Tag: democrats

Filing: Smartmatic Hid Meeting With Dem Megadonor Who Financed Its Suit Against 2020 Election Reporting

Smartmatic, the electronic tabulator company suing Fox News for alleged defamation following the 2020 election, failed in a February court hearing to disclose a meeting with Democrat megadonor Reid Hoffman, newly unsealed court documents allege.

Following the 2020 election, both Fox News and Newsmax “hosted commentators who aired concerns that tabulators were not secure, were vulnerable to voter fraud, and had possibly changed Trump votes to Biden votes,” as described in these pages by Logan Washburn. Smartmatic sued, arguing the comments amounted to defamation. Fox previously settled a suit with Dominion Voting over similar allegations while Newsmax recently settled with Smartmatic for $40 million, according to NBC.

As Washburn reported, Fox had previously expressed concerns about a “deep-pocketed ‘third party’ behind the suit” — allegations that Smartmatic denied in 2023, according to Reuters. But reporting from The Washington Post revealed Hoffman invested millions in Smartmatic, as the company sued news outlets for their reporting about the 2020 election. In July 2024, the Post reported that Hoffman had “connected with Smartmatic chief executive Antonio Mugica through friends of friends” and was “boosting” its lawsuit against Fox.

According to a newly unsealed filing, Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica met with “politically-motivated investors … to discuss the company’s financials and investment prospects.” That’s “a fact that Smartmatic withheld from this Court on February 5, 2025,” says the document, which was initially filed under seal with the New York State Supreme Court in April before being unsealed this week.

“After that meeting, Hoffman and [his adviser Dmitri] Mehlhorn infused Smartmatic with $25,000,000 to fund its litigation against Fox and publicly declared that Smartmatic could be a ‘$400 million’ company but for the alleged defamation,” the filing continues.

A “deposition transcript from the Newsmax case confirms that Hoffman and Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica had a private meeting,” according to the document. But “Smartmatic did not tell the Court at that [Feb. 5, 2025] hearing … that Antonio Mugica, Smartmatic’s CEO, had met with Hoffman and Mehlhorn via videoconference about Smartmatic’s finances, this lawsuit,” and Hoffman’s funding, it says.

The filing also alleges that Smartmatic had previously “failed to disclose to Fox that … it entered into a litigation-funding agreement with … an entity controlled by Reid Hoffman,” a fact that Fox learned “from public media reports” in July 2024, “just seven days before the then-scheduled close of fact discovery.”

In a statement to The Federalist, a Fox News representative said it’s unsurprising that Hoffman would be involved.

Keep reading

The Legal Risks Facing Letitia James: Mortgage Fraud, Campaign Violations, Nonprofit Misuse, and There’s More

President Trump declared in the Oval Office on Tuesday that New York Attorney General Letitia James was “a total crook” and said the Justice Department would “do what’s right” after receiving a criminal referral accusing her of mortgage fraud.

He added, “she’s a disaster for New York. She’s a horrible, horrible human being”.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has for years cultivated an image as a champion of ethics, transparency, and the rule of law.

However, my review of public records and court filings, which I have documented in The Gateway Pundit series “The Letitia Files”, reveals a range of troubling issues that could pose serious legal and ethical consequences for New York’s top law enforcement official.

Keep reading

This Bad Legal Interpretation Allows Democrats To Skew Congress With Illegal Immigration

In his first 100 days in office, President Donald Trump has ended the crisis at our southern border. Customs and Border Protection declared in March that we now have “the most secure border in history.” As Trump famously quipped at the State of the Union, it turns out we didn’t need new legislation, we just needed a new president.

Why, then, would any president want millions of unvetted illegal immigrants to enter freely into the United States? Why would an entire political party defend, and deny the perils of, the porous border presided over by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris?

The only explanation is the advantages this gives Democrats in the decennial census. It’s not sexy, but it’s the entire point.

The core constitutional purpose of the decennial census is to arrive at the “actual enumeration” of the people of each state so the inhabitants of each state are fairly and adequately represented in Congress and the Electoral College. When Democrat-run sanctuary states and cities induce population growth of illegal immigrants — who can currently be counted in the census — they understand the census will apportion in their favor. As the population of illegal immigrants in a sanctuary state swells, so too does that state’s congressional delegation and its Electoral College effect. The more people in the state, the more seats in Congress and the Electoral College. This means more spending, more representation, and more power for that state. Conversely, this means less of all three for the rest of us living in law-abiding states.

The census is essentially a cascade of delegation from the U.S. Constitution (Section 2 of Article I and the 14th Amendment), to Congress (Census Act), to the executive branch (Census Bureau), to the secretary of commerce (report to the president), to the president’s report to Congress. 

So do we have to count illegal immigrants for census apportionment? No, we do not. Illegal immigrants enjoy many rights and privileges while unlawfully in the United States. But being counted for apportionment should not be one of them.

The 14th Amendment requires, “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state.” It was not until the 1980s that illegal immigration became a significant issue in the United States. In response, Congress asked the Department of Justice for an opinion letter on two bills seeking to exclude illegal aliens from census apportionment. The opinion letter was written by Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Thomas Boyd (“Boyd Letter”). Unfortunately, Boyd’s response to Congress declared both laws would likely be unconstitutional.

Keep reading

Democrat Judge Indicted in Ballot Harvesting Scheme, Public Officials Arrested

The Texas Attorney General’s office indicted a Democrat county judge and arrested several public officials, accusing them of scamming voters by engaging in an illegal vote ballot harvesting scheme.

A former Frio County elections administrator, a Frio County vote harvester, two Pearsall city council members, and a Pearsall school board member were all arrested last week on charges of tampering with or fabricating physical evidence and vote harvesting, with Frio County Judge Rochelle Camacho also facing three counts of vote harvesting, while her “processing” is postponed for a later date.

“The people of Texas deserve fair and honest elections, not backroom deals and political insiders rigging the system,” reads a statement from Texas AG Ken Paxton.

The AG’s office explained the arrests stem from cooperation with Frio County District Attorney Audrey Louis and a probe by its Criminal Investigation Division, which looked “into credible allegations of vote harvesting.”

“On May 1, 2025, Frio County District Attorney Audrey Louis and the Election Integrity Unit of the Office of the Attorney General presented a criminal vote harvesting case to a grand jury in Frio County,” Paxton’s office wrote.

Here’s a list of the indicted and arrested public officials:

  • Frio County Judge, Rochelle Camacho: 3 counts of Vote Harvesting
  • Former Frio County Elections Administrator, Carlos Segura: 1 count of Tampering with or Fabricating Physical Evidence
  • Pearsall City Council, Ramiro Trevino: 1 count of Vote Harvesting
  • Pearsall City Council, Racheal Garza: 1 count of Vote Harvesting
  • Pearsall ISD Trustee, Adriann Ramirez: 3 counts of Vote Harvesting
  • Alleged Frio County Vote Harvester, Rosa Rodriguez: 2 counts of Vote Harvesting

Keep reading

Durbin calls on DOJ to investigate anonymous pizza deliveries to judges’ homes

The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee has called on the Department of Justice and the FBI to “immediately investigate” a string of anonymous pizza deliveries sent to judges’ homes.

In the event that the DOJ and the FBI have already initiated investigations, Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dick Durbin, D-Ill., also asked Attorney General Pam Bondi and Kash Patel for an update on those efforts. 

“In recent months, federal judges and their relatives have received anonymous deliveries to their homes,” Durbin wrote in a letter to Bondi and Patel on Tuesday. “These deliveries are threats intended to show that those seeking to intimidate the targeted judge know the judge’s address or their family members’ addresses. The targeted individuals reportedly include Supreme Court justices, judges handling legal cases involving the Administration, and the children of judges. Some of these deliveries were made using the name of Judge Esther Salas’s son, Daniel Anderl, who was murdered at the family’s home by a former litigant who posed as a deliveryman.”

Keep reading

Top California Democrats Fight To Protect Purchasing Sex With Kids

Should it be a felony to purchase an underage minor for illegal sex? 

For most of us, the answer is a very easy yes. This is not a hard one. You will likely encounter three dozen questions today or tomorrow that will be considerably more difficult to answer. Generally, if someone is asked if there should be severe legal penalties for underage sex trafficking, the response is an immediate, unhesitating affirmative. 

Democrats in California feel differently. The state assembly there this past week considered a bill — AB-379 — that would have amended state law to make it a felony to solicit paid sex from “any person under 18 years of age.” In other words, if you seek out and pay a minor for sex — if you engage in child sex trafficking — you would be guilty of a felony.

This should have been an easy move for the assembly; the debate should have taken about 30 seconds and ended with a unanimous vote, passage to the state senate, and a quick signature by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The ink should have still been drying on the bill by suppertime on Wednesday. 

Democrats were not so obliging. In fact, they mounted a major opposition to the bill. By the time they were done with it, the bill’s protections for 16-year-old sex crime victims had been stripped from the measure. Democrats added language claiming it was “the intent of the Legislature to adopt the strongest laws to protect 16- and 17-year old victims.” Which is strange since, when given the opportunity to do just that, they refused. 

What reason could Democrats have for opposing the bill? Advocates in no small part seemed concerned that the measure could disproportionately affect … LGBT Californians. (Really stop and think about that for a minute.) The ACLU of Southern California claimed in part that similar measures “have been used disproportionately against … LGBTQ+ individuals.” Other opponents of the bill claimed that the measure could be used by parents who are upset that their children are in “LGBTQ relationships.”

One group claimed there were concerns “about the way that automatic felonies [could be] levied against older teens in relationships with other minors.” State Sen. Scott Wiener, a longtime LGBT booster, argued on social media that “sending an 18 year old high school senior to state prison for offering his 17 year old classmate $20 to fool around isn’t smart criminal justice policy.”

We should all pause for a minute and consider what is being argued here. At best, Democrats and other opponents of this bill are attempting to defend underage prostitution as a normal feature of young relationships (it’s not). At worst, they are revealing, inadvertently, that LGBT individuals are apparently regular participants in the sex trafficking of minors. 

Which one is it? They should probably decide what their position is and stick with it. But it bears repeating that the bill concerns itself only with paying for sex with minors. Any criticism of this bill in the context of the “relationships” it may affect cannot ignore that simple fact. 

Most functioning adults consider it a very bad thing when underage children are paid for sex, no matter the circumstances. Opponents of this bill are acting as if they are defending meaningful, intimate relationships, rather than innately harmful, exploitative, and dangerous ones. “Think of how this will negatively affect 18-year-olds who bribe their underage friends for sex!” is not persuasive.

Keep reading

Jasmine Crockett Gives Commencement Address, Appears to Hint Graduates Should Be Prepared “Use a Chair” as a Weapon

On Sunday, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX)  gave a commencement address at Tougaloo College, a historically black college in Jackson, Mississippi, that was anything but uplifting.

During her remarks, Crockett appeared to hint at the promotion of using violence, telling the grads they need to know “how to use a chair” against people who say they don’t belong.

“There are going to be people that tell you that you don’t belong, and I am here to tell you over and over and over that you absolutely belong,” Crockett told the graduates.

“There are people that are gonna tell you that there is not a table in which there is a seat for you, but I am here to remind you of Montgomery and those folding chairs. Let me tell you that we know how to use a chair, whether we’re pulling it up or we’re doing something else with it. Let me be the first one to tell you that I know that y’all are ready to put your boots on the ground.”

According to The Daily Caller, Crockett appears to reference an incident where a folding chair was used as a weapon during a brawl.

Crockett appeared to reference a 2023 brawl in Montgomery, Alabama, where some white private boaters brawled with a number of black men, including a dock worker, with at least one of the black men using a folding chair as a weapon during the incident.

Keep reading

ICE Responds to Accusations of Illegal Raid: “WRONG!”

After Democrats accused ICE of raiding the wrong house and terrorizing a U.S. citizen family in Oklahoma, the Department of Homeland Security fired back, beginning their official statement on X with a blunt response: “Wrong.”

What actually happened was that ICE conducted a lawful, court-authorized search targeting a property long tied to a human smuggling network, not specific individuals. Surveillance conducted the day before the raid confirmed that a member of the Lima Lopez Transnational Criminal Organization was still paying utility bills at the home, which remained legally owned by an indicted smuggling suspect. The warrant, based on an 84-page affidavit, authorized the seizure of evidence regardless of who was present. As DHS stated, “This is an ongoing investigation, and we have not ruled out current occupants’ involvement in the smuggling ring.”

Federal agents executed the search warrant on April 24 at a single-family home in northwest Oklahoma City. According to DHS, the property had been used as a stash house for human and drug smuggling involving individuals from Guatemala, Mexico, Colombia, and China. When agents entered the home, they encountered a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Guatemala and her three daughters, the youngest of whom was 17. Although none of them were detained, DHS emphasized that the investigation is ongoing.

Local news outlet KOCO 5 confirmed that the house remains in the name of Cidia Marleny Lima Lopez, a key suspect in the smuggling ring, and that utility records showed members of the criminal organization were still linked to the property as of the day before the raid, “despite the fact that new residents had moved in.” DHS clarified that the warrant legally allowed agents to seize electronic devices and documents found in the home, regardless of the current occupants.

Keep reading

New Jersey Democrats INDICTED AGAIN in Expanding Voter Fraud Case — Accused of Stealing and Forging Ballots and Voter Registrations to Rig 2020 Election

Paterson City Council President Alex Mendez faces new charges in a superseding indictment related to the May 2020 municipal election.

Alongside his wife, Yohanny Mendez, and campaign workers Omar Ledesma and Iris Rigo, Mendez is accused of orchestrating a scheme involving the theft and forgery of ballots and voter registrations to secure his council seat.

The indictment alleges that the group unlawfully collected and tampered with vote-by-mail ballots, including destroying ballots not cast for Mendez and submitting fraudulent ones in their place.

According to a press release from the Attorney General’s Office,

“The 10-count superseding indictment alleges that Mendez, who represents the Third Ward on the Paterson City Council, his wife Yohanny Mendez and campaign workers Omar Ledesma and Iris Rigo tried to deprive Paterson residents of a fair election. Alex Mendez was first indicted in 2021 for election-related offenses. Further investigation by OPIA resulted in additional charges filed by complaint in October 2023 against the co-defendants, as well as additional charges for Alex Mendez, all stemming from the May 2020 election.

[…]

Based on publicly filed documents and statements in court in this case, the OPIA investigation began after hundreds of mail-in ballots for the May 2020 Paterson election were found in a postal box in the neighboring municipality of Haledon, when all voting was being conducted via vote-by-mail because of COVID-19.

Members of the alleged conspiracy face several charges including Tampering with Public Records or Information (third degree), Falsifying or Tampering with Records (fourth degree), Forgery (third degree), and Election Fraud (second degree). Among the allegations, they are accused of submitting fictitious or fraudulent vote-by-mail registrations and ballots.

The superseding indictment contains a new charge of Theft (third degree) against the four defendants for allegedly taking other peoples’ ballots with the intent to deprive them of their vote. It also includes a new count of Receiving Stolen Property (third degree) for those four defendants, alleging they received ballots that they knew had been stolen.

It is further alleged that the defendants tried to cause one or more witnesses previously contacted by investigators to make additional, contradictory, and false statements – leading to the superseding indictment’s new charge of Witness Tampering (third degree).

The superseding indictment also charges an additional defendant, Ninoska Adames, a Paterson resident, with Hindering Apprehension or Prosecution (third degree) and Tampering with Public Records or Information (third degree). She allegedly falsified a voter certificate on a vote-by-mail ballot and gave false information to detectives with the intent to hinder the State’s investigation into the May 2020 election.

The charges are merely accusations and the defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Second-degree charges carry a sentence of five to 10 years in state prison and a fine of up to $150,000. Third-degree charges carry a sentence of three to five years in prison and a fine of up to $15,000. Fourth-degree offenses could lead to up to 18 months in state prison and a fine of up to $10,000.”

“As alleged, this case is not simply about a city council seat. The people’s right to vote and to have their voices heard was subverted by what we allege to be an unlawful conspiracy,” said Attorney General Platkin. “This was unfair to the voters of Paterson. It was, as the grand jury charged, fraud and theft.”

“The tenacious, hard work of the investigators and prosecutors on this case uncovered new information about the lengths the defendants allegedly went to in an attempt to rig Paterson’s municipal election and cover up their conduct,” said Drew Skinner, Executive Director of OPIA.

Mendez was initially indicted on election fraud charges in 2021.

In 2023, new charges have been brought against him, his wife Yohanny Mendez, and two other Paterson residents, Omar Ledesma and Iris Rigo.

Keep reading

Biden press secretary Jen Psaki makes outlandish claims about former president’s cognitive decline

Former President Joe Biden‘s press secretary claims she didn’t know about her boss’ cognitive decline until his train wreck performance during last summer’s presidential debate.

Jen Psaki – the former White House spokesperson and now MSNBC anchor – made the extraordinary confession during Semafor’s Mixed Signals podcast.

‘I never saw the person on that debate stage. I was in the Oval Office every day… I’m not a doctor. Aging happens quickly,’ Psaki said

Psaki then attempted to tamp down speculation of a coordinated cover-up. But her own words only poured gas onto the political firestorm that has been smoldering since Biden’s dramatic withdrawal from the 2024 race last July.

‘Cover-up is a very loaded term,’ she said referring to how some described the Biden’s health issues. 

‘People use that term as related to Watergate or the covering up of not sharing public information about a war… I think it’s a bit of a dangerous term.’ 

Psaki stood beside Biden for more than a year: serving as his public voice, managing briefings, shaping narratives, and defending his clarity and capability from the White House podium. 

Her stunning admission rang hollow. Claims that she was blindsided by his mental decline sparked intense backlash and reignited questions about what the administration – and the press – knew about Biden’s condition.

Keep reading