Patrick Byrne: How Donald Trump Lost the White House

Patrick Byrne: How Donald Trump Lost the White House

Authored by Patrick Byrne via Deep Capture

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 Capitol Police, Secret Service, and Marines without any invitation: 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. Not knowing if he would play ball, I may have been less than clear that there would be some people with me.

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. There was no appointment scheduled but they clearly were confused and trying to figure out what to say. Suddenly 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, even though none of the requisite paperwork was arranged. 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 another of his colleagues who had joined up walked into the inner ring entrance before us, and spoke for us: again, when they saw Mike the guards again all stiffened to attention, looked puzzled for a moment (I think there is no such thing as a high-level visitor like that coming in without it being in the books), 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.

NB Since publishing this it has been brought to my attention that I had an incomplete picture of the situation. Besides my communication with Staffer 1 described above, others were in communication with Staffer 2, who was also making arrangements. Thus, things were more greased/arranged than I understood, and certainly no one was trying to evade security processes.

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 NSC 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 down 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 should be expecting us. President Trump’s eyebrows knitted in puzzlement but his face showed 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 go down peacefully.

“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 positionis 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, …..” and so on.

“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 enough 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 who were on their feet began speaking to her rudely. They challenged her, asking something like, “What do you think you know about the law?” She replied, “Well 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? There was 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 quite 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….

Authored by Patrick Byrne via Deep Capture

Source: Patrick Byrne: How Donald Trump Lost the White House

Parler CEO John Matze Announces His Termination

Parler co-founder and CEO John Matze in Washington on June 11, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Parler CEO John Matze announced late Wednesday that he has been terminated as the company’s CEO.

Matze said that the Parler board on Jan. 29 decided to terminate his position, adding that he did not participate in the decision.

The Parler board is controlled by Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer.

Matze said in a statement, “I understand that those who now control the company have made some communications to employees and other third parties that have unfortunately created confusion and prompted me to make this public statement.

“Over the past few months, I’ve met constant resistance to my product vision, my strong belief in free speech, and my view of how the Parler site should be managed. For example, I advocated for more product stability and what I believe is a more effective approach to content moderation,” Matze added.

Epoch Times Photo
This illustration picture shows the social media application logo from Parler displayed on a smartphone with its website in the background in Arlington, Va., on July 2, 2020. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

“Over the past few weeks, I have worked endless hours and fought constant battles to get the Parler site running but at this point, the future of Parler is no longer in my hands.”

Matze said that he plans on taking a few weeks off.

“After that, I’ll be looking for new opportunities where my technical acumen, vision, and the causes I am passionate about will be required and respected,” he said.

“I want to thank the Parler employees, the people on Parler, and Parler supporters for their tireless work and devotion to the company. They are an amazing group of diverse, hardworking, and talented individuals, and I have the utmost respect for them. Many of them have become my second family,” Matze added.

“I want to thank all the people of Parler that supported me and the platform. This has been the true American Dream: an idea from a living room to a company of considerable value. I’m not saying goodbye, just so long for now.”

In early January, Parler was removed from the Apple and Google‘s app stores over what the two big tech giants alleged was a lack of moderation by the platform of violent content posted by its users—a claim that Parler denies. Shortly after, Parler was taken offline by Amazon’s services due to what Amazon said was Parler’s “repeated violations” of Amazon’s terms of service.

This story is developing, please check back for updates.

Source: Parler CEO John Matze Announces His Termination

Longest-Serving Woman in Congress Says She Feels Increasingly Alienated in Democratic Party

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) (2nd L) speaks as then Rep.-elect Andy Levin (D-Mich.) (L), and Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) (R) listen during a news conference in Washington, on Nov. 29, 2018. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The longest-serving woman in Congress, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), told The Hill in a recent interview that she struggles with a growing sense of alienation within the Democratic party as she fights for the interests of her largely working-class Midwest constituents while the Democrat party is increasingly dominated by representatives from wealthy, often coastal districts.

“They just can’t understand,” Kaptur told the outlet, referring to the difficulty some of her Democrat colleagues have in relating to the concerns of blue-collar constituents like hers.

“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,” she added.

Kaptur told the outlet that she worries that the voices of congressional Democrats who represent wealthy districts are increasingly drowning out those who represent heartland districts.

“It’s been very hard for regions like mine, which have had great economic attrition, to get fair standing, in my opinion,” Kaptur said, adding that, as a Democrat who represents a working-class district, she feels like a minority within her party.

In the interview, Kaptur touched on congressional district data, which showed that 19 out 20 of the nation’s wealthiest districts are represented by Democrats.

“Several of my colleagues who are in the top ranks have said to me, ‘You know, we don’t understand your part of the country.’ And they’re very genuine,” Kaptur said. “You can’t understand what you haven’t been a part of.”

The idea that Democrats are losing touch with their blue-collar roots and are increasingly turning into the party of the elites while Republicans are on track to becoming a multiethnic working-class coalition was an oft-repeated theme in the wake of the 2020 election.

In his first remarks following the November election, in which the GOP defied expectations and made gains in the House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the House Minority Leader, declared, “This election cycle has made one thing clear: The Republican Party is now the party of the American worker.”

The 2020 election results, in general, reinforced the view that the Republican party is poised to become a multiethnic coalition of working-class voters. In the presidential race, for instance, former President Donald Trump won the largest share of non-white voters, a traditionally Democrat demographic, of any Republican since 1960.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) commented on the fact that Trump won Zapata County, in Texas, by a margin of 52–47 percent in 2020, while he lost that same county to Hilary Clinton in 2016 by a margin of 65–32 percent.

“#Florida & the Rio Grande Valley showed the future of the GOP: A party built on a multi-ethnic multi-racial coalition of working AMERICANS,” Rubio wrote in a tweet.

Source: Longest-Serving Woman in Congress Says She Feels Increasingly Alienated in Democratic Party

Facebook CEO Zuckerberg Praised Biden’s Executive Orders: Leaked Video

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies at a Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees Joint Hearing in Washington on April 10, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Newly leaked video from an internal Facebook meeting shows CEO Mark Zuckerberg praising executive orders issued by President Joe Biden in his first day in office.

“I thought President Biden’s inaugural address was very good,” Zuckerberg said in the Jan. 21 meeting.

“In his first day, President Biden already issued a number of Executive Orders on areas that we as a company care quite deeply about and have for some time,” he added. “Areas like immigration, preserving DACA, ending restrictions on travel from Muslim-majority countries, as well as other Executive Orders on climate and advancing racial justice and equity. I think these were all important and positive steps.”

Biden issued a record number of executive orders in his first days in office as he strove to reverse actions taken by former President Donald Trump.

The video was leaked to Project Veritas, a nonprofit watchdog, by someone the group described as a Facebook insider.

Epoch Times Photo
Former President Donald Trump (L) and President Joe Biden in file photographs. (Getty Images)

The group also leaked a clip of Zuckerberg disparaging Trump at a Jan. 7 meeting.

“It’s so important that our political leaders lead by example, make sure we put the nation first here, and what we’ve seen is that the president has been doing the opposite of that,” Zuckerberg said at the time. “The president intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power.”

“His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters in the Capitol I think has rightly bothered and disturbed people in the U.S. and around the world,” he added.

Trump gave a speech on Jan. 6 as protesters turned violent at the U.S. Capitol about two miles away. Trump told supporters to go to the building but urged them to remain peaceful. After protesters stormed the Capital, he released videos asking them to leave and condemned the violence.

Facebook didn’t respond to a request for comment. The social media company took a number of punitive actions against Trump in the lead-up to the November 2020 election and ultimately banned him from its website, claiming he was condoning rather than condemning the actions of his supporters. Facebook appeared to take no action against Biden, despite the Democrat issuing a number of misleading posts before and after the election.

Source: Facebook CEO Zuckerberg Praised Biden’s Executive Orders: Leaked Video

Trump Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize Over Israel-UAE Peace Deal

Then-President Donald Trump departs the White House en route to Florida after signing the Tax Cut and Reform Bill in the Oval Office in Washington, on Dec. 22, 2017. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Former President Donald Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday morning by an Estonian member of the European Parliament, Jaak Madison.

In a post on social media, Madison said: “In the last 30 years, Donald Trump is the first president of the United States, who during his tenure, has not started a war. Additionally, he signed several peace agreements in the Middle East which have helped provide stability in the region and peace.”

Madison was referring to the Abraham Accords, a joint statement between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States–and later, with Bahrain and other Arab countries.

“We encourage efforts to promote interfaith and intercultural dialogue to advance a culture of peace among the three Abrahamic religions and all humanity,” according to a statement on the State Department’s website. “We believe that the best way to address challenges is through cooperation and dialogue and that developing friendly relations among States advances the interests of lasting peace in the Middle East and around the world.”

Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize last year by Norwegian Parliament member Christian Tybring-Gjedde.

“For his merit, I think he has done more trying to create peace between nations than most other Peace Prize nominees,” Tybring-Gjedde told Fox last year.

Separately, Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz nominated Trump’s son-in-law and former presidential advisor Jared Kushner on Monday morning. Dershowitz—who is eligible to nominate individuals because of his status as a former Harvard Law professor—argued that Kushner and his associate Avi Berkowitz helped negotiate the Abraham Accords.

UAE Bahrain Israel Abraham accords
(L-R) Bahrain Foreign Minister Abdullatif al-Zayani, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald Trump, and UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan pose from the Truman Balcony at the White House before they participate in the signing of the Abraham Accords where the countries of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates recognize Israel, in Washington, on Sept. 15, 2020. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

“The Nobel Peace Prize is not for popularity. Nor is it an assessment of what the international community may think of those who helped bring about peace,” Dershowitz wrote. “It is an award for fulfilling the daunting criteria set out by Alfred Nobel in his will.”

Under the diplomatic push, Trump’s administration also negotiated deals with Sudan and Morocco.

Kushner, in a statement Sunday, said that he was honored to be nominated for the prize.

President Joe Biden’s administration is expected to review all national security deals struck during the Trump administration, including arms packages for the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Some lawmakers have complained about the Morocco deal because, to win the nation’s agreement, the United States recognized its sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara.

Also on Monday, the Black Lives Matter movement was nominated for the Peace Prize by a Norwegian Parliament member, Petter Eide. Eide said that people have messaged him “to say that BLM is a violent organization,” but he rejected the claims.

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded in November 2021.

Source: Trump Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize Over Israel-UAE Peace Deal

Religious Books Seized and Burned in Communist China, Believers Given Jail Terms

Falun Gong books are set on fire in Shouguang City, China's eastern Shandong Province, on Aug. 4, 1999. Chinese authorities in cities across China burned millions of Falun Gong books and materials after the communist regime launched a campaign to persecute the spiritual practice in July 1999. (STR/XINHUA/AFP via Getty Images)

Years ago, the horrors of the holocaust paved the way for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; however, our basic right to freedom of religion or belief is still being trampled in societies ruled by totalitarian regimes.

In communist China, practicing a certain faith, printing, or even reading religious books could result in prison terms and abuse. Spiritual believers in China—be it Christians, Buddhists, Uyghur Muslims, or Falun Gong practitioners—are faced not only with brutal suppression or forced-labor terms but also have their religious books burned or trashed at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The coercive policies are aimed at forcing these religious followers to renounce their faith and follow the communist ideologies based on atheism and Marxism.

It is the work of the devil. The situation is becoming increasingly dire; the government [the CCP] is increasing pressure step by step. In the end, they want to eliminate religious beliefs completely.

— A Three-Self Church preacher in China

Ban on Religious Publications

According to Bitter Winter, a magazine on religious liberty and human rights in China, a Three-Self Church venue in one of the villages under the jurisdiction of Lanling County was demolished in July 2020.

A county government official told the congregation that “all churches too close to government institutions must be destroyed” and the same goes for “those that look better than government buildings.”

“Belief in the Communist Party is the only religion allowed,” the official said, according to the report.

In another report, the magazine stated that in the same month, 26 people in Jiangsu Province, China, were sentenced under the charges of “illegal business operations” for being involved in printing religious publications meant for internal circulation for the South Korean Good News Mission.

The director and two members of the mission were fined heavily and handed prison terms of 3 years and 10 months and 3 years and 6 months, respectively, while some printing house managers were fined as high as US$15,000 and sentenced to 3 years, with a probation period of 3 to 5 years.

Even postal and courier services are being strictly monitored. In another recent report, a courier company staff member from the city of Luoyang, Henan Province, told Bitter Winter that the CCP exerted “strict control over mailed goods” in the year 2020.

“Only the mailing of government-approved books is allowed. All books with ‘bad information,’ including religion, are not allowed to be dispatched. If public security authorities discover violations of these regulations, the company will be fined and closed down,” the staff member said.

Epoch Times Photo
A woman reads the Bible at the Christian Glory church in Wuhan on Sept. 23, 2018. (NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP via Getty Images)

Citing yet another incident, the report said a mother of Christian faith from Jiyuan City, Henan Province, visited a post office in June 2020 to mail gospel texts to her daughter living abroad. But authorities told her that her publications were “illegal objects,” the report said.

“I knew that it was illegal to send combustible objects, drugs, guns, and ammunition, but even religious materials are now illegal,” she said.

As the communist regime is escalating its restrictions on religious publications, those in the printing industry are left in distress. A sales department manager in Luoyang City, Henan Province, told Bitter Winter in September 2020 that printing of religious materials, “especially Christian,” is not allowed.

“Anyone who takes on such orders breaks the law and might be put into prison. This is the line that we absolutely can’t cross,” the manager said, according to the report.

The authorities also conduct thorough checks to make sure that the businesses are adhering to the rules.

“They checked my storehouse, scrutinized all records, and even looked at paper sheets on the floor, to see if they have prohibited content,” said a printing house manager in the same city.

“If any such content is found, I’ll be fined, or worse, my business will be closed. Any religious content makes the issue political, not religious. Although banners on the streets say people are allowed religious beliefs, the only faith they can practice freely is that in the Communist Party,” he added.

Epoch Times Photo
A worker operating machinery in a printing factory in Nanjie Village, in China’s central Henan Province, on Sept. 26, 2017. (GREG BAKER/AFP via Getty Images)

The magazine reported in 2019 that the communist regime is also attempting to “sinicize” the Bible by forcing clergymen to interpret the teachings based on the Marxist and socialist ideologies.

“This is a distortion of the Christian faith. It is the work of the devil,” a Three-Self preacher told Bitter Winter. “The situation is becoming increasingly dire; the government [the CCP] is increasing pressure step by step. In the end, they want to eliminate religious belief completely.”

Trashing and Burning Religious Books

Apart from banning the spiritual publications, the Chinese authorities spare no efforts in confiscating religious books that aren’t officially approved by the CCP.

In March last year, the local authorities demolished a Three-Self church in Jining City’s Yutai County after deeming it an “illegal construction.”

“Officials stormed into our church before we even finished collecting our belongings,” a congregation member told Bitter Winter. “They tore up all Bibles and images of the Lord Jesus.”

Chen Yu, the owner of a Christian online bookstore in Taizhou City, Zhejiang Province, was sentenced to seven years and fined 200,000 yuan (US$31,000) for “selling unapproved religious publications imported from Taiwan, the United States, and other countries,” according to an October 2020 report by International Christian Concern. The authorities also planned to destroy the 12,864 Christian books from his bookstore.

Dictating full control over spiritual followers by destroying religious books and demolishing places of worship is nothing new for the CCP in order to advance its authoritarian reign. As a regime rooted in atheism and materialism, the communist party has been cracking down on religious and spiritual groups constantly since it came to power in 1949.

When the CCP launched the decade-long Cultural Revolution in 1966, temples were looted, and scrolls, books, relics, and even Buddha statues were burned.

Epoch Times Photo
The Buddha statues destroyed in the Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 to 1976. (Pat B/CC BY-SA 2.0)

A few decades later in July 1999, the then-leader of the CCP, Jiang Zemin, ordered the eradication of the spiritual practice of Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa), an ancient meditation system based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance.

The Public Security Bureau then issued official documents prohibiting the display of any symbols or images associated with the Falun Gong practice and possessing or distributing its books, according to Falun Dafa Information Center.

Minghui.org, a U.S.-based website dedicated to documenting the persecution of Falun Gong, compiled a report, which includes several news reports documenting the CCP’s “nationwide unified destruction” of millions of Falun Gong publications, namely books and videotapes, by throwing them into a pulping machine or burning them.

Epoch Times Photo
Falun Gong books are set on fire in Shouguang City, China’s eastern Shandong Province, on Aug. 4, 1999. Chinese authorities in cities across China burned millions of Falun Gong books and materials after the communist regime launched a campaign to persecute the spiritual practice in July 1999. (STR/XINHUA/AFP via Getty Images)

Since then, countless Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested, imprisoned, and tortured, with some even having their organs harvested. Many of them were arrested for refusing to renounce their faith or for possessing the books.

In its full report on the “Public Destruction of Books and Tapes,” Minghui cited several cases reported by foreign journalists, state-run newspapers in China, eyewitnesses, and adherents of Falun Gong confirming that millions of publications were trashed, burned, and torn apart during the mass-destruction activities.

Epoch Times Photo
Falun Gong books being crushed under a road roller during the 1999 nationwide destruction of the spiritual practice’s publications and materials. (ClearWisdom.net/CC0 1.0)

Although Buddhism is one of the recognized religions in China, the Buddhist temples and their followers are still being targeted by the authorities.

Bitter Winter reported that the government officials in Shanxi Province confiscated nearly 882 pounds (approx. 400 kg) of religious books and CDs from Fengci Temple in October 2020. In the same month, some impoverished households in Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province, were ordered to burn the Buddhist books in the Foguang Temple or else risk having their minimum subsistence allowance revoked.

In the 2020 springtime, the religious books and CDs were burned in the Reclining Buddha Mountain Temple in Ulanqab City in China’s Inner Mongolia, according to the report.

“Those books and CDs were burned in the incense burner for three to four days,” a Buddhist from Ulanqab City said.

“The rest of religious books and CDs were taken away in a fully loaded truck. The CDs alone weighed three to four hundred kilograms.”

Source: Religious Books Seized and Burned in Communist China, Believers Given Jail Terms

Reddit Users Going After Silver for ‘Biggest Short Squeeze in the World’

Silver bullion is offered for sale at the Chicago Coin Company in Chicago, Illinois. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
 

A number of Reddit users on the popular r/WallStreetBets forum have said they are planning to launch a coordinated effort to target silver as their next short-squeeze target.

Posts encouraged individuals to use the IShares Silver Trust, the largest silver exchange-traded fund, and carry out what one user called the “BIGGEST SHORT SQUEEZE IN THE WORLD.”

“Silver Bullion Market is one of the most manipulated on earth. Any short squeeze in silver paper shorts would be EPIC,” a user on Reddit’s WallStreetBets wrote. “We know a billion banks are manipulating gold and silver to cover real inflation. Both the industrial case and monetary case, debt printing has never been more favorable for the No. 1 inflation hedge Silver.”

It came after purchases of hot stocks like GameStop, KOSS, and AMC were restricted by various platforms, sparking calls by members of Congress for an investigation into whether there was collusion by hedge funds and platforms like Robinhood. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev described that assertion in media interviews this week as a “conspiracy theory.”

Shares of video game retailer GameStop Corp have soared 1,625 percent since the start of January. Driving the rally are individual investors who said they have been stuck at home for the last ten months. Many have turned to online forums like WallStreetBets on Reddit and are buying the stock, some as a form of protest against hedge fund managers who wagered that it would fall.

One expert said those Reddit users will have a difficult time making an impact in the silver market.

“It is true that the combined efforts of those on the Reddit forums can dramatically influence the price of individual stocks, but if you compare the size of the entire silver market to the market cap of the individual companies that forums have recently targeted, we don’t see this as having the potential to significantly move silver into a short squeeze scenario,” John Feeney, business development manager at Guardian Vaults, told Bloomberg News.

“Silver’s market cap is too large and those on the forums typically want to see quick gains, so I wouldn’t read into it too much,” he said.

But Peter Schiff, the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, wrote that it appears the “Reddit raiders have turned their attention to #silver stocks,” adding: “They’re getting smarter. Silver stocks are actually cheap and represent good investment value. The fact that some investors were foolish enough to short these stocks makes their trade even better.”

Source: Reddit Users Going After Silver for ‘Biggest Short Squeeze in the World’

1776 Commission Director: Abolishing the Commission Won’t ‘Get Rid of These Principles’

Dr. Matthew Spalding, a professor of constitutional government and Dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College was interviewed by The Epoch Times’ program American Thought Leaders. He was the executive director of the 1776 Commission, created by executive order by former President Donald Trump.

The host of the program, Jan Jekielek, asked him some key questions highly relevant to the current intense political zeitgeist, allowing Spalding to cast lucidity on the partially forgotten, at least for the younger generations, ideals of 1776.

The new Biden administration has abolished the 1776 commission, a history-centered, patriotic education program that calls for remembrance of and upholding the nation’s founding principles.

Spalding spoke about the clashing points that juxtapose the New York Times’ controversial “1619 Project” and the United States’ founding history, along with the ideological and theological ramifications.

Spalding noted that current popular educational trends are unfair to students because they don’t reflect the true picture of the founding of America. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are regarded as “dusty old documents” rather than honored documents that hold in them powerful truths that led to the founding of the first nation with the assertion that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with unalienable rights.

Epoch Times Photo
A replica of the U.S. Constitution. (WikiImages/Pixabay)

He asserted that America has not always lived up to the principles that the founders believed in, but should not be judged due to its deficiencies.

One of the most obvious deficiencies is the subject of slavery.

When questioned about the irony of some of the founders owning slaves and at the same talking about abolishing slavery, he acknowledged the legitimacy of the criticism, but that it’s important to see how overcoming slavery and realization of these flaws were part of history. It shouldn’t invalidate the greatness and nobility of the founding principles, something that he said should still be loved and inspire patriotism.

“Slavery clearly existed. They were arguing about it at the time, Jefferson held slaves at the same time he wrote a condemnation of the slave trade in the draft of the Declaration of Independence. George Washington owned slaves. But by the time he writes his final will, he frees them, those that are in his estate, because he has come to detest slavery,” said Spalding.

He stated further that slavery didn’t grow out of the founding itself.

“The principle [of equality and freedom] had been established. So they can then carry it out at the appropriate time. They made compromises, but we have to understand that they were compromises, compromises in light of the Declaration of Independence. That’s the only way to understand it. Because otherwise, you must condemn the whole thing. And I think that’s just not good history. And that’s not fair to them,” he said.

Epoch Times Photo
(Illustration – Author/Shutterstock)

Spalding asserted the necessity to understand something in order to love it, and in contrast to other regimes, the love is not to be imposed on the people.

“You can love this country, despite its flaws, because it has done so much to advance that cause. And that’s what makes it a great and wonderful, successful nation,” he said.

Spalding then turned to the subject of education, and important topics that are not taught properly anymore, such as civics.

“What is a genuine education? And what the report is especially concerned about is what is education about civics? What does one need to know to be a good citizen?

“In America, to be a citizen means you actually need to know something about American history, how American government works, the debates over what the declaration means, alternatives, great figures in history, those kinds of things. And that’s not the way civics is taught much anymore. And we think a recovery of that would be a large step in the right direction.”

Spalding then highlighted a controversial view of progressives, who ironically over-empower government and interpret “truth” rather than give people the capability to govern themselves.

“The intellectual point they make is that ‘the idea that there are truths isn’t true. They’re only historical truths or truths that progress with time.’

“Instead, what they turn to, at least the early progressives turned to science, expertise, or the idea of bureaucrats, people that have been specially trained to run things, whether that’s in the economy, in the academy, or say in government. And this is how they reshaped and rethought government to that they have themselves into this administrative state.

“It’s no longer about the fundamental ends of government. It’s about the process. And so yes, they very much introduced in its place, in the place of a Constitution granted on the principles as understood by the founders. Having unmoored it from the principles, they now kind of re-invented this new way of thinking about how to run things.

“And I think that’s something that has stuck in American history in politics, and we continue to have a kind of a troublesome problem in our politics is the fights over bureaucracy, the so-called fourth branch of government.”

On the topic of religious liberty, Spalding asserted that it was a “core right” and that it is intrinsically related to civil liberty. He added that securing rights should “garner the most respect and protection” over the increasing dominance of government.

The removal of the 1776 report from the White House webpage, Spalding believes, is due to the incompatibility of the founding principles with some of the policies that the new administration is attempting to empower or instill, such as identity politics and critical race theory.

He believes the removal gave the report, which is available in other institutions, more prominence.

“I think by abolishing the commission and removing the report, they actually drew more attention to it. Thank you very much,” he said.

Spalding was asked about the future of the 1776 commission.

“The commission, in some form, will carry on.”

“You could abolish the commission, but you can’t erase history, you can’t get rid of these principles. That’s what we’re dedicated to. And that’s what we will continue teaching and working to defend,” Spalding said at the conclusion of the interview.

Source: 1776 Commission Director: Abolishing the Commission Won’t ‘Get Rid of These Principles’

Media Company Files Antitrust Lawsuit Against Google, Facebook

The logos of mobile apps Facebook and Google on a smartphone in Sydney, Australia, on Dec. 9, 2020 (The Epoch Times)

A media company that operates several West Virginia newspapers is suing Google and Facebook for threatening the extinction of local newspapers across the country by their alleged anticompetitive business practices.

HD Media Company this week filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to determine whether the two Silicon Valley companies had violated anti-trust laws. The lawsuit claims Google had unlawfully exercised monopoly power of the digital advertising market, which has prevented newspapers from competing in the market and losing their primary source of revenue.

It also claims that Google and Facebook had “unlawfully conspired to engage in anticompetitive conduct,” through an alleged secret deal nicknamed “Jedi Blue.” Details of the alleged agreement were first revealed when 10 state attorneys general sued Google for multiple violations of federal and state antitrust and consumer protection laws.

According to a redacted version of the lawsuit (pdf) filed in December, Facebook announced in 2017 that it would try a new method of selling online advertising called “header bidding,” which would act as a threat of competition for Google. The lawsuit suggested Facebook eventually “curtailed its involvement” with the project after Google gave Facebook “information, speed, and other advantages in the [redacted] auctions that Google runs for publishers’ mobile app advertising inventory each month in the United States.”

The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, who both say they’ve reviewed an unredacted version of the complaint, reported the alleged secret deal referred to in the lawsuit was code-named “Jedi Blue” by Google.

HD Media’s lawsuit claims that as a result of Google and Facebook’s alleged anticompetitive and monopolistic practices, newspapers in West Virginia and across the country are facing “a very real existential threat to their existence.”

“Without redress, these newspapers, and hence the citizens of West Virginia, may well end up in the ‘news desert,’” the lawsuit states (pdf).

It claims that Google’s monopoly has created an uneven playing field to compete for online advertising revenue. It says Google had integrated itself through numerous mergers and acquisitions to “enable dominion over all sellers, buyers, and middlemen in the marketplace.”

“The freedom of the press is not at stake; the press itself is at stake,” the filing states.

“As a result of falling revenues, newspapers are steadily losing the ability to financially support their newsrooms, which are costly to maintain but provide immense value to their communities. A robust local newsroom requires the financial freedom to support in-depth, sometimes years-long reporting, as well as the ability to hire and retain journalists with expertise in fundamentally local issues, such as coverage of state government.”

Google and Facebook did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

HD media is seeking an order that declares Google and Facebook’s actions violated the law and blocks them from further engaging in such conduct. It also seeks damages for any injury caused.

HD media owns and operates newspapers such as The Herald-Dispatch in Huntington and Cabell County, the Charleston Gazette-Mail, The Wayne County News, The Putnam Herald, the Williamson Daily News, The Logan Banner, the Coal Valley News in Boone County, and The Independent Herald in Pineville.

Source: Media Company Files Antitrust Lawsuit Against Google, Facebook