obama). “Without question he has the authority.” Alyssa whipped out EO 13848 again and showed the relevant language that we had just covered. Trump looked at Cipollone with an expression that said, You never even brought this to my attention, Pat. He said to Cipolloner, “You know Pat, at least they want to fight for me. You don’t even fight for me. You just tell me everything I can’t do.”

By this point Cipollone was getting hot under the collar. Raising his voice to the President, he said, “Hey if you want to do this you don’t need my permission. You don’t even need a pen or a piece of paper. You can just say, ‘I hire Sidney Powell as White House Special Counsel,’ and it’s done.” But then he went on with more objections to everything he was hearing, all of which continued to sound stretched. Even frivolous.

After half-a-dozen of such frivolous objections from the White House General Counsel, Mike and I looked at each other dumbstruck. Mike grew calm and silent, his brow knit in bafflement. Finally I calmly announced to the room: “This is the most surreal conversation I have ever experienced.”

Around that time Alyssa spoke up on a legal point: he clearly had grounds to find that those Problematic 6 counties had enough peculiarities in their election, that under his powers under those EO’s, he was sending in federal teams to recount the ballots in those six counties. It was a defensible, reasonable action to take (which she said in legalese). What happened after that would be determined by what was found. But now the three male lawyers on their feet began speaking to her rudely. They challenged her, asking something like, “You’re not even a lawyer!” She replied, “I am a lawyer. I work for Sidney, and-” they cut her off, snorting derisively.

Flynn sprung to his feet with a grace and ease that surprised me, a surfer getting up on his board. He turned to face the three lawyers standing over and barking at Alyssa. In a measured tone he asked of the three lawyers, “Let’s get something clear. What do you think happened on November 3? Do you think was a fair election? Nothing unusual about it in your eyes?”

The three lawyers looked down, stuck their toes in the dirt, glanced at each other out of the corners of their eyes, and would not give an answer.

President Trump looked directly at me and said gently, “You know Pat, all my life I’ve had the best lawyers. People call me from all over the world, ‘What lawyer should I use on this? What lawyer should I use on that?’ But here…. You know, the other side breaks every rule in the book, but me….? All I have are lawyers who tell me ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do that…’ Do you see what I have been working with for four years? Can you imagine what I could have gotten done……” He broke off, then turned to Cipollone, asked “Where’s my Durham report? Where’s ….” and started rattling off his legal disappointments.

Standing there next to his two colleagues, Cipollone started shouting back at Flynn, still on his feet, and at the President. Still shouting, he stepped rudely towards us, standing over (and inappropriately close to) Alyssa from behind. Before I knew it I was on my feet, shoulder-to-shoulder with Flynn, back mostly to the President, with a mental trigger that if Cipollone moved another inch towards Flynn, Alyssa, or me I was going to bury my knuckles in his throat.

President Trump said, “Hey hey hey!” We all turned. With both hands waiving at us to calm down, and a quarter-smile of disbelief on his face, he said, “Heeey calm down….”  Cipollone turned to storm out the door again, his two butt-boys in tow. Before he was out Sidney said, “Let him leave. I’ll take the job and you’ll win.” Trump said after him, “Go ahead Pat. Leave. Don’t come back as far as I am concerned.” As the door shut, Trump said softly, “Ahhh, I don’t mean that. You know, Pat’s a friend, and…” his voice trailed off. I winced at the dawning of my understanding.

I took another shot at it with the President. “Again Sir, I know that Rudy is a friend of yours, he’s wonderful. He’s America’s Mayor. I love Rudy, I don’t want to embarrass him. But you should see how what Mike and Sidney have got going. It is so organized, so well-planned-” Again he cut me off, saying, “No no, it’s got to be Rudy…” On the inside I slumped.

There was a third round where the lawyers came back in to interject themselves into what the rest of us were talking about. A third round of frivolous push-back, but this time in the end it was President Trump who got ticked off (in a weary kind of way) at the push-back from his own people, the searching for things they could oppose. Again he muttered something to me along the lines of, Can you imagine what I would have been able to accomplish these four years if I had not had to put up with this? Finally, when President Trump asked why such-and-such a course of action Sidney was proposing had not been explored by Cipollone, the lawyer responded, “Well we’re not the campaign lawyers.”  

I did not even know what he meant by it, but it was painfully obvious that Cipollone was being purely obstructionist, coming from a place of, “How do I stop this?”

Trump sighed, and wearily said to Cipollone, “You know Pat? A few minutes ago you said that I can do it just by saying it. Well…. OK. I have decided, now I’m saying it. ‘Sidney Powell is hereby appointed as White House Special Counsel’. There, that’s it.”

“She needs a clearance!” interjected one of the other lawyers. “It’ll take months to get her a clearance!”

Even I knew how frivolous that objection was, but Flynn spoke up first, in disbelief. “Mr. President,” Flynn said, “you can do the same thing with a clearance. You can grant any clearance you want, on the spot, verbally.”

Sadly and defiantly, President Trump looked at his three lawyers and said, “I hereby grant Sidney Powell a Top Secret security clearance.”

Again they stormed out of the room. Again the conversation continued amongst the President, Sidney, Mike, Alyssa, and myself. That is where I realized I was having an emotional reaction quite different than I had ever expected. There was a moment of real warmth, where I saw him for what he was: a 74 year old man, tired, knowing he was being cheated out of his re-election, mostly defeated, ruing his errors, dwelling on what might have been. I wanted to walk behind his desk and put my arm around him, and tell him, Yes, I do understand now what you have been facing.

Eventually President Trump said that we would all meet in 30 minutes in the living quarters, in the “Yellow Oval” (I believe the room is called). In the meantime, Rudy was coming in and we had to find a way to make things work between Rudy and Sidney. As we parted he said, “You know, in 200 years there probably has not been a meeting in this room like what just happened…”. As he was leaving he brushed past me, stopped, and speaking low and quiet, said something quite kind and meaningful, showing me that he knew a lot more about me than I had guessed.

A few minutes later Sidney, Mike, Alyssa, and I were in the Cabinet Room. waiting for Rudy. It was dark, and we had to find a couple lamps to turn on. Mike and I were intent on making sure the meeting went well between Sidney and Rudy, so everyone could work happily together.

After 10 minutes Rudy came in, tying his tie, and said in not too gruff a manner, but with perhaps the gruffness of a man disturbed from his evening meal, “You know Sidney, if we are going to work together you have to share information.” I did not take his tone as being too aggressive, but one of trying to turn over a new leaf in a relationship, perhaps.

Sidney immediately told him, “I do share information Rudy. You never read your emails, you never read your texts.”

“That’s not true Sidney! I just need you to stop keeping me in the dark-“

“”Rudy I don’t keepo you in the dark! You-”

“Sidney you have to stop keeping everything to yourself! I cannot work with you if you don’t share with me!”

Within moments the conversation had spiraled out of control. After a minute of squabbling I tried to interject something helpful. “Mr. Mayor, it is true that since I arrived, everything we ever brought Sidney, she always said, ‘Get this to Rudy right away.’ It’s true. Absolutely everything we turned up, she told us to share with you. She never asked us to keep you in the dark about anything.” But it went poorly. Fuming, we all went up to the living quarters of the White House.

The President was there, waiting, and after we walked in the three lawyers joined again. Meadows entered as well. A waiter brought out a bowl of small, bottle-cap sized Swedish meatballs, with share plates. Trump motioned for them to be placed at the small table so that everyone could indulge, but the table was in front of me, for which I was grateful. I actually keep vegetarian from time to time, especially when I travel, but how often does one sit with a President serving meatballs from his grandmother’s recipe? And they were good.  For the rest of the meeting there were two and only two people eating meatballs: myself, scarfing them down like popcorn, and occasionally the President, who would get up, walk over to me, and refill a small share plate. Nobody else had any.

There meeting continued for a couple hours up in those quarters. No substantial new ground was covered: we walked through the reasoning we had gone through in the Oval Office, and explained the plan. President Trump was decisively onboard, and none of the other parties pushed back. Instead, they glumly asked a few questions about how such-and-such was to be done, and Mike or Sidney explained. Finally, around 12:15 AM, we all began fading, and wrapped up. We walked outside in the hall, waiting, until the President came out to say goodbye. We each had a moment with him, and again he said something meaningful and kind to me. But we were all exhausted, I think, and glad that the meeting was over.

I wish to emphasize that at no point in the evening or in any segment of the discussion was there mention of martial law, or Insurrection Act, or anything of the sort. All claims to the contrary are lies, propagated (I would imagine) by Pat Cipollone, who (according to multiple sources) regularly leaks to Maggie Haberman of the NYT. Even cursory review of Haberman’s writings on the White House, which never fail to give stroke to Cipollone, would support that claim.

A few minutes later Alyssa, Sidney, Mike, and I were walking on the sidewalk in front of the White House, light snow still falling in the dark. We saw Meadows and Rudy leaving out another entrance and walking away together to the west. The four of us strode east, elated: with Sidney Powell ensconced as White House Special Counsel, and Mike (even from the outside) providing organizational skills and his vast expertise of matters DC, we were in good standing, and I believe at that moment we all weighted the chances of our success high. As we walked home in the falling snow we confided in each other, You know, for me this is not really about Trump. But we cannot let a rigged election stand. If we do, it could mean civil war, and even a Chinese take-over of our country. All we need to do is follow this plan, expose what happened in those six counties by checking the ballots. If there is nothing amiss, then Trump gets in his helicopter and leaves, and there’s no civil war. But if we find chicanery, it will give an opportunity to blow this scheme up for the whole nation. Who knows how much fraud there is going to turn out to be in US elections? I think ‘a lot,’ what do you think? Around and around we went, excited for our success in the meeting, like we had been thrown a Hail Mary and caught it in the endizone. After a few blocks our long-forgotten SUV found us in the snow flurries, we got in, and he drove us the rest of the way to the hotel. I had my first good night’s sleep in weeks.

The next day, Saturday, Sidney called Meadows and said, “Well now that I’m White House Special Counsel, I am going to need an office over there.”

Meadows told her, “Yeah we’re looking into that, we don’t have anything immediately but we are going to soon…”

“Then I will need a White House ID, so I can come and go,” replied Sidney.

“Yeah well we are working on that too, there might be a problem with that, we’ll see what it is going to take, …” said Meadows.

We all had a terrible sinking feeling, and by Monday or Tuesday, we learned that Sidney’s “White House Special Counsel” position was not going to happen. The plan we had discussed so extensively in the White House, the one that got an answer before Christmas (and depending upon the evidence found, either permitted a peaceful transition of power, or justified more extensive federal involvement that would get to the bottom of what the intent of the People truly was), that plan…. had been called off.

Instead, Rudy was going to continue his slog through the courts and the hotel-room hearings in the states….

Next: Chapter 4: The Christmas Doldrums (December 23- noon January 6)

The occasion was a 1950’s drunken Hollywood party. The leading men of the day were holding an impromptu contest of a certain form. Jackie Gleason famously shouted to Milton Berle: “Hey Miltie, do us all a favor and only pull out enough to win!”

In this chapter I will follow that principle. On the dictum that “a picture is worth 1,000 words,” I will start with somethingto end debate on whether Dominion machines are made in China:

Let us now turn to an analysis of the packet traffic on Election Day 2020 provided me by the best cyber-forensics specialist (aka “dolphin-speaker”) I have ever met. As packets travel through the Internet they leave a trail, and dolphin-speakers using the right tools can, in a sense, “shine a light” and reveal those packet trails in the cyber-fog. The cyber-specialists to whom I refer, who has access to such tools (and even more arcane ones), has documented vote-flipping in the Problematic 6 states amounting to 299,567 votes, just enough in each state to flip the election. 43% of that activity came from China. 

The vulnerability, named "Baron Samedit," impacts most Linux distributions today.

The post Dems Are Seriously Considering a “Vehicle Miles Traveled” Tax appeared first on The Bongino Report.

Trump allies foresee a split between the former president and the GOP in their choice of social media, a fracture of the online Right that could make it more difficult to organize to regain majorities.

'I don’t think we go back to a world before this,' Ohanian said

There's some political equivalent here. I don't know what it looks like yet, but there's only so long the rapid destruction of jobs and the economy and political persecution can continue without the political equivalent of a short squeeze on Democrats.

The post GameStop Politics: Democrats’ Hubris And Abusiveness Will Lead To Their Own Short Squeeze first appeared on Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion.

YouTube has reportedly extended its suspension of former President Donald Trump’s account indefinitely. Trump's associate Rudy Giuliani has also been barred by YouTube from monetizing his channel for at least 30 days, according to Reuters.

 

My new book THERE IS A RAINBOW is out today. It's a story of hope during the pandemic. School Library Journal called it "the perfect pandemic book...the book we need, the message we deserve."

When my editor Ariel Richardson sent me Theresa Trinder’s powerful, poetic text, I was hooked. It was a welcome chance for me to explore some of my thoughts, feelings, and observations from last Spring’s lockdown. I also experimented with a new art style: colored pencil. Let’s just say I used a lot of them...

Here in Kansas, our stay-at-home order took effect in late March. I was forced to be off from my job as an orthodontist. I attempted to work on comics but found it difficult to accomplish much. It was an unprecedented amount of family time. We went on walks in neighborhoods in parks all across the city. I taught my kids to ride their bikes. I kept a couple sketchbooks and a written diary. 

Eventually my diary turned from daily observations into short poems. My sketchbook was filled with scenes from our daily life. Though confined to our small circle of people, I felt attuned to the outside world. 

When I sat down with Theresa’s text and started sketching, I tried to capture the energy of my kids roaming free during the pandemic. Separated from school and friends, but full of joy and curiosity. Splashing in puddles. Scribbling on the driveway in sidewalk chalk. Finding big sticks and tiny snails. Climbing trees. 

Here are some early sketches for the book:

I wanted to show rainbows in every way possible. In windows, on sidewalks, in the scattered droplets of a garden hose. By blending colored pencils, I used a spectrum of colors to create the world of a young boy and girl at home during lockdown. 

For visual reference, I looked at sidewalk chalk drawings in my neighborhood encouraging social distancing, hand-washing, and hope. I found some of my old sketches of brownstones on a street in Brooklyn near where my brother lives. 

I read news stories of the rainbow window displays that sprung up in cities everywhere. There was a feeling of fear and confusion in the world, but also of shared purpose and unity.

One day while working on the book, I went on a morning run. I was greeted by a perfect rainbow arcing across the clearing sky. Life seemed to be imitating art. Of course, I put it down in my sketchbook. 

Though the pandemic is far from over, this new year has brought a sense that things will get better. Despite continued uncertainty, we have a vaccine and better understanding of the virus. There is a new administration here in the US with a new sense of dignity and purpose. As Theresa wrote in our book: “On the other side of a storm, there is a rainbow.”

It's time to start creating a better future. Put pencil to paper. Paint to canvas. Chalk to sidewalk. Start imagining. What will your rainbow look like?

Bureau delayed FISA warrant and instead gave candidate defensive briefing, in stark contrast to Trump, declassified memos show.

This is Part 6 of an ongoing series.

First of all, it should be noted that the shocking images from the storming of the Capitol on January 6 are going to be used against our efforts to restore constitutional government and to clean up our compromised and corrupted institutions for years to come. It was a sad day for the country, with five people (including one law enforcement officer) dead, plus the suicide of a Capitol police officer. Those who broke the law during the course of those events must be punished, no matter who they are.

That is a crucial understanding that is part of this next lesson from 2020. While fraud and the failure to follow the law and the Constitution had a clear impact on this election and created a massive appearance of impropriety when combined with the denial of transparency in the contested states, there were plenty of other mistakes on the part of President Trump and his team that made this election close enough for the irregularities to matter. This is not to diminish the many accomplishments Trump can rightly boast of, but there are objective conditions and factors that we must consider.

We covered a number of the other issues elsewhere, including mistakes in personnel, planning failures, not taking battlefield preparation into account, failing to anticipate attacks, and poorly-considered ways of delivering the message. A common thread runs through all of these issues – it’s a misreading at best of what the situation was, if not complacency, or worse, outright denial and/or willful blindness.

It has long been said that one can’t get to where they are going if they don’t know where they are. That means that a campaign needs to have as clear an understanding of the situation as they possibly can at all times – at the start of a campaign, during the campaign, and in the time between winning an election and taking office. This is a time to evaluate the objective conditions, as opposed to taking a best-case scenario. Candidates need to have an accurate assessment of what the situation is, or they end up going into a fight for the future of their community, state, or even country, blind. That is a certain way to fail.

One of the biggest keys is to find out all the data from past elections and to ensure the data is reliable. But it is more than just paying someone like Richard Baris to crunch the numbers. There also has to be an understanding of the issues, how the electorate feels about those issues and an honest assessment of how much the electorate’s feelings overlap with the candidate’s positions. For instance, support for the Second Amendment will require a very different approach for a candidate running in Philadelphia’s suburbs than for a rural Alabama candidate.

Knowing the laws governing elections is also crucial. If a candidate knows the process, they can protect not just themself, but also those who cast votes for them, work on the campaign, and raise money. Knowing what the limits are can help a candidate avoid scandals – or worse. This could be very crucial in a state where officials show a tendency to abuse power.

For example, a candidate running for office in Michigan will likely have to deal with the fact that officials like governor Gretchen Whitmer, attorney general Dana Nessel, and secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson will play for keeps and have no compunction about breaking norms or unilaterally acting – essentially usurping power from the legislature. In Florida, though, while a candidate will not have to worry about an unfair system, they will have to invest strongly in Spanish-language media in addition to English-language media. In Washington state, the universal vote-by-mail system must be factored in

Candidates must also know which media outlets are fair and will report the facts, and which outlets are biased and for all intents and purposes acting as stenographers for the establishment. Finding alternative ways to get the message out will also be important, whether through talk radio, free-speech friendly social media like Parler, MeWe, Gab, and Rumble, or through e-mail newsletters to mitigate censorship from Big Tech.

 

Those who are working as grassroots activists will also have to understand what the present situation is and accept it. If, as Larry Schweikart postulated, federalism failed, then activists at the grassroots level need to figure out how and why it failed. Much of that answer will likely be found in the people who were in place as opposed to the system itself.

A system can be only as good as the people running it – and the failures come not just from those who abuse power but those who fail to use their powers to address abuse. As has often been learned to our frustration and sorrow these last two and half months, the letter “R” behind the name doesn’t always indicate a fighter, and a fighting spirit doesn’t guarantee tactical and strategic competence.

There may be any number of reasons for that failure. Some could very well be intimidated by the prospect of harassment by the likes of Antifa. Those who have stood up, whether Wayne County Republicans, lawyers, or elected officials, have faced threats of retaliation. Even Josh Hawley, who objected to certifications from Arizona and Pennsylvania, faced intimidation and retaliation. His wife had Antifa show up on her front door while Hawley was in Missouri, while Simon and Schuster canceled his book contract.

For others, it may have been a matter of pursuing or balancing other priorities. For instance, Mitch McConnell tried to save Georgia’s two Senate seats – that was part of his responsibility as the leader of the Republicans in the Senate. He was trying to do so in close runoff elections in a state where the Georgia Republican Party had to sue a Republican secretary of state to follow the law. Now, McConnell’s refusal to get the $2,000 checks passed ended up wrecking that endeavor, but he wasn’t the only one who bears the blame for Georgia. Trump himself firmly rebuked the other major reason during those runoffs.

There need to be some very hard “family conversations” about the conduct of some on our side on a similar front. In some cases, elected officials, some seeking higher office, have made statements that are counter-productive at best. We’ve even had some entities promise action was coming… and they got people to sit and wait rather than to engage in the necessary grassroots activism to win elections or have an effect on legislation. Other figures made big promises but have delivered precious little in terms of results to date.

Of course, the conversations must also discuss those who sat on the sidelines in the momentous fights over the last six weeks while tens of millions of Americans wonder if their votes were properly counted. The fact is, many Americans have had their faith in the system shaken, if not shattered, and getting them to remain involved will be extremely difficult, especially when they rightly question whether those asking for their vote will fight for them.

The situation is pretty grim. What should have been a solid re-election, if not a landslide, was in all probability, lost, and the other side will claim it was “fair and square” through thin veneers of legal technicalities, pre-election court rulings, and using the events at the Capitol to suppress any discussion of the very real questions surrounding mail-in voting, the need for transparency in elections, and a host of other questions surrounding this election that may never be honestly answered.

That being said, putting things right is still quite possible. We will have to understand that reclaiming our government from the Swamp was never going to be a long, unbroken string of victories. Setbacks were going to happen, we are often at the mercy of events outside our control, and those are two things we will have to deal with. The ultimate reality is this: As long as we fight for freedom, we have a chance. We just have to fight smart to make the most of the chances we have.

Harold Hutchison has nearly two decades of experience covering a variety of topics, including politics, national security affairs, foreign policy, Second Amendment issues, and sports. He has been published in numerous media outlets, including National Review, the Daily Caller, the Patriot Post, Ammoland.com, and the Washington Examiner.

The post Lessons Learned From 2020 – Accept The Situation As It Is appeared first on UncoverDC.

(Adds Chinese foreign ministry reaction)

(CNSNews.com) – In the last of a series of parting blows aimed at Beijing, the Trump administration on Tuesday declared that the Chinese Communist Party’s actions against Uyghurs Muslims constitute crimes against humanity and “genocide,” becoming the first government in the world to make such a determination.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an advocacy group which on most issues is a strident critic of the outgoing administration’s policies, was among those praising the decision, saying it welcomed “our government’s decision to finally and officially declare China’s heinous actions against Uyghurs Muslims as genocide.”

While the U.S. has led international condemnation of China’s treatment of Uyghurs and other minority Muslim communities, Beijing’s polices in its Xinjiang region have drawn support at the U.N. from scores of countries, including some of the world’s leading Islamic nations –  a stance attributed largely to the significant economic leverage wielded by China.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement that the CCP-controlled state has, since at least March 2017, “committed crimes against humanity” in Xinjiang, including arbitrary imprisonment and deprivation of liberty affecting more than a million people, torture, forced sterilization, forced labor, and “draconian restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, freedom of expression, and freedom of movement.”

In a second determination, Pompeo said the actions constitute genocide.

“I believe this genocide is ongoing, and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uyghurs by the Chinese party-state,” he said. “The governing authorities of the second most economically, militarily, and politically powerful country on earth have made clear that they are engaged in the forced assimilation and eventual erasure of a vulnerable ethnic and religious minority group, even as they simultaneously assert their country as a global leader and attempt to remold the international system in their image.”

Early reaction from Beijing came in the form of several undiplomatic tweets.

“Pompeo’s so-called determination is NULL & VOID,” said Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying. “Not worth the paper it’s written on. Because he is so NOTORIOUS for LYING & CHEATING. Btw, he is INDEED successful in making himself ‘the Clown of the Century’!”

Also on Twitter, the editor of the CCP organ Global Times called it “shameful” for the U.S. to “label peaceful governance in Xinjiang genocide,” and in a dig at Pompeo jeered, “you are still going to be kicked out of your office today.”

Foreign ministry officials have repeatedly denied allegations of atrocities in Xinjiang.

Secretary of State-nominee Tony Blinken said during his Senate confirmation hearing that he agrees with Pompeo’s assessment: “That would be my judgment as well.”

Reaction also came from congressional critics of Beijing.

“The United States does not apply these terms lightly,” said House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Michael McCaul (R-Texas). “I hope today’s designation will motivate the nations, businesses, and people of the world to reconsider the ways they entangle themselves with a brutal, communist dictatorship that is guilty of committing genocide against its own people.”

McCaul chairs a Republican China Task Force in the House, which last year urged the State Department to assess whether genocide was being committed in Xinjiang.

‘You have to be right’

Along with praise for Pompeo’s announcement, critics complained that the decision had taken too long in coming, with some accusing the outgoing administration of trying to complicate China relations for the incoming one.

“What took so long is when you do something like this, you have to be right,” Pompeo told Fox News in response to a question on the time taken.

“There were lots of vigorous discussions all across the United States government. We talked with people all across the world. We relied on facts that came from nongovernmental organizations, journalists, other governments, to make sure that we had everything just right. And we wouldn’t have done this if we weren’t convinced that these declarations, this determination that I have issued today, was proper, appropriate, and would hopefully lead to better lives for people in this region.”

 

Such determinations are not made lightly, or often. Genocide is defined in international law as the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, accompanied by atrocities aimed at achieving that goal. In U.S. law, title 18 section 1091 of the U.S. Code refers to acts with a “specific intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such.”

The last U.S. genocide determination was the Obama administration’s finding in March 2016 relating to ISIS atrocities against Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities in areas under its control.

Some voices in Congress had been calling for that determination for several years, and it came only after lawmakers inserted a requirement in an omnibus spending bill signed into law in late 2015.

Asked in March 2016 why Secretary of State John Kerry looked set to miss a 90-day congressionally mandated deadline for the determination, his spokesman said the process was, “by its nature, a very rigorous one.”

“The secretary has urged his team here at the department as well as the broader intelligence community, and even the NGO community, to provide as much information and evidence as possible so that he can make the best decision possible,” Mark Toner said at the time. “And if this has delayed the process, we believe it’s worth it.”

Kerry made the deadline, with just hours to spare. The Trump administration reaffirmed the ISIS genocide finding the following year.

See also:

Muslims Lash Out at Islamic Bloc Over Uyghur Silence, ‘Complicity’ (Dec. 18, 2020)

Islamic, Communist, and Other Autocratic Regimes Back China's Treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang (Oct. 7, 2020)

Religious Freedom Panel to Pompeo: Do Forced Sterilizations in China’s Xinjiang Constitute Genocide? (Jul. 1, 2020)

China Thanks 36 Countries, Half of Them Islamic States, for Praising Its Uighur Policies (Jul. 15, 2019)

Let's be honest: The right is making a forced retreat. Here's how we can make it a strategic one that sets our ideas up for better success in the long run.

Big Tech is rapidly becoming the arbiter of speech on the internet, as evidenced in recent undercover videos from James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas. Reportedly, 70,000 accounts have been purged from Twitter alone since the Capitol Hill protest on Jan. 6. The vast majority of those accounts are, by Twitter’s own admission, associated with QANON types of accounts—which are accounts that may typically espouse a more conservative perspective. Many of the permanently banned accounts, however, including the one referenced by Editor-in-Chief for UncoverDC, Tracy Beanz, had nothing to do with QANON and were permanently suspended without notice. Several high-profile accounts that were also banned without notice or recourse were those owned by lawyer Sidney Powell and General Michael Flynn, among others.

Twitter announced the permanent suspension of the President’s account on Jan. 8, “in the context of horrific events” at the Capitol. An excerpt of their statement is below:

“Due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, and an uptick in the global conversation in regards to the people who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, these two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks. After assessing the language in these Tweets against our Glorification of Violence policy, we have determined that these Tweets are in violation of the Glorification of Violence Policy and the user @realDonaldTrump should be immediately permanently suspended from the service.”

A series of Tweets posted by Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, rationalizes his decision to permanently ban the President’s account:

I do not celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban @realDonaldTrump from Twitter, or how we got here. After a clear warning we’d take this action, we made a decision with the best information we had based on threats to physical safety both on and off Twitter. Was this correct?

— jack (@jack) January 14, 2021

O’Keefe released a video on Jan. 14 that shows an insider’s video of Dorsey explaining his “full retro” review of his platform that will be “much bigger than just one account [President Trump’s] and is going to go on much longer than just this day…to go on beyond the inauguration,” chilling words in a country that has long valued its first amendment rights. He mentions QANON accounts, associating them with “ties to real-world violence” and the dynamics of how speech from those accounts might “play out over time.” He argues that the U.S. is extremely divided, and his platform shows that, so his mission will be to “protect the integrity of that conversation” to make sure no one “is being harmed based off that.”

Another Veritas undercover video emerged Monday showing one of Twitter’s top executives, Vijaya Gadde, the Legal Policy Trust and Safety officer for Twitter. She speaks about the tweets that led to President Trump’s permanent ban on the platform, as well as the company’s plans for censorship on a global scale.

Twitter initially put the President in a temporary time out. In that context, she lays her foundational rationale for future decisions, “Whether we believe Trump’s tweets are inciting violence and having real-world harm, I think we’ve seen that, in fact, they are.” She acknowledges that President Trump attempted “to de-escalate the situation” after coming back from his time-out. However, apparently, his actions were not adequate to prevent his ban in the days that followed. A statement from the President before his suspension can be found below.

The video that spurred the temporary suspension from Twitter was posted on Jan. 6 as the Capitol was in lockdown with Congress inside. The minute-long video spoke sympathetically to those who were in attendance at the Capitol that day. He mentioned the pain of the “fraudulent election” but encouraged people to leave in peace. “I know your pain, I know you’re hurt,” Trump said. “But you have to go home now, we have to have peace. We have to have law and order, we have to respect our great people in law and order.”

Gadde proceeds to speak about the company’s plans to build upon the work they are doing in the U.S. with intentions to install those policies on a global scale. She explains that the policies will revolve around violence that is unfolding globally “as a result of misleading information or coded rhetoric.” She says that they are also applying what they are learning in global markets and applying “those learnings” in the U.S. Also discussed were the many inputs from employees who felt that the temporary suspension of the President’s account was not commensurate with the violation. She said that these decisions are “judgment calls” that resulted in a “robust” discussion on behalf of the leadership at Twitter. She also explains that there needs to be an attempt to “give adamant notice before we take a very aggressive step like permanent suspension.”

Notably, the President’s accounts and videos were all removed from Facebook and YouTube following the Twitter ban. Facebook reinstated his account on Jan. 15, but he has not used it since the ban.

Jason Miller, a Trump Senior advisor, tweeted on Monday that a “reckoning is coming” for Big Tech companies, some of which have already seen substantial losses in the market. He says there will be a public backlash because many Americans think that if the President of the United States can be censored, their right to free speech is not far behind.

2/3 74% of Battleground State voters agree that if Twitter, Facebook and Google can censor and take away the President’s right to free speech, they can take away the right to free speech for any American…https://t.co/pg0FqdoIVR

— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) January 18, 2021

On Sunday, Alex Stamos, the former chief security officer at Facebook, during an appearance on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” said the following:

“We have to turn down the capability of these conservative influencers to reach these huge audiences. There are people on YouTube, for example, that have a larger audience than daytime CNN, and they are extremely radical and pushing extremely radical views. So it’s up to the Facebooks and YouTubes, in particular, to think about whether or not they want to be effectively cable networks for disinformation.” 

He then named two conservatives news outlets he thinks are problematic and should be targeted as soon as possible, “We’re gonna have to figure out the OANN and Newsmax problem,” he said. The spot was particularly chilling because Stamos says people now have too much leeway in their choices for information.

“People have so much choice now. They can choose what their news sources are. They can choose what influencers they want to follow, and they can try to seal out anything that helps them question that…it gets to a really core issue of our freedoms as Americans, and the way we have treated press freedom in the past is being abused by these actors. In that, we have given a lot of leeway in the traditional media and on social media to people who have a very broad range of political views, and it is now in the great economic interest of those individuals to become more and more radical.” He directly references OANN and Newsmax as those radical “actors” because they are to the “right” of Fox News.

The post Project Veritas Exposes Rationale for Censorship of Free Speech On Social Media appeared first on UncoverDC.

  “Those riots would not have happened but for Twitter, but for Facebook.  Algorithms were set up to cause this sort of radicalism to explode. They set up their business models in a way that would lead to the insurrection.”   Mika then screams at Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg — ‘You are pathetic! You […]

Federal authorities have charged Robert Gieswein as one of the rioters who stormed the Capitol in support of a pro-Trump insurrection on January 6.

The Woodland Park, Colorado, resident was seen in photos wearing distinctive patches and military-style equipment on Jan. 5 and on Jan. 6 as he pushed through police barriers at the Capitol and confronted officers in the building alongside a number of rioters wanted by the FBI.

He is charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding a federal officer, depredation of U.S. property. obstruction of an official proceeding, and entering a restricted building with the intent to impede official functions.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said the removal of Parler from Apple's online store was done because the company doesn't consider incitement of violence free speech. “We looked at the incitement to violence that was on there and we don’t consider that free speech and incitement of violence has an intersection," Cook told Fox News anchor Chris Wallace. Apple suspended Parler from its store on Jan. 9, asserting Parler didn't take “adequate measures” to address alleged “threats of violence and illegal activity” by its users. The move followed Google's suspension of Parler, and preceded Amazon Web Services (AWS) suspending Parler's account, which led to the company going offline. Cook said Apple has suspended Parler. "And so, if they get their moderation together, they would be back on there," he added. Parler CEO John Matze told The Epoch Times that his company's terms of service were approved by Apple, Amazon, and Google. ...