Tag: election interference

Why CISA’s Censorship And Election Interference Work Is The ‘Most Insidious Attack on American Democracy’

West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner last month eviscerated the Big Brother censorship operation known as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

“When we have our own federal agencies lying to the American people, that’s the most insidious thing that we can do in elections,” the election integrity champion told officials from the FBI and CISA on a panel at the winter meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) in Washington, D.C., according to Wired’s Eric Geller. While Geller did his best to defend the federal agency — under the suggestive headline, “How a Right-Wing Controversy Could Sabotage US Election Security” — its history of censorship and election interference validate Warner’s concern.

The agency’s work, particularly the extracurricular business CISA has conducted in recent years, has been rightly criticized for its massive overreach. A report released last fall by the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government details just how CISA “Colluded With Big Tech And ‘Disinformation’ Partners To Censor Americans.”

“Although the investigation is ongoing, information obtained to date has revealed that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)—an upstart agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—has facilitated the censorship of Americans directly and through third-party intermediaries,” the congressional report states. 

The report goes on to assert that the shadowy agency has “metastasized into the nerve center of the federal government’s domestic surveillance and censorship operations on social media.” 

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Supreme Court rules Trump cannot be kicked off ballot

The Supreme Court on Monday handed a sweeping win to former President Donald Trump by ruling states cannot kick him off the ballot over his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — bringing a swift end to a case with huge implications for the 2024 election.

The court in an unsigned ruling with no dissents reversed the Colorado Supreme Court, which determined that Trump could not serve again as president under section 3 of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

The court said the Colorado Supreme Court had wrongly assumed that states can determine whether a presidential candidate is ineligible under a provision of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

The ruling makes it clear that Congress, not states, has to set rules on how the 14th Amendment provision can be enforced. As such the decision applies to all states, not just Colorado.

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Ohio Senate Republican Candidate Frank LaRose Took Over $1 Million in ‘Zuck Bucks’ to Help Run 2020 Election

Ohio Senate Republican candidate and Secretary of State Frank LaRose took more than $1 million in funding from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s election nonprofit to help run the November 2020 election.

LaRose announced his Senate bid on Monday, making him the third prominent Republican hoping to unseat Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH).

LaRose actively sought more than a million dollars in funding from Zuckerberg’s Center for Election Innovation and Research as some Republican officials questioned whether or not to take the grants. A local outlet reported in September 2020:

But Ohio lawmakers on Monday without debate approved accepting $1.1 million from the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a Washington D.C. nonprofit. That money will pay for radio, TV and digital ads describing absentee voting procedures, combatting misinformation, poll worker recruitment and other items, according to a request submitted by Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican.

Ray Weber, a local Republican, said, “I just have a real problem with private organizations getting involved with funding and dictating what we’re supposed to do.”

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‘Significant Problem’: Ex-CIA Analyst Warns Intel Agencies Will Meddle in 2024 Election to Stop Trump

A former CIA analyst is sounding the alarm about plans by intelligence agencies to get politically involved in the 2024 election to stop the Republican candidate.

Dr. John Gentry, a Georgetown professor who spent 12 years as a CIA intelligence analyst, said the politicization of intelligence agencies in the age of Trump has become a “significant problem” and is confident they will interfere in the 2024 election.

“My guess is that the the proverbial Deep State within the intelligence community will reemerge because presumably a Republican candidate will again be seen as a threat to the internal policies that many intelligence people like,” Gentry told Fox News.

Gentry pointed out how the CIA in a “clearly political” move days before the 2020 election with the “intent to help the Biden campaign” approved a letter penned by 51 former intelligence officials falsely claiming the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop published by the New York Post was “Russian disinformation.”

Gentry said he expects intelligence agencies to resume similar political ploys ahead of the 2024 election.

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Karine Jean-Pierre and top Biden spokesman inappropriately used their roles to influence elections with attacks on ‘MAGA’ Republicans, government watchdog rules

White House spokespeople Karine Jean-Pierre and Andrew Bates violated the Hatch Act when they had been warned against using the word ‘MAGA’ to describe certain Republicans, a government watchdog agency said on Friday.

The independent Office of Special Counsel said the two took actions ‘contrary’ to official guidance on the law when they slammed ‘MAGA’ Republicans’ budget plan this year.

In their letter, first reported by NBC News, the office notes the violations came days after Jean-Pierre was warned she had violated the law intended to prevent federal employees from using their offices to influence elections.

This summer, the Office of Special Counsel notified government officials that ‘MAGA’ and similar terms were effectively off-limits for use as they were seen as campaign-related slogans. 

The ruling came after OCS’s June finding that Jean-Pierre was in violation of the Hatch Act when she repeatedly referred to ‘MAGA Republicans’ in the run-up to the 2022 midterm election. No action was taken against Jean-Pierre.

‘MAGA’ is the campaign slogan for former President Donald Trump. The OSC did say that the use of ‘MAGAnomics’ is permitted.

‘We take the law seriously and uphold the Hatch Act,’ a White House official told DailyMail.com.

Jean-Pierre, Bates and other officials repeatedly cite the Hatch Act in press briefings when declining to answer reporters’ questions about President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign or about Trump’s candidacy. 

But Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, and Bates, who is deputy White House press secretary, have used the word ‘MAGA’ repeatedly when talking about ‘extreme MAGA Republicans’ and their agenda.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Banned by Major Social Media Site, Campaign Pages Blocked

Twitter owner Elon Musk invited Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for a discussion on his Twitter Spaces after Kennedy said his campaign was suspended by Meta-owned Instagram.

“Interesting… when we use our TeamKennedy email address to set up @instagram accounts we get an automatic 180-day ban. Can anyone guess why that’s happening?” he wrote on Twitter. An accompanying image shows that Instagram said it “suspended” his “Team Kennedy” account and that there “are 180 days remaining to disagree” with the company’s decision.

In response to his post, Musk wrote: “Would you like to do a Spaces discussion with me next week?” Kennedy agreed, saying he would do it Monday at 2 p.m. ET.

Hours later, Kennedy wrote that Instagram “still hasn’t reinstated my account, which was banned years ago with more than 900k followers.” He argued that “to silence a major political candidate is profoundly undemocratic.”

“Social media is the modern equivalent of the town square,” the candidate, who is the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, wrote. “How can democracy function if only some candidates have access to it?”

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Churches’ role in local election prompts calls for investigations

Voters in West Texas have decisively rejected three conservative Christian candidates who campaigned on infusing religious values into local decision-making. But the support the candidates received from local churches during the race has prompted calls for state and federal investigations and triggered a local political reckoning.

“I think there should definitely be some penalties,” said Weldon Hurt, a two-term Abilene City Council member who won his race for mayor against one of the candidates. “I don’t know how severe it should be, but I think there has to be a way to curtail this from happening again,” he added. “I think there should be some discipline to these churches.”

ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reported a day before the May 6 election that three churches had donated a total of $800 to the campaign of Scott Beard, a pastor who was running for City Council. That was a clear violation of the Johnson Amendment, a law passed in 1954 by Congress prohibiting nonprofits from intervening in political campaigns. The IRS can revoke the tax exemption of violators, but there’s only one publicly known example of it doing so, nearly 30 years ago.

Beard, a senior pastor at Fountaingate Fellowship, said the donations were a mistake and that he would be returning the money. But within days after Beard’s defeat to retired Air Force Col. Brian Yates, a national group that espouses the separation of church and state demanded that the IRS revoke the churches’ tax exemptions.

“Beard is insisting that he has returned the donation checks, but his belated attempt at contrition doesn’t mitigate the initial transgressions” of the churches making the donations, the Freedom from Religion Foundation wrote in a news release. The group has sued the IRS in the past “to force it to take steps to enforce the law against tax-exempt entities from engaging in partisan politicking, and is prepared to sue again if necessary.”

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MEME TRIAL: Defendant says he wasn’t committing ‘election interference’, was simply trying for viral meme

On Monday, attorneys gave their opening arguments in the trial of internet meme maker Douglass Mackey, also known as Rickey Vaughn, with his lawyer Andrew Frisch telling a federal jury that Mackey wasn’t looking to trick voters when he posted Hillary Clinton memes in 2016 telling supporters to “vote from home” via text messaging.

Frisch said that Mackey was merely attempting to go viral, according to the New York Daily News, stating that Mackey was “sh*t-posting,” or “stuff-posting” as he told the jury.

“It means what it says — he was posting stuff,” Frisch said. “A lot of it was online trash-talking. Juvenile, sure, and some of it was vulgar.”

“Whatever your reaction when you hear his views … whether he was a great thinker or a neanderthal caveman, you will see that none of it is proof of a criminal conspiracy.”

According to Rolling Stone, Frisch argued that people had begun texting the number only after media outlets began covering the meme. He noted that two people texted “Hillary for prison” to the number.

Federal prosecutors claimed that Mackey worked with fellow meme makers to create the Twitter posts and make them as real as possible.

“This wasn’t about changing votes. This was about vaporizing votes, making them disappear,” said Assistant US Attorney Turner Buford.

“The number was real and set up to receive incoming messages,” he explained. “The release of these fake campaign ads was timed to flood the internet before Election Day.”

Mackey posted the memes on November 1, a week before the election, and Frisch said that the meme’s message was “ludicrous to anyone with a basic knowledge of how presidential elections work,” the New York Daily Mail reported.

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Air Force Confirms Military Records of Two More GOP Candidates Were Leaked to Democratic Firm

The U.S. Air Force has admitted that it improperly released the military records of a further two GOP candidates to a Democratic-aligned research firm in an issue that House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said is “not going to go away quietly.”

In a letter last Friday obtained by Politico, the Air Force informed House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-AL) and Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) that an internal audit confirmed nine people’s records were “released without authority” to the Due Diligence Group between 2021 and 2023.

“During the two-year period covered by the timeline in your letter, AFPC received a total of 19,597 requests for records,” the letter read. “AFPC also initiated a separate audit of all third-party requests received between early 2021 and early 2023. That audit identified a total of 11 individuals who had their military records released without proper authority.”

According to the letter, seven of the disclosed records affected GOP candidates running for office in 2022. Among them, five had already been made public, while a further two have just been confirmed. The first is J.R. Majewski, an Ohio candidate who faced campaign-trail scrutiny for embellishing part of his military record. The other is Robert “Eli” Bremer, who lost in last year’s GOP primary race to take on Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO).

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