Over 400 people from the Intelligence Community (IC), military, law enforcement, and the judiciary have formed a loose network to investigate irregularities in the 2020 election.
Robert Caron, one of the organizers of this network, began his intelligence career with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He later worked for the Special Situation Group, a task force established by President George H.W. Bush that includes strategic planning, technologies, and foreign and domestic investigations.
He told The Epoch Times that he was recruited to the network in 2014, during which time many in the intelligence community (IC) were seeing an increase in improper operations. Many IC officers were withholding information from their leaders, and their leaders were withholding information from the public. Caron mentioned that in 2014, Lt. General Michael Flynn called out then-President Barack Obama for “not acting properly on intelligence.”
In the same year, Obama fired Flynn over management issues. On Aug. 7, 2014, Flynn left his post as the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and ended his 33 years of an army career. After President Donald Trump pardoned Flynn last month, Flynn said in an interview with The New York Post that he was framed via the Russia-collusion investigation partly because Obama was afraid of Flynn’s ability to expose his corruption.
“President Obama was not acting properly on intelligence that he received concerning Benghazi,” Caron said, referring to an attack of U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, that resulted in the deaths of several U.S. officials. He said he believes it was then that a lot of people from the intelligence community got together and started recruiting people to join the network.
Retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn speaks among President Donald Trump supporters who rally in Washington, on Dec. 12, 2020. (Yong Wang/The Epoch Times)
After numerous reports of irregularities in the 2020 election, the investigation network expanded. Many have focused on investigating the election, according to Caron, who said most are volunteering, while some are getting paid for the inquiry. He said that as far as he knows, the size of the network is “way over 400” and that each member of the network sees obvious election fraud based on their own observations.
Caron said that the network includes former intelligence officers, analysts, operatives, military, law enforcement, and judiciary from the FBI, CIA, Military Intelligence, DIA, and National Security Agency (NSA), among others, as well as many former intelligence officers in other countries.
“The fraud was so massive and so blatant, despite what the mainstream media said, that we need to get this information out to the public,” said Caron. “That’s why more and more people from the intelligence community and law enforcement are coming out, which is unheard of.”
Caron shared an example of information control by the mainstream media that he witnessed in McAllen, Texas, when Trump visited the border wall there in January 2019.
He said he saw two groups on both sides of the street. A group of about 100 was on one side, and a much larger group was on the other side. “A lot of people, because of what was told in the mainstream media, thought that all the people in the big crowd were the ones against the president. But no, they were the ones that were for the president.”
He said he asked them what they thought and learned that the border wall made their families feel safer, and was told that without the wall, various Mexican criminal organizations would cross the border and force their children to sell drugs.
One of the IC network’s current investigations focuses on foreign interference during the Nov. 3 election, with the Chinese Communist Party being a significant player.
Attorney Sidney Powell, who filed third-party lawsuits on behalf of President Donald Trump, said that Republicans in Congress should back Trump’s election challenge if the Republican Party hopes to survive.
“[Trump] won more than 305 electoral votes & the popular vote as well. You won in the greatest landslide in history,” Powell wrote on Twitter, suggesting that if election fraud was dealt with properly in the courts or in state legislatures, the president would have at least 305 Electoral College votes.
“If the [Republican National Committee] hopes to survive, every Republican should stand up for you now,” she said, adding that “a multi-billion-[dollar] donor told me there’s no point donating at all when [the] election is rigged.”
Later, the former federal prosecutor said that the upcoming Georgia runoff election for seats held by Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) could be tainted as well.
“Maybe they already won outright. Maybe someone else won? How do you have a runoff from a failed and fraudulent first election? Get the first one right first,” Powell, a lawyer who successfully represented retired Army Lt. Gen Michael Flynn, asked on Twitter.
It comes as President Trump recently criticized GOP members of the Senate and House for not taking up his $2,000 stimulus check proposal, saying Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his allies have a “death wish.”
“Unless Republicans have a death wish, and it is also the right thing to do, they must approve the $2,000 payments ASAP. $600 IS NOT ENOUGH!” Trump wrote on Twitter. McConnell blocked an attempt to pass the $2,000 CASH Act after Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) made a request for unanimous consent.
Several Republican senators expressed their support for the bill.
Now, Democrats in Congress are highlighting McConnell’s move in light of the Georga Senate runoff elections.
“Mitch McConnell, Kelly Loeffler & David Perdue are standing between your family and a $2,000 survival check Georgia,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) wrote in a tweet on Tuesday, saying Georgians should vote for Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, both Democrats. Loeffler and Perdue have said they support the $2,000 stimulus payments.
McConnell later Tuesday introduced a bill that combines the $2,000 payments with a repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—although Democrats have said the bill is designed to fail.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told CNN on Tuesday that McConnell is attempting “throw a few poison pills in there” to discourage senators from voting on the package this week.
“Let me throw in a reform of the internet while we’re at it here. Let’s do some work here and investigate the last election. For goodness sakes, stop looking for poison pills, Sen. McConnell, pass this right now. America needs it,” he said.
President Donald Trump’s campaign adviser said the team is aiming to present evidence during a potential congressional debate on Jan. 6 if lawmakers in the House and Senate object to states’ Electoral College votes.
As of Wednesday, it appears that at least one member of the Senate, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), and a number of House lawmakers will object to the electoral votes during the Joint Session of Congress. Hawley announced he would object to the electoral vote, pointing to previous Democratic efforts to do so during the 2004 and 2016 presidential elections. After the objection, an hours-long debate will occur.
Miller said that evidence could be presented in Congress, which would differ from what the Trump campaign presented in courts over the past several weeks.
“We will have a chance in front of the American people, next week to present these cases, all these evidences of fraud,” Miller told Newsmax, pointing to a lawsuit filed by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) against Vice President Mike Pence earlier this week to prevent him from confirming Joe Biden’s electoral victory. Miller told the outlet that the 1887 Electoral Count Act allows the vice president, who is the president of the Senate, to preside over the Joint Session of Congress.
Then, Miller told Newsmax that he hopes at least one senator and representative join together to object to the Electoral College vote, allowing for two hours of debate.
The U.S. Capitol Building is seen past the Washington Monument as the sun sets in Washington on Dec. 26, 2020. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
Should that happen, Miller said President Donald Trump’s team is seeking to present alleged evidence of voter fraud or irregularities in the Nov. 3 election, including law changes regarding mail-in ballots in Wisconsin, “suitcases of ballots” in Georgia being wheeled out late at night on Nov. 3 in Atlanta’s State Farm Center, and being blocked in Arizona and Michigan from inspecting voting systems, alleging that ballots were counted several times.
“These are the specific types of evidence we want to present to the American people on the national stage and not allow local politicians to sweep it under the rug,” Miller said.
Weeks ago, Trump’s team led by Rudy Giuliani presented a surveillance video from the State Farm Center that showed suitcase-like boxes being wheeled from under a table. It came after election officials allegedly told other workers and poll observers that counting was done for the night.
The Georgia GOP said they received conflicting and incorrect answers and statements from Fulton County officials about what happened on Election Night, and officials later acknowledged that vote-counting went on until the early-morning hours. State election officials, in response to the video, said nothing unusual occurred with the ballot boxes and vote-tabulation process in Fulton County.
Elaborating on Wisconsin, he said, “Article II of the Constitution makes it very clear, the state legislatures, and state legislatures alone, set up the voting systems for each state, the codes and the way they are conducted.” He said, “And what we have here is we have over 20,000 ballots that were cast without actually having an application on file, the mail ballots. Wisconsin’s very clear, very specific you got to have an application on file.”
At 1 p.m. local time on Jan. 6, members of Congress will gather in the chamber of the House of Representatives to observe the formal certification of Electoral College votes for president of the United States.
While it’s usually a formality, nothing has been usual so far about this year’s election amid numerous allegations of voter fraud in key swing states.
The situation is complicated by a lack of clarity on the legal and constitutional guardrails for the process. The joint session of Congress may well result in gridlock, in which a clear winner of the race isn’t announced at all.
Based on current election results, former Vice President Joe Biden has received 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232 votes. Meanwhile, Republicans in seven states where Biden claimed victory have sent their own sets of electoral votes to Washington, and some members of the House have indicated that they will object to Biden electors in some states. Any objection would require support from one House member and one senator to be considered, and at least one senator has has left open the possibility he would join the effort.
So what will happen?
The counting of votes is primarily governed by the 12th Amendment of the Constitution and the amended Electoral Count Act.
The Constitution simply states that electors of each state have to meet, make a list of their votes, “which they shall sign and certify,” and send those to the president of the Senate, meaning Vice President Mike Pence.
“The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted,” the 1804 amendment says.
The Electoral Count Act of 1887, currently known as 3 U.S. Code Section 15, establishes a procedure for how the votes are counted, how to raise objections, and how to resolve disputes. First, it says that the vice president indeed presides over the proceedings. Then, it says the House and Senate leaders each designate two tellers. The VP opens the envelopes with the vote certificates and hands them to the tellers for counting. The tellers then read them out loud, count them, and hand them back to the VP to announce the results.
Then, in rather convoluted language, the law says that Congress members can object. At least one objection from each chamber is needed to trigger a separate vote by both House and Senate on the objections. If both chambers agree, the objected voters are rejected. That’s virtually out of the question given the Democrats’ majority in the House.
If two sets of electors are presented for counting, the House and Senate need to separately vote on which set is legitimate and which should be rejected. If each chamber votes differently, the set certified by the state’s governor should count. That would hand the victory to Biden.
The problem is, there’s a voluminous body of legal analysis arguing that the Electoral Count Act is unconstitutional. Congress has no business granting itself the authority to decide which slate of electors is the correct one and which votes should be rejected. Nor does Congress have the power to designate state governors as the final arbiters, a lineup of legislators and legal scholars have argued.
There are two arguments for who has the constitutional power to decide which electors to choose.
Some jurists say it’s the VP who has the sole discretion to decide which votes to count. The argument is that the framers intended for the VP to be the sole authority over the counting of the votes because the unanimous resolution attached to the Constitution said that the Senate should appoint its President “for the sole Purpose of receiving, opening, and counting the Votes for President.”
Moreover, before the adoption of the Electoral Count Act, it was always the VP counting the votes, sometimes despite major objections from Congress. Thomas Jefferson did so as the VP in the 1800 election, counting Georgia’s constitutionally deficient votes and de facto securing his own presidency.
Arizona state lawmakers and GOP electors, together with Rep. Louie Gohmert, have filed a federal suit asking for the court to clarify the law to the effect that the Electoral Count Act is unconstitutional and the VP’s power is paramount.
Not everybody agrees, though.
University of Virginia professsor John Harrison, an expert on constitutional history, says the VP doesn’t have “any constitutional power to make decisions” over which votes to count.
He argued that the law is deficient to the effect that “Congress doesn’t have the power to make the announcement [of its decisions regarding the vote count] conclusive.” But that doesn’t mean it can’t prescribe any rules at all.
“The Constitution does call for counting the votes with both houses present, so I think that setting up procedures for a count is within Congress’s power,” he told The Epoch Times via email.
The second argument is that the Constitution grants the authority to determine how electors are picked to state legislatures. As such, any disputes over which votes should be counted should be resolved by state legislatures.
The problem is, state legislatures aren’t in session and they can’t assemble in a special session without a call from the governors, who have refused to do so. Meanwhile, the legislatures have usually delegated the power to certify electors to the Governors and Secretaries of State, undermining their own authority on the matter.
The conservative Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society has filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the power of the legislatures is both “exclusive and non-delegable,” and thus any state and federal statutes to the contrary are unconstitutional and void.
That would not only knock down some provisions of the Electoral Count Act, but also render electoral votes that haven’t been certified post-election by state legislatures illegitimate.
Regardless of what the courts will say, the core question is what will take place in the House chambers on Jan. 6? Will Pence refuse to follow the Electoral Count Act? Will some of the tellers dissent? If things go wrong for the Democrats, will House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) try to end the session prematurely?
There’s no way to tell. Pence hasn’t let his intentions be known.
President Donald Trump in a message to the nation late Tuesday sought to explain why he is determined to pursue all legal and constitutional avenues to “stop the theft of the presidential election,” and called on the American people to “raise their voices” and demand to correct the injustice.
“Americans must be able to have complete faith in the confidence of their elections. The fate of our democracy depends upon it,” he said in a video statement. “Now is the time for the American people to raise their voices and demand that this injustice be immediately corrected. Our elections must be fair, they must be honest, they must be transparent, and they must be 100 percent free of fraud.
“We won this election by a magnificent landslide, and the people of the United States know it. All over, they’re demonstrating, they’re angry, they’re fearful. We cannot allow a completely fraudulent election to stand.”
Trump said that one of his most solemn duties as president is to protect the integrity of Americans’ “sacred right to vote.”
He accused Democratic officials in key swing states of having used the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes the disease COVID-19, as a pretext to allegedly illegally violate state laws to “to enable, encourage, and facilitate fraud” on an unprecedented scale in the country.
Trump has previously alleged that there was widespread voting irregularity and fraud across the nation, however, this is the first time he has made a lengthy address about the election urging Americans to be vocal about the situation.
It comes after he recently called for his supporters to join a planned protest in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021. “Be there, will be wild!” the president wrote. Jan. 6 is when members of Congress are set to convene in a joint session to count electoral votes.
Pro-President Donald Trump protesters rally against the results of the presidential election outside the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta, Ga., on Nov. 18, 2020. (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)
Hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters have held multiple protests across the nation since the election, calling for a free and fair election and for leaders to take action.
Democrat Joe Biden has declared victory in the election. Trump and other Republicans are contesting election results in courts in key states. The Epoch Times is not calling the race at this time.
‘Facts Every American Needs to Know’
The president spent the majority of his White House address Tuesday night explaining why he believes there was widespread fraud while repeatedly asserting that he was the true winner of the election.
“The truth is we won the election by a landslide. We won it big,” Trump said. “Today I’m going to give you the facts that every American, needs to know.”
On the night of Nov. 3, swing states including Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Pennsylvania saw a lead for Trump. However, vote counting stopped abruptly in the early hours of the next day and a series of “massive and statistically inconceivable vote dumps” in the middle of the night overturned the results, Trump noted.
“These gigantically ridiculous one-sided spikes were miraculously just enough to push Joe Biden into the lead in all of the key swing states. These glaring anomalies are just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.
The president also shared how he had won Ohio, Florida, and Iowa “by historic margins,” and won 18 of 19 “bellwether counties” that have for the past 40 years correctly predicted the winner of the presidential election.
“[This means] Biden would be the first candidate since 1960 and only the second candidate in American history to win the White House while losing all three of those major states, and it wasn’t even close,” Trump said.
He pointed out that Democrats had lost 25 out of 46 toss-up House seats, and noted that Democrats ended up having a net loss of 14 seats even though they were projected to gain 15 seats, which was, according to Trump, due to his success and the down-ballot effect.
Trump said that his presidential campaign earned about 75 million votes, which is about 12 million more votes compared to the 2016 election—the largest vote increase recorded for an incumbent president. Despite this, opponent Joe Biden “somehow received 11.7 million more votes than Barack Obama, and he beat Barack Obama all over the country,” Trump said.
“It is historically, mathematically, politically, and logically impossible. It did not happen. He did not win. We won by a landslide.” he said.
The Trump campaign has over the past seven weeks provided evidence alleging voting irregularities and fraud. The president told Americans that the campaign has shown that Democrats violated their own state laws by changing procedures ahead of the election without having gone through the state legislatures.
Such changes included suspending all signature verification requirements, flooding a given state with absentee ballot applications, and deploying hundreds of unmanned ballot drop boxes. These changes were allegedly done to “illegally benefit” Biden, Trump said.
He also alleged that the incredibly low absentee ballot rejection rates “prove that hundreds of thousands of illegitimate ballots were counted in the key states,” and that there were no “meaningful attempt to verify citizenship, residency, identity, or eligibility for mail-in ballots.”
“The potential for illegal activity is unlimited and that’s what we just experienced,” he said.
Trump also pointed to witnesses who have testified that they personally witnessed different instances of cheating and fraud. This included witnesses having seen poll workers backdating thousands of ballots and counting batches of the same ballots many times. Other witnesses said they saw thousands of pristine ballots that had no creases or folds and that were all for Biden.
The building housing the Toronto office of Dominion Voting Systems. (The Epoch Times)
The president also questioned the involvement of Dominion Voting Systems, a supplier of voting hardware and software, including voting machines and tabulators. He said that Arizona state senators recently issued a subpoena for a forensic audit of the voting machines and that other states using Dominion’s equipment and software should also carry out similar investigations.
“As I have just laid out, we have unveiled overwhelming evidence of election fraud. None of this should ever have been allowed in the United States of America. It is a travesty of democracy, it’s a shame upon our republic,” Trump said.
Trump also accused the Democrat Party, the media, and Big Tech giants of “openly colluding” to deceive the country. Prior to the election, media and Big Tech companies censored stories about how Biden’s family had “received millions of dollars from the Chinese Communist Party.”
“Our country no longer has a free press. It is a press of suppression. It is a press where the truth will never come out. It is the greatest and most shocking scandal involving a presidential candidate in modern history,” Trump said, later adding, “The media and the Democrat Party lied to the American people to try to steal the election.”
“If this egregious fraud is not fully investigated and addressed, the 2020 election will forever be regarded as illegitimate and the most corrupt election in the history of our country,” Trump said.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro listens to a news conference about a presidential executive order relating to military veterans outside of the West Wing of the White House in Washington, March 4, 2019. (Leah Millis/Reuters)
Peter Navarro, who serves as an advisor to President Donald Trump, on Thursday released a report, in his private capacity, on the integrity of the 2020 election, concluding that the allegations of irregularities are serious enough to warrant an urgent probe and substantial enough to overturn the results.
The findings of the report (pdf), titled “The Immaculate Deception,” support the claim that the election “may well have been stolen” from President Donald Trump.
“If these election irregularities are not fully investigated prior to Inauguration Day and thereby effectively allowed to stand, this nation runs the very real risk of never being able to have a fair presidential election again,” Navarro said in the report.
On a call with reporters explaining his findings, Navarro said his role in putting the report together is to say that, “the emperor, in the election, has no clothes.”
Fielding questions about what, at this stage, can be done, given that numerous legal challenges brought by the Trump campaign have been dismissed and the Electoral College has already voted, Navarro said, “with every day that goes by, it becomes more complicated” and “options narrow.”
Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis, in a recent interview with The Epoch Times, said there’s still time for state legislatures to convene in special sessions and authorize alternate slates of electors.
While Navarro declined to specify a proposed remedy in light of his findings aside from a thorough investigation, he said, “the last thing this country needs is an Inauguration Day where we have what is perceived to be an illegal and illegitimate president of the United States.”
In making an urgent call for a probe of the allegations, Navarro argued that “if, in fact, compelling evidence comes to light proving the election was indeed stolen after a fait accompli Biden inauguration, we as a country run the very real risk that the very center of our great American union will not hold.”
In the report, Navarro examines six types of irregularities in the six battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—states in which certified results show Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s holding a lead and where the vote continues to be hotly contested.
Summary of findings regarding election irregularities in six battleground states. (Source: Data – The Immaculate Deception Report; Design – ET)
Navarro said that the pattern of irregularities across the six states suggests “a coordinated strategy to, if not steal the election outright, strategically game the election process in such a way as to ‘stuff the ballot box’ and unfairly tilt the playing field in favor of the Biden-Harris ticket.”
He argues that the weight of the evidence, which comes from sources that include over 50 lawsuits and judicial rulings, thousands of affidavits and declarations, testimony in a variety of settings, think tank analyses, and press reports, is “more than sufficient to swing the outcome in favor of President Trump.”
Biden’s margin of victory in all the battleground states except Michigan is less than the number of ballots that Navarro flags as possibly illegal.
Rather than any single “silver bullet” of election irregularity responsible for an unfavorable outcome for Trump, Navarro argues that “this was theft by a thousand cuts across six dimensions and six battleground states.”
The list of actions that Navarro classifies as outright voter fraud include large-scale manufacturing of fake ballots, bribery, along with ballots cast by dead voters or ineligible voters like felons and illegal aliens. Others include ballots counted multiple times and those cast by illegal, out-of state voters.
Summary of findings regarding outright voter fraud in six battleground states. (Source: Data – The Immaculate Deception Report; Design – ET)
Ballot Mishandling
Another major dimension of alleged irregularities in the 2020 presidential election, which Navarro calls a “multifaceted problem” that featured in five out of six of the battleground states, includes such factors as no voter ID checks, signature match check abuses, “naked ballots” that lack an outer envelope, and broken chain-of-custody records.
Summary of findings regarding ballot mishandling in six battleground states. (Source: Data – The Immaculate Deception Report; Design – ET)
Contestable Process Fouls
The third dimension of election irregularities includes abuses regarding poll watchers and observers, such as denial of access or lack of meaningful access, as well as violations of state law in the area of mail-in and absentee ballots. It also includes illegal ballot curing by poll workers, and violations in voter registration procedures.
Summary of findings regarding contestable process fouls in six battleground states. (Source: Data – The Immaculate Deception Report; Design – ET)
Equal Protection Clause Violations
The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution features the Equal Protection Clause, which mandates that no state may deny its citizens equal protection under the law. Questionable practices in this regard identified by Navarro include applying higher standards of certification and ID verification applied to in-person voters compared to mail-in and absentee balloting, and different standards of ballot curing for different counties.
Summary of findings regarding equal protection clause issues in six battleground states. (Source: Data – The Immaculate Deception Report; Design – ET)
Voting Machine Irregularities
There were two major types of voting machine irregularities Navarro noted in the report: large-scale voting machine inaccuracies, as well as vote switching from one candidate to another and vote surges in favor of one candidate.
Summary of findings regarding voting machine irregularities in six battleground states. (Source: Data – The Immaculate Deception Report; Design – ET)
Significant Statistical Anomalies
The final category of irregularities detailed in Navarro’s report are statistical anomalies, which include such phenomena as significant changes in absentee ballot rejection rates compared to prior elections, and unusual vote surges.
Summary of findings regarding statistical anomalies in six battleground states. (Source: Data – The Immaculate Deception Report; Design – ET)
In concluding his report, Navarro argues that “the failure to aggressively and fully investigate” the irregularities he has flagged “signal a failure not just of our anti-Trump mainstream media and censoring social media but also of both our legislative and judicial branches.”
Since Election Day, Trump and third-party groups have pursued legal challenges to the outcome of the election in the six battleground states. None of the efforts have so far borne fruit, including an interstate Supreme Court challenge brought by Texas and backed by 19 Republican attorneys general.
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe confirmed that there was foreign interference in the 2020 election, according to CBS correspondent Catherine Herridge.
“Well DNI Ratcliffe leads the 17 intelligence agencies and he has access to the most highly classified information that is held by the US government. And he told CBS News that there was foreign interference by China, Iran, and Russia in November of this year and he is anticipating a public report on those findings in January,” Herridge said.
Ratcliffe’s office did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ request for confirmation of the report.
Ratcliffe’s statement contradicts others made by national security officials.
Christopher Krebs, the recently-fired top cybersecurity official during the presidential election, testified before the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday.
“While elections are sometimes messy, this was a secure election,” Krebs said.
On a Nov. 27 “60 minutes” interview, Krebs was asked what he thought of the Trump legal team’s allegations that votes were tabulated in foreign countries and were manipulated.
“So, all votes in the United States of America are counted in the United States of America,” Krebs said. “I don’t understand this claim. All votes in the United States of America are counted in the United States of America. Period.”
Adding, “So, again, there’s no evidence that any machine that I’m aware of, has been manipulated by a foreign power. Period.”
Sidney Powell a former federal prosecutor who has been seen working alongside President Donald Trump’s legal team pushing election challenges, filed a letterwith the Supreme Court on Dec. 13 to notify them of two batches of recently obtained evidence about Dominion Voting Systems voting equipment.
Her letter outlines new affidavits from two forensic experts who allege that international interference took place in the 2020 election and that Dominion systems were connected to foreign systems around the globe.
Powell said that two military intelligence analysts have signed sworn affidavits stating that the SSL certificates from dominionvoting.com were used multiple times from Canada, Serbia, and the United States.
Meanwhile, the office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) confirmed that their upcoming report includes information about “relevant” foreign threats from the recent election.
“The IC has received relevant reporting since the election and a number of agencies have not finished coordinating on the product,” said Amanda Schoch, a spokeswoman for the office, adding that Ratcliffe remains committed to an expeditious release of the report.
ODNI announced late Wednesday that the Intelligence Community (IC) has notified Ratcliffe that they will not meet the Dec. 18 deadline set by President Trump’s executive order to submit the report on foreign threats during the November election as “agencies have not finished coordinating on the product.”
“This afternoon the DNI was notified by career intelligence officials that the Intelligence Community (IC) will not meet the Dec. 18 deadline, set by executive order and Congress to submit the IC’s classified assessment on foreign threats to the 2020 U.S. elections,” said Schoch.
Dec. 18 marks 45 days after the Nov. 3 general election, when, according to Trump’s executive order from 2018, the DNI was expected to deliver a report regarding “to the maximum extent ascertainable” whether any interference attempts took place, and the nature of such interference, methods used, and who was involved and authorized such efforts.
You can find whispers of this on Twitter but I’m pretty sure it’s throttled down and, if I had to bet, I would say it will get censored in short order. Especially if the order goes into action.
But it’s not a theory. It is an Executive Order that was issued by President Trump on September 12, 2018. It’s almost as if President Trump saw this situation coming.
The order is titled:
“Executive Order on Imposing Certain Sanctions in the Event of Foreign Interference in a United States Election”
I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, find that the ability of persons located, in whole or in substantial part, outside the United States to interfere in or undermine public confidence in United States elections, including through the unauthorized accessing of election and campaign infrastructure or the covert distribution of propaganda and disinformation, constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. Although there has been no evidence of a foreign power altering the outcome or vote tabulation in any United States election, foreign powers have historically sought to exploit America’s free and open political system. In recent years, the proliferation of digital devices and internet-based communications has created significant vulnerabilities and magnified the scope and intensity of the threat of foreign interference, as illustrated in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with this threat.
So, what remedies are described in this Executive Order?
Section 1 says the Director of National Intelligence (John Ratcliffe) shall conduct an assessment and report on any foreign related interference in our elections.
Section 1. (a) Not later than 45 days after the conclusion of a United States election, the Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the heads of any other appropriate executive departments and agencies (agencies), shall conduct an assessment of any information indicating that a foreign government, or any person acting as an agent of or on behalf of a foreign government, has acted with the intent or purpose of interfering in that election.
We could be approaching 45 days fairly soon depending on when they deem the conclusion of the election to be.
The report will be delivered to the heads of State, Defense, Treasury, Homeland Security, Attorney General, and the President.
The report will then include any recommended remedial actions that the United States take against such actors, other than sanctions described in the order.
Sec. 2. (a) All property and interests in property that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of any United States person of the following persons are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any foreign person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Homeland Security:
The actions that could be taken are wide ranging.
Will this Executive Order come into play? The implications could be huge, if so.
Donald Trump hats and other items on offer at the Nevada Republican state central committee meeting in WInnemucca on Saturday, Sept. 7, 2019. (Bill Dentzer/Las Vegas Review-Journal)Mesquite City Councilwoman Annie Black, who unsuccessfully challenged incumbent state GOP chairman Michael McDonald for the post, speaks to a party delegate at the state party central committee meeting in Winnemucca on Saturday, Sept. 7, 2019. (Bill Dentzer/Las Vegas Review-Journal)
Nevada state GOP chairman Michael McDonald speaks to party delegates standing on line to vote for party posts at the Republican state party central committee meeting in Winnemucca on Saturday, Sept. 7, 2019. (Bill Dentzer/Las Vegas Review-Journal)
WINNEMUCCA – Nevada Republican Party officials, seeking to put 2018 state losses behind them and set a glide path for nominating President Donald Trump for a second term in 2020, re-elected their incumbent chairman and other party leaders Saturday and formally took the party out of holding a presidential caucus to choose its candidate in February.
The Silver State’s GOP thus becomes the latest state party to all but formally endorse the sitting president more than a year before the election, though central committee members stopped short of nominating him outright. That vote, per Republican national committee rules, won’t happen until February, state leaders said Saturday.
But by opting against a caucus, a move favored by the Trump campaign in Nevada and elsewhere, state Republicans do avoid a contest that could sow division and would cost the party money, but whose outcome would not be much in doubt.
Republicans in South Carolina and Kansas voted to forgo their states’ primaries earlier Saturday, and Arizona Republicans were expected to follow suit as well.
“We have an incredible incumbent who’s very strong,” Douglas County’s Amy Tarkanian told fellow delegates as party faithful debated the move. “And I think it would be a slap in his face if we did not pass this.”
The measure was approved on a show of raised hands. Those who spoke against it said skipping the presidential caucus would sharply curtail participation and enthusiasm for other caucus contests, which will continue as normal.
“It is not only about money. It’s also about the individual’s right to go to the (caucus) and cast a vote,” said Clark County delegate Mary Beganyi. “You want to elect Republicans? Engage Republicans.”
Meeting Saturday in Winnemucca, the county seat of strongly-Republican Humboldt County in Northern Nevada, far from Democratic strongholds in the south, party officials also backed the full slate of incumbent leaders, all Trump stalwarts who enjoy the similar backing of the president.
Chairman Michael McDonald, who has served since 2012, easily won a three-way race with 57 percent of the vote, or 205 out of 362 votes cast, beating back opponents who sought to blame him for the party’s losses in 2016 and 2018.
Trump lost the state in 2016, and Republicans suffered steep losses in 2018 up and down the ballot, including races for U.S. Senate, three of four U.S. House races, and the governor and attorney general races. Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske remains the only Republican statewide elected official.
McDonald defeated Mesquite Councilwoman Annie Black, who received 102 votes, and former Clark County GOP chairman Dave McKeon who won 54.
The caucus opt-out had the backing of the chairman and leadership.
“Caucuses are expensive,” McDonald said during a break in the meeting. He noted that county party organizations had their eyes on reversing 2018’s losses in state legislative races and wanted to “focus on and put the resources where they’re needed.”
In Nevada, Democrats hold a 73,000 active registered voter advantage over Republicans on the strength of their 165,000-voter lead in Clark County, where 71 percent of Nevada’s voters reside. Republicans have a registration advantage in the state’s other 16 counties. State active-voter registration is 38 percent Democratic, 33 percent Republican, and 22 percent nonpartisan according to August figures from the secretary of state’s office.
The Nevada Assembly voted 23-17 this past week to cut the impact of your presidential vote by at least a third.
Assembly Bill 186 would have Nevada join something called the “Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote.” Instead of awarding Nevada’s six electoral votes — one for each representative and senator in Congress — according to how Nevadans vote, those six electoral votes would be awarded to the president and vice president team that wins the popular vote nationally.
One could say this cuts the value of Nevada’s votes from six to four, since the votes nationwide would be proportional to population. Or one could say it negates our votes entirely since it matters not how we vote.
Not a single Assembly Republican voted for the bill and five Democrats had the good sense to reject this attempt to emasculate the federalist system on which this country was founded.
If only three state Senate Democrats have the temerity to buck their party leadership and reject AB186 it would fail.
An email to Gov. Steve Sisolak’s office asking whether he would sign or veto the bill should it pass did not garner a response.
Backers say the compact would become a reality if it is adopted by states possessing a combined 270 electoral votes, or a majority of the 538 electoral votes. A similar bill passed in Colorado earlier this year, giving the proposal 181 electoral votes, just 89 votes short of becoming binding.
A similar measure passed the Nevada Assembly in 2009 on a party-line vote but failed to come up for a vote in the state Senate.
The instigation for the current push is the fact that in 2016 Donald Trump won the Electoral College vote by 304 to 227, though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.9 million.
If the National Popular Vote had been in force in 2000 Nevada’s then four electoral votes would have been enough to flip the election to Al Gore, even though George W. Bush won the popular vote in Nevada by 49.5 percent to 46 percent, winning every county except Clark. Bush won the electoral vote 271 to 266, but lost the popular vote by 540,000.
Janine Hansen, state president of the Nevada Families for Freedom, mentioned just such a scenario in testimony opposing AB186.
“There are three dangers I’d like to mention with the National Popular Vote,” Hansen testified. “One is the National Popular Vote will potentially betray the voters of our own state. If our state voted for candidate A and the National Popular Vote winner was candidate B, our votes would be stolen from our desire and given to the National Popular Vote winner, betraying the voters in this state. I think there would be a lot of angry voters if they found out that that’s what happened.”
Hansen also noted there is no national authority for determining the accuracy of the National Popular Vote.
In his testimony, Jim DeGraffenreid, vice chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, pointed out Nevada is currently a battleground state, getting significant attention from national candidates. He said the state’s first-in-the-West caucuses provide opportunities for all Nevadans to participate.
“The Electoral College exists because the Framers of the Constitution believed that each state should matter in selecting the president,” DeGraffenreid testified. “It is designed to protect the smaller states like Nevada. To suggest that a state should disregard its own voters and instead follow the will of voters in some other state is the exact opposite of what the Framers intended.”
He said the bill could make Nevada voters irrelevant.
The Founders created the Electoral College and the U.S. Senate to assure the smaller populated states were not relegated to powerlessness in a one person-one vote system. The states were meant to be sovereign and to hold the powers not specifically delegated to the federal government.
The National Review pointed out in a recent article that using 2016’s turnout stats a candidate could have won 54 percent of the vote in 48 states, losing only California, New York and D.C., but if an opponent won 75 percent of the vote in just those three locales, a 451 to 87 electoral vote landslide would have turned into a popular-vote defeat to 50.7 percent to 49.3 percent — even though the voters in 48 states rejected that candidate.
Should Nevada surrender its presidential votes to California and New York?
