Tag: election interference

Zuckerberg’s election spending was ‘carefully orchestrated’ to influence 2020 vote: ex-FEC member

A former federal election official on Thursday called the $400 million-plus that Mark Zuckerberg spent to help finance local elections a “carefully orchestrated attempt” to influence the 2020 vote — and recommended that all states ban private funding of election offices.

Hans von Spakovsky, a former Federal Election Commission member, said the billionaire Facebook founder’s donations to a pair of nonprofits that doled out the cash to nearly 2,500 counties in 49 states “violated fundamental principles of equal treatment of voters since it may have led to unequal opportunities to vote in different areas of a state.”

“My reaction is that this was a carefully orchestrated attempt to convert official government election offices into get-out-the-vote operations for one political party and to insert political operatives into election offices in order to influence and manipulate the outcome of the election,” said von Spakovsky, a Republican who now runs the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative.

He added: “All states should ban private funding of government election offices no matter the source.”

Keep reading

Emails Show Biden Campaign Pressured Facebook to Censor Trump Before the Election

Emails obtained by CNN reveal how the Biden campaign pressured Facebook to censor President Donald Trump before the 2020 election.

The messages reveal how Biden campaign officials repeatedly insisted that Facebook remove information that it deemed to be ‘violent rhetoric’, a concern that seemed to be absent during months of leftists rioting and burning down entire city blocks throughout the summer.

After a deluge of public and private complaints by members of Biden’s team and other Democrats, a former Biden campaign staffer said Facebook “essentially did nothing” in response.

The focus was primarily on the official Team Trump account, with Biden officials infuriated that Facebook didn’t remove enough videos that warned people of upcoming election fraud.

Gee, I wonder why they were concerned about that.

“It was the most frustrating series of conversations,” a Biden aide said. “We went to Facebook with a series of letters, public complaints, private emails and all throughout, they essentially did nothing.”

Naturally, CNN spins the story as an example of how Facebook failed to clamp down on “misinformation,” despite the social network giant banning many of Trump’s most prominent supporters before the election and engaging in industrial-scale levels of censorship of pro-Trump content.

Keep reading

America’s Soup-Brained President Says The US Never Interferes In Other Countries’ Elections

During an astonishingly sycophantic press conference after the Geneva summit with Vladimir Putin, President Biden posited an entirely hypothetical scenario about what the world would think of the United States if it were interfering in foreign elections and everybody knew it.

When AP’s Jonathan Lemire asked the president of the most powerful government in the world what “consequences” he’d threatened the Russian leader with should the Kremlin interfere in US elections going forward, Biden meandered his way through one of his signature not-quite-lucid word salads, and then said the following:

“Let’s get this straight: How would it be if the United States were viewed by the rest of the world as interfering with the elections directly of other countries, and everybody knew it?  What would it be like if we engaged in activities that he is engaged in?  It diminishes the standing of a country that is desperately trying to make sure it maintains its standing as a major world power.”

The fact that the entire press corps did not erupt in side-splitting laughter at this ridiculous utterance is in itself proof that western news media is pure propaganda. The United States has directly interfered in scores of foreign elections since it began its ascent to global domination at the end of the second World War, to say nothing of all the coups, color revolutions, proxy conflicts and regime change military invasions it has also participated in during that time. The US openly interfered in Russia’s elections in the nineties, and literally just tried to stage a coup in Bolivia by interfering in its democratic process. The US is far and away the single most egregious offender in the world on this front, which is largely why it is perceived around the world as a greater threat to democracy than any other government.

This is not a secret, internationally or in the United States. Anyone who has done any learning about the US government’s actual behavior on the world stage knows this. Hell, a former CIA director openly joked about it on Fox News a few years ago.

Keep reading

‘We Were Creating A Story — Our Focus Was To Get Trump Out’: CNN Director Busted By Undercover Veritas Operative

A technical director for CNN made the grave error of sitting down with a (probably hot) undercover female journalist from Project Veritas, to whom he admitted that the network “got Trump out” with their coverage, and that he “100% believe(s) that if it wasn’t for CNN, I don’t know that Trump would have got voted out.”

“I came to CNN because I wanted to be part of that,” added the director, Charlie Chester.

He then explained how the network engaged in propaganda to ‘create a story’ about Trump vs. Biden.

“[Trump’s] hand was shaking or whatever, I think. We brought in so many medical people to tell a story that was all speculation — that he was neurologically damaged, and he was losing it. He’s unfit to — you know, whatever. We were creating a story there that we didn’t know anything about. That’s what — I think that’s propaganda,” he said, adding “We would always show shots of him [Biden] jogging and that [he’s] healthy, you know, and him in aviator shades. Like you paint him as a young geriatric.”

Keep reading

US Intelligence Cartel: All The Governments We Hate Interfered In Our Election

So what the US intelligence cartel is asking us to believe this time around is that America’s democracy has suffered yet another invisible attack, the evidence for which is of course top secret, and that the culprits involved are most of the governments the US intelligence cartel doesn’t like. Also, we’re being asked to believe that US-aligned nations like Saudi Arabia and Israel have had no similar interventions in the US electoral process at all.

And of course we’re already getting reports that this narrative will be used to justify sanctions against many of the accused nations, including Iran (which would necessarily kill the nuclear deal Biden campaigned on re-entering).

“The Biden admin is expected to announce sanctions related to election interference as soon as next week, three admin officials tell me,” CNN’s Kylie Atwood reports on Twitter. “They didn’t disclose details related to the expected sanctions but said that they’ll target multiple countries including Russia, China and Iran.”

So this completely unevidenced narrative is being used to justify support for increased aggressions which have already been long sought by the US intelligence cartel, which has an extensive and unbroken record of lying to us about exactly this sort of thing. The response to this is of course disbelief absent the mountain of evidence required in a post-Iraq invasion world, which (spoiler alert) will never surface. We will never be given any solid evidence for these US spy claims, yet US foreign policy and mainstream news coverage of it will march on as though we have.

Keep reading

Social Media Influencer Charged with Election Interference Stemming from Voter Disinformation Campaign

The complaint alleges that in 2016, Mackey established an audience on Twitter with approximately 58,000 followers. A February 2016 analysis by the MIT Media Lab ranked Mackey as the 107th most important influencer of the then-upcoming Election, ranking his account above outlets and individuals such as NBC News (#114), Stephen Colbert (#119) and Newt Gingrich (#141).

As alleged in the complaint, between September 2016 and November 2016, in the lead up to the Nov. 8, 2016, U.S. Presidential Election, Mackey conspired with others to use social media platforms, including Twitter, to disseminate fraudulent messages designed to encourage supporters of one of the presidential candidates (the “Candidate”) to “vote” via text message or social media, a legally invalid method of voting.

For example, on Nov. 1, 2016, Mackey allegedly tweeted an image that featured an African American woman standing in front of an “African Americans for [the Candidate]” sign.  The image included the following text: “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home. Text ‘[Candidate’s first name]’ to 59925[.] Vote for [the Candidate] and be a part of history.”  The fine print at the bottom of the image stated: “Must be 18 or older to vote. One vote per person. Must be a legal citizen of the United States. Voting by text not available in Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska or Hawaii. Paid for by [Candidate] for President 2016.”

The tweet included the typed hashtags “#Go [Candidate]” and another slogan frequently used by the Candidate. On or about and before Election Day 2016, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “[Candidate’s first name]” or some derivative to the 59925 text number, which was used in multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by the defendant and his co-conspirators.

Keep reading

Intel Analysts Withheld Info On China Election Interference To Boost Biden

A new report from the office of the Director of National Intelligence reveals officials downplayed Chinese Communist Party interference in the 2020 election “to avoid supporting Trump policies” since many “disagreed” with the administration’s approach to China.

The revelation comes from a 14-page report obtained by the Washington Examiner authored by Barry Zulauf, the Chief of the Solutions Division in the office of the Director of National Intelligence. Sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, the report reveals the agency’s assessment on foreign influence in the 2020 election was conducted in a “polarized” atmosphere and completed by officials who “disagreed” with the Trump administration’s approach to China.

“Given analytic differences in the way Russia and China analysts examined their targets, China analysts appeared hesitant to assess Chinese actions as undue influence or interference. The analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward because they tend to disagree with the administration’s policies, saying in effect, I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies,” Zulauf described.

Keep reading